Happy Birthday to Me! - I'm now 33!

edited -AGAIN - I am so embarrassed that I still haven't completed this post and hit publish YET!!! ...OK, so two weeks later here goes again -So sorry!!! ~Bonnie

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Just like everything I do lately - I began this post on my Birthday (7/26-Thursday).....typing here and there when I got a minute or two... but I am not getting around to finishing it until today!!! :P Sunday

It's a good thing you can't hear me singing... "Happy Birthday to me, I'm nooooooow 33!" LOL I will never have trouble remembering how old I am b/c all I have to do is add 30 to how ever old Nora is. ;) The year I had her my "big" gift that year was an electric breast pump! oooough wow! Yeah, right! It was something I wanted and cost over $200 so it had to count as my rotten birthday gift that year. LOL ;P

This year, my "big" Birthday gift is I am getting my string quilt quilted by Bonnie Hunter!!! I first contacted her back in May about getting it done and at that time she was booked thru Jan 2008... and I was still looking around and pricing out longarm quilters.

I really love the Baptist Fans Quilting she has used on several of her quilts and found some other LA's who had the template and prices were good - but one thing that Bonnie offered that other's didn't was attaching the binding on for me! It's been ages since I have attached binding and I am not sure I would remember what to do for the corners - so even if I had to wait longer for her it would be worth it!

So this week I emailed her again about it and confirmed that I wanted hire her to do the quilting on it - and out of wishful thinking on my part I asked if she by chance had any cancellations? or would she now be totally booked thru December 2008??? LOL

Well, to my surprise she replied back and said that in fact she had a cancellation and had an opening for late August! WHOO HOOO! :) This made my day!!! My quilt will be done a lot sooner than I had hoped!

I don't know if I have shared with you the story of this string quilt - did some back tracking of my blog and doesn't seem that I have shared the story about it so here goes :)

For my string quilt, I had used cut up scraps that I've had since before I even quilted! You see what you don't realize is that 90% of of the fabric used to make up my string quilt came from a very special place. My grandmother "Momma Newt" had her quilting scraps in Wal-Mart bags under her bed when she passed away in 1995. At the time, I was only 21 and my mom and aunts were cleaning out and said to jut throw these bags out to the trash!

To every one's surprise I said, "NO, I want them!!! Maybe one day I can use that fabric!" At that time, I had never quilted much less sat behind a sewing machine. They didn't go thru all the bags and what they saw was only the polyester fabrics - but there was some "good 100% cotton in those bags as well!

Since then both my quilty family members, my mom and aunt Elender have passed away.... if they could just see me now, they would be so proud! ;) In those bags were a lot that I did end up trashing but also there were fabrics worth keeping - as a matter of fact, enough for this string quilt and those boarder fabrics were from the larger pieces - thankfully there were two that somewhat went together in there so I picked them first and planned my middle string to be the same all throughout. I only wish now I had cut them all even and centered them evenly so that the "x" seams would match and would be pretty.

In the photo above is my girlfriend Tracie who came to vist shortly after we first moved to TX - (Tracie use to be my neighbor when I lived in GA & we worked together) - anyway that year, she used her bonus check from work to fly to TX and spend a whole week with me in Jan of 2006 and she brought her son Anthony with her too!

We wanted to plan something easy to sew while she was here and I had found the BEST EVER Quilting Internet site = http://www.quiltville.com/ and this looked like the perfect project for us to work on together!! Sure enough it was - so I prepared all of my scraps into strings and we were able to work together on this "Brainless sewing" as I call it and chit chat and stay up all hours on the night (after our kids were in bed) sewing and not having to worry with matching or paying attention to seam allowances or patterns. :P

A few days later we had my string top (the one I showed you above) and this one done and ready for boarders! Sorry the photo doesn't show the colors like they really were...more "blue" in the photo that they were in real live.

The corner stones between the sashing were left over scraps from a quilt that she and I put together for the St. Jude's Quilt Project from the year before..... and after the top was put together I ended up having the perfect boarder fabric to tie together all those bright and colorful fun fabrics. I had bought it at Hobby Lobby and there was just enough! In her quilt, the only fabric we had to buy, was the solid black sashing. Using the same ABC boarder fabric made it tooooo busy.

Funny how the same two people can work on two totally different quilts at the same time and they each turn out to be so unique and pretty!!? I love each of them and it was really hard to let her take this black/bright string quilt home with her but I did. :) I wanted Tracie to have a quilt from her trip to TX and before I had moved she had given me several of her scraps which I still have today so all in all we are even .... only her fabric I gave her is pieced into a beautiful quilt and the fabric she has given me is strung out all over the floor of my quilting room b/c Nora likes to "organize" my scraps! LOL.

and sure enough we each pieced a top that week and had so much fun as did our toddlers playing in the strings on the floor. Nora was only about 18 months old at the time and I think Tracie's son Anthony was just under a year old. He wasn't walking at time, but crawling and pulling up.

I have already purchased backing for this quilt but need to make sure it has been washed first. I've gotta get it ready to ship to South Carolina! The backing is a red fabric so I may was twice just to be on the safe side. Also I need to figure out how to cut the binding strips and get that prepared for her. I have no idea if I need to cut on the grain or bias...? I haven't done that in years either! This is one of those times, I wish I could pick up the phone and call my momma...

Oh, how I am so excited to finally be getting this quilt QUILTED and done!!! Until now it's been hiding in the closet... but now after it comes home I will enjoy seeing it everyday!!! I didn't aim for it to - but it is the PerrrrrrrrrrrrFECT square to go on my square kitchen table as a table cloth! I mean Perfect!!! You'll see - come September after I get it back from Quiltville! ;)

This was my first time making string blocks and certainly not my last! I am currently involved with the Heartstring Quilt Project and have been the block hostess for my HGTV Sunshine Quilters collecting string blocks for the Heartstrings Project. :) For the month of June we mailed in 45 blocks!! I am anxious to see how many more we collect during August.