He GRADUATED!!!!!

Look at him go!!!!

This is where I spent my weekend, watching HTB walk across a stage and receive the holder for the diploma he's had for the past two months (He's good like that). 

I'm so happy I could share the day with him and his family. 

CONGRATS RYAN!!

(doesn't he look so happy!?)

--Flying back in less than 36 hours to make it to work on Monday--

Dre

**note: images of him and I together will not be posted until my in-house photo editor fixes it---I squint***

I have a condition

So the cleaning lady came to our house on Wednesday.

This normally means that the family room that my mother and I have converted to a craft area needs to get cleared up. With my Pineapple Hospitality quilt finished I was able to clear everything. (I haven't gone through my scraps to get the pieces of fabric that are salvageable for scrap quilts.)

This is just a quick pic of what it normally looks like. However with the pineappe hospitality frustrating me I had started also cutting the fabric for my next project. 

It's called Shiloh. I'm using not only the fat quarter pack of Civil War Homefront by Moda but also scraps that I had from my stash buster quilt and creams that I had laying around. 

Needless to say this only meant that I had a whole bunch of fabric in my craft room and a whole bunch of fabric in my closet that was not being used. On top of all this I went through a week of accumulation where I bought some more fabric. 

At the top is fabric from JoAnns, the Owl print and greens came from Fabric Worm and the purples to the right are from my favorite Pumpkin Patch. 

Needless to say I wasn't aware that the size of my stash had increased significantly. 

It wasn't until this wednesday

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when I had to move my fabric out of the craft room

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This is the sight that greeted me in my room thursday when I moved the fabrics in my closet out to re-organize.

I was shocked. How did I let my stash grow so uncontrolled!?! I started going through every trip to cabbage rose, every call and visit to my Pumpkin Patch and came to a disturbing conclusion. 

I'm a fabric hoarder! 

Don't worry, I'm not talking hoarder like the TV show, just that I have been buying fabric in some cases because I just want to have it. 

So I started pulling everything out and taking proper stock of what I had. 

these are my fabrics that are over 1/2 yard. I have another 2 yards of cream fabric in the craft room that I didn't bring in. 

I have used a whole ton of blues and not enough greens. I'm working on that, just got to find the right pattern. 

note the french general fabric that it behind this stack--I have a whole bunch of red. 

In my defense, I use cream in just about EVERY project I do, this means it's the color I need the most of but run out of the fastest. :/ 

This is all my kits and precuts. I have a whooolleee bunch of Rouenneries by French General. It's part of their quilt kit but I have been auditioning them for another project. 

These are the flannels that I looked at when finding the backing to  Ryan's Quilt. 

I went through all the cigar boxes I use for scrap storage and the bigger pieces went here. 

not quite sure what I'm going to do for the stringy left overs--but I've read you can have so much fun using them for a certain technique. I'll be saving them for whenever I find out what it is and take a class on it. :P 

that and I can't bring myself to throw anything away quite yet. 

Now all m stash is organized and it will prevent me from buying fabric I already own (it happened with a fat quarter of brown fabric). 

Now, it's back to the drawing board to see what I can use all this fabric for!!! I already have all the stuff I need for Shiloh, I didn't even include THAT stack of fabrics. 

My only comfort is that this condition is normal and hereditary. 

This is my mother's stash. (note, two of the uhaul boxes are just non quilt related books.) My thought process is that she's had a head start for accumulating her stash. :P

--thinking she needs alternative storage for her fabric needs.--

dre

Pineapples. nummy-ness.

So, I mentioned a few weeks back that I was working on an anti-OCD buggy barn project.

HERE'S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE!!!!

I will confess to everyone of the 3-4 people reading this that I was sure that this was going to be my first UFO.

Let me walk you through the whole traumatic but in the end very satisfying process.

First I had to slash into a few layers of fabric then swap everything around. This was no trouble for me! It's the next step that drove me crazy. Once I had swapped everything around, based on the order the book gave me, I had to sew these un-even pieces together!

This is when everything went down hill.
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If you like all your blocks looking the same then a buggy barn quilt is NOT for you. >.< (*note the very different widths shown above*)
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not only was it frustrating to not have everything line up but it was also frustrating that I could chain piece ANYTHING. I had to work a whole block from beginning to end.
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This gets very old, very quickly with 24 tops and bottoms.

So 48 blocks later I had bottoms and tops of pineapples. Now it was time to organize them. 

So right now then they didn't quite have the pineapple roundness but they looked pretty friggin cool right? The whole point of this step leads me to the next step in my frustration.

Once I had the matching tops I had to sew rectangles that I had already cut to the corners of my pineapples. 

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This would be simple enough if it:

a. didn't take so long

b. wasn't so confusing to understand the first time around

c. didn't involve cutting only one piece of fabric from between two other one. (you won't understand this reason unless you make this quilt)

after 4 rectangles were sewn afore mentioned pieces were cut and the block ironed it was then smooth sailing. 

sew tops to bottoms (even if they aren't the same width), trim, and sew into rows of seven.

it's only after almost 2 months of struggling with this quilt to finally see it accomplished today. *sniff sniff*

I would like to thank the academy for making this moment possible *sniff*

This is quilt 6 of 13 for my bridal quilt set. My intention is to slap a border on this sucker and applique "welcome" to the bottom with some pretty embellished vines and call it done!

-making progress, and planning her next project--
dre