Opened shop!

By the way we did finally move. We sold our home in April and moved out to the country with my family. I couldn't have asked for a better arrangement. I love living near my parents. I have the peace of mind knowing my mom is right next door for the kids when I'm at work.

Not just that, but I now have a nice cozy area for my quilting and genealogy research. No more freezing my butt of in the basement, and no more clutter and mess in my family room.

Since I started this blog a lot has happened. I still do my genealogy research which I write about when I find the time on my Untangled Family Roots blog, but I also Do a lot more sewing and quilting now. I also have a new position at work as the Continuous Improvement Coordinator (Lean Manufacturing Coordinator). As a result this has brought me a new opportunity.

Here it is. I'm am trying find a way to help my company make an even smaller impact on the environment by upcycling their fabric waste. I work for a local office furniture manufacturer. Some of the product we make involves fabric. We go through thousands of inches of fabric every day and discard tons of waste from the left over pieces. I am also pursuing what options they may have to recycle this waste. They recycle all the metal, wood, paper, cardboard, etc that they use, but the fabric has always been thrown away as there is not really a viable option out there for a large scale company in this area to recycle. This creates an opportunity for me if this works, so I'd sure appreciate some help if you can.

I open up my Etsy shop last night Going Green Scrapy as a way to sale some of this reusable fabric and to sale the crafts I make from this fabric. Although I am still in search of a viable option for them to recycle the waste fabric that is really no longer usable for anyone. If you can think of any other option I may have to help my company achieve this goal of less impact on the landfill and environment please help.

House Quilt Finished

Finally I finished my House quilt and hung it on the wall. It does have some flaws, so I'll probably never sale it. The flaws are on the back though, so it makes a great wall hanging.

This quilt was a test for me. I wanted to see if I could reuse scrap pieces of fabric discarded the the office furniture making process at work to make something beautiful. I did and it look great, but I soon realized these fabrics were not easy to work with. If I want to continue doing quilts, and I plan to, I'll go back to using cottons.

However, I am pursue other ideas to reuse the fabric my work discards to create wonderful pieces. Some of the ideas I have are pillows, pot holders, purses/bags, window coverings, etc. I'm open to further ideas if anyone has any.

I'll keep this quilt above my sewing machine for now and appreciate all the hard work that went into it every time I look up.

Two Weeks of Pride

I picked up a fabric a while back at Wal Mart with a Native American theme. I didn't even know what I wanted to do with it, and then one day it hit me..... that fabric would look great with a Lone Star design of bright colors taken from the fabric. So I went to buy a few pieces of those bright fabrics and also found a Native American design that would work great for the border.

Now I had all the fabrics. The fun part would be taking my time to do the Lone Star technique correctly. I had to be slow and precise with it. This is not a design you can rush on. I used Lone Star Quilts and beyond by Jan Krentz to guide me through this. When it was all finished I was proud of it. The last time I tried to do a star quilt I messed up so royally I threw it away, but this one, though there are a few minor errors, came out looking great.

I spent about two weeks on the weekends making this top. It's a queen sized top, so I don't know how I'm going to quilt that on my machine. I may end up quilting this one by hand as well. It would also help to give it that old fashioned style to it. I'm not sure which way I will go yet, but I know I'm very pleased with how the top came out.

Maple Leaves

This was the first quilt I started. I'm still working on the hand quilting. I wanted a particular look with this one that I knew I couldn't achieve on the machine. You'll see that look in the maple leaf and design I stitched around it. Also by hand quilting it gives this quilt an old fashioned look to it.

This quilt was done all out of fabrics from work. None of this is cotton. One thing I like about that is these fabrics are very heavy. When you hold the quilt you can tell it's made out of heavy fabrics and when I have it draped over my legs while I quilt it's very warm. So this one will make the perfect lap quilt.

Dont' think that quilts can only be made out of cottons. Quilts made from other heavier fabrics can be warmer and even very unique and interesting.

Houses of Warmth

This quilt was an interesting one. I started quilting when I started bringing home fabric from work. At my place of work we use all kinds of fabric to make office panels. Unfortunately none of it is regular cotton that you would use in quilting. But some of the fabrics are beautiful. So I used many of them in the houses on this quilt. I was able to create unique looking homes on the quilt with texture and designs that you wouldn't find in normal cotton fabrics. I also used cottons with it as well.Here you can see the buses. One is of a cotton floral print. Nothing unusual there. The dark green on has a texture on it that's like little tiny pebbles. It gives it a texture of leaves. The other one has a checkered pattern where some of the squares are raised. The textures add a lot of interest to the quilt.

I'm going to admit to a mistake, but as a result I was able to add more interest to this quilt. Under the tree I messed up and the roof of that house doesn't line up. So I just covered it up with the top of the tree. It works great! No one would know had I not said anything. The truck of the tree is another fabric with texture and a design that reminds me of wood. Just above that tree you can also barely see another fabric I found that looks like bricks.

Yes I have lots of fun looking for unique scraps at work. It's also fun because I work with both my parents and my mother now works at the fabric table where I use to work. I'll have to find another pattern where I can use interesting fabrics like this.

Right now I am in the middle of machine quilting this one. The hard part is my sewing machine is a small cheap on from Wal Mart and it's very hard to machine quilt such a large quilt. So far I've only been able to stitch around the houses and bushes in the center row. I hope the outer rows get easier.

My first finished quilt!!!

Finally I can say that I have finished one whole quilt from start to finish and it only took me six months.....lol.

I really enjoyed doing this quilt. It was a sampler lesson through Victoriana's Beginners Sample Class. There were many different types of blocks to do, so I gained a wide verity of experience from it. I recommend it to anyone looking to start quilting of better their skills.

This is a baby sized quilt so I was able to do the quilting on my sewing machine very easily, unlike two others I'm still working on. I'll post them later.

I give up

Well as a tie in to my last post I must say I finally gave up on finishing my sewing room. Who knows we may still move if we can't catch up and save our home. But I haven't given up on my quilts. Instead I moved my quilting up stairs to the front room. Besides it's warmer up here. Yes my desk got move up here to. Everyone got tired of going down stairs and freezing in order to do anything on the computer.

Since moving my quilting up stairs I have finished one quilt, moved further on the quilting of two quilts and started and finished a top to another. I share each of them in future posts.