Happy New Year everyone!! I know that I am a month late-better late than never right? I hope that the holidays were enjoyable. Did we all make good resolutions for the new year? I know that I made quite the long list of things that I would like to accomplish- Fingers crossed that I do at least half of them :0) My biggest wishes for this year are to stay smoke free, to blog/craft more and to get back into school. Heres to hoping for the best.
Anywho,

I was digging through old pictures and I came across this and wanted to share:
These are my two older sons. They are so cute and it seems like it wasn't that long ago. They grow up so fast. They are both teenagers now in high school and driving. Hopefully I can keep the 10 year old young for at least a little longer.

Figured that I might as well complete the family :0) Here is a photo of my husband and I together. I am rarely in photos-I prefer to be the one taking them.
2011 was a great year, I hope that 2012 is even better!
Have a GREAT year!
Lesley

How to bind a quilt

Good morning! I sincerely apologize for not posting sooner. I have no excuses, except laziness. I have good news though. I finally finished the quilt I was working on so I can post about quilt binding.

First - We need to sew all the 2 1/2" binding strips together to make one REALLY long strip. Now there are two ways to do this. I sew the strips together at a diagonal so the binding is smoother. If you sew the strips with a vertical seam then there is a bump in the binding where the seams are. I will show you are picture of what I mean a little further down. After sewing your strips together, trim your excess fabric leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

Before you trim your seams, open up your strips and make sure you sewed in the right direction. You should have a straight strip. Now you get to press.

Press your seams open and your strip in half lengthwise.

Now that I have pressed my strip in half I can show your how the diagonal seam is better. If I had of sewn a vertical seam then it would have made two seams on top of each other. When I sew the binding to the quilt then that would have left a bump for my machine to sew through. Just trust me - this is better.

Now that our binding is finished (or before, it really doesn't matter) you want to trim your quilt to make sure it is "square". I measured 3 1/2" from my blocks and trimmed all the way around. Next you start pinning your binding to your quilt. Match up the unfinished edges and pin until just before the corner. Make sure you leave a long tail. This will be used at the end. Mine is about 12" long. Mark 1/4" before the corner. You will sew the binding to the quilt up to this point.

You stop sewing 1/4" from the corner like shown. After you have stopped at the corner pull your quilt out of the machine a little so you have some working room.

Now, I got a little ahead of myself when I was sewing the corners so don't let my pictures confuse you. Fold your binding strip straight up like shown. Be careful to keep the raw edge line straight. Finger press the fold and hold it. Then fold the flap down, again keeping your raw edges straight.

Put it back into your machine and turn the corner, then measure 1/4" from the edge and start sewing. This will leave you with a flap at the corner. Keep going all the way around the quilt until you come close to the "tail" you have left. Make sure your leave about 12" between your starting stitch and your ending stitch. You can leave a little more if you like. You want to make sure you have enough room to pull the binding away so you can sew the ends closed.

Once you have neared the end lay out your "tail" and fold the end up like shown. If your tail is too close to your ending stitch or it overlaps then you can trim it shorter. Just make sure you have enough of your binding to finish the quilt. Lay the ending binding across your folded end and pin into place. You will be sewing a diagonal stitch here to secure your ends.

Stitch your binding ends together like so. After they are stitched lay everything flat to make sure your don't have any excess binding and to make sure your seam was sewn in the correct direction. When everything lays properly you can trim your excess fabric leaving 1/4" seam allowance. Finger press the seam open and finish sewing the binding to the quilt.

Now that your binding is attached you don't need your machine any more. The rest is hand sewn while sitting on the sofa watching some good T.V. Fold the binding around to the back of the quilt covering the seam and hand stitch into place. I am not sure what this stitch is called, sorry. Just be careful that you don't go all the way through the quilt. You just want to go through the first layer of fabric.

When you get to your corner you want to fold the fabric so you have a nice, neat corner. Finger press the fabric like shown. You can pin it if necessary, but you want to make sure the fabric lines up nicely. You also want to make sure the front of the corner and the back of the corner are folded the same direction.

Hand stitch up and down both sides of the corner to hold your fabric in place and continue around the rest of your quilt. Now you have finished a whole quilt!

This was a long drawn out process and I apologize. Usually you can have a quilt finished in a few days. If you remember back to the quilt I made for my living room, that one took a day and a half. It was a very easy layout. Looking back it probably would have been a better quilting tutorial.

Happy Holidays!! I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was really nice-lots of good food. So good in fact I think that I may have gained a few pounds.
Now it is time to get into the Christmas spirit :0) We put our Christmas decorations up the Sunday after Thanksgiving. My 10 year old was wanting to get all of our Christmas stuff out and up. I wasn't really feeling it but I am so happy that he pushed because now it really feels like Christmas in our house. Since we have lived in our new house we put up two trees every year, a big one and a small one. I bought new ornaments this year, which was a nice change. We have been using the same ornaments that we have had since the older boys were small.
Here is the big tree with all new ornaments.

And here is the small one with some of the older ornaments on it.

I think that they both turned out really pretty. I am sure that the boys wish that there were presents under it. I am the worst about waiting until the last minute. But in my defense they are horrible about telling me what they want and sticking with it.

My husband and I went to Ft.Worth last weekend for a mini get away. I took pictures as we were driving down the road. These give me a headache when I look at them but I think that they look really cool and I like them. I love the motion blur in each of them.

We walked around downtown and I took lots of pictures, one of my most favorite things to do.

There was such pretty Christmas Decorations. I wish that I had this tree in my yard :0)

Here is my sweetie looking down from the parking garage that we parked in.

We had such a good time. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed each others company. It was amazing to get to go out and have a conversation without having kids constantly trying to interupt. We do not do it nearly enough.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday season. Have a great week :0)

Lesley

Happy Monday!! The holidays are fast approaching. I find it so hard to believe how fast this year has flown by. My oldest will be a senior in high school before I know what is happening. Why is it the older we get the faster time goes? You always wake to the realization that time is steady moving forward regardless of what you do and how slow you try to do it.
Wanting to spend time with my kiddos and not wanting to go anywhere-I decided to go outside with the sidewalk chalk. We had so much fun doing this and I was really impressed with the creativity that each one of them used.

The first one is mine, second is my oldest son, the middle son and then my youngest son.

I wanted really dark bold colors so I dug out my pastels to go with the chalk. Now that I think about it probably not the best of ideas-It might not be so easy to get the pastels cleaned up. Well-atleast it is pretty :0)

I found these pictures online at http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/. They are way too cute-I want to make them so BAD or atleast something like them. But knowing me I probably never will. I always find or come up with great ideas but lately I have had no follow through.

I hope everyone has a GREAT week :0)
Lesley

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Monday!! and Happy Halloween everyone!! I just wanted to say "HI" and post few pictures.
My son and I made this mum for homecoming-He wanted it to be an original and be totally different from everyone elses-I think that we succeeded and she LOVED it. So I take that as a job well done for us :0)

Here are pictures of the Halloween cake that the kids and I made-It was chocolate and vanilla and very tasty. We tried to make black frosting but ended up with the yucky green color.

Here are my babies in all of their Halloween scariness :0) No princesses in our house. I made the older ones dress up and this is what they came up with. Very imaginative-not too shabby for being forced at the last minute by your mom :0)

I hope that everyone has a spooktacular day and get all the YUMMY treats that they want :0)

Once again HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Lesley