December 30, 2012

Happy Birthday To Me!


My mom and I.  I have no idea how old I was in this picture but I love it.  As a gift this year, she made me not one, but two scrap books full of pictures of my life.  I cherish these.  Thank you mom, because if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be celebrating today.

December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas!


Wishing everyone a safe and very Merry Christmas!

December 19, 2012

No Slacking Here - I Promise

Because our team is not doing very well (2-12) we have been moving players in and out, up and down.    Whew!  Anyway, I PROMISE I will have lots to show you (new singer featherweight, wink, wink) as soon as this season is over (2 more weeks).

I'm relaxing at home tonight and then off to our Christmas party tomorrow night.  I'll be back soon.

Have a Merry Christmas Everyone!


December 1, 2012

Projects

These adorable bags were made by my friend, Amy, in the spirit of our new owner, Mr Khan.  She also works for Mr. Khan on the Flex-N-Gate side of his business.  She's very creative and it was by complete accident we found out that we both love to sew.  

We were out to dinner one night when she was visiting and my husband mentioned my new Bernina.  she says "you have a Bernina"?  She was the only one who even knew what it was!  LOL!  Of course we started talking and realized we both love to make stuff.  

She told me you can get the tutorial from the Noodlehead blog.  I'm totally going to make these now.

Hi Amy!  Wish you were closer so we could have a sew day. 

Tracey



November 18, 2012

Retreat Projects

The day started with a Holly Jolly surprise.  On Friday we made these cute little Santa bags (his little hat should be standing up) and there were nice little goodies in it this morning from the Holly Jolly Elf.

Everyone was busy completing their projects.  I got the center of mine done:
More projects:




We all had a great time and it was so much fun getting together with everyone.  Thanks again to Karen and Faye!

Holly Jolly Quilt Retreat

I've been having a FANTASTIC time at Cinnamon's Holly Jolly Quilt Retreat this weekend!  We started Friday afternoon at 2:00 and sewed until, well, in my case, 9:00 but you could sew until midnight if you wanted.  Then back up early yesterday morning at 8:00 to sew again until midnight.  Today, we begin at 9:00 and sew until 3:00.  GREAT weekend to get those Christmas presents done.

Karen and Faye, our fearless leaders, kept things lively with Christmas Carols, door prizes and of course, food.

You can work on anything you want but they had an optional quilt project if you wanted to do that.  I chose to make the optional quilt because, well, starting something new is always more fun than finishing the hundreds of projects you already have.  ;-)

I'll have more pictures later but this is the pic of my project, Jubilee.  I'm using a Jelly Roll of Little Black Dress by BasicGrey from Moda.
More retreat today.

Talk to you later,
Tracey

November 10, 2012

A Little Walk

Team Jaguars (about 12 - 15 of us) walked in the Step Out Walk to Stop Diabetes this morning.  What a beautiful day!  This is my friend, Dana, with her two children.  The kids were soo good.  We had a great time and got some good exercise in as well.
More of our group ahead.  Alisa, our ringleader, is on the left.  Thanks Alisa for organizing this.

Hope you all had a great day as well.

Best,

Tracey





November 7, 2012

Sewing Machine

Somehow my sewing machine post was deleted.  I'm sure it wasn't user error (wink, wink).  Anyway, I'm putting it back up.

I took the new owner class last Saturday and learned a lot of things it can do using the different feet.  This weekend is the new owner class specific to the 830 but I can't make it.  Walking in a 5K on Saturday morning so I'll be taking a rain check on the class.

October 28, 2012

A Little Quilt

I haven't had any time this week to play with my new machine.  My boss was in London for the Rams/Patriot's game and so I ended up working a lot more than I planned.

Today, however, I was able to finish up this little quilt I showed you a while ago.  I tried one of the new decorative stitches (circles) on the binding.
I was trying a new half square triangle technique and thought my PKM fabric was perfect for this.  I also just did some stipple quilting.
Back to more sewing.

Later,

Tracey

September 29, 2012

Not Much Quilting But A Lot of Music

If you want to see a fantastic concert, go see Brad Paisley in his new Virtual Reality Tour.  We went on Thursday and it was truly one of the best concerts I have ever been to (and I'm a Jimmy Buffett fan).   There was even a "surprise visit" by Carrie Underwood, but since the name of the tour is "Virtual Reality" you soon realize Carrie is virtual as well.  But boy, did it fool us!

On a quilting note, there's some news from Ami Simms on the Alzheimer's Art Quit Initiative that I would like to share:

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative has received it's 12,000th donated quilt. It's a beautiful quilt by award-winning quilter and teacher Charlotte Warr Andersen and it will be included in our October online quilt auction (October 1-10). 
See all the auction quilts here http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltauction.html
See the press release about the 12,000th quilt (with pictures for you to use) at http://www.alzquilts.org/aare12doqu.html
2. August 2012 was the most successful month in AAQI history for selling Priority: Alzheimer's Quilts online. (http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltsforsale.html)   The AAQI sold 248 quilts bringing in $13,469. The average price per quilt (and this includes the monthly online quilt auctions) was $54.31. The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative has raised more than $763,000 for research since it began in January 2006. The AAQI prides itself on transparency with an online explanation of every dollar earned and spent. See the "Show Me The Money" page at http://www.alzquilts.org/show.html
3. Thanks to the incredible generosity of the quilting community, the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative will be bringing MORE than 2,000 quilts to sell at International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX (Oct 31-Nov 4). With a month to go (before the shipping deadline) more than 1,600 quilts have already been tagged and bagged and are waiting to be shipped. In  2011 the AAQI offered approximately 1,200 quilts for sale.
4. The AAQI will be putting out a call for helpers to staff the booth at IQF Houston. Please follow the AAQIUpdate blog (http://aaqiupdate.wordpress.com/) for announcements and sign-ups. Follow the AAQI on FaceBook athttps://www.facebook.com/AAQI.News

Did you notice #3?  2,000 quilts are going to Houston!  That's awesome!

Today is errand and lawn mowing day.  We have a home game against the Bengals tomorrow so not much will get done before we head to the game.  

Have a great weekend everyone!

Tracey


September 23, 2012

Quilt Fest 2012


Went to Quilt Fest on Friday with my mom.  Sooo many beautiful quilts.  My mom commented that there were so many and not one was the same.  I have to agree.  Lots of variety.  The quilt above was done by my friend, Cathy Peters.  She is our long arm quilter at Cinnamon's.  She won a blue ribbon!  Sooo proud of her.  Great job Cathy!!

This was a scrabble quilt.  Love the creativity.


I took a couple of the dog quilts for my friends at work.  They're big dog lovers.  For you girls!

One for my husband who has been bugging me for a couple of years to make him one of these:

On Saturday we headed over to the Goodwill Thrift Store.  Found a SUPER buy.  This camera bag was $4.99 and brand new!  Woo Hoo!  Love deals like this.  You can see my mom in the background holding it for me.


On a football note, my Jaguars won today.  Great job guys!  Not pretty, but you got the job done.

More later,

Tracey


September 17, 2012

My Olympic Moment


We had a surprise visitor today.  Gold Medalist Sanya Richards-Ross is in town.  She's actually here to see her husband, our own Aaron Ross.  She spoke to the staff and we were all able to get our picture taken holding one of her medals.  What a thrill!

Oh, and she's an itty bitty thing.  ;-)  I'm going on a diet.

Later,

Tracey

P.S.  She does 1,000 sit ups a day.  I better get started.

September 10, 2012

An Early Halloween

I decided to get a jump on Halloween this year.



I love my Halloween Village!

September 9, 2012

Some News From AAQI

I received an email from Ami Simms asking me to pass along some more information from AAQI.  I'm happy to oblige.

AAQI Starts Hoarding Quilts For Houston
 
The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative hopes to bring 2,000 quilts to sell in its booth at IQF Houston. (Exhibit area, number and row as yet unknown.) They've already started moving quilts from the Quilts For Sale page(http://www.alzquilts.org/quiltsforsale.html)  over to the Hoarding For Houston page (http://www.alzquilts.org/houston2012.html) They will continue to move quilts, starting with the lower numbers first. So if you're not going to Houston, it's time to shop now!
 
And, if you've got a quilt in the works: GER 'ER DONE!
 
We are working really hard to shorten the time it takes to get your quilt from registration to sale.  


Thanks for the update Ami!


September Already?

I could have sworn we were just starting August.  I looked up today and suddenly, it's September.

These past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of cuts and signings.  We had to cut the roster to 53 and then re-sign 8 to the practice squad.

This weekend, I'm finally able to do a little sewing.  I learned this technique from Quilting Quickly II on Craftsy.com.  Using all Jelly Rolls, you sew a strip set with a dark, a light, and a dark (in my case I used white).  Then, on the second strip set sew a white, a light, and another white.


After sewing your two strip sets, put them right sides together and sew 1/4" down each of the long sides.


At this point, you cut.  Line up your 45 degree line on your ruler with the stitch line and trim off the edge.

You're now ready to cut your triangles.  Move your ruler to the bottom stitch line and line up your 45 degree line to this stitch line and cut.


Continue cutting, alternating top and bottom stitch lines.  And when you open it up to press, voila:


Now play:



I think this will be a cute throw when it's done.  Lots of choices and you get a different look depending on how you turn pieces.  

Ok, time to go watch my team play.  More later!

Tracey



August 18, 2012

The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative











Hi everyone,

Several years ago my husband's grandfather passed away.  However, in the years prior he started to decline with what was later diagnosed as dementia/Alzheimer's.  This is a terrible disease.

Ami Simms, who is Founder and Executive Director of The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative is trying to change things by raising money for Alzheimer's research.  Please check out her site, AAQI, to learn different ways to help.

To date, the Initiative has raised $735,000 but so much more needs to be done.

August 5, 2012

Olympic Gold

Congratulations to Sanya Richards-Ross for winning the gold medal in the Women's 400m.

We know Aaron is so proud of you and Jagnation is proud of you as well.  We can't wait to see the medal!

A Productive Weekend

It's been raining a lot here this weekend which means - sewing!

This the baby rag quilt I made for a baby shower in a couple of weeks.  She's having a girl.
I also finished all but the binding on this table runner.  I had a wild hair and wanted to do some half square triangles.  I learned a new technique, which I'll share in another post, and it was sooo easy!  Using my PKM fabric from Lakehouse.
And last, I'm taking the Hawaiian Quilting 101 class from Quilt University taught by Nancy Chong.  Ever since I returned from Hawaii earlier this year I've been wanting to make a Hawaiian Quilt.  This is a whole new process for me since I've NEVER done hand appliqué before.  So far though, the class instructions have been fabulous and I've been able to follow along easily.  It's all pin basted at the moment.  The fabric is one that I brought back from Honolulu.
Next step will be the thread basting.

Thanks for checking back.  I'm off to make dinner.

Have a great day!

Tracey

July 29, 2012

It's a Football Post

Photo by Katie Vaughn
It's been a wee bit busy around EverBank Field this week.  On Wednesday, we signed our 3rd Round Draft Pick, Bryan Anger (his shirt says Punters are People Too - I love it) and Thursday was spent checking in 90 guys for Training Camp.  

Our new locker rooms are done (they're fabulous) and we were able to take a tour on Friday.  Instead of showing you my terrible pictures, I'll just let you look at the slide show from the website.  All I can say is "Wow".  

The excitement around the stadium and training camp is very, very high.  With new ownership and a new coaching staff, I really hope this will be a great year for us.  

Ok, gotta go mow my grass, it's been a little neglected lately.

Talk soon,

Tracey

July 21, 2012

The Octathorp Quilt

My friend, Rita, told me these little symbols are actually Octathorps.  (Recently learned while playing a trivia game).  I love it!

It still needs the binding, but I finished the borders and backing when I was in Georgia and then Joanie quilted it.
I love the quilting - can you see it?

The binding will be hot pink!

More later,

Tracey


July 14, 2012

A Little Vacation

Just got back from a wonderful week in the North Georgia Mountains.  We visited friends and family and had a very relaxing time.

Saw some beautiful flowers -
and more than a few mountains -
This little guy -

Has become this big guy - who still THINKS he's that little guy.  LOL!
I love small towns -
Did a little of this -

and was even able to get in a walk -

Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and kindness.  Love you guys!