The Great Hugs and Kisses Adventure...

Well hello thar!!
I am so EXCITED you came to visit my humble corner of the interwebz!

Before I get to showing you what I made for the blog hob, let me tell you...this was one HELL of a CHALLENGE for me. I'm pretty much a beginner in the world of quilting. I started last summer after finally taking the plunge to get a decent sewing/quilting machine to work on. 

Once I started getting going and popping out one thing after another, my friend over at Every Stitch a Prayer - Bellezza- asked me if I wanted to do a calendar block swap. One block a month for the next year with the first one being made in July (2013) so that we would essentially make a quilt for one another. What a FANTASTIC idea! 

You can see those in the tab above labeled "The Great Calendar Block Swap".

I used it as an excuse to explore different techs and methods of producing blocks. Along the way I completed my first log cabin lap quilt and made my first gift quilt, which can be seen under the tab "Quiltings" along with my other makings.

One person wondered "What is the donate button for?"

Well, once upon a time in a lifetime far far in the past, I use to produce tutorial videos and uploaded them to youtube. Whilst doing that I had some video card and memory issues on the old computer. By that time I had gathered quite the following and some folks offered to send money to help me keep going in that adventure. Enter the donate button! With those folks generous donations, I was able to get a new memory stick (one had gone bad) and continue to produce more tutorials. 

You can see those videos under the tab "A Few of my Youtube Videos".

I don't do so many now-a-days because there is just about everything you could ever want to see up on Youtube now.  I still have a couple folks who still follow the blog, even after the long-long-long hiatus I took from blogging in-between breaking up with the ex and moving out on my own for the first time. Well, that was a year and a half now and being single isn't so bad...except for I have to pay for everything on my own which can be a challenge at times since my job is seasonal. But, that's how it goes. I'm very lucky to have some super supportive and helpful friends. They helped me move out, move in and took me out to eat when I was broke. I. AM. BLESSED!!!

Anyhoo...I tend to ramble so stay with me here...

LOL

"Heart of a Smallish Stature"
First attempt....printed too small!!

I started sewing away and ironically enough, or maybe not so much, the HEART was the HARDEST part. Bellezza was not surprised at all about this. It became a symbol of my still mending broken heart from the aforementioned ex. I was struggling with the heart peice as I still do struggle to open my heart up again to receive love. So, in essence, this became a healing project. I was with this ex for THIRTEEN YEARS before the inevitable "straw that broke the camels back" happened and the shit hit the fan. The relationship was done LONG ago but I was still clinging on to the slim hope that things would get better...and 2012 was the year I finally could hold on no longer. And that's the very abbreviated version of that experience if only to give you an idea of the pain-in-the-arse this simple paper pieced heart was for me. It's not a hard pattern by any means. Everything is already laid out and ready to go! The first printing of the pattern made a pattern to small (I forgot to uncheck the "fit to page"), then my fabric pieces kept coming out too small...even after I had made sure they would fit!! Well fine, okay, thank you universe...I get it! Time to move on!! LOL!!

Okay, so I printed out the pattern...again to the correct size.
THEN...

THEN the border I wanted to add, (which was a bit of a learning curve to make with so many triangles!!!!!), WERE NOT FITTING!!!

Oh!! The madness!!

I took off those coping strips AT LEAST eight times....AT LEAST!

I even went to the library and found a book "Pieced Borders Workbook"  and TRIED to figure out the god-forsaken math from hell! Math has never been my strong suit. I have to sit down, turn everything off...and if there is noise from the neighbors then the earplugs come out. I have to have QUIET so I can sit and have a THINK.

Well okay...so I THOUGHT I had it figured out..and I tried it...and STILL...things were not coming together.

Son-of-a-biscuit!!

And time was ticking...

The more I thought about the math the more anxiety I felt and the worse the numbers came out.

SO I said "SCREW THIS!"

And I put the calculator away. I measured the borders against the piece and figured out the coping strips from that. There was a one inch difference in the width of the twisted ribbon border so I chopped off what I didn't need from the sides. 

KABAM!! 

DONE!!!

After struggling for nearly TWO WEEKS by trying to do it "the right way"....
it was finally, COMPLETELY, assembled!

Drumroll please!!!

Sunny day at last!

Unfortunately the day I took this photo it was cold, cloudy and snowing so no outdoor photos. I turned on all the lights and the flash to really light everything up. If the sun comes out tomorrow I will have to replace this with a sun kissed photo. The pinks look more white on my monitor, but they are pinks. The X is a micro print and the O is a polka-dot print. And I noticed, now, that the heart block that others have done does not have a third row of fetching on the arrow. Oh well. This one is uniquely mine.
There's no way I am ripping again on this project!!

No, it's not finished. It still needs to be quilted and bound, but like I mentioned before....this was a doosy of a challenge for me. So if you feel up to it, bookmark the blog (or follow in your blogroll) and look for the completed quilted piece in the future! I thought I had till the 14th to get that part done...NOPE!

Well, this is my first blog hop after all.
It was a very fun project to work on and I really do enjoy paper piecing.

And I have to say, with all I struggled with to get the top done...

I think I did fairly well, for a beginner quilter. 

Don't cha think?

So I wanted to do a give away for this special occasion. How about a couple fat quarters?
One of the heart print, one of the polka dot and one of the micro pink print?
I don't have anymore of the batik used for the heart on my piece.
Just leave a comment and when the hop is done, I will do a random number generator pick for a winner. :)

Be sure to check out the other ladies who are in the hop for today!

Feb 14th

Lady Soma

Whims and Fancies

Lady Laura Ann

fuzzyhatquilter

Lady Doris

Quilting Queen Online

Lady Rexie

Crow Calling Woman

YOU ARE HERE!

Lady Shari

refreshedintent

Lady Cherry

cherry blossoms quilting studio

Until next time...
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