Snoopy Quilt Part 4 - Favorite Square Part - 1

I finished sewing the individual squares for the Snoopy quilt tonight. I sorted through some scanned pictures and found this one of Princess One wearing the Snoopy dress about age three. 

When I told Princess Three that I clearly remember Princess One wearing it, she said, something about it being Princess four or five wearing it but I knew Princess One wore it as I remember her doing her little picture pose. She has all her pictures now and they didn't get scanned as they didn't save after she scanned them all and never wanted to go back and scan them so I don't have those to go through but found this one in Princess Two's scanned pictures. 

It has taken lots of time but there are a few squares that are some of my all time favorite squares as they are things I haven’t done before. I have done hats into squares (click here for that post.) And, I have done overalls into squares. (Click here for that post.)

Tonight, I finished sewing on tags and labels from shirts and pajama pants that are all “Snoopy” tags. When I was cutting the shirts into squares, I noticed that there were many different types of tags. One would think that since they are all copyrighted that they would have one tag for all the shirts. No, there were at least 10 different tag styles and sizes.

 

I had the idea that if we needed an extra square somewhere, we could save the tags and labels and sew them onto a square.

We had the back of a little Snoopy dress that was actually one of my favorite dresses on them when they were little. I thought it would be cute to sew them on there. I pinned them on and asked Princess Three what she thought. She thought it was a great idea so I started to hand sew them on and they started to fray and so I machine sewed them with a zig-zag on the edges to keep them from fraying.

 

I didn’t like how it looked but didn’t see any other option but when I finished with them, I actually liked how it looked. With the t-shirt fabric, I pinned it under on the edges so they wouldn’t fray and hand stitched one on but didn’t like how that looked either so I used the same color thread as the shirt and sewed them on with a straight stitch. I thought it looked better and took SO much less time. We are on a deadline to finish it in the next few days as well as a computer desk project so we need to get it finished.

I thought it was so cute that I took a picture of the finished square so you could see it done. If all goes well, tomorrow, we will start sewing the squares together! Yahoo for that.

 

I wanted to show the difference in the label so I took some close up shots of them. Some are silky but aren’t hemmed and it is printed on and not woven. Those will fray and needed to be done on the machine all the way around.

Some are woven and quite well made and won’t fray but they have a white line or another color at the top where it is sewn into the shirt. I just folded that part over the top and rolled the entire thing down making the fold on the bottom a bit lower so that the line didn’t show. I am pointing to a blue one that I did that with and you can see it folded over if you blow it up.

 
I also took close up pictures of the tags where one is printed and fraying and one is linen, woven and folded over.

I show how I folded over the t-shirt ones where the Snoopy is printed onto the t-shirt rather than having a tag sewn in. I folded them under as I explained and I took a close up so you can see that as well. 
 
I found a straight stitch close to the edge to sew those on worked better than the zig-zag as it stretched the fabric as you can see on the bottom of the white Snoopy t-shirt print. It waved on the bottom because I used zig-zag. When I used a straight stitch on them like you can see in the top finished picture, they didn't warp as much.  


I thought the fabric tags looked like postage stamps after I sewed them all on. 

It is one of my favorite squares now as I loved the dress and now love the quilt square.

Single Mom on the Run - Sleep-itus and 111

I can't believe I didn't take pictures of Princess Five driving the car for four hours today. You would think I had a busy day as I am always taking pictures. I have probably taken 2000 pictures in the past week with four performances of the play and her first game cheering. I took pictures of the cast and many of every scene so I could share them with the kids in the play.

So, I feel sad that I didn't get a picture of her first real driving but am VERY glad it is over as it was such a long day. I woke with a really sore neck like I got hit in my sleep or something and can't turn my head far and it is causing headaches as well as the stress of teaching a new driver and driving six hours in a Metro with four people and a trunk full of college stuff.

I really should have taken a picture as I had that trunk stuffed with two large totes, a book shelve of glass, two shoe racks, a vacuum and a bag of clothes for Princess Two. That is a lot to fit in a Chev Metro.

In the car we had two small coolers, clothes for us for church, the kids bags, a camera that someone lost in our town on the fourth of July that lived two hours away and we told them we would meet them at the highway today and a few things for family members.

Princess Two gave me my birthday present since I didn't know when I would see her and she got me several books on audio because she knows me so well. Click here for a post on that.

My sister also not knowing when she would see me gave me a gift bag as well. I didn't have time to look at it as I was dropping over to my mothers with her birthday gift and then Princess Five drove home amidst some stressful moments. 

When we arrived home, between my headache, the stress of her driving for four of the six hours and sitting that long and getting up early, I was exhausted. I took a few hour nap and would have been in for the night but Princess five can't go to bed without waking me up so she woke me to let me know she was going to bed so I got up and put things away and saw what my sister had given me and was THRILLED!

She makes these homemade flax crackers that I LOVE! I don't go to her city much anymore as we used to stay with her almost monthly, I enjoyed them often but now, I haven't had any in years. They are time consuming to make and I have never tried to make them but have purchased the stuff before but with my busy life, it is just one more thing to put on the list as it isn't a necessity, it gets pushed further and further down the list.

We did the trunkload of stuff up to my dad who was at the family function today and he said he would take it to the family function next week which is a 5 to 6 hour drive from our home. I don't want to have to drive the Suburban to take Princess Three's stuff to college as she is going to the school that is about 15 minutes from my brothers home. So, we are all headed up to his home next weekend and we are moving Princess Three into college the day before. It will save on gas and my sister and her husband took a few bins she didn't need when we moved her out after our reunion so with them taking a load and my dad taking a load, I am hoping we can fit the rest in our two cars with our over night bags.

It was a busy day and my head is banging but I stayed up working on the "Snoopy" quilt for Princess Three and now I am really tired and my sister sent me this picture today joking about my having Sit-itus even at the hospital. I laughed more about the fact that the picture showed up on my email and the size of the picture was displayed above it stating the pictures is 1119.8 kb. So, her attempt to make me smile about the "Sit-itus" prank "someone" played, made me smile even more because it was a reminder from Heavenly Father that everything will be "OK." Click here for the sit-itus post and click here for the funny thing "someone" did with sit-itus. 

My day on the run isn't over as it is 6:20 a.m. and my head hurts and I can hardly move my neck. But, I got two wonderful gifts from people who love me and a little reminder from Heavenly Father and Princess Five drove and I'm still alive so it was a good day! Oh, I also got a call from Princess Four at 2:30 a.m. last night telling me how much fun she is having at college and about a boy she met etc, etc, etc. Good times all around.

Cheveron T-Shirt Blessing - Snoopy Quilt Part 3

It is interesting how things happen in life just when you need them to happen. My Angels must work overtime!

My sister and her husband decided a few months ago that they were going to start a T-shirt printing shop. I thought that it was an odd choice at their point in life as he has always worked on cars in someway doing detailing, auto-body work, custom painting and now makes "Rat Rods" which are custom made souped up antique cars that are made from rusty parts found anywhere. The rustier the better! 

Anyway, I had them make our camp shirts for us a few months ago and they did a great job. I knew the school would be ordering shirts for the play "You're a good man Charlie Brown." so I suggested to Princess Five that she have her Uncle do the shirts. 

Right about the same time they were ordering the shirts, Princess Three and I were pulling out the stuff for her quilt. I told her I thought it would be cute if we could find some old shirts and put the cheveron pattern on lots of different colored shirts and we could make a row out of them. 

I called my sister and asked if she would let me come and put the pattern on some shirts when they were doing the shirts for the high school. She said she would. I went to pick up the shirts from their shop and my sister showed me how to "screen print" the shirts I brought. I have never seen that done and I have never done it before so it was interesting to see that process. I had no idea how much work went into printing shirts, especially those with lots of different colors on them. 

They let me do as many shirts as I had and I made one for each of us to wear to the play to support Princess Five. Princess Four was actually in the play until she found out that her ambassador retreat was the same week so she missed out being in the play but drove the two hours to support her sister in the lead as "Lucy" tonight. It was WONDERFUL to have two princesses there supporting their sister. She did a great job and got the biggest applause at the curtain call. My twin nieces went and whispered in their mom's ear that they thought Princess Five was the best in the play while the play was still going and the sad part was they missed her favorite song which she is SO good at singing. "Schroeder" is the song where she is talking about marrying him. She is SO adorable when she sings it to him.

I got a bit carried away there talking about her in the play. Back to the story, my sister allowed me to make them and tonight after the play, I pinned them all end to end making one long cheveron out of seven different colored t-shirts. I then sewed them together and now that they are all sewed together, she can cut them to the right height for the row. You can't get all the t-shirt printing to line up exactly on the shirts so some were towards the bottom, some towards the middle and some more at the top so if we cut the t-shirts before sewing them all together, the row wouldn't be the same height. As the shirts were just old one's I had and are all sizes and types of fabric they had to be sewed first before cutting. Tomorrow, Princess Three will cut off the excess and then we can start pinning and sewing the quilt top. I only have a few more squares to stitch together before the squares will all be done. 


These quilts take forever to make but I am glad I can see some progress as we need to finish the entire thing by this time next week if she is to have it at college with her as I am not sure when I will see her after that.

I am so grateful that they decided to print shirts just when I needed them and that I had shirts that would work and that I didn't think about it after the screens were thrown away and that she chose to make the quilt just when the play was going on and for all those other things that had to line up to make this all work out so wonderfully. I even have enough to make a pillow cases for her long body pillow that will match. 

Snooped Out This Week - T-Shirt Quilt Part 2

Princess Five's play "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown" started today. We had a long day of practices yesterday and some today as well as the first performance. Also, I helped Princess Three get started on her Snoopy quilt and realized I don't have a long enough quilt cutter/guide so we purchased one that will be long enough for all the tall shirts and clothes she wants on her quilt. I should have purchased one before now with all the other girls quilts we have made but just made due with the shorter one's I have. 

Princess Three picked up how to make the squares VERY quickly. I usually have to do many of them myself due to the odd shapes of the shorts or other weird thing I have put on their quilts. Click here to see how I put hats on Princess Fives Looney Tune quilt.

We've had a few storms this week as well as keeping busy getting Princess Three ready to go back to college, Princess Five is having "mini cheer" camp all week. The school has their first football game Friday night and it will be the first time Princess Five will cheer and we have two more performances of "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." to attend and after the late night performance on Saturday, we head on a six hour round trip drive to a mission farewell for my nephew who will be leaving soon. 

We are trying to get the Snoopy quilt done before Princess Three heads back to college next weekend so I have my work before me. She is doing a wonderful job getting all the squares cut and really is quite the perfectionist getting everything to line up so well and cut so exact. 

It is now 5:14 a.m. and I have a full day today and need at least a few hours sleep so I hope you are understanding of the pictures and not as much explanation as there are things to explain but I will have to do it another day. 

I will say that these little kids sweat shirt fabric jumpers are fun and I will have to sew some of the arm fabric into the leg area but you can figure out how I did that but Princess Three liked that the snaps still showed and the cute leg stripes so we worked those in. I am excited for her as it is getting quite cute. She is learning how to piece things together, how to pin them and make it work out.

This will be nice when she wants to make her t-shirt quilts using her club, dance and college t-shirts later on as she will know how to square them up. Basically, you take the smallest item in the line and square all the other items in the line up to that size in height and it doesn't matter on the width side to side as much as you can fill in on the edges with a strip of fabric if you need to fill space. 

You could even purchase fleece with the print that matches your quilt and sew it on the ends or make a square here and there with it if you need to fill in space. We are thinking of putting all the "Peanuts" tags on a square as we are cutting lots of them off shirts and were surprised at how many different tags there are. 

I will share that you need to use two thicknesses of t-shirt for each square but only one thick of sweat shirt so you can always use the back of the sweatshirt as a backing for another item or shirt if you want to use the front and back of the same shirt making two squares or combining them into one square. You can see how we are doing that with the "Happiness is..." from the front and "Being part of the gang!" from the back of the shirt. We will sew them into one square so you can see both and not have to jump to another square to read the back comment. 


On the Christmas Woodstock, we are sewing the arms on to the sides of the front of the shirt since they are so cute. 

If I paid $2 for each shirt (which I KNOW I paid more than that for most of the shirts) the quilt top alone would be $60. I laughed at how many of the shirts still had tags on them and were never worn. The little outfits were worn except the Dracula one and then as they got older, it wasn't "cool" to wear the shirts as much but still cool to wear the boxers so they were both still being worn but are going on the quilt anyway. 

Princess Three's birthday is coming up and she said she just wanted her quilt. With the batting, backing, top, time and love going into it, I think it will be a wonderful quilt for a birthday present. I do have other gifts for her as well but for some reason, I think she will like this one the best.

New Dehydrator Today for FREE - Oh Happy Day

I was gone most of the day supporting Princess Five and when I arrived home, I came through the garage. While I was getting dinner ready, I heard a knock at the door. It was my neighbor with a bucket of vegetables he wanted to share. I LOVE that my neighbors are all great gardeners since I am usually so busy, I don't give mine much attention. I finally got out there and fixed the sprinkler that is supposed to water the garden but was watering weeds for a month and during that time, the garden suffered losses. 

My life just is what it is and I figure I am growing amazing girls at present and when they are gone and I have more time, I may get better at the garden thing. I got my first bag of little tomatoes today from our garden and have only had a few so far and now that August is half over, my garden is finally growing just in time for the fruit to freeze before ripening. I can laugh about it because it happens every year.

My neighbor pointed out that I had a delivery on the porch. It would have been there through the night had he not come over as we use the garage to enter so I was glad he did come over as it was my new dehydrator top as the old one was recalled. I did a "happy dance" when I opened it. Here is the post about the recall.

Last week was the first time I have used my dehydrator in a year or so. I didn't want to purchase a new one but finally found a smaller one that fit the trays I already had the other day at a second hand store for $5 or so and was thrilled to get it. 

I did three trays of plums off my tree last week and five trays this week. I hardly got any plums this year and was sad as I love our plums dehydrated but the many storms we have had knocked all of them off the tree. I didn't even have enough to fill the small trays on the small dehydrator. 

I am praying that some of my friends and neighbors will have some they would like to donate as last year, I didn't do many if any apples and the same with the plums. Here is a post about that.We were gone when they came on and I was so busy that when I got back, I took bags all over the neighborhood giving them out as my dehydrator broke while trying to dry them. Sad that now when I have several working, I have no plums to dry. I shared the picture of the extra trays that had no plums to fill them.


I am grateful to say however, that our apple trees are FULL and those of you who love my apples will be in for a treat. I have two branches that are actually touching the ground they are so loaded with fruit. It will be nice to have those this year as I know many people missed them last year.

I am so grateful to my neighbors for their kindness at sharing their bounty. We had a friend over tonight and I shared a few tomatoes and cucumbers with her as she left. 


I always like to pay it forward when someone shares with me and I know that when I do share, more blessings come my way. 

One of my favorite signs I have hanging in my home is, "The hands that give, gather." I believe that is true and I know my neighbors are blessed because they share with me.

Snoopy Quilt Part 1 Memories a Plenty

I used to think I would never be able to write a daily blog because I don't go anywhere and don't have an interesting life as a single mom, I keep busy but I'm not out saving the world.

I figured I would write for awhile and give up like most people do and there have been days where that idea sounds great but then one of the girls asks me about something and I tell them to look it up on the blog or someone asks for my advice on a medical issue and it is so easy for me to have them look up the answer on the blog rather than explaining the entire thing each time. 

I blog about what is going on daily in my world but I can't even remember the amount of times I take pictures to post a blog post about something but so many other things are going on that I skip over sections of my world in order to get something on paper and post something current. Over the years I have LOTS of things I took pictures, started posts and never got around to the actual post.

I often think at some point I posted about it because I took the pictures and wanted to post but when I go searching the actual posts, the actual post never happened.

I haven't posted anything about our reunion, Princess Five in cheer, or that she is the lead in the summer play, Princess Three home for a few weeks etc. I still never posted everything from girls camp. The list goes on and on over the years so at some point, if my life does actually get boring and slow some, I may get to post on those things but since they aren't current, they lose their excitement and I want to move onto something else I am doing so perhaps I may never actually get to those posts.

Princess Four moved out to college today and Princess Three and I are already working on a new project. Princess Three would like a quilt to take with her when she moves to a distant University to finish her Bachelors degree.

She wanted her t-shirt quilt but I didn't want her to make it until she was through collecting the shirts from university, missions etc. What she would put on the quilt now vs a few years from now could change.

Both of the older girls made their t-shirt quilts after their missions and getting their college degrees but what I realized she was thinking was that I made Princess Two a t-shirt quilt out of the Pooh shirts and clothes we wore over the years and when she attended the university that Princess Four will be attending, she had her "Pooh" quit and used to talk about how her roommates were so jealous about that quilt and when she missed me, she would wrap up in that quilt and feel like she was getting a big hug from me. Here is a link to that t-shirt quilt.

I told Princess I thought I may have enough Snoopy shirts to make a quilt she could take so I pulled out all the t-shirts I have been saving over the years for the girls and found LOTS of Snoopy shirts and some still had the tags on them but others we actually wore. The Woodstock one and several others were from someone who made the girls pillows out of t-shirts and the girls used those pillows for years. When they washed them and the batting became all clumpy, I took the stuffing out and put them in the "quilt" box.

Both sets of shorts have been worn by two different girls in the past few weeks but when I asked for all the Snoopy stuff for the quilt, they were donated to the cause. 

The little yellow dress, the girls all wore. I can picture them in it in my mind and know I have a few pictures of them in it somewhere. I hope I can find them to post while I am working on the quilt.

The first thing to do when doing a quilt like this is to set it out and get an idea of the sizes of items you have. Match up similar sized shirts so that you can keep the rows uniform. The rows don't all have to be the same size but everything on the row needs to be the same size. As you can see by the top picture, the tall shirts are on a row with the tall shirts and the shorter shirts are on a row with all shorter shirts.

Once you have them in rows by size, you swap around the shirts within the row so that no two colors that are alike touch so you are heavy with red on one side and all white on the other unless you are going for that look or the quilt doesn't look as aesthetic. I always take a step back and squint at the quilt and see if my eye is drawn to one side more than the other or if it looks "even" on the rows going up and down and right to left.

Once you have the placement in place, take a picture in case something happens and the shirts get out of order which will happen as you sometimes need to cut them up and sew them into a square or as you can see in these pictures, you need to take out zippers, snaps, elastic bands and other items that may make your quilt thick or items that could cause pain if you laid on them. Snaps and zippers should be removed before you cut the squares so that once you sew the square together, it isn't smaller than the other squares because when you take out zippers or snaps, sometimes you sew it together and the fabric doesn't stretch as much.

So, always take out the elastic and zippers BEFORE cutting the sqaures. Just take a seam ripper and unpick the seams holding the zipper in and then you will pin the front of the sweatshirt or jacket together and zig-sag over the seam where the zipper used to be.

On the shorts, boxers or other pants, some you can safely just unpick the stitches holding the elastic in but on one where the band is a different fabric, to get the elastic out, you may have to resew the band back onto the top of the shorts as they sewed the elastic on at the same time as the waistband.

I will keep you informed of our progress on this as Princess Three wants to help me make it. Should be a fun project to make together. 

Summer Pool Party - Prizes For All - In God We Trust

Being a single parent on a limited income, we don't often eat out much or go to the movie theater as I can purchase the movie for less than the cost of all of us to get into the theater to view the movie. Our eating out, mall shopping and movie experiences have been limited but not non-existent.
 
Our orthodontist throws a customer appreciation pool party every year using up lots of his trades with people for the food etc. He gives out gift cards from his trades as well and then he purchases a table full of toys and gift cards to give away. 

We have gone for years but have missed a few as they send out the invitation in the bill but since we usually pay up front, we don't get a bill. This year, Princess Five put it in her phone when she saw the flyer at her appointment a few weeks ago. We were headed out to go bowling and play pool on Saturday and her phone alarm went off and she remembered the pool party. Here is a post about us going in 2010.  
 
The girls didn't want to swim but wanted the free food as they usually have pizza, snow cones, and some other type of food. They had a luau type of thing going and several types of food which was nice as I couldn't eat most of the food they offered being off gluten products. I can't believe is has been a year now coming up that I haven't eaten gluten. It has gone fast. 
 
Anyway, we were going to go bowling and we saved ourselves a bit not going bowling and in the end, we ended up making LOTS of money by going to the pool party. 

First off, Princess Five won a lime green lava lamp. I then won a $15 Subway card. Princess Four then won a $25 movie theater gift card and we all laughed when she won that as it was the exact same thing she won last year. I didn't post about her winning it but I did post about when she was going to use it in this post.  

Then, Princess Four won a $25 itune gift card. She didn't really get excited about that as we have a large credit on itunes but they just listen to playlists online most of the time. 

A boy the girls knew won a Rue 21 gift card for $25 and they asked if he wanted to trade and he did so Princess Four will be shopping for some new belts she wanted that the other girls purchased there. 

I also gave her my $15 gift card since he birthday is coming up and she will be at college far away and I won't be able to come and take her to lunch like I did when she was nearer.

So, for the day, we got $65 in gift cards, a Lava Lamp and free lunch. 

We went to the grocery store on the way home and I bought bananas and pointed out to Princess Four who was in line with me that the total for them was $1.11 and on the way out the door, yes, we did find a penny. You may wonder why I point out so many times when I find them and it is because I give gratitude for each one as it is a reminder to Trust in God and with everything going on that is lately, I have needed lots of reminders. 

I had Princess Threes car in again with the "Service engine soon" light on three times just this week. I am grateful for her car and for the gentle and constant reminders that my Heavenly Father gives me to trust His promptings and counsel. He does take care of us well and now the girls can go out to the movie, to eat and buy an outfit! Their Heavenly Father provides and watches out for them well!