Weight Loss Week 4 – Don’t Give Up

May 15, 2012March 19, 20131 Comment

This week is probably the most crucial – it’s the week where I’m tempted to give up. I’m 23 days into my routine, I’ve lost a total of 7 lbs which is awesome, but I’m a little discouraged because I didn’t lose any weight this week – even though I ate right and worked out almost every day last week.

I have made a self-discovery though. Each time I start a diet & healthy eating routine, I get about 3 weeks into it and then quit because the same thing happens – I plateau. It makes me feel like all the previous work was a waste of time and I’m never going to accomplish my goals. Then the opposite of what I want begins to happen – I start eating more, exercising less and the weight comes back on. Part of why I’m blogging is so that I can tell the world – THIS TIME I WON’T QUIT!!

So my goal for this week is to simply NOT GIVE UP! I know that by continuing to work out this week, continuing to record my calories and meals, something miraculous will happen – I will start to lose weight again next week.

Here are this week’s tips on HOW NOT TO GIVE UP!

1. Call in the reinforcements. I told my family and friends I’m a little discouraged. That let my husband know to keep cheering me on, and my running pal made me commit to a longer with her this Saturday, even if I don’t fee like it. I need that encouragement.

2. Look for other measurements of improved fitness, rather than the scale. Several of my friends told me this week that they are starting to notice the weight loss even if the numbers didn’t reflect it. My last run was faster and I’m tarting to feel stronger. My jeans feel a little looser, too. I actually went shopping for a bathing suit and it wasn’t too bad. Even though I’m a numbers person, it’s great to have other signs of positive feedback, too.

3. Find Inspiration to Keep Going. Right now Jason and are watching old episodes of the reality show The Biggest Loser. We started on season 1 when I began my weight loss and we watch an episode each night before bed. That really gets me excited to get up and work out the next day. The way these people have changed their lives and have become more healthy is really encouraging. If they can do it, I can, too!

You can read about last week’s weight loss HERE.

Lovely Mother’s Day

May 13, 2012March 19, 2013Leave a comment

What a nice Mother’s Day I’m having today, and I want to wish all mothers and mother-figures out there a blessed peaceful day.

After church this morning, my son Ryan made me a healthy lunch all by himself and my son Jason offered to make a tasty low calorie-treat for dessert (he’s saving his specialty high-calorie ice-cream cookies – my favorites – for later after I’ve lost a few more pounds.)

My daughter Jenna made me this lovely Mother’s Day T-Shirt to wear:

And the best part is, my husband (who is a Bishop at our church which usually means super busy Sundays) cancelled the rest of his Sunday afternoon appointments so he could play games with the kids and let me have some nice relaxing quiet sewing time for the rest of the afternoon. Too bad every day can’t be Mother’s Day!

Weight Loss Week 3 – Exercise!

May 7, 2012March 19, 20131 Comment

I’m down another 1 1/2 pounds this week bringing my total to just over 7 lbs so far! Whoo hoo! You can read about last week’s journey HERE.

I love exercise not only because it helps speed up my weight loss, but the mental health benefits are enormous, too! When I can get my heart-rate pumping and work up a good sweat, I feel so great afterwords and I am ready to take on the world!

It helps to workout with friends and I exercise each day with a group of gals that live close by. We are lucky enough to have a clubhouse in our neighborhood complete with a fitness center and swimming pool. We like to start off with a bit of cardio each day (biking, running, stairmaster, etc.) and then do some strength training. By getting out first thing in the morning we can enjoy each other’s company and get ready to take on the day. It’s amazing how fast an hour can go!

Here are this week’s fitness tips that will help keep me motivated:

1. Exercise at the same time every day. By getting my body used to a routine, it’s easier to wake up at the same time each day and know what to expect. Plus, my friends all like to meet at the same time for consistency.

2. Workout 5-6 days a week. That seems like a lot, but I look forward to meeting up with my gal pals each morning. It’s productive girl-time!

3. Vary the routine so we don’t get bored. We like to run Tues/Thurs/Sat and lift weights Mon/Wed/Fri. The cross training is good for our health, and it gives us enough recovery time between hard workouts.

Here’s to another great week!

Circle Stars Part 2 – Paper Piecing

May 2, 2012May 2, 20124 Comments

Many Circular Star designs are more commonly known as Mariner’s Compass blocks. They look very complicated but are actually quite simple to piece.

To make my fiery star block that I’m working on this week, I began with a hand-drafted pattern that I learned how to make in a workshop I attended recently from Gail Garber. You can read more about that awesome class HERE.

For me, the hardest part was picking out the colors! I started out by bringing the whole pile of fabrics shown below to class. It’s hard for me to envision a project until I know exactly what I’m doing. After a day of block designing I was able to narrow down my choices and stick with an analogous color scheme – colors that lie right next to each other on the color wheel. I’ve been learning a little color theory, too.

My heart really yearned for reds, oranges, and yellows so I rummaged around in my stash until I was happy with my fabric choices. I needed to make sure there was enough contrast in value to make the design stand out.

Once the pieces were rough cut into large rectangular patches, the sewing fun could begin! Gail’s method of paper-piecing is to cut each piece out 1″ bigger on all sides. I don’t mind the waste if I can trade it for extreme accuracy. The REALLY nifty part is below.

We started off with the first piece in the middle like you normally would for paper piecing. We used freezer paper foundations and made multiple copies by pinning them together and running an unthreaded needle through a stack of freezer paper sheets. The fabric adhered to the freezer paper when I ironed between seams. That meant no shifting! It easy pulled away when I was ready to add the next piece.

The “magic” happened when we used an add-a-quarter ruler to the edge of each sewn piece to cut off the excess. Instead of getting globs of fabric lumps on the back, each seam was nice and tidy. It made lining up the next piece super simple!

Once I had a stack of pie slices – 8 to be exact, they were ready to be trimmed and sewn into a circle. The picture below shows Gail in class demonstrating how to paper piece on my Bernina. The best thing about taking technique classes is that it gives me great ideas for nifty notions that I’ll eventually carry in my store. In the meantime, if you are interested in the add-a-quarter ruler and other supplies for paper piecing, you can order them from Gail’s website here: www.GailGarber.com.

Now I can’t wait to turn this block into an exciting (perhaps award-winning??) quilt! I will post weekly updates as I work on this project.

Weight Loss Week 2 – Eating Well

April 30, 2012March 19, 20134 Comments

Today was my “official” weigh-in day with my friends and I’m happy to report I’m down 5.5 pounds! Whoo-hoo! I feel like the Biggest Loser!! (That is a good thing, referencing the television reality show that encourages overweight people to get healthy and fit). While that is a pretty big weight loss for the first week, I don’t expect that kind of weight loss every week. But I’m happy about it so I’ll take it. My goal is to lose about 30 more!!

So how did I do it? Quite simply, I ate lots of fruits & veggies and watched my calories! I wrote down everything I ate and limited myself to 1200 calories per day. For my five-foot tall frame, that’s quite enough (for you taller gals out there, you’d want to adjust your calories accordingly.). What made my eating successful this week is I tried the 6 meals a day plan. No, that doesn’t mean six large meals. It means 3 moderate 300 calorie meals with 3 healthy 100 calorie snacks, eating about every 2-3 hours. Here are a two pictures of actual meals I ate this week, a breakfast and a dinner of 300 calories each.

The trick to keeping these meals low-calorie is in the portion sizes and by watching the condiments and sauces. The eggs and hash browns were fried in cooking spray and the corn was sweet enough that I didn’t need to add any butter. The milk is low-fat and the chicken salad was made with plain vanilla yogurt rather than mayonnaise. Notice the addition of grapes to round out the meal.

Here are few tips on how I will maintain my enthusiasm and stick to my eating plan:

1. Don’t say NO to ANY type of food. If I want a cookie, I’m going to have a cookie but I’m going to count it as either part of my 300 calorie meal or 100 calorie snack. Hmm, 100 calorie snack packs anyone?? (And I’m going to just have 1 treat – not 10!!)

2. Add fruit and veggies to EVERY meal. They are high in fiber which fills me up and keeps me from being too hungry. A banana makes a great 100 calorie snack. 1 cup of steamed broccoli or summer squash is about 30 calories. A good sized tomato is only 25 calories.

3. Watch my liquid calories. I’m sticking to 1% milk (I don’t do fat-free anything!) Also, it’s more filling and better for your system to eat a whole orange or apple, rather than drinking it as juice. I’ll lay off the sodas and dessert drinks (I’d rather just drink water).

4. Keep going when life gets in the way. I had a small accident on my road bike this week which sent me to the doctor for stitches on my chin. But instead of using it as an excuse to give up and eat a pity party, I renewed my determination to not let anything stand in the way of my goals!

Until next week, I’ll keep thinking healthy thoughts!! In case you missed it, you can read about Week One HERE.

Circle Stars Workshop Part 1 – Drafting

April 28, 2012March 19, 2013Leave a comment

I’m finally ready to share some pictures with you from Gail Garber’s workshops I took last weekend. You can see some of Gail’s beautiful quilts with her signature colorful flying geese in my earlier post HERE. She’s one of the most fun quilting instructors I’ve ever had!

She started us off with a private show & tell of her beautiful quilts and we spent a little time introducing ourselves. What a perfect way to start a class – creating camaraderie to boost our morale for the weekend of work ahead! Getting into the nitty-gritty the picture below shows the types of supplies we needed to create such complicated quilts. It wasn’t too intimidating since she walked us through the procedures step-by-step. You can purchase many of these supplies from Gail Garber’s website HERE.I spent most of the first day designing and drawing with a compass and pencil. Gail used such friendly terms like “make a fish tail” rather than scary math terms like “bisect the angle”. Her approach was fun and certainly doable! Be sure to click the pictures below for closeups.

Drafting perfect stars was fun once I knew how!

Once we were happy with our design, we made a paper pieced pattern pie!

I managed to get one wedge of my star sewn by the end of the weekend. What a success!

Several friends and guild members took this fun class. Shown above: Jean, me, Gail Garber, and Karen. (Jean and Karen both make award-winning quilts that you can see HERE.)

A Visit with Gail Garber

April 24, 2012March 19, 2013Leave a comment

My quilting guild is in the wonderful habit of bringing in nationally-known award-winning quiltmakers to come lecture and offer workshops. This last weekend, Gail Garber paid us a visit and shared her work in making beautiful circle star quilts with intricate borders and colorful flying geese. I was fortunate enough to take 2 of her classes on Friday and Saturday and will blog about how fantastic those were in future posts!

Gail is a wonderful lecturer and has an easy-going friendly personality. After just a few minutes with her, you really do want to be her best friend! Here are a few pictures of some of the quilts she brought to show us, posted here with her permission. All I can say is wow!This quilt, called “Wheel of Fortune” is my absolute favorite. I love the asymmetrical block placed into a symmetrical format with the gently curving binding.

Galactic Tango is amazing with streaks of flying geese and asymmetrical edges. We learned in class was how to make a radiating star, similar to the one above. Yes, it can be done!!In Quadrille, I love how she used a Paula Nadelstern fabric as the focus print in the diamonds, then utilized solid colors, hand dyes and tonals to match.

Dawn of the New Day was made to commemorate the events of 9/11. Her signature geese and wonderful color selection make this a hallmark of Gail Garber’s amazing work. These quilts were a feast for the eyes!

Be sure to visit Gail’s website at GailGarber.com. You’ll be glad you did!

Weight Loss Week 1 – The Start

April 23, 2012March 19, 20133 Comments

I am going to be blogging about my journey to lose weight over the next few weeks and months. Feel free to follow along if you need inspiration to get healthy and lose weight! It’s somewhat related to quilting in that in order to live long enough and make all of the quilts I want to, I need to be healthy and fit!

I’ve always been active and have run several marathons, half-marathons and triathlons. But, the more I started devoting serious time to my quilting, the more I was eating. Quilting can be a sedentary pursuit and all of a sudden I’ve realized I’m about 35 pounds overweight and my cute clothes don’t fit anymore!

Jason and I started watching the “Biggest Loser” television show and it’s inspired me to get back on the exercise bandwagon and begin a solid fitness routine. Here’s my “before” picture.

I’m going to start with this week with these tips to lose weight and keep it off.

1. Work out with friends. I’ve realized time and time again I cannot do it alone. Because I’m so busy with my quilt business and my family, I rarely have any “girl” time. My time with my fitness pals in the early morning before I start my day provides that outlet for me.

2. Get to bed early! This goes along with #1. It’s easier to work-out first thing in the morning if I’ve gotten a good night’s rest the night before.

3. Keep a food journal. Another thing that works for me is keeping track of what I eat, my exercise routine and counting calories. The act of writing it down holds me accountable and really discourages me from mindless eating.

So here’s to a healthier life!

Stipple Practice

April 19, 20126 Comments

I’ve decided it’s ok to doodle on fabric. I love to machine quilt but sometimes I’m in between projects so that’s when I love to play with scraps of muslin and just go to town!

I keep a bunch of scraps on hand so I can mess around with thread, tension, and batting before I move onto my quilt. I can mark a motif with a stencil and see how it will stitch up.

I tried pebbles, free-form feathers, paisleys, wavy lines, and – oh yeah – stippling! I wanted to see if I could get a trapunto effect by quilting a motif and filling in the background.

If I see a design I want to try, I just grab a scrap and quilt away. I called this post stipple practice but it’s really a good idea to try out ANY design on a “fabric sandwich” first.

How a bout a touch of color – what will that look like? These little pieces are for nothing but my own pure enjoyment. They are fun to look at when I want a visual feast and I plan on incorporating the designs into quilts in the future. Whew, that was fun!

How to Make a Corner Label with Hanging Pockets

April 17, 2012April 15, 20121 Comment

After I finished my Hearts & Feather wholecloth quilt, I wanted a simple way to add a label and hanging tabs so I used the folded square method that’s been gaining popularity lately. Here’s a picture of the back of my quilt, before adding the binding:

It’s super easy to do. Just cut a 5″ square or larger for the label and two smaller 3″ squares for the corner tabs. Fold in half and sew them on the backside of your quilt in the appropriate corners. You can attach the binding after which will cover the stitching.

I wrote information on the triangle label, added binding, and stitched down the 3rd side by hand. I added a dowel between the two corner pockets for hanging.