Pineapple Quilt Progess

Just in case you thought I'd fallen off the earth, nope, I'm still here. I've been spending some time at my sewing machine this week (very unusual of me, I know). You see, I've gotten very bored with the hand-quilting of Mom's tablerunner (which is supposed to be finished by July 14)...so I've been bouncing between projects right now, trying to do a little bit of something and then going back to the hand-quilting. It's not exactly working...

Here are my working stacks of fabric next to my sewing machine...I know, the creams are washed out by the light, I'm a horrible photographer...

I tried to take a shot of me sewing on one of the blocks - how do you ladies get these kinds of pictures in focus??? You can tell from this photo that these blocks aren't large - only 5 1/2" finished.

Here is the beginning of a block...boring to start..

But look what 9 finished blocks looks like!! I haven't sewn these together yet, they're just pinned to the design wall right now. I'm liking them more and more :) I've finally gotten it down to about 1 hour to sew a block, from the 1 1/2 hours it was taking me....I think this is going to be a quilt where you either love the process or you don't make the quilt...

One last shot of Felix. He likes to sit between our legs if we have our footrests up. He doesn't bother my sewing - too much. If I happen to dangle a thread within his line of sight, he'll attack it, oh yeah. Doesn't he look like he's just waiting for that to happen? LOL

Have You Used the Bathroom Yet??

Ok, so that might be a bit more personal than you'd like. But it's the question on my mind today. Why, you might ask?? Well, our water has been turned off for the majority of the day. You see, we are having road construction on our street this summer to replace the water/sewer lines and today is the day we get hooked up to the new water line. Yippee!!! Unfortunately, that means they have to turn the water off to our house while they do it. And apparantely, they've decided to do 3 houses at the same time, so it will be most of the day without water.

Have you used the bathroom yet? LOL

I just hope it doesn't end up like the last house they hooked up last week...I shot this video after they had broken the water main - not fun... Oh, and the phone ringing at the end? That's my mom calling, she always picks the perfect time to do that.. I shot this video out our front picture window on Thursday..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sHAIkjrEnQ&feature=youtube_gdata

Memorial Day Weekend

DH and I spent the day at my sister's house having a yard sale. We did better than we had expected to do, so both DH and I were pleased. And I made enough money to have some mad money for the community sales happening in my hometown next weekend! Yay!

The bowls I showed you in my last post didn't sell, though. Apparenly I had them priced too high for a yard sale or nobody was interested in them. That's ok, I'll just keep them handy for gifts.

I finally got some pictures on the wall today. If you'll recall, we had painted the living room this week, and I wanted to wait a while to put the pictures back up. For some reason, the walls grew in size when we took down the wall of curtains!!! LOL We replaced the curtains with roller shades (very temporary until we can afford to get the roman shades we want), but now I have more walls to put the same amount of pictures on. They sure aren't going far! I need to look for wall pockets to add to the ensemble and have Mom help me compose some nice settings. She learned this wonderful trait to put together wall settings when she sold Home Interior years ago. At least someone in the family has some taste! LOL

Some pictures today..

I finally got around to taking some pictures of my activities these last couple of weeks.

Yesterday was taken up by painting our living room, as I mentioned in yesterday's post. Here is an action shot of DH putting on the second coat of paint. As you can see, he's quite focused on his work - and he does a great job, too :)

Today I found this lovely in the mailbox. Notice where it came from? Hint - Australia! But wait - I'm not expecting anything from Australia....Hmm...well, I did just send a package to this person back in March, but I wasn't expecting anything in return...

So this pile of loveliness was completely unexpected!!! 9 skeins of Silk 'N Colors flossies!!!!!! And do you see the cute card she included? How sweet :)

The main project taking up my time these last few weeks has been Mom's tablerunner. Here is a full shot of it as it dangles off the side of the table. I've gotten the entire center blue section quilted, as well as the top left portion of cream. I am working my way back to the center on the top section. The blue triangles at each end will ultimately be chopping off.

Here is a close-up of the feathers I quilted into the center section. You can't see them very well, but they are a 3-pronged feathery frond kind of thing. Each pattern filled half of the space, so I flipped it for the other side.

Here you can see the design I am quilting into the cream sections of the tablerunner. I'm quilting in the ditch around this design. I love how the wool batting is making the designs puff up nicely, even before it's been washed.

Here is a shot of my Candied Hexagon quilt - in process. You can see the piles of fabrics in the upper right of the picture. The bowl of glassine envelopes are the quilt blocks waiting to be pieced. Each quilt block gets it's own glassine envelope. I learned that trick in a hand piecing class I took with Linda Franz. Once you get all the pieces to a block cut out, they all stay together in their own envelope and don't get mixed up. Very tidy.

The bottom of the picture shows my styrofoam working space. Another idea Linda Franz offered was to have a flat working space that can support your work, and can be pinned into. I found a spare piece of styrofoam in DH's shop and cut out a 7" square - perfect!! And still room for a kitty to sit in my lap while I'm working :)

Below is the design wall holding all the completed Candied Hexagon blocks. I was wrong, I only have 2 rows finished so far, not 3.

Below are 3 bowls I've made this week. The dark purple one is the largest one I've made so far. The blue one is my attempt at a square bowl. It's also a little shorter than I had wanted. The light purple one has become my go-to size/shape of bowl.

Here is a shot so you can see the heights a little better. Sorry the camera decided to focus on the jar of threads rather than the bowls I spent so much time on.....stupid camera....

Ok, that's enough from me for today. I won't have much to post about for a while, but at least you are now all up to date.

Am I still here???

My life has gone on hyperdrive since my birthday last month. I've now become the official back-up babysitter for my sister's 2 boys. Which is taking up a fairly good amount of time. And Kendrick has hit the stage where he is testing to see how far he can get away with things..and he doesn't seem to like his little brother, so there is a LOT of hitting going on. Good thing Grayson is so laid back about it. Anyway, life is very full with this new responsibility - and I've only watched them 5 days out of the last 3 weeks - wow, it seems like it's been a lot more than that! LOL

I've also discovered the fabric/clothesline bowls craze that was going around a year ago or so. Man these things are addictive!! I made a couple for my mom and sis for Mother's Day and am now trying to build up a small stash of them to offer for sale at the yard sale we're planning to have this weekend. I currently have 3 made - hopefully at least 2 more will join the party.

I also spent today painting the living room with DH. Talk about hard work!! I was in charge of trimming the ceiling and baseboards so DH could follow with the roller....which meant I was up and down the ladder alllllll day. And did I mention we have 10 foot ceilings in our house? That's a long way up!!! The first time I went up the ladder this morning I thought I was going to have a panic attack (I have issues with heights) and DH would have to to the ceiling bits. But I finally conquered my fears and didn't look back. We now have a lovely green living room and we even got 2 coats on in one day!! All the neighbors were impressed (yes, we had to show it off to someone!).

Let's see....oh yes, I'm also working on a surprise gift for Mom for her birthday in July. I had some blue and cream log cabin blocks floating around my sewing room for years. I had originally bought the fabric to make a log cabin quilt for my little brother and his first wife. He's now on to his second wife and I never managed to finish the quilt. In fact, I only had 6 blocks made. So I got this bright idea to round out the number of blocks to 8, and sew them in 2 rows of 4 blocks to make a tablerunner. I'm going to cut the corners off to make the ends pointy and am in the process of hand quilting it now. I'm about 2/3 of the way finished with that and am still on schedule to get it to her by her birthday. And I repurposed the blue and cream fabrics to make my pineapple quilt.

I've also been working on my pink and brown Candied Hexagons quilt blocks. I've got 3 rows of blocks completed and on my design wall. I'm waiting until I get all the blocks pieced before I decide on an actual layout. In the meantime, I'm placing them in position the same way the quilt I'm following for the pattern has the blocks placed. I'll rearrange to make the colors flow right once they're all made.

I was able to get my grandmother's sewing machine fixed recently, too. Apparently the ceramic plate in the foot pedal had cracked, which made the entire machine not usable. The local quilt shop's father (a retired electrician) replaced the foot pedal for me for only the cost of the pedal. How awesome was that!

I've had another interview since my birthday rejection. And they didn't want me this time, either. My mom and sis think I need to dye my hair. I went gray really early - first one found in high school, major additions in college. I'm really starting to think they might be right...sigh...

Now that I have access to my blogger account again (I was locked out for a week or so) I hope I'll keep up with somewhat regular posts....but we'll see.

It's My Birthday..

And I'm another year older. I'd like to think I'm a little bit wiser, too, but really, who knows? I don't dare ask DH - I don't know what he'd say in response. I'm not sure I want to know! LOL

It was a very nice birthday - as birthdays go. It started with a phone call from the out-laws...a very pleasant call it was, too. Then DH took me out to dinner at my favorite restaurant with my Sister, BiL and 2 nephews. We followed that up with a visit to my Mom's house for cake and ice cream...and visiting. At about 8:00 we decided to head home and I found lots of wonderful birthday wishes on facebook and in the mailbox.

Although I did find a rejection letter in the mailbox for my latest job interview....oh well.

I can definitely say this was one birthday I enjoyed. Thank you DH and family for making it such a nice one.

Lots and Lots of Green..

I've been caught in the cross-stitch fever this past couple of months. To be specific, the Teresa Wentzler cross-stitch fever. You know I stitched her Unicorn piece throughout the last fall, followed by a quick stich of hers - You Were Hatched.. Now I'm working on her Woodland Faerie piece. You can see the entire design here.

I'm really enjoying it. Lots of green to combat all the white snow outside my window. Here is a pic of where I was on Friday last week (2/26/11).

The top section of this picture constitutes 1/6 of the overall design. Let me tell you, that flowery border section is not fun! It's the most fiddly bits of stitching I've ever done. But it is so worth it in the end.

Of all the different greens you see in this shot, you wouldn't expect me to be coming up short on any one of them. However, I'm currently 1 strand of floss away from needing a new skein of 522. I can't believe I went through an entire skein of that already! Yeesh! Good thing green is my neutral ;)

I'm hoping I'll be able to get all the 'boring' green bits done before the snows disappear for the year. Then I'll have all the interesting animals and flowers on the bottom of the design to work on throughout the spring...we'll see how successful I am. Especially considering spring and summer seem to be my season to work on quilts....I know, I'm crazy. Winter is supposed to be quilting season! Who knows...