What is your opinion?

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had a great Christmas! I'll show a couple of photos of our Christmas and then move on the house update and quilting.

Christmas Eve we went to Richard's sister, Vanessa's cabin for dinner. His family met for dinner and gift exchange. Richard's grandmother was there, she is 91 years old and he is very close to her. After dinner we headed back home so that Hunter could get in bed before Santa came. Hunter was up this morning by 6am! Andrew had to work a 12 hour shift last night and didn't get off work until 8am this morning. He has to work tonight 8pm to 8am. So here are my boys! Hunter was excited to get to open the gift that Andrew got for him. This is Andrew's first job so he was very proud to get to buy things himself.

We had a wonderful day together. I fixed dinner and my sister and her boyfriend came out for dinner. I got a nice call from my brother and mom too. We will have Christmas with mom and my brother will be there too, next weekend after she gets home.

Here are a few photos of the house progress...everything is sooooo dusty out there right now with the construction still going on. First off is the light that will be over my dining table. I know it would look so much better if everything was painted but paint is just not in the budget right now. :(
This is the light that will be over my kitchen island....that is not there yet! :) My upper cabinets, island and all the doors are not done. So after we hung the light I am very anxious to have my island built. You can see in the background where the recessed lights are that will be in front of my upper cabinets. I still need to put the covers on them....I just haven't had time yet. Oh and you can see that I have a ton of dishes on my counter that needs to be put away. I'm just trying to unpack most of the kitchen stuff before I put it away so that I can better organize everything.
This is the bathroom sink and all of the mess on the counter is the shower head and faucet that Richard was installing. See all of that dust in the sink? I still need to take the shopvac in there and clean it a little better before I get the walls painted.

Oh, I actually didn't mean to load this photo on here but it's here anyway! LOL! This is just the kitchen BEFORE I used the shopvac to clean the dust out of the cabinets. :)
This is the ceiling over the living room. You can see the area down there where the white is showing...Richard still needs to put the trim up there where the ceiling angles. It looks much better in person, this ceiling is 22ft high so the wood doesn't make it look closed in as it might if the ceilings were lower. Oh and you can also see where the ceiling fan/light will be installed.
This is the guest room where I am storing all of the stuff right now until I can sort through it and put it all away. I've run out of boxes! :( I think I have been to every business in town bumming their old boxes. :) BTW...this photo was taken several days ago so there is much more in the room now.
Now on the quilting! The other day I needed to take a break from working so I sat down in my sewing room. Laying on the table in front of me, was my Courthouse Step quilt pieces. I've had this thing sewn into 4 sections for a while. I just haven't taken or had the time to finish it. I layed it out on the floor to see how it would look, and this is it. There are a total of 224 of these little blocks. Now I have a question...after I get the four sections sewn together...do you think it will need a border or not????? If you look close in the upper corner, I have a fabric laying there to see how it would look.
Here is a closer look at the border fabric. It has a small stripe in it, and if I use it, I want to miter the corners. Without the borders it will measure 84 x 96, with a 6 inch border it will measure 96 x 108. So what do you think????

I would love your opinions on the border. I just have too much on my mind right now to even really think about it very much. :)

Merry Christmas!

Kristie

Just a little update...

If I don't get to post again before Christmas, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and let it be full of Blessings. We, well Richard, finally got all of the ceiling covered in my sewing room and the open part over the living room. A total of 1200 sq ft covered with wood. These are very high ceilings so it doesn't feel dark and heavy. This is the part over my sewing room, part of it was done for a while but he finished it and did all of that over the living room. The beams will be covered with stained wood as soon as we get to it. We just mostly wanted to get the ceiling wood up to cover the insulation. The bookshelf in the photo measures 4x6 ft so that can give you an idea of the size of the room and the ceiling. Still have to install the ceiling fan/light in there, which I don't have yet because it is a Christmas gift from my mom. :) Sorry mom, but I know. LOL!

I tried to get a photo of the ceiling over the living room, but they didn't turn out very well. I'll try that again as soon as I can. Richard is sanding the drywall in my kitchen right now. I can't wait to get that mess cleaned up. After he gets it done and I can get all of that dust and building materials out of there I will start unpacking some of my kitchen stuff. It will look a little odd because my upper cabinets and island are installed. I don't even have cabinet doors on the bottom cabinets, but that's okay with me....for now. :)

I started painting the bathroom the other day and that didn't end well. First, I couldn't get the ladder to fit right in there. It would go in the bathroom but I couldn't get it positioned right so that I could paint around the edges of the ceiling or the very top of the walls. I even tried to stand on a bucket but that didn't work, my ceiling is 8ft and I'm only 5ft tall so you can see the problem. LOL! Richard said he would paint the trim areas as soon as he could get to it, so I decided to go ahead and paint the walls in there. I only got one small section done, the roller was leaving tons of lint/fuzzies all over the wall. I stopped because it looked so bad. I picked up more rollers but haven't had a chance to get back to it yet.

Hunter was sick for a few days. He is feeling so much better now, but he had a chest cold and cough. I couldn't go out to the house and work because I didn't want to leave him in here by himself and didn't want him going in and out in the cooler weather. So while I was in here with him, I packed up more stuff. It is a bad sign when you have packed for what seems like forever and you still can't tell that anything is gone. :( Most of what is packed up is stuff out of cabinets, under beds, closets, and stuff like that.

I guess that is enough about the house, this is what I have been doing this morning....making my Goat Milk Soap gift baskets for gifts. I think there are a total of 20 of them all ready to go!

Late last night Richard was putting some trim up on the living room ceiling to finish it and while he was doing that, I loaded a quilt on the frame. I know, I know, I said I was done, but......all of my customer quilts that needed to be done before Christmas are done but I had forgotten that I still needed to quilt 3 large lap/twin size quilts for my brothers little kids for Christmas. :( Which I've still got a little while because we will not have Christmas with them until Mom gets home which will be about a week after Christmas. I haven't started the quilting, I just loaded it on.

That's all for now....back to packing....
Kristie

Woo Hoo!!!

Here is the quilt that I quilted today. It was pieced by my aunt and I think she said it was a gift for her DIL. It was quilted with white Maderia thread and I used the "Verdant" panto on it. This is the last of my customer quilts that needed to be done before Christmas!!! Woo Hoo! The rest of them are lined up for after Christmas. I still have one more that I have to do the binding on and deliver it on Monday, it is the quilt that I did yesterday. As of right now, I hope to take a couple of weeks to enjoy Christmas, work on the house and move.

In the morning I plan on painting the bathroom. I have the ceiling painted but not trimmed around the edges. So I need to trim the ceiling and paint the walls. The bathroom isn't that big but it will take a little time to paint around the tub and cabinets. I'm trying to get it painted before we install the toilet, light, mirror and floor tile.
Kristie

Off the frame...

Here is the latest quilt that I quilted. I thought it would never end. LOL! I quilted this for a local lady that is not a quilter but bought this top and had it quilted. It was all hand pieced and it had some fullness in it that I tried to push out to the edges so that hopefully the binding will hide the puckers. There are only a few of them. But overall I think she will be pleased with it, she knew that it had a few problems. Here is view of the back. The quilting really shows up on it but I don't care if I ever use that panto again. LOL! It is a design called Camellias and I had used it once before on a tablerunner and it was fine but on a huge quilt is killed my shoulders for some reason. I think because there is so much quilting in the flowers and the quilting is so close that I was tensed the whole time. I love how it looks but I don't want to do that one again on a large quilt if I don't have too.

I have the last one loaded on the frame now but I haven't started it yet. I plan on quilting it tomorrow and I will be finished with my BEFORE Christmas quilting except for a few binding. Then as soon as Christmas is over and I get a few things settled in the house then I will start on the other 10 that I have waiting to be quilted.

Richard has been working on the house as I am quilting. He is working on installing the wood on the ceiling over the living room. The living room has a 22ft ceiling so we had to rent some scaffolding so that he could get it done. He also had to put the insulation up there before he could start putting the wood up. Anyway he has a couple more days of work doing that before he can move on to something else. We rented the scaffolding for a week so he has to have it done before Monday morning when we have to return it.

So my plan is to finish the quilt that I have on the frame tomorrow and then hopefully if all goes right I plan on painting the bathroom. I still have to trim the ceiling and paint the walls. I want to get that done before Richard puts the tile down.

Kristie

Making Progress...

I am making some progress on the quilts! I must say it feels great to see the pile getting smaller. First let me show you the $1 fat quarters that I picked up at the quilt shop! I ended up getting 20 of them. A few of them I already had but I got them anyway. I was very pleased with them.

I just loved this one. I'm not even sure of the fabric line. I'll have to check to see if she has this on a bolt, because I would like to have some yardage of this.
On to the machine quilting....Here is a lap quilt that I quilted for a lady. She wanted a WVU lap quilt and pillows so I had to order the WVU fabric online and she just wanted a border sewn on it. I also made to 16" pillows but they are out in the house and I'm not. LOL! I'll try to get a photo of them tomorrow if I can think of it. I am still working on the binding on this one. I quilted it with a panto called "Happy Times" and I used navy Signature thread on top and the bobbin.
Here is one that I quilted today. I had a guy that we know wanted a quilt for his wife. He came over and we found this quilt top that I had made several years ago. He looked through a bunch of them but this is the one that he picked out. I priced it and he didn't hesitate. Actually this is one that I wanted to keep for myself but money talks right now. LOL! I didn't have a pattern, I just pieced a bunch of blocks, I think they might be 8 inches, then I added the pieced border. It still wasn't big enough for what I wanted so last year I added the outer border. Here is the back of it. I used a panto called "Verdant" I've used that on several lately and really like it. I also used a med/light brown Madeira thread. I also need to do the binding on it too. Giggle....he wants me to wrap it for him too. :)I have the backing of my next quilt loaded on the frame and I will load the top and batting in the morning. I'm tired... Anyway, I have 2 more to finish before Christmas!! But.....as of right now I have 10 customer quilts waiting to be quilted AFTER Christmas. I've told everyone that I need a couple of weeks after Christmas to relax first. Well, I won't be able to relax, I've got to MOVE! LOL!

A few nights ago I was packing up some of the quilting stuff and ran on to these Courthouse Step blocks. I really want to finish this top. It has a total of 224--6 inch blocks. I have most of it sewn together, actually I have it sewn in 4 sections so it would only take me a few minutes have it done. When I do get it sewn together I will see then if I want to add a border or not. That's all for tonight....I'm off to do some laundry! :(

Kristie

Another One Finished...

I can mark another one off my list!! This is another client quilt. It is a very large Carpenter's Star quilt. The quilt shop sold these as kits and I have another one to quilt after Christmas that is done in a different color scheme. I quilted it with a panto called, Verdant. I have quilted several lately with that design and I have a couple more quilts that need to be quilted with that same design. It quilted up great and I only had ONE thread break in the whole quilt and the quilt is something like 104 inches. I got a small shipment of Maderia thread in. It is my very favorite to use. Hubby looked at it and said "That doesn't look like 22,000 yards of thread" but it is. Each cone has 5500 yards. This will last me a while. I was running low on these colors and I tend to use them a lot. I also ordered a color card. They don't really list the colors by name, just numbers so it is hard to determine the exact color. Hunter has a little friend spending the weekend so I figure I probably could not start on another quilt today. Now that I got that big one off the frame, I will fix supper and MAKE some bindings tonight. I have 4 more quilts that need quilted before Christmas and 3 of them I will be doing the binding for. I figure I can work on the handwork late at night as I am resting on the couch.

I was thinking today that I will be delivering a pile of quilts to the quilt shop on Monday and they have a sale going on......you know where this is headed right? Actually, I can't spend very much on fabric right now but they have some of their Civil War Fat Quarters bagged up and priced 10/$10. So at a dollar each, that is too good to pass up. I'm delivering 6 client quilts so I probably wouldn't miss $10 or $20 bucks....right? LOL!

I'm off to get supper started and pack a few more boxes.....I didn't realize we had this much JUNK! LOL!
Kristie

The pile is getting a little smaller...

Time is slipping away and I am trying to get everything done. I'm packing a few things up as I take breaks from quilting. Just trying to keep the laundry and dishes done is a huge task for me right now. Here is a photo that I took yesterday morning, the sky was soooo pretty. As you can see I have been getting up super early and when I took this photo I had already been up about an hour.

Here are a few quilts that I have done the past couple of days...

Here are TWO exact same quilts! These are two customer quilts and I must say that even though they are made from a very simple pattern they are very lovely! I just love the fabrics used in them, such warm tones. It seemed like it took me forever to quilt them since they were both exactly alike. I quilted them both with a design called Verdant. I love using this design. I also used a medium brown Bottom Line thread in the top and bobbin.

Here is a closeup of the fabrics and you can also see that the backing was pretty too.

This is a quilt that I pieced for a customer in the colors that she requested. I hope she likes it. I still have to sew the binding on and bury a few threads and it will be ready to deliver. The fabric is actually a barn/country red with tiny cream stars on it. I picked it up from Hobby Lobby. I quilted it with a simple design called Happy Times.
I still have several more to go! But at least the pile is getting smaller. I'm not even sure how many more I have to go. I've finished the quilting on several and also added a few more to the pile. I know I have a couple of big ones coming up in the next few.

Not a lot of progress on the house the past few days. I'm too busy with the quilts and just the job of being a wife and mother to get much done. Richard has his final exams this week, so he is spending every minute studying.

I have a doctor appointment in the morning and then have a few errands to do. That will take up most of my day. I'm hoping that I can at least get another quilt loaded on the frame and work on some binding or something.

That's all for now....I'll leave you with a photo that I found on my camera that Hunter must have taken a few days ago..... I just love seeing the world from his eyes.... LOL! He loves to play at the base of this big tree in our yard. Have a wonderful evening.... ~Kristie

A Little Progress...

Here we go....first off, I want to thank all of your for your kind words and prayers! I have never been able to deal with stress. I was in a panic the other day when I wrote my last post. :) I know that the Lord will not put more on me than I can handle. I know it is not going to be easy but I trust in him and I think he will help us through this.

My mom had to leave for work early this morning and she will be gone for 28 days and she will not be home for Christmas. That breaks my heart. She was home for Thanksgiving and we had dinner at her house but when she gets back home a couple of days after Christmas we will celebrate at her house with her. Hunter is excited because he will get to open gifts several different times. We had the little conversation of what Christmas was really about. Sometimes you have to remind the little ones that it is not the gifts but Christ.

So Tuesday mom came out and cleaned Hunter's room and the main bathroom in the new house. Everything was covered in drywall dust and it was horrible. As she was down stairs cleaning, I was upstairs quilting. After she got it all swept and vacuumed I came downstairs and started painting when I needed a break from quilting. It has been a long couple of days. I got the ceiling in Hunter's room and the bathroom painted and also Hunter's walls are done. He was so excited about it.

Now here are the details on Hunter's room. Please keep in mind that everything is NOT done and we will be moving in with the house UNFINISHED. :( Hunter's room measures 12x16 and only has the window that you can see in the photo, but it is a big window. He picked out the comforter, sheets, and curtains and mom bought them for him a while back but we had been saving them for the house. Hunter also picked out his own paint color. It is a little hard to tell the true color in the photo but it is "truly olive" We still need to do all of the wood trim as you can see it looks a little messy around the ceiling and floor but it will be covered as soon as we can get the trim and baseboards up. There is not any flooring down yet, just the plywood with a rug over it. :( I also plan on changing the white curtain rod. It is flimsy and the curtains are lined and heavy and it would just be a matter of time before Hunter tore it down. This is all that we have moved into his room so far. There are still tons of toys to move.

The bathroom is nowhere near finished. Richard did get the sink, counter top, and faucet installed after school. I got the ceiling painted but not trimmed yet. I have the paint for the walls but just haven't had time to get to it yet. I'll post a photo of that mess as we make a little more progress on it.

I have finished a few quilts while doing this too. Here is the quilt that I had on the frame in the last post, it is finished. Not sure what the pattern is but it is beautifully pieced. This one measured something like 92x92...I think. I quilted it with the Chantilly Lace design and used Madeira thread. I just love that stuff.
Then I loaded and quilted this one. The next two quilts were pieced by a man. I am doing the binding on both of them. I quilted it with the Barbed Wire design and used a matching thread from Connecting Threads. I finished the binding last night before I went to bed.
I quilted this one for him today. It is quilted with a Foliage design, just leaves. I used a orange thread from Connecting Threads. I have the binding ready to go on it and I will probably work on it later tonight. I'm not sure what all I will get done tomorrow, Hunter has an eye doctor appointment tomorrow afternoon and I need to do some grocery shopping. I would love to load another quilt and at least get it started. I dropped off a finished quilt at the shop on Monday and ended up picking up 2 more to do. I explained to her that it would be a while before I would get to quilt them. She said that was fine, just whenever I could get to them.....after the holidays.

That's all for tonight....I'm off to take a long.....hot.....soaking bath! :)
Kristie

I'm a total mess...

I'll try to make this story as short as possible and a few details are a little personal. Here goes... A couple of weeks ago our income made a dramatic drop. Hubby only has 6 more months of college and he will graduate with a degree in Nursing. He goes to school 5 days a week and often works on homework until bedtime and weekends. And there is no way that I would want him to quit when he is so close to being finished with it. So with such a school load we have slowed down on the house. I was hoping to pick up a few extra quilting jobs through the holidays until we could figure out something to get us by. I had 2 quilts to quilt for a couple of ladies and mom and I headed to the quilt shop to pick up a backing for one of them. You know how mothers are, they think their kids can do no wrong. LOL! The quilt shop owner asks if I do machine quilting, I said "yes" and left it at that. Then mom started going on about my quilts and stuff and the lady wanted me to bring by some of my work so she could see it, they needed a machine quilter.

A couple of days later, I take a couple of things by to show her and long story short.....she loaded me up with quilt tops!!!! I know have 13 quilt that have to be quilted by Christmas!!!! 4 of them need binding but the others don't. I truly believe that if you trust in God and try your best he will show you the way and he did that for us. Then panic set in! 13 quilts and they are NOT small quilts before Christmas! Oh no! I started stressing....and I do figure that I will have to quilt through the nights some to get them all finished. I sat down with a calendar to figure out a quilting schedule.

Now there is more....See several years ago when we decided to build this house we bought a mobile home to live in here on the property so that we would have a place to live while we worked on the house. Our plan was to get rid of the mobile home when we were almost ready to move in and get it out of the way. We really had not advertised it, just word of mouth. Last night we were sitting here and a young couple that is a friend of a friend kind of thing, called and wanted to come by and look at the mobile home. They came and seemed interested but I didn't think too much about it. So today I am out in the new house doing some machine quilting (which is in the backyard from the mobile home) someone knocks on the door and it is the young couple with her parents. They look it over and he father looks at me and says....."I have cash in my pocket to buy it, how long will it take you all to get things done to move out?" I'm thinking HELLO!!!! So I now have until the end of December to be out!!!

I have 13 big quilts to quilt and that will be hard for me to do with my busy farm life but somehow I will get them done! :) And on top of that...I have a month to pack everything up and move and my house is NOT DONE!!! Richard has bee gone all day helping his mother move from Ohio so I was here alone. After the buyers left, I just sat down and cried! I'm in a panic and don't know where to start. My head is throbbing and I wouldn't even want to check my BP right now. LOL! I'm sure things will work out just fine, I just have never been on that deals well with change or stress. My mom lives on the property that connects to ours and she said that we could stay with her until we got the house ready if we needed to. There just seems so much to do and not enough time.....and here I am on the computer! LOL! I need to get busy!

Okay now that I have dumped all of my stress on you all, I will talk about something else....Thanksgiving was wonderful, except that my brother didn't get to come for dinner. His FIL fell the night before and broke his leg in 2 or 3 places and had to have surgery. Andrew was home from college and that always makes me happy. Here is a photo of Andrew and Hunter taking silly photos on his Ipad. Hunter is always happy to see him too.

Yesterday, I was upstairs quilting and Hunter got bored and wanted to sew. So I set up this little machine that he uses from time to time. I bought it at a junk store and it works perfect. He quickly tired of sewing squares together and was off riding his bike. Silly boys!

Here is the first of the 13 quilts and the smallest of them all, this one is a twin and is made with Homespun fabric. This was my first time quilting something with Homespun fabric but I just had to adjust my tension a little and it was fine.
After I got it off the frame, I loaded this one on. I'm not sure of the pattern but it is very pretty in person. I only have it loaded, I haven't started quilting on it yet. I plan on getting it started this evening and hopefully finished late tomorrow evening. Wish me luck!
That's it for now!!! I'm off to get some quilting done!

Kristie

Client Quilt Off the frame...

This is the quilt that I loaded on the frame yesterday. It is finished and will be delivered to the owner tomorrow. When I deliver this one I will be picking up 4 or 5 more from the quilt shop. This one measures 92x92 and was beautifully pieced. I wanted to get a photo of it when it was finished so Richard and I were holding it from upstairs in my sewing room and letting it hang over the stairway wall, Hunter was in the living room trying to take the photos for me. It was a little funny, because Hunter was being hateful! :)

I just love the fabrics used in the quilt. Below is a photo of the backing.
That is really all that I have done today, just quilt on this quilt for a little while and then take a break. Anyway, it is finished and hopefully I can get another one loaded on the frame tomorrow evening!

Kristie

Things are getting a little busy...

This has been a long week! I'll start with the quilting first. I cut out part of two quilts. These are special order quilts. I don't have the background fabric cut for them but I will do that tonight. I cut the color fabrics at the same time for both, it was just much easier and faster that way. When finished they will be lap quilts. Here is my "Strip Twist" with the binding all finished! I was glad to get it finished and marked off my list. Here is a beautiful customer quilt that I loaded on the frame on Saturday morning. It measures 92x92 inches. You really can't tell much about it here on the frame but it has a big star in the center and other stars towards the corners and such. This belongs to the lady that owns the quilt shop. I must say that it is very well piece and lays really flat! If you are a machine quilter you know how important this is for it to quilt nicely. Anyway, I am at the halfway point on the quilt. I hope to finish it up after Church. She will be doing the binding so all I have to do is the quilting. I spoke with her this afternoon and told her that I would drop this one off at the shop on Monday. She said she had 5 more waiting for me!!!! So with this one that is on the frame that will make a total of 10 that I need to have finished BEFORE CHRISTMAS!! :)
Even though I have been quilting on this quilt most of the day and I cut the others out last night, I haven't been doing much of anything else. This is why....
My blood pressure here is 134/112 and that is with me taking 2 pills a day for it. So first thing Friday morning I was at the doctor's office. I took my monitor with me to show him how high it had been running. (BTW...I had my monitor checked and it is accurate) So the doctor flips out on me and said that I should have gone to the ER. So he changed my medication once again and over the next several weeks I will have lots of testing done on my heart and everything else. :(

Here are some photos of Andrew and his new colt that I took over the weekend. The photos are not that good, it was raining and his horse was muddy. Anyway he is 6 months old and a good size for his age. Andrew is very proud of him and you know how that goes when your kids are happy, you are happy! :)I promised Andrew we would take more photos of him when the weather was nicer and his horse was cleaned up. I guess that is all for now...I'm going to hit the couch and rest for a bit and then cut out the background for those two lap quilts.

Kristie

Off the frame...

I finally got my "Strip Twist" off of the frame. This is one of my own quilts and I've had it on the frame for a long time, but just haven't worked on it. So over the weekend I got it completed. Now I am hand sewing the binding on it, that is my favorite part. This quilt has a wide variety of fabrics used in it and those are my favorite quilts. I just love scrap quilts.

I got some goodies in the mail today. Bernie sent me these wonderful reds to add to my red and white quilt that I have been trying to collect some reds for. I don't have a lot of reds in my stash. I was sorting through some stuff today and found a pack of neutral fat quarters that I had picked up from the quilt shop. They had these on special for 10/$10, not too bad for $1 each! These are now put away in my stash. Oh and I wanted to show you this little baby hat that I made from leftover fleece from the camo crib set. I stuck it in the bag with the rest of the camo stuff, just a little extra something for the baby when he gets here. You can find the pattern here and this little hat only took me about 3 minutes! Can you believe that? Very simple to make.
Now my plans are to load another quilt on the frame and finish the binding on my Strip Twist quilt. I may not get started quilting on it today but I at least want to get it loaded on the frame. I'll post photos of the quilt as I load it on. It is a beautiful client quilt and it measures 90x90.

Kristie