Patience...

I thought I would drop by for an update! Nothing major going on here just busy doing little things. First off....Mom went back to work! If you remember a while back I mentioned that one of the anchors had backed out of her shoulder about halfway. Well, the surgeon said that there was nothing else that he could do with her shoulder and that there wasn't anything in there for him to work with so redoing the surgery would only make her worse. So after a lot more physical therapy she is still only able to raise her arm about halfway! She can't raise it above her head without assistance from someone else or by using her other arm to raise it up. So she is nowhere near back to where she should be but they did let her go back to work to try it after she asked them to release her. Broke my heart for her to leave after having her home since the middle of November 2010! One thing is that is miss her so much and then I am also worried about how she will do out there and hopefully not do any further damage to her shoulder. She flew out to Jackson, Mississippi last Thursday. All I know right now is that she is floating somewhere on the Mississippi river between Memphis, TN and New Orleans, LA. I talked to her once because her cell signal is not the best down there, but she said that the guys on the boat were doing everything that they could to help her.


Now on to other things....PATIENCE!...Patience is something that I do not have!!! I can remember as a child that my grandmother would always tell me "Be Patient" and I would say "You know that I can't!" LOL! As you know I had to move my frame out to the new house to make room in here for my new couch and chair. Using it out there would not be a problem but first there was the drywall. All of the sanding and dust from that just makes too big of a mess for me to quilt up there until that is finished. I have a few quilts that I really need to get done! Trust me I know how important it is to get all of that stuff done so that we can move on to something else in the house but that just really messed my plans up! So then, the other day...I walked out to the house to take some boxes and I swear if Richard didn't have the stairs taken apart!!! See we only had temporary stair treads up there until we were ready to put the "real" ones down. Well, he didn't tell me that he was going to do that NOW! LOL! Imagine my shock when I walked out there and there was not a way for me to get upstairs!! So until he gets the staircase completely finished, I can only stand in the living room and stare up at my lonely quilt frame and a lot of my quilting supplies! :( Last night I asked him how long it would be and he said "maybe another 2 weeks!" EEKK! Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that he is working on the staircase and he has worked so hard making each and every piece of them himself, but I WANT TO QUILT!


So meanwhile, I have been working on bindings that need to be done. I finished the binding on the sailboat quilt. And during the evenings I am working on the binding of a huge flannel quilt. I don't work on it very long at a time because it is so hot with that thing on my lap.
I am still in the process of cleaning, sorting, packing and throwing away a bunch of stuff! I didn't realize that we had so much stuff. I have a bunch of stuff boxed up and sitting next to the front door that needs to go upstairs in the new house (but I can't take those out until I have stairs!) LOL! There are things like trophies, books and odds and ends that the boys can do without until we move in the house later in the summer (hopefully). I also have a bunch more of my quilting things boxed up and ready to go out there like, batting scraps, kits, and more UFO's.


So while I was in my bedroom cleaning out my closet I took a photo of my bed. I know that is probably silly but I just love the quilt that is on there. It is faded and well used but it is so comfy. It has been washed a million times and has that "crinkly" I love them when they crinkle up. I also took this photo of the stack of quilts that is in my bedroom too! I try to keep them stacked neatly but that is near impossible. I really need to go through and refold them all to keep out permanent wrinkles, maybe I will get to that in a day or too.

I washed and dried this one that I finished the binding on a few days ago. I is nice and crinkly too. I am pleased with how it washed up.

Back to cleaning and packing...I am in the process of sorting through my romance novels. Some I am boxing up and they will go to the new house and some I am getting rid of. So it takes a while to pick and choose. I have a huge pile that I will take to the bookstore and trade in for "store credit"

Kristie

Binding a few quilts...

It's been 10 days since my last post, just been busy with things here. Just busy with everyday life. Working a little out in the new house. I've come to terms with the fact that I will not be able to load a quilt on my frame until ALL of the upstairs drywall is finished!!! :( Just too much dust from the sanding! Since my quilting area is an open loft there is nothing there to keep the drywall dust from floating in there from the 2 bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. So it may be a couple more weeks before I can get back to machine quilting.



Hunter has been sick, but went back to school today. He is still a little under the weather but not as bad as he was. I guess his antibiotics are kicking in now.
On to quilting...I did get all 20 of my dresden plate rings finished. I have put them aside until I decide on the center fabric and pick up some background fabric. I am really pleased with how they have turned out so far.
In the late evening while trying to wind down after cleaning, sorting, and working in the new house, I have been working on some binding. While refolding a pile of quilts I found 3 of them that still needed bindings done. They are all queen and king sized quilts so it takes me a little while to get the hand work finished. This first one, is an older quilt that I pieced but quilted it a few months ago. Since it was an older top and I don't have most of the fabrics anymore I just did a simple scrap binding on it and it turned out just fine.Now I am working on the binding on this sailboat quilt. Another older quilt that was quilted several months ago. I have made 2 of these sailboat quilts, one for each of my boys. The other one has been finished for a few years. As far as I know, I still have one more quilt that needs binding and it is a huge king flannel quilt. I'll get to that one next. I am so behind on reading blogs and answering emails. I'm really sorry and hopefully I can get to all of those this evening. Right now, I am out the door to milk the goats!!!!! I am getting about 1 1/2 gallons a milk a day from the two that are being milked! So that is more than we can drink, so I give some to my mom and sister and sent a little to my brother and have several quarts in the freezer that will be used for goat milk soap real soon! Oh and I already have some butter and cheese put away too!
Kristie

9 Down and some painting...

I have a few more dresdens ready for applique. I now have a total of 9. I will probably try to work on them again later tonight. I'm really liking how they are turning out. Never thought they would be this easy.

I had few people ask about what size that I cut them, I cut my wedges 6 inches and that should make a 14.5 inch dresden. But there are several different dresden rulers out there and as I was looking they are not all the same size. I ordered mine online instead of driving 40 minutes to pick it up. This is where I got mine it is priced $6.95 and ONLY $2 shipping!

We had a hail storm earlier today and tons of rain. Here is a photo of the hail in the yard when it first started. They ranged from nickel to quarter sized hail. Not good at all! Hunter has a friend over that spent the night last night and they wanted to go out in it to play! I told them they were crazy!!! Long story short.....they didn't get to go! LOL!

Early this morning, I started painting my sewing room (sweat shop). I tried to take a photo but you really can't tell anything about the color because it was so dark up there due to the storm coming. It's not even dry in this photo so that is why it looks so spotty and that dark spot near the bottom is the shadow of my head when I was taking the photo. This is the actual color, Valspar, Cincinnatian Hotel Briggs Beige. If you click on the link you will see that it is totally different than it looks in the photo. Maybe I can get a better photo of it later. I didn't get it all painted, I got the short wall where my storage closets are behing my frame and the big 24 ft wall where the big window is. I stopped there in the corner and when I start painting again, I will be painting the BIG 40 ft long wall that is 12 ft tall!!!! I do dread that wall! Lot's of ladder work on that baby. Then I will come back and do all of the trim before I move on to another room. Well.....I'm off to start supper and maybe work on a couple more dresdens for tonight.

Kristie

***Sorry, I just realized that my links do not work! I'll try to get a better photo later!

Two Down...

Another long day. Got up early this morning and did the laundry before I got Hunter up for school. After he got on the bus, Richard got a call from a friend that wanted him to go help get a big load of hay. He milked the goats before he left, so I strained it and put it all away. After I got all of that cleaned up, I started cleaning again! Today I still work mostly on the kitchen, cleaning out some cabinets and the windows, plus my regular daily chores.

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I took a little break and made a dresden plate out of some of the wedges that I cut yesterday. Not sure what I will use for the centers yet.

After that, I went out to the new house and tinkered around out there. So much dust upstairs from the sanding so wasn't any sense in trying to sweep that until he is finished up there.

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Came back in and put on supper, BBQ ribs, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and cornbread. While I was watching supper I worked on another dresden plate. So far today I have made two of them. I'm not in a rush, I just want to enjoy the process. Most of the blocks will probably look the same because I picked out the fabrics that I wanted to use out of my scrap bin and I cut it up until there wasn't anymore of it. So some fabrics I may have in every block, I just wanted to use up the scraps and be done with them.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have one or two more finished. We will have to wait and see...

Kristie

Cutting the day away...

This morning didn't start out as I had planned. Seems that Richard and I had different plans for today. You see, I had planned on getting up early, getting all of my chores done and put a quilt on the frame. But that didn't happen! Richard had planned on getting up early, getting his chores done and sanding the drywall upstairs and my frame is up there. So with all of that dust I could not load a quilt on the frame. I will have to wait until he gets all of the sanding done on the second level before I can do that, just too much drywall dust.

So I ended up taking a bucket and a scrub brush and scrubbing the floor in front of my cabinets and around the wall in my kitchen of our current place. It was horrid!! I was ashamed once I started that I had let it get that bad. That took me forever and now my back and knees are paying for it, but at least my kitchen floor looks better.

After that mess, I went to the mailbox and my Dresden Plate ruler/template had came today. So I started digging through scraps! This is what I got cut today.......over 400 wedges!! Enough to make 20 blocks!This is only part of them. All of the pieces were cut from my scrap bin and didn't have to cut into my yardage so that made me feel great to be able to use those pieces first. I'm not going to be in a big hurry with this quilt, I just want to work on it when I want to and enjoy the whole thing. I think I will work on one block at a time. I will piece one block at a time until I get them done and then I will do the applique on them. I'll have to pick up some background fabric when I can too. Kristie

(Sorry about the clipart but I could not get this to post with a space between my paragraphs)

Sample Dresden...

We've had very high winds today and now thunderstorms are moving through. We were without power for most of the day today. I had planned on loading a baby quilt or table runner on the frame and quickly quilt it to make sure that my tension was okay before I loaded a customer quilt on but that didn't happen. Like I said we had several hours without power and by the time it came back on, it was time to fix supper. While I had supper on, I played around with these... And ended up with this...The big white circle in the middle is just paper, I was trying to find out what size I would need for the center fabric. I was just practicing to see how it would come out. I printed a paper template off and cut them out with that, it worked okay but if I made a quilt later with these, I would like a different size. I ordered a Dresden Plate Acrylic template a few days ago online and I'm waiting for it to come. I figured it would be cheaper to order it and pay the $2 shipping then it would be to drive 40 minutes and buy one, gas is just too high. I'm not sure what I will do with this sample one unless I make a wall hanging or pillow or something like that with it. I even thought about making a table runner too. I still need to clip all of the little threads and cut out the center circle, I haven't decided on a fabric for that yet. I guess I had better cut this post short, it is storming really bad and my lights are going dim, don't want to lose this post. Kristie

Just tinkering around...

I've had many "family things" going on this past week and just haven't been in the mood to sew. I did work on a little bit of binding but not enough to really show a photo of. But I guess this week I will just suck it up and get back to quilting.....maybe. It's just been a very stressful week.

Anyway...I have been tinkering around and boxing up a few things and moving them out to the house. I figure if I do a little at a time it will not be so overwhelming. Boxed up some China and stuff like that. I had three sets, one set was my grandmother's and the others are just mine. So they are boxed up and out in the house. Not sure what I will do with them, I really don't have a way to display them, I just keep them stacked in the cabinets.

Another thing that I boxed up was these....I'm really embarrassed for you to see all of the dust in that cupboard. I have this little cupboard that is only about 32 inches tall and it has a solid door so you can't see anything in it but when I opened it I was embarrassed by all of the crud/dust in it. I have collected odd china cups over the years. I usually pick them up for about a quarter a piece at the junk store or yard sales. Some of them are not real old but some of them are really old. So these all got washed and packed up and I also cleaned the dust out of the cupboard too.

When I went to get the box to pack these in this is what I found...

I also took my big tote of orphan blocks out to my new sewing room too. There is probably enough orphan blocks in here to make 3 or 4 bedsized quilts. There are also a few stitcheries that I made a few years ago.

I did get my new sewing room cleaned up some in the new house. Richard had a bunch of scraps of sheet rock and plywood piled everywhere in it. Of course, he will still be making more messes in there. He still has to run the electric wire and install my rescessed lighting over my frame and finish mudding and sanding the walls so that I can paint. This will have a wood ceiling so that will have to come later. He doesn't have all of that sawed out yet. Anyway, he had a ton of stuff piled on my frame so I cleaned that off too so now I can pin a quilt on there and get back to quilting. You can see that I have some stuff already stored in there. This is the view of the other side of the room. In the end I will not have all of those supports in there, I will still have a couple of them, but they will be replaced with huge oak beams when the time comes. If you look close you will see that I have some hollow core doors laying in the floor over there. Richard is going to make me a sewing table out of them. I put them over there because I was thinking that I might sit the table there. They measure 36x78 each so that should end up being a good sized sewing table. I'm sure I will be moving everything around once we actually get moved in. But I do know one thing, I don't want anything blocking my window. I love my window and we had such a hard time getting that thing in there it is 4ftx8ft and with me being only 5ft tall, I feel like a midget when I stand in front of it. LOL! I guess that is about all for tonight, hopefully I will be back in a couple of days with some quilting to show you.

Kristie