Off the frame...

Here is the quilt that I got off the frame yesterday! It was a fairly large one measuring in at 96x96. This is an old top that I had pieced several years ago and I think I added the border sometime last year. The pattern is called Country Wife.I hung it up this morning in the house so that I could take a photo of the whole quilt. I have the binding ready to be sewn on. Since I was in a hurry to get this one off of the frame, I just did a fast and simple panto on it called "Happy Times" After I got the Country Wife quilt off of the frame, I loaded the baby YBR on the frame and started quilting on it this morning. I'm about half way through this one. I just had to take a break for a bit. My hips still ache and throb after I stand for a little while. Anyway, I'll have this one done later in the day. I also have the binding ready to be sewn on this on too. I had planned on starting the quilting on this YBR as soon as Hunter left for school. I was on my way out the door (to the new house where my frame is) and the phone rang. It was Andrew! I instantly thought "This is Thursday and he has late classes today so he sleeps late....something is wrong" You know me, I always worry and panic. So I answered the phone and I heard a very weak "m....o......m" He was sick. :( See that just goes to show that they will always need their mom. The way that he described it he either has a stomach bug or his acid reflux is acting up. Several years ago he had a big problem with acid reflux and did take medication for it but he stopped taking it. So I call every hour to check on him and told him that if he got worse to go to the doctor.

Yesterday evening we had a little rain shower and Hunter spotted this rainbow. He grabbed the camera and took this photo. He loves taking photos of everything lately.

That's all for now. I'm going to finish my break and then go finish quilting that YBR!
Kristie

Top Completed!

I was lazy all day today! :( It was one of those days that I just could not get myself going. I think I was just still tired from the weekend. I did get a couple loads of laundry finished but I started cleaning house like a mad woman when it was time for Richard to get home from school. LOL! Not that he would say anything anyway, he knows that I stay busy all day.

I mentioned earlier that I needed to move some stuff away from my frame so that I could finish my big quilt, but I didn't even get upstairs to the sweat shop today. It is such a mess since we were working on the ceiling up there. But I did get this baby top finished! These colors are really bright and way out of my comfy zone! I need to get my quilt off of the frame and get this one and a couple of other customer quilts quilted real soon.
I had bought a blue backing but now that it is together I think I will use a lime green backing and quilt it with lime green thread. Do you think that would look okay? I also need to decide on a quilting design. I want something simple but maybe something geometric, I don't really know I will have to think about that a little more.
Richard and Hunter had homework this evening so nothing was really done in the house. Actually, Richard was outside feeding the horses and yelled for me. I went outside and he took me in the house to show me that he had moved the new stove over on the concrete pad that he had poured a few days ago. It looked great but I'm afraid that he will pay for it later. It took 4 men to carry that stove in the house on Saturday and then he picks it up this evening by himself and carries it over and puts it in place! Shame on him! :( I love him so much but I really have to stay on to him about silly stuff like that.

I guess that is all for tonight! Hopefully tomorrow I can get my big quilt off of the frame early and get started on some of these others.
Kristie

New Quilt and House Progress...

Not sure where to start! I am soooooo tired! First off, the weather here is going to be bad later this morning. It is starting to cloud up and they are forecasting severe storms and tornado watches. I took this photo about an hour ago while I was outside moving the goats. I am so far behind on emails and blog reading. I clicked on my email early this morning and it said 600+ in my inbox.....so I went and did a load of laundry! LOL! I'm just not up to sorting through that many emails yet. Hopefully I will get to them later in the day. Also my Google Reader has 300+ blog updates that I haven't read yet. :(

It has been a long but productive weekend. First off, Andrew was home for the weekend! I am so happy when my boys are home. Richard even commented on the fact that I seemed to rest better when they are both at home. We had a wonderful weekend together just hanging out.

Saturday morning we went on a little shopping trip to get a load of stuff for the house. We hooked up to the 16ft gooseneck trailer and headed out. We got our new stove!!! It isn't hooked up yet, we are waiting for the concrete pad to dry before we can set it on it. In a few years we plan on taking that out and building a huge fireplace but right now that is not in the budget to do. So I am happy with our new wood stove!

We also picked up the other 10ft section of my kitchen countertop! Here you can see some backer board stuff for the bathroom floor tile, water line, more stove pipe. We also picked up the big electric wire, 35 breakers, grout and sealer and a bunch of little odds and ends that we needed to get these jobs done.
Oh and here is the faucet that I got for bathroom #1, which is the main bathroom downstairs. It is oil rubbed bronze. Giggle, I have to wait a couple of weeks to get the shower faucet for that bathroom.....we ran out of money! :(
Here are a few photos of what we got accomplished on the house this weekend. The living room walls now have the FIRST coat of drywall mud on them. I'm trying to think here......I believe we still need to put the first coat on the kitchen ceiling and all of the laundry room. Then we can do the 2nd coat and then the sanding.....such a mess. Worked more on the ceiling over my sewing room. Mom and I stained boards last week and we were trying to get those put up. We didn't get them all up but some progress is better than nothing. That center beam will be covered too and section that you see in the bottom right corner of the photo....that is where my living room ceiling starts. It will be done in this wood too. And you can also see where the electric wire are hanging that is where my recessed lights will be over my frame. My sewing room is a HUGE mess right now. We had to move my sewing table and a bunch of stuff to make room for the ladder so that we could get that section of ceiling up. This is how it looks right now.That is my quilt on the frame and I need to get in there sometime today and get it finished. Oh and we are getting rid of that roll-away bed. We slept on it those few nights that we camped in the house. After we move in I will not have a place to store it. While we are out Saturday I picked up 6 fat quarters and some border fabric to make a baby quilt that is needed October 4th. I decided to make a Yellow Brick Road quilt. I'm made 2 or 3 bed size YBR quilts and they are easy to make. Late last night, I couldn't sleep so I started cutting out this quilt. I should not have even tried that as tired as I was. I messed it up! I cut them wrong but I managed to salvage it! I will not look like the actual pattern but I'm sure a baby would not notice it! LOL! Here are a few of the blocks, I had these fabrics here trying to decide on one for a narrow border before I add the 6" border, which is not shown in the photo but it is a blue fabric. I hope to get this top completed sometime day.

Here it is almost 10am now, I had better get off this computer and get my butt in gear! Tons of things to do!

Kristie

Change of plans...

I had plans to start quilting a quilt top that belongs to my aunt. She made this quilt for her boss. She works on a boat just like my mom does but for a different company. She didn't have a pattern and designed it herself. I think she did a wonderful job. You should see all of the detail on that boat close up. She had brought me a king size white bed sheet to use as the backing. I know that some people don't like using them but my machine doesn't have a problem with them and I use them most of the time for my own quilts. So I get this king size sheet pinned on the frame and start pinning on the quilt top.....the quilt top is LARGER than the backing! :( This quilt is HUGE!

So my plan is to pick up some backing fabric for it this weekend while we are out picking up stuff for the house. I didn't really want to take that backing off of the frame after all of that pinning that I had done getting it on there. So.......since this is my aunt and I explained to her what was going on, I decided to use that backing for myself and buy hers this weekend. It all equals out in the end anyway.

At last count I still had 34 quilt tops of my own that needed to be quilted, so I just dug out one that needed a king size white backing. This one is called, "Country Wife" I made it several years ago, as you can probably tell by the fabrics used. It is probably 6-8 years old, but I added that border on sometime last year or so. I got this pattern out of a quilt magazine, not sure which one it was since it has been so long. This one measures 96x96.

I'll so more of the quilt after I get it off of the frame. This was not my original choice for a quilting design but I am in a little bit of a hurry to get it done and off of the frame so that I can get hers back on and quilted. After all of the pinning and unpinning that I did today, I only ended up getting about two passes with the machine quilted on it.

I had planned on just using a white cotton thread from Connecting Threads. I have used it several times and not had a problem with it but for some reason I think my machine was being hormonal today! LOL! It didn't like this thread! It kept breaking, skipping and I even broke a needle. So in the end I changed thread and bobbin. I switched to white Bottom Line for the top thread and bobbin, it worked GREAT! I quilted those two passes with no problems at all.

Nothing done on the house today. :( I cleaned house and worked on this quilting stuff. Richard had clinicals so those are his late days. By the time he got home, he changed clothes, ate supper and is still doing home work. He has clinicals again tomorrow so he probably will not have time to do anything when he gets home then either. But that is okay, the weekend is coming up and we hope to get a ton of stuff done!
Kristie

Monday's Progress...

Another busy day! This is hubby after he got home from school Monday evening. After the long and busy weekend that we had, he was just exhausted. He ate supper and napped in the recliner for about 30 minutes and then got up and went to work on the house!As you can see, it was dark outside and he was still working. This wall between the windows is where we eventually plan on putting the big fireplace. But it will be a couple of years before we can add the fireplace, so meanwhile we plan on buying on of those new wood stoves. Actually we are picking it up this weekend. Here Richard is measuring for the concrete pad that the stove will set on. During the day yesterday, mom and I stained more wood boards for the ceiling over the living room and my sewing room. As you can see in the photo a few of the broke! :) Oh and I almost forgot, I got another coat of stain on my french doors in the master bedroom before mom came out.
It took us a while, these boards are 16ft each. Hopefully Richard can get these put up on the ceiling soon. I think this is enough to finish the ceiling in my sewing room. There are still a ton of them left to stain for the living room.
I'm hoping that I can settle down for a little bit of sewing some time today. Honestly, I am sooooo tired so I'm not even sure that will happen. But I do plan on going out to the house and cleaning up some of the construction mess so that more work can be done.

Richard and Hunter left for school a few minutes ago, so I need to get my day started. Actually I've been up since 5:30am but I don't usually get my day started until everyone is out of the house. Anyway....Hunter gets home around 4:30pm and Richard about 5:30pm (on Tuesdays) and then it will be the same routine.....supper, homework, and working on the house. With the limited time that we have during the evenings it is only small things that we can get done....but something is better than nothing!
Kristie

Weekend progress...

It has been a busy weekend! The weekend started on Friday with me picking up several buckets of drywall mud. Hunter snapped this photo of Richard working on the master bedroom ceiling. He is actually on stilts but Hunter didn't get that part of him. :) Ended up getting the FIRST coat of mud on the walls and ceilings of the master bedroom, master closet, hallway, and the kitchen walls. Next it will be the kitchen ceiling, living room and laundry room. Oh and the second coat of mud was put on Hunter's room.

He also cut, raked, and baled somewhere around 100 bales of hay!!! Didn't get any photos of that. The only time that I was out there during that part was to drive the truck as it was being loaded and I didn't take the camera with me.

Here are my girls Friday evening. It was getting a little late but Hunter wanted to get them out to play. At this time, Richard was still out cutting the hay. As you can see, Sweetie is ready to be milked!

It was a nice weekend....busy but nice! Andrew was home!!!! It was wonderful! Even though I talk to him several times a day it's just not the same without seeing him. He is loving college and is doing great so far! He called me last week or so and was worried about an Anatomy test that he had. His exact words were, "Mom, I'm worried! I don't think that I did so well on it." Now this coming from a boy that has always made straight A's.....I was worried!! So we waited for his grade to be posted online and the silly boy got a 95% A!!! Anyway, here are a couple of photos of our time with Andrew!It was very hard when Andrew left, but I am proud of him and very thankful that he is going to college.
Hunter has played with the camera this weekend and you would not believe some of the photos that he has taken! Let's just say that only a little boy would take the camera in with him when he had to go to the bathroom.....imagine my shock this morning when I was loading photos on the computer and find one of the toilet!!!! Not very pleased with that! :(
But they are my boys and I love them with all of my heart! Now everyone is back to school this morning and I have to get my butt in gear and get my stuff done. Lot's of housecleaning to do and animals to feed!

Oh I almost forgot! I had a nice little visit from my brother and family after church yesterday! I really enjoyed that. He works so much so I don't get to see him much even though that he only lives 20 minutes away. My SIL is a nurse and she works with my sister, Chantal. So everyone is very close. They have 3 wonderful little kids and I always love seeing them. The little one, Gabe, he cracks me up! He is 3 yrs old and has the deepest voice!! I smile everytime he speaks! I'll have to catch him on video so that you can see what I am talking about!

Kristie

Feeling a little overwhelmed...

In my last post I mentioned that life was a little busy, well I am starting to feel a little overwhelmed. I guess I just need to concentrate on ONE thing at a time but that is hard for me to do.

First off, here are a couple of photos of my Courthouse Step blocks. I have all 224 blocks sewn into sets of 4. Now to just keep connecting them all. My plan is to have it 14 blocks wide and 16 blocks long and add a 6 inch border.

I am just working on this quilt when I have my sleepless nights...which is pretty often. LOL! I'll get it finished before too long.
Not sure when I will get it quilted but I will just add it to the pile when I get the top completed.

Now on to everything else....okay the house....the seasons are changing so fast and we still have so much to do. We want so bad to move in before WINTER! Like I said before the house will not be finished but I can live with that for a while. This evening we plan on jumping in and getting this drywall finished within a week. I just hope we can do it. At first we thought about hiring that job out but the money just isn't there for it. I figure I can mud the screw heads and put the tape on the seams if Richard can mud the seams and the ceilings. We will see how that goes. Also there is more hay to cut this weekend. Just a small field, should end up with something like 100 bales from it, but it is something that HAS to be done.

So here is my list of stuff for the house that needs to be finished before WINTER!

• Mud the drywall



• Purchase our wood stove for heat



• Purchase more electric wire that goes from the pole to the box



• Connect the million wires to the fuse box



• Hook up all of the water



• Tile the bathroom floor and tub surround



• Bathroom door



• Finish bathroom cabinets



• Install sink and toilet



• Finish bottom kitchen cabinets



• Install kitchen countertop



• Install kitchen sink



• Put up all of the lights



• Okay.....I'm stopping here!!! LOL!



• Finish staining wood for the ceiling over the living room and sewing room

Richard and I were talking about all of this last night and we decided that it was not IF we can get it done......WE WILL GET IT DONE!! We just need to buckle down and do it.!! At this point, I don't even expect to have all of the rooms painted, just because there is not extra money for that right now.

Now to quilting.....I love to quilt! And it keeps me sane, or at least I think so. LOL! I truly enjoy doing this stuff, but I have several things that HAS to be finished. I'm not as stressed with this, I just need to make a list in order that they need to be finished and get my butt in gear!

• Quilt a quilt for my aunt. Still need to load it on the frame. I honestly dread quilting around the center of it. I'll post a photo of it when I load it on so that you can see what I am talking about. She made it for her boss and has a million hours in it.



• Piece and quilt table runner or wall hanging from an old antique quilt top.



• Pick up another customer quilt and get it quilted.



• Make a WVU (West Virginia University) lap quilt for a customer. Has to be done in October.



• Make a custom baby quilt, pillow and curtains for the same lady. It is camo.



• Donation quit. I was contacted last week about doing a donation quilt to raise money for a Blaine School Reunion. This is the school that my whole family has attended. My parents, my brother, my sister, me, my kids and everyone around here. At this point....I just know that they are buying all of the fabric and I just need to piece something and quilt it. They want it QUEEN size and just something done in school colors. Oh this doesn't have to be done anytime soon but I just want to get it planned and don't want to wait until the last minute.



• Soap to make for Christmas gifts



• Clothesline bowls, pot holders, and a zillion other things for Christmas gifts

This is not counting things of mine that I would like to get finished too.

• Two table runners (one large and one small)



• Two Halloween quilts to quilt



• Oh and several other quilts of mine that I would LIKE to get finished

I'm sure there will be a ton of other things that will pop up between now and then. And I'm also sure I have forgetting several things.

A few quilting projects...

Another week has gone by since my last post. Things have been really busy around here, family stuff, house stuff and some quilting stuff. LOL! I'll start with the family stuff first. Mom is home so I have been spending a little time with her. I hate when she is gone. I know she has to work but I just don't like her being that far away. She had to fly back home this time so she was pretty tired.

We had our little county fair/festival this past weekend. That is always a busy time in our little town. The main day is on Saturday. Andrew had been there all day on Friday (he doesn't have school on Fridays) and again most of the day on Saturday. He was actually doing some of his community service hours that he needs for college. So on Saturday, Hunter went in with mom about 2pm and Richard and I worked on the house for awhile before we headed in later that evening. When we did get there it was nice...most of my family was there....Mom, Hunter, Andrew, Chantal and her boyfriend, Ronnie. I missed my brother he was in there a little earlier in the day. After we got there we walked around a bit and then we took Hunter and Andrew for pizza. I was so tired afterwards, my hip and leg was killing me.

This is what Richard and I were working on before we went....the main bathroom cabinets!!! It's hard to tell much about them right now but we wanted them to be a little rustic. If you are wondering why there are parts that don't have stain on them yet....these are some of the boards that I had been staining for the upstairs ceiling. So now I have to go back over the cabinets and stain all parts and then add an extra coat. Richard also did a tongue and groove with the boards so that they would fit together perfectly. The big cabinet on the end will hold the hot water heater and then the cabinet above it will just be for storage. I don't have the sink, mirror, and light fixture installed yet but I have them and I'm hoping to get them installed soon.

I layed out a piece of our tile to see how it will look with the cabinets and the tub. We bought them a couple of weeks ago. We got a great deal on them because of an overstock. I think they will look great once we finally get the walls painted a lighter color. That dark green sheet rock in there looks horrible. And here is a photo that I snapped of Richard mixing the bucket of drywall mud to get started on Hunter's room. The first coat is on and dry, now just waiting to get time for him to add the finish coat. It is hard with him going to school 5 days a week. When we do move in, the house will NOT be finished but we would like to have Hunter's room completely finished. He is so excited about moving in.
On to a little quilt stuff....I made this little hot pad/trivet out of cotton clothesline and some strips. Got it finished and threw it in a box and plan on saving it to use in the new house.
I also got in 2 rolls of batting!!!! I'm hoping those will do me for a while. I have a ton of tops that need to be quilted and also I get a few customer quilts along.

Finished up the binding on this customer quilt. I will be delivering it tomorrow. With downtown being so busy with the fair I have several things to do tomorrow. I need to deliver this quilt, mail out 2 more, grocery shop and get new tags on 2 vehicles! Shhhh....don't tell anyone but I am the world's worst at remembering to update our tags every year! LOL! Richard noticed yesterday that the tags had expired......in JULY!!!! :)
Anyway, still having a little trouble sleeping! :( I would say that 95% of my quilting stuff is already moved out in the new house. All that I have in here is one sewing machine, iron and board, and a few scraps. Soooooo.....one sleepless night I got the big idea that I would make a HUGE tablerunner for my kitchen table in the new house. When we move in, mom is giving me an antique table that she has. I plan on extending it out to the max size so it will measure 54x78 or something close to that. Giggle....I called and woke my sister up late one night and had her to measure it! :) So here it is...I don't have the blocks sewn together in this photo but you get the idea. I still have to quilt it. But I ended up making 40 of these 6 inch blocks but only used 32 of them in this runner. I will use the other 8 to make a smaller one. This runner ended up being 24x48. I made it from leftover scraps from my Courthouse Steps. BTW...I am still trying to get all 224 of those blocks pieced into a quilt top!!! :(

Kristie

A little Donkey time...

It has been a week since my last post. Not a lot of quilting going on but lots of other work. I have put up so much fresh corn and green beans that I could cry! I am extremely thankful for having it but it is also a lot of work and rather messy.

I have also been doing a little bit of packing, as you can see here. Now I just need to find more boxes. My house is a wreck!! Just don't feel like cleaning too much, with all of this rain just makes me stiff and my hips and legs ache.

If you have read my blog for a while you know how much that Hunter hates school....right? Every morning it is a fight just trying to get him up to go. I have a horrible time trying to get him to do his homework and he is constantly begging me to home school him because he just doesn't want to go. He loves his friends but just doesn't like school work! Every evening when we are doing homework, he complains about it the whole time and swears that he doesn't understand it and doesn't know how to do it. I guess you get the idea....right?

So this morning around 11am, the phone rang and the caller ID had his school's name on it. So I'm thinking....he is sick. The lady on the other end introduced herself and said she was the "special education" teacher at his school. So I'm thinking...."OH CRAP!" Not that there is anything wrong with it and if I thought Hunter needed extra help I would gladly welcome it. But I have always thought in Hunter's case he was just being lazy. So she begins to explain the reason for the phone call......something about "rank 1", "graduate school" and a "masters degree" and that she needed to conduct a case study for HER EDUCATION. So I'm listening to all that she has to say. And she needs to conduct a case study and they need to be the same gender, same age, and same class. She will study their habits, hobbies and stuff like that and see how it affects how they learn and stuff. She said she needed a "high functioning male" and a "low functioning male" to conduct this study. So you know at this point what I am thinking....then she goes on to say something about Hunter being an extremely high functioning male. And I am like "EXCUSE ME?" LOL! I started to explain to her what a hard time that I have with him about school in general. She laughed and told me that he was "playing me" :( She said that his scores showed that he was the highest scoring male in his grade level at his school! Imagine my surprise!! LOL! I am always proud of my children and all that I expect is for them to do their best. So now this little guy has some explaining to do when he gets home.... Here I thought he was struggling. hmmm....

Oh and I must add that if we agree to this, at no time will these children be studied together at the same time and they will not know how the other one is doing or even if they are the high functioning or low functioning student. That is one thing that I asked about, if Hunter was the low functioning male I would not want it thrown in his face and made to feel bad. I don't expect my kids to be perfect and I know that each one of them are completely different. Even if Hunter is doing that well, I still believe that he does struggle with it. And if we do agree to this, if at anytime one of the parents or students want to stop, it will stop instantly. She will be sending lots of papers about it for us to read. I don't know who the other student is and neither will Hunter but she said that the parent and boy seem to be very excited about it all. So we will read all the paper work before we make any decisions.

Now on to some "Donkey Time" He doesn't go outside now because he has glaucoma and I'm just afraid that something might happen to him out there in the big world. LOL! So now he just stays in and is getting extremely fat and lazy! Here he is trying to get cozy in my bucket of beans.

I swear there is a sewing machine under there! LOL! I had it apart cleaning and oiling everything, took a break and this is what I saw when I started back to it.

Here he his still holding that sewing machine down and toying with a seam ripper.
And last but not least.....he is watching me getting his food ready! Silly cat!Now I guess I had better get my butt in gear and get some stuff done. I have a long day tomorrow.....grocery shopping, mailing a bunch of packages, and picking up a load of horse feed.

Kristie