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

The whole set is finished....

I'm so excited that I got this finished! This is a crib set for a local lady that is getting ready to have a little baby boy! In this set is a large crib comforter, a bumper pad for the crib and 3 camo pillows for the nursery. The comforter is made up of camo fleece, batting in the middle and the brown fuzzy stuff on the back. It will be so warm. The bumper pads came together wonderfully. I was a little nervous about making them because these were the first ones that I had ever made but they went together really well. Then there are 3 pillows for the nursery, one large and 2 smaller ones.

I've not worked a whole lot with fleece but it really wasn't too bad. Not bragging on myself but I just love how this set turned out. Now....I just hope she is happy with it too!
I always stress out over my holiday sewing but I'm hoping that I will get a few more local sales before Christmas. The extra money is always nice to have during the holidays. :)

Yesterday I was out with mom while she had to go get her flu shot and stuff like that. We stopped at the quilt shop in Ashland because I needed to pick up a special backing for a customer quilt. Here is what I ended up with.... The large piece is the backing for a quilt that measures 98x114!! The piece on the far right is the fabric for the binding for that same quilt. The others are 1/2 yd pieces. The red goes in the pile for my red and white quilt that I am slowly making. The other two pieces just go in my stash. Here are the other 12 pot holders that I was working on the other day. I still need to bind them and they will be finished! They are so quick and easy and a great way for me to use of some odd scraps and strings. Tonight I am planning on piecing together one of the 4 patch flip quilts. I have all of the blocks sewn together, I just need to complete the top. I'll have to look through my stash to find something that will work for the border. I'll post photos of that as soon as I can.

Kristie

Back to sewing...

Over a week without a post...now I will backtrack and get you all caught up on what I have been doing. Actually not a lot because of my blood pressure running high for the past week. If you have read my blog for a while you will know that it does this every once in a while even with medication. So most of the time I have been on the couch sleeping. But the past two days I have actually been sewing.

First off, here is the 4 Patch Flip that I cut from my scrap basket. I'm not real crazy about the yellow border but I pulled it from my stash and didn't want to buy anything for it. I also have the binding ready for it after it is quilted. So for now it is in my pile of tops that need to be quilted. This one is folded up but you can still get the idea of what it looks like. This is fabric that I had in my stash for a while. I just cut the center piece with cowboy hats and boots on it and added borders to it. This will be a Christmas gift for one of my little nephews. Actually my other nephew will get one just like it. Since they are brothers and close in age I will probably use different backings so that they can tell them apart...you know how kids are. :)I forgot to take photos of them but I also worked on several more pot holders and fabric bowls. I think now I have a total of 20 bowls made and will be used to hold homemade goat milk soap for Christmas gifts. I will try to remember to post photos of them in the next post. I have a ton of stuff to do and the holidays are sneaking up on me.

I also pieced a little more on my Red and White quilt, not much....just a little. I'm thinking that if I have any extra time before the holidays I will work on this Red and White quilt instead of starting Bonnie Hunter's new mystery! I'm hoping that I can hold off and not start it! LOL! We will see how that goes.

I also have some client Christmas stuff that I will be working on. Some of it I can show on my blog and some of it, I can't. Maybe I can just show pieces of them. I'll just have to wait and see if I can sneak some partial photos of them in. LOL!

Now on to some family things....

Hunter got a new bike!! He loves it! He was shocked when he got home from school because he didn't know that we were getting it. Actually we didn't plan on getting a new one but caught it on a very good sale! :)Here is Hunter on Halloween! He was a boxer! Thank goodness the weather wasn't too bad, so we had a nice time.

My nephew Gabe had a birthday party. He turned 3!!! He is such a cutie! He has such a deep voice for a little guy, just cracks me up to hear him talk. This is my brother, John in the photo with him. John is the only brother that I have and I just love him so much. He has always been the best BIG brother. As you noticed I said BIG! Hehehehe! He is 4 yrs older than I am and he tells everyone that I am older! :( Anyway...he works so much and doesn't have a lot of extra time so I don't get to see him as often as I would like too. And last but not least....mom came out for a visit the other day and brought me a gift! I just love Jim Shore things! She got me several of them last year so I'm excited about getting to add this little guy to my collection. As you can see he has a RED and WHITE quilt on his bottom half. Well mom said that when she saw this one she thought of the RED and WHITE quilt that I am working on! I just love it!

Now that I am back to feeling better, hopefully I can get some stuff done. I usually read blogs through Google Reader and when I checked earlier I had 600+ blogs that were backed up that I had not read, same thing with my emails.
Kristie