Lots to do before surgery...

Shewww....What a week!  First off, I did get my machine back.  You all know how stressed I was over that thing.  So once I got it, I had to wait until the next morning to get Richard to help me get it back on the frame.  See, I had several customer quilts that were past due because of all of this machine trouble.  I had been working on one customer quilt and ran out of thread.  I thought for sure that I had another spool of it but I didn't so I had removed that quilt and ordered the thread.  Meanwhile I loaded another customer quilt on the frame and while quilting it, my machine BROKE!  Anyway, it locked and broke some stuff on the inside, so I had to ship it off to be fixed.  Now after I got it back and got it loaded on the frame I started quilting the quilt that was on there and look!!!  Do you see that huge skip??  Well  I picked all of that out, I can't have that on a customer quilt and had to adjust the crap out of that machine which took me awhile.  So here I was crying and stressing over it again.  In the end it now works great and this quilt is finished.  I have a couple more to finish up and get delivered back to the quilt shop this coming week.  

 This is such a lovely quilt.  It has four of these preprinted barn panels in it.  I just loved it.  I have the pattern for these barns that is all embroidery but man, that is alot of stitching.  So I'm thinking that if I do the embroidery blocks they would make a great winter project.

So now on to all of this other junk...the next couple of weeks are going to be very busy for me.  I'm having a minor surgery and tons of other things that have to be done first.  Here is how the past few days have gone.  Between machine quilting, this has been my schedule.

* Thurs  April 19th            Dentist Appointment
* Friday April 20th            Pelvic Ultrasound
* Sunday April 21st           Church (morning and evening)

* Monday April 23rd         Grocery shopping and errands
* Tuesday April 24th         Hunter Dentist Appointment
* Wed. April 25th             Gynecologist Appointment
* Thurs April 26th             GI Specialist Appointment
* Friday April 27th            Hunter's school program

If you remember back in February I had an ER visit because of severe pain on my lower left side.  They did tons of tests and only found a 4.1 CM cyst on my RIGHT ovary.  So I had to have another pelvic ultrasound Friday to see if it had grown any.  I had to visit my Gynecologist on Wednesday to get the results.  The cyst had grown a little bit, but not alot.  It went from 4.1 CM to 4.5CM.  So it has to come off and the ovary has to come out.  I will still have my left ovary because it is fine.  It is all not a big deal, just a little bump in the road.  My doctor assures me that I will only be down for 2-3 days at most.

Thursday I had the appointment with the GI specialist because of the pain that I am still having in my left side.  He thinks it has something to do with my intestines/bowels and also says that I have some back problems but hey everyone has some type of back problems.  So in a few weeks I have tests scheduled for all of that.

My surgery is scheduled for May 7th so I am determined to get all of these quilts finished and delivered BEFORE my surgery so that I don't stress over them the few days that I am recovering.

Here is my schedule for the next couple of weeks....

* Monday April 30th            Hunter has another dentist appointment
* Wed. May 2nd                  Hunter's Awards Day at school
* Thurs May 3rd.                 DELIVER ALL QUILTS              
                                            Preregister at hospital & blood work
                                            Last day of school for Hunter
                                            Church at 7pm
* Friday May 4th                 Clean house and get things ready for surgery
* Sunday May 6th                Church (morning and evening)
* Monday May 7th              SURGERY DAY
* Sat. May 12th                   RICHARD'S GRADUATION FROM NURSING SCHOOL
                                            AND ALSO OUR 11TH ANNIVERSARY
* Sunday May 13th              Church (morning and evening)
                                            Mother's Day
* Monday May 14th             Tests for GI Specialist

AND SO ON.......

I'm already tired and I'm not even halfway through all of this!!  Like I said, the surgery is no big deal and I will be back up and at it within a couple of days.  So my plan is to take about a week off of machine quilting because I have a few more coming in but I have told them that I am taking about a week off to get everything taken care of and enjoy our anniversary and Richard's graduation.

Speaking of Richard I am sooooo proud of him!  He has also been chosen to speak at the graduation so he is working on his speech.  I'll have plenty of photos to post.  He has also promised to take good care of my after my surgery too.  With him being a nurse now, I guess I will have to listen to him.  :)  He was at the doctor with me when she told me that I had to have surgery.  He said "Don't worry baby, I will take care of you"  I thought.....awwwwww.....how sweet.

I just want to make sure everything is DONE before surgery.  I almost have all of the quilts done so I'm not worried about that really, I just want to make sure that the house is clean and groceries are bought and wife/mommy stuff like that.  My mom is home too, so I'm sure she will be out here "babying" me too.  :)

Like I said....GIVE ME A WEEK and I will be back to quilting and normal! :)

Oh and while I was at the GI Specialist yesterday a horrible thing happened.  Mom took me to my appointment and Richard had class.  I was on my way home and he had just got home a few minutes before I called him from my cell.  We were talking and I was telling him about my appointment as Hunter got off the school bus and came running in the house yelling that Bullet, Richard's stud horse had gotten out and tried to get in the other pasture with the other horses and was tangled in the barbed wire fence.  Of course Richard hung up and ran out there.  He got him loose but he is cut up pretty bad.  He has several big gashes on him.  He has been cleaned, doctored and on antibiotics, but today he is walking pretty stiff and his front leg up at the top where it goes into his chest is swollen really bad so is his hip area.  All we can do at this point is keep  it all cleaned, doctored and medicated.....and pray.  It is so easy to get attached to these babies.

Before I finish this post, I wanted to show you all this photo of Donkey!  He loves the beams in our house!  Sometimes he sleeps up there!

BTW....this is my first post with the new blogger so I hope it all comes out okay.  Got to get back quilting.....
Kristie

Weekend update...

Still waiting on my machine but the tracking number shows that it should be delivered TOMORROW!!! That is good news! Actually since I live out in the middle of nowhere, UPS usually doesn't get up here until late in the evening, but that's okay, at least it will be here.

I really haven't been in the mood to sew. I guess I was just stressed over that machine. My spiderweb quilt still looks like this... It hasn't been touched since I last posted. I will probably finish it up in the morning so that I can have it out of the way and my sewing room cleaned up for when my machine arrives.
And since I really don't have anything quilty to show you, I found this quilt that was saved on my computer that I did several years ago. :) Sorry that the photo is sideways but you still get the idea of it. I just love this simple pattern, it goes together so quick and works great with scraps too. I've made a few using this pattern. Now on to other things...Here is a photo of my boys yesterday. I think they were playing games on Andrew's IPhone. I love my kids and I am the happiest when we are all home together. BTW...you can see my log cabin is still hanging on the wall in the background. It is still unfinished. All I have to do it sew the borders on it and the worst part is....I already have them cut, but just too lazy to sew them on. :( Here is Hunter that I just snapped a few minutes ago. He is such a sweetie. After Church this morning, Hunter rode home with a friend to play for a little while and Richard and I drove in to town to visit with his mom and grandmother and make a quick stop by the grocery store. Anyway, Hunter is back home now and Richard is gone to Church for the evening service. I didn't go because I had a slight backache. I know that really isn't a good excuse but still that is why I didn't go tonight.

I mentioned that I stopped by the grocery store while in town, I needed a few HOT peppers. I woke up this morning wanting some Mexican cornbread so bad that I could almost taste it. I had everything except for the hot peppers. It is made and I am just waiting for it to cool just a little so that I can get started eating it. :) That's all for tonight. I'm off to eat some Mexican cornbread....Oh and I will leave you will a photo of the little spoiled girl that I have been babysitting 5 days a week for that past couple of weeks......My sister's dog, Zoey! She is so spoiled. Anyway, she has seizures really bad and they had switched her meds and my sister is afraid to leave her alone while she is gone to work. My doggies love to play with her.
Kristie

Another sleepless night...

Well here it is 4:20am and I have been awake for hours! I think it is really starting to get to me, being without my quilting machine. I did get a little good news yesterday afternoon. My machine was shipped out and should arrive in 5 to 7 days!!! I never imagined that I would be as stressed as I am over that machine, but then again this is my income right now. I haven't even been in my sewing room for 2 days. I do think that today I will go up and clean it so it will be all neat and ready for when my machine does get here.

Did I tell you all that Richard graduates next month??? I am sooooo excited. It has been a long haul for us but well worth it in the end. For those that haven't been with me for that long, hubby lost his job December of 2009. You talk about stress! He lost his job December 2009 and started Nursing school 3 weeks later! I am so proud of him for going back to college at the age of 40, I know that was hard for him, but he did it. He graduates May 12 and that is also our 11th anniversary! So it will be a very special day for us. Even though his graduation date is the 12th of May he will not be finished for another month or so. He has something like 160 hours of clinicals, which he has been having clinicals all along and then lots of testing and boards, stuff like that. So by the middle of summer he should be finished.....I guess.

Now on to the sewing or lack there of...I started piecing together my spiderweb. I'm telling you this is not even a hard pattern but I am having to MAKE myself finish this thing! I think I am just so tired of having it lay around. Anyone else ever feel like that with some of them? I'm really not crazy about square quilts but I just couldn't stand the thought of making 5 more of these blocks. :( So in the end it will be square and measure somewhere around 72 inches. I had the blocks and border strips up on the wall to see how it was going to look and I just wasn't pleased with it. I felt it needed a small inner border to break the red up.

So now I'm thinking that I may add this 2 inch inner blue border in it. I'm not crazy about it but it is what I had in my stash. Oh do you see my Hugs & Kisses blocks at the top? I pieced a few of them to see how it was going to look. So I think after I get this spiderweb top finished I will work on it like I did my log cabin blocks. I did those as I was taking breaks from my quilting machine.

Since these photos I now have all of the blocks sewn into rows. Now I just need to MAKE myself finish it up. It's not like it would take that long to do.

Mom comes home from work on Thursday! Well, maybe I should say Friday since it will be extremely late on Thursday. I think she said the boat would be in St. Louis when she got off of it and that is something like a 8 or 9 hour drive for them to be back here. I'm anxious to see here, I miss her so much when she is gone. I can't wait for her to retire so that we can spend more time together. She is only 58 so she still has a few years before she will be doing that.

I guess I will close for now and maybe do another load of laundry before everyone gets up.
Kristie

A few more quilts...

Thanks for your input on the border for my log cabin quilt. It is fun to see how each of you see it and to hear your reasoning. I love it. I still haven't fully decided but I am leaning towards one. I guess you will just have to wait and see... Anyway, I have a few quilts to show you and some house progress that I am very excited about.

Since I have to wait a few more days on my quilt machine I have been digging through some UFO's. You remember a couple of posts back when I showed the spiderweb blocks. I decided to go with red corners. I have been slowly working on that. I think I have 8 out of 25 blocks done. I'm anxious to have it finished. I swore to myself when I dug it out that I would either finish it or throw it away. I have also started cutting a few calicos for my Hugs & Kisses quilt too. I'll show photos of that as soon as I start piecing it.

Here is the next UFO that I plan on finishing. It is called Civil War Wreaths. I got the pattern here and she called it "churn dash and stars" It is the same pattern, I just changed some of the color placement for the amount of fabrics that I had. Then I ended up miss cutting and didn't have enough of the navy paisley so I put it away for a long time. I did find the navy fabric and ordered it not too long ago. So now I want to finish it. I still need to piece 2 more rows (14 blocks) and then add the borders. Here is an up close shot of it. I plan on a small red inner border and a wider navy outside border. I don't know the exact measurement of it right now but by the time I am finished it will be a queen. I also made the pillow that I had mentioned for Church. The pews are very uncomfortable and I have a few back problems and alot of the other people have pillows too. :) So I finally made it! And I'm sure you are not surprised to see that it is a log cabin!
The blocks measure 4.5 inches and the pillow is 18 inches. I love it! Actually it looks pretty good on my couch too.....hmmm.....will I have to make more?? LOL!
The last quilt that I have to show you is one that you all have seen a million times. My FIRST log cabin that I call "Civil War Log Cabin" When I started it I planned on making it to hang on the big wall above my living room. We finally got it hung! Please don't pay attention to all of the woodwork that is not finished in the house yet. :)
Last Saturday Richard's uncle called and wanted to give us a couch. I haven't had my brown one too long, but he really wanted us to have it. I told Richard that I would put it upstairs in my sewing room. He also said that it was fairly new and that he and his wife had only sat on it TWICE!!! What was funny was that it still had the plastic on it!!! Anyway, they just said it was too big for the room and wanted to buy a loveseat for that room. So I ended up with a NEW couch!!! It will be nice to be able to relax on the couch while up in my sewing room. I'm thinking that I will have to dig a coffee table out of storage to use with it or maybe a side table and lamp. I told Richard that I have almost everything that I need up there except for a microwave and refrigerator. If I had those I would never have to leave the room. LOL!
Now the part that I am soooooo excited about! It may be a small thing to some of you but a major thing for me. Since you come in my front door and the first thing that you see is my stairs I wanted that post to be very special. I looked online for over a year for the perfect post. Any of them that I even liked a little were completely out of my price range. So you all know how handy that my hubby is........he made it himself!!!! LOOK!!!!

It is made out of oak and measures 10 inches each side and 51 inches tall. The only thing that we bought were the little flowery things that are near the top. Everything else he made!!! We didn't even have to buy the trim or dental moulding he made it!! The wood is from trees on our property that he sawed up with his sawmill and let it dryout for ever and then planed it down smooth. We still have a little more work to do to it. The bottom is not finished. You can see where it it bolted in place. All of the will be covered with wood and the bottom built out more. I just love it!!!! We still have a ton of work to do on the stairs.....railings, spindles, and the wall there underneath the stairs will eventually be wood and also the wall on the right of the stairs as you go up. We just put the drywall up to cover the wall until we can do the woodwork.

Stay tuned for more UFO photos and progress reports!!!

Kristie

Log Cabin top completed.....almost!

Sorry that I haven't posted for a little while for those of you that emailed me to make sure things were okay. I have just been really stressed and restless lately that is why I had not posted. If you remember in my last post my machine had broke and I had sent it off to be fixed. Well, I am still without my quilting machine!!! I spoke with them this morning and hopefully it will only be a few more days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I also did NOT get the loaner/demo machine that I was promised. Anyway, this has had me so stressed out. I've even cried but found that crying just doesn't help matters any does it?

On to other matters....I got all of my log cabin blocks sewn together!!!! All 168 of them!! Now I am just trying to figure out the border fabric for it. I want to use something from my small stash for the border and not buy anything extra for it. I hung it on the stairway wall so that I could get a better look at it once it was all sewn together. It finished pretty big. I did a rough measure of it and it is somewhere around 86 x 102 without borders. I love big quilts. When I do sew the border on, I don't plan on a very wide border. The blocks measure around 7 inches. When I started this quilt, in my mind I planned on a green border but this is the only green that I have enough of and I'm thinking that the design may to big for these blocks.

The red that I plan on doing the small inner border in, is the same red that is used in the block centers. Then I found this blue fabric. What do you think of it? Would it look better than the green?
I have plenty of both of them. My other Civil War yardage just would not work for this quilt. I have some purple that looks way too busy for this and then most of the other ones, I don't have enough of them for the border. So this is where I'm at right now. Waiting for my machine to be fixed and trying to decide on border fabric. After I get the borders sewn on, this quilt will have right at 2200 pieces in it.

Please help me decide on the border fabric. I do value your opinion. Oh and I haven't even decided on a name for this quilt either. In the last post, I asked which fabric to use for my spiderweb blocks and I loved reading the comments on it. I do think I have decided to go with the RED. I am still working on those blocks. Hopefully soon I will have that top ready to show you.
Kristie