Catching up...and some new sewing....

This is a photo heavy post, believe it or not.....I have been sewing!!!  :)  I'll get to all of that in a few minutes but first I'm sorry that I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I do thank you for all of the emails of concern.  I have just been feeling a little down, just aggravated with life I suppose.

First my quilting machine was down for what felt like forever, then once I did get that fixed and back I had to rush and stress over getting the quilts quilted before my surgery.  If you remember I even had one lady to pick her quilt up at the hospital that morning.  Then I had my surgery and first she said I would be down for 2-3 days but it was more like a couple of weeks!  I wasn't expecting that at all!  Once I felt better and could get upstairs I planned on getting back to my quilting and then realized that I had forgot to place my thread order!  I had planned on ordering the day after my surgery but I guess I was just too out of it to remember.  So I ordered my thread, got it in and NONE of it was what I ordered!!!  They mixed my order up with someone else.  They were really nice about it and gave me a gift certificate for my troubles and I am now waiting on my correct order to arrive.

Then as I mentioned in my last post, Richard's truck was broken into and we lost about $800 worth of tools and such!  That really got me down.....  So I guess that is enough complaining about life, but I have still been busy!

We decided to clean out one of our outbuildings!  :(  Man, I don't know how everything was in there.  Some of the stuff belonged to Richard's grandmother so all of that had to be sorted.  I had tons of stuff in there too.    I had put things back in storage for a few years to save for when we got moved in the house.  I had lots of new stuff in there and lots of antiques too.  It was almost like Christmas getting to sort through it all.  That took us a couple of days.

I'll go ahead and show some quilting stuff before I get on the the family stuff.  :)

Do you remember me talking a few posts back about a quilt that I designed and was making for my granddaughter, Raelynn?  Well, here is what I have so far, I'll try to get a better photo of it once I get all the blocks sewn together.  I've decided to call it, Shades of Lilac.  As I was working on it all of those different shades of purples reminded me of the Lilac tree in my mom's yard and how pretty it is when it blooms.  This was a great use of all my purple scraps.  I didn't have to buy anything for it, just used what I had.  Anyway, I need to get the blocks sewn together and the borders on so that I can get it quilted.

The past few nights I have been watching the Hatfield and McCoy movie on the History Channel.  From what I have read a bunch of you watched it too.  I can remember in college I had to do a research paper on the Hatfield's and McCoy's which all happened right here where I live.  So while I watched it, I decided that I would work on something simple and mindless.....  So here is the story of how that all came about.

I am so sick of my older stash that it just makes me sick when I have to dig through it.  I did have a fairly large stash before Richard lost his job and I am very thankful for that because I would have gone crazy if I hadn't.  I read on someones blog the other day that she felt the same way and she jumped in a cut it all up and used it!!!  I don't even remember which blog it was, sorry.  I thought that was a great idea because no matter how much I hate it, it's not going anywhere unless I use it, right?

So I grabbed a stack of greens and started cutting...

I ended up with 350+ of these 3.5 x 6.5 rectangles before I stopped.

 Then I sewed them end to end in sets of two...

 Giggle, I'm still working on it so you will have to wait to see what it looks like!  I will tell you this though, I did end up adding one more color in it to give it a little "pop" and it will be pretty big once it is done.  The measurements that I figured up will be 94 x 103.  Even though I hate my old fabric stash, I really like how this quilt is turning out so far!  :)

As I mentioned we cleaned out the outbuilding and I found my old antique table and a couple of chairs that my great grandfather made.  They look a little old and rough but, hey they are antiques!  I placed them on my front porch and put this little quilt over the table top. This is something that I made a few years ago and it is about the size of a baby quilt.  My porch is 40ft long so I have plenty of room out there but I thought it might be nice to sit out there and have my coffee early in the morning or to even do some handwork too.

 Here is the quilting on it.  I used a panto called "on the forest floor"  it is one of my favorites!  I just love it, even though there is a ton of quilting in it.

 Now on to other things in my life the past few days....  My day lilies are starting to bloom!!!  Don't look at the mess in the flower bed.  This is just a temporary one until we get our dozer work done and the yard all fixed the way that we want it.  I am in the process of putting thick newspaper down around the flowers and then I will add some OLD sawdust over it all.  I've done it this way for years and it has always worked good for me.  I put a think layer of newspaper down to keep the weeds out and then put a layer of old sawdust over that.  It has to be old sawdust because the fresh stuff has too much acid in it.  The old sawdust just turns back into soil once it decays anyway.  This works great for me since we own a sawmill, it doesn't cost me anything.

I baked 5 loaves of Banana Nut Bread!  I put four in the freezer and cut this one to eat!

Here is a photo of Andrew and his yearling, REV.  Rev is the Tennessee Walking horse that he bought a while back.  He is doing great and will be sent off to the trainer in November.  Just in case you don't fool with horses much, in this photo he is "parking out"  He is doing great so far and Andrew just loves him so much.  BTW....see the background....I told you that I lived in the woods!  :)

Here is Hunter taking a break from playing.  As you can see he has his little toolbox and his toy gun beside him....that's my boy!

I've been babysitting Zoey, my sister's poodle for the past few days while she it at work.  Zoey likes to watch me sew!  She has seizures and Chantal doesn't want her to be alone during the day just in case she has one while she is at work.  So most days she is at my house unless mom is home.  She is a sweetie and my little dogs love to play with her.

This morning while I was making my bed, I kept hearing something and when I went out to see what it was, I found this.....Cocoa!  She had got out of her lot and was on my porch!  Maybe a little redneck but it's just farm life.  :)  I love it.  As you can see, we haven't stained the side of the house yet.  We'll get to it as soon as we can, just so much to do.  Anyway, the long windows on the front porch are my master bedroom windows and the french door on the side, you can see a little of it, that also goes to my master bedroom.  Eventually we will have a big wrap around porch all the way around the house.  I can't wait to the the porch done on this end, I think it would be nice to get up out of bed and go out and watch the sun rise...

I guess that is all for now, I need to finish up our late supper.  Richard has been working in hay all day and probably will not be home until dark.  I know he will be starved....
Kristie

Photo Heavy Post...lots to talk about...

Just to warn you, this is a photo heavy post.  Let's just say, I am feeling restless and have lots to talk about and show.  First off let me fill you in on the past few days and then I will get to all the photo stuff.  Feeling a little better each day but when I spoke to my doctor I asked her, "what happened to 2-3 days and all would be back to normal?"  Monday will be 2 weeks ago that I had my surgery and I still feel like crap.  I wasn't please with her answer but she said, "a lot of it probably has to do with your age and also I had more to do once I got in there than I initially thought"  I'm thinking, MY AGE???  Then I started feeling pretty old....  :)  I turned 40 in March and she's got me thinking I'm 80!  LOL!  Oh well...

Richard has been working some night shifts doing his practicum at the hospital so I get pretty lonesome.  It probably wouldn't be too bad if I felt more like doing something.  Hunter has had several friends over since school has been out.  None of them are very hyper, thank goodness!  ;)  Anyway this week he had a friend over on Wednesday.  He is a very good boy and a couple of years older than Hunter.  Richard and I grew up with his father and is mother is a wonderful person too.  Actually, they both are Hunter's Sunday School teachers.  So Wyatt came over and stayed Wednesday and spent the night.  I kicked back on the couch most of the evening and did NOTHING!  Then Wyatt went home on Thursday about 5:30pm.  Richard and Hunter got ready and went to our Thursday night Church service at 7pm.  I did not feel up to going so I kept the couch company.  :)  So when they came home a little after 9pm, Hunter had another friend with him!  LOL!  Another little boy from Church that we are good friends with his parents too.  Hunter and Tyler are also in the same class.  He went home today.  So after a long couple of days for Hunter, he took my couch away from me.  LOL!  He had a wonderful time but he was wore out!

This is right before Richard left for work this evening.  As soon as he left, I got Hunter up and we crawled inn my bed to snuggle and sleep!  We didn't get back up until after 8pm this evening.  I'm sure we will be up most of the night!  Oh well....Richard will get home about 8:30am so we can all sleep in, I guess.

Now on to the quilty stuff.  I ventured upstairs today and oh my goodness I wish that I hadn't!  Ewwww....not only did it feel like crap trying to get up those stairs but this is what I saw when I topped them......

If you remember I was in a big rush to get some of those quilts quilted before my surgery so there was not any time to clean or put things away.  Also since my surgery I had Hunter and Richard up there digging for stuff that I needed to sew on downstairs.  I would like to shove it all out the window and start over!  Is that possible?  This is what it looked like back in March, of course I've moved some stuff around since then but at least it was clean.

So I started here at the couch since it was the cleanest part.  :)  I did get that part cleaned up but had to get Hunter to help me get some stuff out of the floor because it didn't feel very good when I bent over.

As you can see I did make a little progress, but that is about as far as I got.

Then I thought about winding some bobbins so that I could clean off my frame and load a quilt on in a day or two.  I have a few more that need to be done!  So I sat down to do that and oh my goodness, I had planned on ordering thread right after my surgery!  Like I mentioned I worked on quilting some quilts right up to my surgery.  I even had one lady pick her quilt up at the hospital that morning.  Since my doctor said I would be down 2-3 days at the most, don't laugh but I figured I would get online and order thread that evening after my surgery and that would give me something to do.  Well......that didn't happen and I forgot all about the thread.  I am OUT of thread!!  I do have COLORS but what I need for the quilts that I have are whites/creams.  So I will order in the morning and it will take a few days to get here.  Hopefully, I can get my frame cleaned off and a quilt loaded and be ready to start as soon as it arrives.  After all of this, I got a little depressed and sat down to make a plan!!

I have so many things of my own that are almost finished but then I get sidetracked or loose interest before I get it finished.  I made a list of what I need to finish so that I can get them done one at a time.  So here we go.....Remember this?  My spiderweb is still in this state.  Well actually I do have all of the blocks sewn into rows, I just need to sew the rows together and sew the borders on.  As you can see everything is already cut.

And then there is this one, my Hugs & Kisses.  Sorry this photo is sideways but you get the idea.  You can also see it in the photo above with my spiderweb.  I love how this quilt is turning out even though I don't have much of it done.  I also need to dig out stuff to send to a few people that helped me in a swap of fabrics so that I could make this quilt.  I am soooooo far behind on everything.

Now lets move on to this one, my Log Cabin quilt.  This baby is huge!  It is all put together except for the borders.  If you remember I asked your opinions on what border to use.  I had planned on a green border when I started it but in the end I felt like the green that I had was too busy for this quilt and I just couldn't get past that.  I'll save that bolt of green for something else.

I decided on the navy fabric.  I felt that it nicely framed the quilt.  I'm not completely sure but I think I even have the borders cut.  I'll have to check on that, I did see the navy bolt up there today but I'm thinking that I already cut off of it.  Don't want to do that twice.

Here is another one that I'm anxious to get done.  Well, I say anxious but evidently not or I would have had it done by now.  On this one I need to sew the blocks for 2 more rows and sew the borders on and I know they are already cut.

Now my Farmer's Wife blocks!  I love working on these small blocks.  They are the same size as my new Civil War Anniversary Blocks that I started.

Here are those, my Civil War Anniversary blocks that I started after my surgery.  They kept my mind busy.  I think I will keep both of these close to my machine so that I can work on them a little at a time.

Do you remember the other day when I started piecing that baby quilt from scrap and felt like it looked more for a boy than a girl when it was finished?  So I started another one and I wanted it to look completely "girlish"  I'm not done but here is a little peak of it so far....

I'm making this quilt for my little granddaughter, Raelynn Grace.  Isn't she a cute?  Look at those cheeks!!  She will be 7 months old on Sunday.  She belongs to Breanna, Richard's oldest daughter.

Oh I almost forgot, I plan on using some of this bolt of purple for the borders for it, I think it will look nice and bright when it is finished.

I wanted to come up with a baby quilt that looked a little modern and that was a challenge for me since I mostly work with reproductions.  I was disappointed when I finished the other quilt and it looked so "boyish"  I looked and looked for a pattern to use my purple scraps on and I had a certain thing in my mind but couldn't find a pattern online with what I wanted and I couldn't go upstairs to dig though my books and magazines so I just sat down and played around with EQ.  This is my own design so we'll have to see how it all turns out in the end.  I most say it was pretty fun drawing out my own block.

I guess that is all for now.  It is 11:35pm and I'm wide awake from my nap.  It will be a long night.  Not sure if I want to go back upstairs tonight or not.  I may just try to do some laundry, watch some tv and surf the web....  I think I will also schedule this to post first thing in the morning since it is so late tonight.

Night...
Kristie