Friday, July 29, 2011

Searching for fabric and got some goodies...

I took today off from the hayfield so that I could finish up some school shopping. Hunter's school starts Monday, August 1st. I had everthing for him except for his new shoes so Mom and I took him shopping for them today. While I was down in Ashland, we stopped by the quilt shop so that I could pick up a tiny bit more of this blue for this quilt. If you remember, I had just enough to finish the quilt but cut some triangles the wrong size. :(Well wouldn't you know....they were out of that fabric!!! So now I have to try to find it online and it is an older Marcus Brother line so I hope I can still find it. While we were there, Mom fell in love with the little shop. They still had their sale going on so I picked up more fat quarters. I got 15 for $15, can't beat it for $1 each!Yesterday I spent all day in the hayfield and I am still exhausted! As you can see that big ole sun ball was blazing! It was soooooooo hot out there! See this little opening in the trees? I know it is hard to see it but that is the trail to walk back home. I kept wondering how long it would take Richard to miss me if I slipped off and went back home. LOL! I did take some yo-yo's to work on while I was taking my breaks. I really didn't get very many of them done but I am one that has to always keep my hands busy.

I left the field before Richard did and I snapped this photo as I was driving off the hill from the hayfield. See the lake! That is just a small part of it but I think it is something like 2300 acres.


I guess tomorrow I will have to get back to the grind.


Kristie

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

More sewing...

Richard has been busy cutting hay, it is sooooo hot! I've been back and forth, he usually doesn't want me out there unless he needs my help because he says it is just too hot for me.....awwww... Anyway, I will have to be out there the next few days, because he will be raking and baling it, then loading it. But it all has to be done, I'm just thankful that we have hay to cut. Hunter had been out watching his daddy cut the hay. That bunch of trees there on the left in the photo is actually an old building/cabin that is falling down.



Hunter was waiting for me to take a ride so that we could cool off. Don't worry he was not riding it by himself and he does wear a helmet. :)
I had a small gift certificate from Connecting Threads and used it to buy a few spools of threads and a couple of downloadable patterns. I really do like their thread, it is a little linty but not too bad. It is on sale right now for $1.74 a spool until August 15th. I plan on trying to order several more spools.Between everything else I did get to sew 20 more Courthouse Steps. This makes me 40 of them right now. This is not even a third of what I would like to have to make the quilt. I just hope that I can stay interested in making that many. LOL! I think my log cabin quilt has 144 blocks in it and they actually seemed to go fairly fast considering the size of them.
I'm hoping that we can get a break in this heat so that I can get upstairs and get back to quilting on my frame. I have several that needs to be done. Well I had better get off of here, I need to finish supper and get the milking done.

Kristie

Monday, July 25, 2011

Cutting Strips...

I've been cutting and sorting Civil War Repro strips for my Courthouse Steps quilt. I did this when I made my log cabin quilt and after I got them cut and sorted the piecing seemed to go so much faster for me. One good thing is that these stack up and don't take up that much room while I am not working on them.

This is still all that I have done on this quilt, but I do like it really well.
Anyway....I probably will not get too much sewing done this week. I have a busy week ahead.


* Tuesday ---- My aunt is coming out so that we can design some blocks and borders for a special quilt that she is making. She has the center done but that is it. I'll take some photos of it while she is here. Then Hunter has Readifest at school at 4pm and then Mom will be home tomorrow too!!!!


* Wednesday --- Working in the hay field!


* Thursday --- Working in the hay field!


* Friday --- Working in the hay field!


* Saturday --- Working in the hay field!


Here is the hay field that will be my workplace this week! LOL! The weatherman says it will be a little cooler ONLY in the mid 90's! UGH!


Yesterday we had some wonderful friends come to visit. Of course, Mark and Richard were outside most of the time but is gave me and Mitsie lots of time to catch up. I really enjoyed their visit! The funny thing is, when they got here I had her some of my homemade goat soap ready to give her and she pulled some wonderful smelling candles out of her purse that she had made. I forgot the scent of the brown one but I think she said the orange one was called fruit slice.
Have to run....my sister is coming over to spend the night!!!! :)
Kristie

Thursday, July 21, 2011

A Few More Blocks...

I really didn't plan on posting tonight because I just didn't feel like I had that much progress to show. My plans were to get up early and load one on the frame, but like I said my frame is upstairs in the new house but we don't have power in the house yet. I always just run a power cord upstairs to plug in my machine but I don't have A/C out there! It is just too hot up there right now. I was up there for a bit and I got sick to my stomach it was just too hot. So back in here I came where I have A/C.

Today was filled with housework and a little bit of sewing in here. I ended up making 10 more blocks today. I am now up to 20 of these Courthouse Steps. I'm sure I have a few more of them somewhere and they are probably upstairs so they will just have to stay there until it cools down. I'm not sure of the design yet. I may just piece them like this or I did see online where they had alternated the blocks. I do like these blocks but right now I'm not as happy with them as I was when I was working on my log cabin blocks. I loved them! Then again maybe I am just cranky from this heat. LOL!

That's all for now, hopefully tomorrow I will have more to show.
Kristie

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Courthouse Steps

Just a little sewing today. I had planned on starting another big project quilt as soon as I got my red & navy Civil War Wreaths quilt finished. But now that I have to wait a week or so before I can finish it, I really didn't want to drag out everything to start something big. And besides, I have several other things that need to be finished also. For one, I have an antique quilt top that I need to try to salvage some of the blocks out to make a table runner or a lap quilt. That is for a customer. I also have two other customer quilts that need to be quilted. One is a T-shirt quilt and the other is another Musical quilt. This will be the 3rd Musical quilt that I have quilted for her. And I have one of my tops that need to be quilted by the 3rd week of August. Plus all of the farm, house building and hay stuff! Speaking of hay....the next couple of weeks will be filled with HAY!

So today I cleaned up my sewing table and did get out one of my UFO's. I figure I will work on it for a while in between all of this other stuff. I don't have any plans on finishing it right now but just something to work on during the evenings. See, my frame and most of my sewing stuff are out in the new house in my sewing room and then I have another sewing machine set up in here on my kitchen table. I had a few blocks finished and I have several more almost finished. At this point, I'm not even sure how big I will make this quilt. I do love paper piecing these little guys. These measure 6 inches, if I can stay interested in them I would love to make it as large as I did my Civil War Log Cabin quilt last year. I think I made 144 blocks for it.

Yesterday Richard and I worked some on the house. He worked on some drywall and I stained more wood for my ceiling. Here are a few of them but in all there is a little over 1000ft of boards to be stained. :( But it will be worth it to me in the end. I also got one coat of stain on my cabinets. He doesn't have them all built yet but I just couldn't help myself. LOL! Oh and I stained that big support beam in the middle of the kitchen too, actually that will be where my island will be. I can't wait to get the upper cabinets built and the island. I think my island will be 7 or 8ft long. I'm excited about that because I've never had an island before! :)And last I will leave you with a photo of my little one....very dirty after a day of play outside. :( Now he is all clean, freshly showered and ready for bed! LOL! Hopefully I can get a few more Courthouse Step blocks sewn in between everything else!
Kristie

Monday, July 18, 2011

Burns my butt!

Are you tired of seeing this quilt yet? LOL! I sure am! I do love how it is turning out but I am ready to be finished with it! Do you see anything wrong with this photo? :(

In my rush to finish my last 2 rows (7 of each block) I made my half square triangles too small!!! Just not paying attention. I had made all of my sections and was ready to piece the blocks together before I realized what I had done. The bad part is.....I don't have enough of the navy fabric to finish my quilt, but the good part is....I can get it at my local quilt shop as soon as I get down that way. :( I need less than 1/2 yard! I was really looking forward to finishing this up tonight, I even had my borders and bindings cut.


As of right now, I guess I will just piece together what I can on it until I can get the fabric to finish it up. I have a new quilt in the works IN MY MIND! LOL! So I may go ahead and get things together for that and I also have a few customer quilts to work on too, so it's not like I don't have anything else to do.

Kristie

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Sewing right along...

Yesterday evening while Hunter went with his friend to see the new Harry Potter movie, Richard and I took the 4-wheeler out to check on the big bottom to see if it was ready to have hay cut from it. It was getting late so we took the 4-wheeler instead of walking out there. As you can see here it is dark in the woods but the sky is still light. I took several photos but I'll only post a couple of them.

There is also a small older cabin/building out there but it is all grown up around it and you can hardly see it. Anyway after that we went back to the house to watch tv and wait for Hunter to get back home. He had a wonderful time.


Today I got all of my scrap windmill blocks sewn together to make a top. Now I will put it away until I get upstairs and can dig out something for a border. Right now it measures 54x63 and I would like to have it a little larger. I don't have it all spread out here but maybe you can get an idea of how it looks. Very quick and easy!!
Here is what I have done so far on my leaders/enders project. I really wish that I had used Civil War fabric for these but, I guess I should use up the regular scraps first.....or maybe not.... I just think the Civil War fabrics would look great with the cheddar solid.
And right now I am trying to finish up my last 2 rows (14 blocks) of my Civil War Wreaths quilt. I showed what I had done to mom when she got home and she asked me this morning if I had finished it yet so I think that was a hint to get my butt in gear! LOL!

Back to quilting....
Kristie

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Sewing most of the night...

Well let's see....Mom came home late Thursday night so I'm getting to spend some time with her. She is supposed to be off for 28 days at a time but will probably have to go back to work in about 4 more days and work a week. She has been working on the Mississippi River so she is a little further away. Yesterday evening we went out to visit her and she was cutting her grass and my sister had just gotten home so we jumped in a helped her. Richard cut her grass and Hunter, Chantal, Mom, and I moved some rocks for her to make another flowerbed. Hunter had his wagon out there so that was a big help.

Afterwards Hunter and I took the 4-wheeler (ATV) out for a ride. We had a nice time together and after we got back home Richard took it for a longer ride to cool off. It has been hot here, like it has pretty much everywhere but we finally got some rain in the wee dawn hours.

For some reason last night I couldn't sleep, I do that every so often. Anyway, I started sewing on those blocks that I cut last week. The windmill blocks. They go together so fast and before I knew it, I had 45 of them sewn together!! That is all that I had cut out, so I'm not sure at this point if I will just use what I have and do a 6x7 setting or try dig up more white and make more blocks. This is the 3rd quilt that I have made using this block. This first one is a king size

And this one is a full size. I don't have this one anymore, I sold it at Christmas. I really liked the fabrics in it.


And I also decided to jump on Bonnie's Bowtie Leaders and Enders. I actually pulled fabric for a bowtie a few weeks ago just from scraps and set it aside. But when I read her post, I knew I had to pull some background fabric for them and use them as my leader and ender project since I wasn't working on one at the time. Now sure how big it will be, I guess until I get tired of it or I run out of scraps! I'm not crazy about that green block but I guess that is the best part of scraps....if I use enough of them, you will never notice this in the quilt!And the whole time I was sewing last night my precious little Smokey stayed up with me. He is so sweet and lovable and only weighs in at 4lbs. And now an update on Hunter's eye. If you remember last month he got hurt with a piece of rebar at his birthday party....now look how well he has healed! I'm very grateful that the Lord was looking over him because it could have been so much worse than it was.
Now I had better get my butt in gear and clean my house and get something planned out for supper. Mom just left a few minutes ago, she came out to see our progress on the house since she had been gone. Maybe after supper this evening I can get these blocks pieced into a quilt top and I really need to get back to working on my Civil War Wreaths. I am so close to having that top finished but I have been avoiding it like the plague! Only two more rows and borders and I can call it a top!


Kristie

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

A few goodies...

So tired after yesterday that I missed my doctor's appointment this morning. I just didn't feel like going so I will have to reschedule it. Yesterday Andrew and I had to make a trip to the college that he will be attending in the fall. It is just a couple hours away but we were gone for a total of 12 hours!! He is now all set and ready to start August 22nd. There were several classes that he will not have to take because of his test scores so he was very excited about that. I'm not sure if I had posted them but here is one of his senior photos, this one is one of the proofs that I got from the photographers website, I'm just too lazy to scan one. So while we were out yesterday I stopped by the little red hen quilt shop in Ashland, just little over an hour away. I had received a flyer last week that they were having a big sale. Since I had to drive right by there I just had to stop. LOL! They had fat quarters on sale for $1 each and they are only $1.50 regular priced. I only bought 15 of them, I was in a rush to get back home but I am pleased with what I bought. You know how I like Civil War Repro fabrics so I was very excited! Of course it is all quilt shop quality fabric and is only $5 to $6 per yard regular price!!!! Hunter stayed home with Richard yesterday while I was gone and they worked a little bit on my ceiling in my quilting room. I'm loving it!!! After he gets it all finished he will be going back over it and touching up the screw holes with stain. See those yellow electric wires hanging down? I will have 3 recessed lights there and they will be centered over my frame for extra lighting. I can't wait to get this done and get the trim up!!!! It is hard to see in this photo but the ceiling goes from 6.5ft up to 12ft in the center. What you see here in the photo is the short side.

Have a ton of housework to do today so not sure if I will get any sewing done today. And I might just be a good little wife and go help Richard out in the house today too.

Kristie

Monday, July 11, 2011

Started a new one...

It has been a long weekend. Not sure what I have done but my hips and legs were killing me all evening and through the night. I had hip and leg injuries a year or so ago and from time to time they still bother me but this is the worst that it has been for a while. Better today but still not completely better. Anyway....

I finally got that antique quilt quilted and off the frame. I will post photos of it later as I have to trim it up and bury knots. I started a new quilt! I know I really don't need to do that but I've been a good girl and working on and finishing some UFO's lately so I thought it would be okay. Here is my first block! It is a traditional block called "Wheel Of Fortune"
The other day I decided that I wanted to do this quilt so I printed out a zillion of the paper piece sections, bought some red solid and was ready to go.....or so I thought! Silly me cut up all of my scraps from my scrap bin a day or two before for the "Road To Jericho" and "Windmill" quilts that I planned on cutting out and bagging up for kits! Can you believe that????? So now I guess this quilt, as much as I love it, will end up being a WORK IN LONG PROGRESS! I will just piece it as I collect scraps for the centers. Oh well....

Now on to a little more house progress....first off here are my kitchen countertops. It is not attached but just sitting on there so that I could see exactly what it was going to look like. Hopefully, if my hips can stand it, I will be staining my cabinets this week. My countertops are nothing fancy but they are what I could afford and I am very pleased with them. Now I just have to dig out the new sink and faucet that I have stored.....somewhere. LOL! I think I bought those back in March. We plan on having a wood ceiling over the living room and my quilting room and that measures 24x40 ft and the living room ceiling is 22 ft high so I dread Richard putting that up. Yesterday he cut down the 12" pine boards that he had drying out and had planed down smooth. When he sawed them on the sawmill he cut them 12" wide and we decided that we would go with 6" boards on the ceiling so he is cutting them in half. So while he did that I was staining them. Let's just say that his job went a lot faster than mine. That is almost 1000 sq ft of lumber that needs to be stained! :( So this morning since my hips are still bothering me a little, he is out there staining them for me. Here are a few of them that are leaned up in the living room drying. I'm loving them so far!I guess I had better get off of here and try to get my butt in gear!
Kristie

Friday, July 8, 2011

Weekly update...

It's been almost a week since my last post, just been a little busy. So here we go....my sister came and spent the night one night this past week! I really enjoyed her being here even though she lives on the property that connects to mine. LOL! It was nice to have her here and just sit down and talk. She will kill me for posting this but here she is when she feel asleep on my couch! LOL! I am almost finished with the antique quilt that I was quilting. I should have been done with it a long time ago, but had some problems with the quilting and I am still have to go extra slow because of thread breaks but it is much better after I changed battings. You can see a little of the quilting in the photo below. I always wonder about the people that piece these quilts, what were they like? What was going on in their lives? Did the fabrics have special meanings to them? Stuff like that. I still have not cut out the last two rows of my Civil War Wreaths quilt that I showed in my last post. I just needed a break from it for a few days. So meanwhile, I have been cutting up the fabrics in my scrap basket. I started cutting fabrics for a "Road To Jericho" and a "Windmill" I've make them both before but they make great scrap quilts and with what was left over I cut 2.5" squares to put in my bin. Not sure when I will start piecing these quilts but they go together quick and are nice when you need a top to quilt as a gift or something. Now on to a house update. We have been doing a lot of cleaning and sweeping. Everything gets piled up and messy when you are building. Tomorrow we will be buying the electric wire that goes from the electric pole and runs to the fuse box in the house, that wire alone will cost us $400. And this week we have plans to start installing our wood ceiling over the living room and my quilting room. That will be a total of about 1000 sq ft of wood ceiling to put up. My job will be staining the wood and Richard will be installing it. He makes me nervous when he is up high, but he says that is only because I am afraid of heights! The ceiling over the living room is 22 ft high. But I am excited about getting it done.

I am a person that has to actually see something, I'm not that good at imagining how it will look so that has cause Richard some extra work in the kitchen. See, he is building my kitchen cabinets and I know what I want but I also need to see it just to make sure. LOL! Anyway, he set my bottom cabinets up TEMPORARILY. They are just tacked together, now that I know that I like them, he will actually build them. The front framing is what he will use but has to build the backing, sides and shelving....and then the doors. Upper cabinets and my island will come next too. But at least you can get an idea of them in this photo.

Let me explain them. Just so you know that microwave will not actually be sitting there! LOL! But on the end beside that microwave I will have a floor to ceiling cabinet there but he just didn't frame it up when he did the rest of them. My sink goes under the window and on the left of the photo my stove will go in that section where I have the boxes with my lights in them. And then there will be one cabinet (as seen in photo) between my stove and refrigerator. And of course, upper cabinets over top of them and my island will go there where that beam is and it will be a pretty good size too.This is the view of the kitchen by the big window where my table will be. You also see my back door and the doorway behind it is my laundry room. See that cabinet there along that side wall? Richard built it for me too!


Speaking of Richard building stuff... I had mentioned that I wanted a desk in my quilting room for a computer and papers and stuff. He built me one the other day!!!! See, just another reason that I love him so much! LOL! As you can see, Donkey likes it too! It is actually 5 ft long and has a small drawer in the center, it will work perfectly. Since I'm showing photos of my sewing room, I hung a wall hanging up the other day. It is not exactly centered but I will take it down and reposition it, it is only pinned up with stick pins. I made it several years ago but never used it. It fits perfectly between the two closets up there. And the closets still need doors and trim but all that will come with time....and money! :) Anyway, my frame sits right in front of this, you can see part of my machine there.


That is all for now...hopefully in a few days I will have more quilting and house photos!!!!


Kristie