Lots of Progress! (Photo Heavy)

I'm made a lot of progress over the past week.  About a month or so ago I made a baby quilt as a gift.  I posted a pic of it on my blog and facebook.  My SIL's mother wanted me to make 2 of them for her as gifts for twins of her niece.  They will be 2 yrs old this summer.  I added a border on these to make them a little bigger so they could use them for several years.  

 They ended up being 52" square.

 I quilted a simple stipple on them.

 I did the binding on them Saturday morning and she picked them up Saturday afternoon.  She seemed very pleased with them. 

 I also made a few pin cushions.  :)  I did not make the pretty one with the tiny flying geese.  That one was a gift from a dear friend several years ago.  I use it all the time.  I actually made 4 but didn't get a pic of the other one.  These were all made from leftover blocks or small orphan blocks.  I filled them with crushed walnut shells.  I like the weight that it gives to them.

 I have a huge jar of vintage buttons that I picked through and used.  I want to make several more when I get a chance.  I think I would like to use some of them and also put several in a basket to display. 

 I also started a new quilt for myself.  I feel the need to work on a few things of my own between customer quilts.  I need this!!!  LOL! 

 These colors are not my usual so it's totally out of my comfy zone!  I guess that is a good thing!  My plan as of right now is 30 blocks.  I was going to do just a bunch of random fabric colors but once I started I wanted to do blues and greens. 

 By the time that I got ready for bed last night I had 10 blocks pieced.  I'll get better pics of it when the lighting is better. 

 I signed up for the Fat Quarter Shop monthly subscription of reproduction fat quarters a few months ago.  It alternates between Civil War and 1930's.  This is what I received this time.  Love them!!!

 This is the line that they are from.  It's not the whole line but just 12 each time. 

 These purples are my favorites!  I have been on a purple kick lately.  I need to make a purple quilt! 

 Other life happenings this week...  

Andrew's cash offer on the apartment building was accepted!!!!  He is very excited and this momma is very proud of all his hard work.  I'll post more details as time goes on with it.  

I was out shopping with mom and Chantal a few days ago and found a big cactus that I bought! Actually in the cart you can see two but we actually bought three.  We each got one.  I've been looking for one of these big ones for years and finally found one.  20+ years ago I had one that was over 6 ft tall.  I had over 50 houseplants.  At that time I was married to my first husband and went back to get my plants about a week after I left only to find that he had poured bleach in every one of them.  I lost them all.  The huge cactus was my favorite.  Anyway...that was a long time ago and I now have another one.  :) 

 Today my niece, Addison turns 4.  Hard to believe that.  :)  Her birthday party was Saturday.  She had a blast of course.  She owns my heart.  :)

 Here is a pic of her cake!  She had a beautiful Barbie cake and 36 cupcakes.  :)

 Hunter has been on Spring Break this past week and goes back to school today.  I will sure miss him.  I have always loved it best when everyone is home with me.  That is my "happy time" 

Oh and I didn't get pics but Richard and I were able to take another short motorcycle ride on Thursday while he was off and the weather was nice.  I think sometime in the near future we are going to get a GoPro to attach to his helmet to video some of the beautiful rides that we go on.  

Today I have a customer quilt that I need to do some repair work on and hopefully get it quilted and the binding done as well.  Fingers crossed that I get it done.  LOL!  The top belongs to a coworker of Richard's.  Her sister had purchased it for her in PA.  It's all squares and hand pieced.  Someone has washed the quilt top and it has came apart in several places.  The seam allowance is very narrow and the stitches are pretty big.  I actually worked on some of the repair work yesterday but I hope to finish it up today.  I also need to quilt and machine bind it too.  I'll post pics of it tomorrow. 

Started a new one...

 Thanks for the wonderful comments on my SIL's quilt.  :)  She gave it to my brother and he loved it.  :)

I worked on my applique block.  I had it ironed to the background but hadn't stitched around it.  I got all of the green done but not the tulips yet.  After I get this first block done I will prep another.

 While I was working on the applique Richard built a grape arbor for me!!!  He is just so awesome!!!  I love it!!!

 He's still on vacation and Thursday had some nice weather so we took the motorcycle out for a little ride.  It was nice but a little windy.  We had a wonderful time.  In the pic we had stopped by the lake.  We rode about 110 miles.  Can't wait for warmer weather so we can do more riding.  :) 

 Friday we had errands to run.  Richard took his bow and had some work done on it.  He loves archery.  Picked up a few things from Sam's.  Stopped by Joann's and picked up these fabrics.  Not for any particular project but just to add to the stash.  :)  I got 1/2 yard of each.

 This came in the mail so I thumbed through it a bit after we got home.  I was tired so I really didn't feel like doing much.  I've been eyeing this book for a while.  I love the quilt!  I know that I really don't have time to start this quilt but I did do a block.  :)

 This is Block #1.  I'm not using the fabric colors suggested in the book, I'm just going to use my scraps for it.  Not in any big hurry for this quilt but I figure I could do a few blocks a week on it and eventually get it done.  As the cover of the books says, the blocks are 4x5 inches. 

 Shew...this momma is nervous.  LOL!  Andrew put in an offer on an apartment building.  It's a 3 unit building.  He has always wanted to have rental property even as a child.  He is now 26 and works 100+ hours a week.  He has been working hard for this.  Praying that the Lord will guide him in the right direction with this.  Right now the building is full with tenants but he may end up living in the smaller unit and continue renting out the other 2 apartments.  Not sure yet.  Anyway he put in an offer and now we wait...

Today I hope to work on a couple Lori Holt blocks and maybe another Anthology block.  Oh and maybe work on the purple tulip applique.  I don't like much finishing up that block.  I also have a customer t-shirt quilt that I need to work on.  I am so grateful for the customer work but I'm feeling a tad burned out right now.  I'm sure that will pass.  All that I can think about is wanting to work on something of my own.  LOL!  

A gift and an order for two more...

I pieced this baby quilt over the weekend.  Andrew's first cousin on his dad's side has a baby girl due any day.  I still have a good relationship with most of my former in-laws and family.  LOL!  Anyway, his cousin Chris is just a couple years younger than Andrew and he's such a nice young man.  I wanted to make a quilt for the new baby.  I think they are inducing her on Thursday the last that I heard. 

 

A dear friend of mine sent me the Wing Clipper Ruler for flying geese.  I really wanted to try it out so it was the perfect time to make the baby quilt.  So much easier than the old way and they could put pretty close to perfect.  I put my back out over the weekend so it was slow going for me.  I got it pieced and quilted it yesterday morning.  I will send it by Andrew to the new baby when she arrives.

I posted a pic of it on FB yesterday and my SIL's mom (my brother's wife) asked me to make TWO of them for her.  She needs them as gifts later this summer for a set of twins...a boy and a girl.  So it worked out well for this pattern.  :)

Sunday, Andrew turned 26!  Oh my where has time gone?  Shew.... hard to believe.  I'm so proud of the young man that he is.  He works 100 hours a week and I've tried and tried to get him to cut down some.  He works hard and saves almost every dime.  :)  He and his girlfriend, Hannah were here Sunday evening after work.  I made him a Key Lime Pie.  That is his favorite and I make it every year because that is what he wants.  I also made chocolate cake for the ones that didn't like pie.  :)  

I mentioned that I put my back out.  I've been on the couch with a heating pad for a few days now.  I did get that baby quilt quilted but then I was back on the heating pad for most of the day.  It's getting a lot better...not perfect but better every day.  So yesterday while on the couch I was on Pinterest way too much.  LOL!  I have so many customer quilts and so many quilts that I want to make and not enough time to do it all.  I'm sure we are all like that.  

Oh I started a new applique quilt.  I'm just going to work on it between customer quilts.  It is a purple tulip design.   The blocks are 22" so they are big.  I have one pressed on the background with heat-n-bond but haven't stitched it down yet.  I'll post a pic of that tomorrow.  

Before I close I want to thank everyone for the wonderful comments about my published quilting.  A few of you were "noreply" so I couldn't respond.  It was a fun experience that I really enjoyed.  

I'm back!!!!

Not sure if anyone is still reading my blog but if you are.....I'M BACK!!!   It's been almost 4 months since I have posted so I will just do a quick update with what has been going on.  

I've been dealing with a few health issues and spent a little time in the hospital and lots of doctor appointments...it's all heart and diabetes related...mostly.  I also have a mass in my abdomen right under my left rib cage.  Lots of testing on that and still don't know what it is yet.  Enough of that....

Hunter had his 8th grade Social Dance/Prom.  

 He graduated last Friday from the 8th grade.  I love that both of my boys grew up in such a small school.  There were 19 kids graduating from the 8th grade with Hunter.  This Fall he is off to high school.  :( 

 Andrew is doing well.  He works all of the time...60-70 hours a week.  I'm proud of both of my boys. 

 An updated photo of me and Richard.  He had just gotten home from work. 

 In other news....the garden is planted.  We've had rain the past 22 out of 26 days.  :(   I'm hoping that my potatoes don't just rot in the ground.  

I have been sewing a little bit...just working on my hexies.  Nothing major on that.  I have been doing "one block a day"

Now I have some awesome and exciting news!!!!   I have a dear online quilting friend from South Dakota that is coming for a visit in a couple of weeks.  I am so excited to meet her and her family.  I will have to post lots of pics from our visit.  It's almost a 20 hour drive for them.  I think she is bringing some of her quilts too.  So there will be lots of quilty talk and sharing going on.  Over the next 2 weeks I will be trying to "whirlwind" and clean my house before they get here.  I am just giddy with excitement.  

Also I will be getting a "new to me" longarm!!!!  My other one has died.  LOL!  It's been over a year since I have been able to quilt anything.  I'm sitting here now with around 35 of my own quilt tops that need to be quilted.  So expect to see lots of pics from that.  This one is also a lot bigger than my other one.  My old one is a 13" Bailey and this one is a 30" Nolting...big difference.  

That's all for now...I'm going to try to start posting again regularly.  Blessings...Kristie


 

Hexies, Birthdays, and a little Jazz

 Still taking it easy and not doing too much.  Here is my progress so far on this hexie quilt.  It sure seems like I should have more done.  LOL!  These are 1" hexagons.

 I have a few hundred more prepped but I'm needing more variety in it.  I know this looks like a lot of hexagons but there are several of each.  I really need to try to dig though some scraps to add some variation.

 A pic of my 1919 Singer Red Eye.  This is one of my favorite machines and it sews wonderfully.  I've had it for a while but I had Hunter to bring it downstairs for me and put it on the old school desk so that I could see it better.  :) 

 My baby boys turns 13 today!  Shew...time flies!  With 4 ultrasounds they told me that I was having a "girl" imagine my surprise when he came out a "boy"  LOL!  I thought Richard was going to pass out! 

 Here he is at 11 months old, trying to look sweet.  :)

 This in one of my favorites...oh how he loved that horse.  I still have it.

 Here he is at the age of 3.  We were heading out to watch Richard ride bulls....shew...I'm glad those days are over.  That made me nervous but of course Hunter loved it. 

 And last but not least...we lost our little Jazzy last night.  He had a long history of seizures and had not been feeling well this past week.  Hunter was pretty emotional last night.  I felt so sorry for him.  Shew...the boys loved Jazz so much and I do hate that he is gone but man he was a 4lb firecracker that at times made me want to pull my hair out!!!  LOL! 

 I guess that is all that I really have to blog about today.  I think I'm going to head back to bed, Richard just left for work.  Oh and say a little prayer for Andrew today.  He is traveling and that always worries me.  He is on his way to the beach with his aunt on his dad's side.  He had vacation time and she invited him to go, all expenses paid so he was excited to go.  LOL!

Pink Chevron...

 I made some progress yesterday!  I finished the quilting on this baby quilt.  

 

 I have the binding cut.  Now I just need to get the binding sewn on before Saturday and also finish up my puff quilt. 

 While I was working on all of this, I needed a small break so I grabbed my bow ties that were beside my machine and assembled 20 more blocks.  I'm loving this quilt and I hope to have it completely assembled real soon.  I need 120 of these blocks and that will be a total of 1080 of those little 3" bow ties! 

 We had more busted water pipes today!  :(  I'm sure that is not exactly what Richard wanted to work on when he got home late this evening.  The weather here in KY has just been crazy.  It is getting a little depressing but I keep trying to remind myself that spring will be here soon and we usually don't have weather like this in KY.  It could always be worse.  

On this day 22 years ago at 9:25pm, I gave birth to my first born son, Andrew.  I was in a bad marriage at the time but my world forever changed for the better.  He was and still is my world.  We stuck together like glue back in those days and to this day we have a bond that is so very strong.  I am so proud of him and the young man that he has become.  My boys are my world and I can't imagine life without them.  Soooo...here is a photo of Andrew at 10 months old...1st. Christmas.  Those eyes still light up my world.  

Here he is when Richard and I got married.  He walked me down the isle.  In this photo he is standing beside Richard's brother, Claude.  It was funny, they stood there the whole time talking about monster trucks as that was what Andrew as obsessed with at the time.  Richard and I were laughing the whole time because as we were saying our vows we could hear Andrew talking about those monster trucks. 

Richard has to work again today.  So Hunter and I will just try to deal with the snow and cold temps....I will do a little sewing and he will do a lot of eating!  LOL!  Wow!  He has officially hit that eating stage that boys hit when they want to eat you out of house and home!  :)  
-Kristie

Thankful...

 First off, I want to thank you all for the prayers for Richard.  His appointment went well the other day.  Right now they think that the spot on his retina is okay.  He has to have it rechecked in 9 months and it will always have to be monitored.  They also said that the spot was in the best place possible.  It is on the front and if it was on the side then lots of times if it changes it is too late by the time that they find it.  Also with the location of his spot he should be able to notice any change in it before their tests would pick it up.  They said if there is any change then he would be able to see a yellow tinge.  Very thankful for this news!!!  Thank you Lord!!!  There is also a good possibility that it will NEVER change so that is what we are praying for!

I made a few more hair bows for the new baby.  BTW....the new baby has a name!!!!!  Chantal and Ronnie have decided to name her.....Addison!  I think they are going to use it as a middle name and call her by that name.  They haven't decided on a first name yet.  Mom and I also painted 2 of the walls in the nursery.  Hopefully we can finish it up in a few days. 

A pic of the snow a few days ago.  Sadly today we are supposed to get 8-14 inches!!!!  :(  I will not be able to get off this hill until summer!!!!  :(  This much snow will shut our whole area down.  Temps are supposed to be well below ZERO and the windchill -10 to -20 below.  This worries me too death as Andrew is out working in this.  They brought his boat in locally to dry dock for some work and took him off while it is on dry dock and put him on the harbor boats for 2 weeks.  While he is doing that he will be working 12 hour shifts and is supposed to travel home and back each day.  Sadly he can't get here.  :(  I guess tonight he will have to either stay on the harbor boat or get a hotel close by.  It's just too cold to be working out in this weather.  Please say a prayer for my boy and all of the people that have to be out in this. 

With this much snow coming later today we expect to lose power.  I dread that but thankful that we heat with our wood stove.  I'm gathering up some hexies and stuff to work on if the weather gets as bad as they think it will.
-Kristie

Another baby quilt and some hexies!

 Making lots of progress!!!  I got this second baby quilt quilted and the binding is finished!  :)  You can't really tell in this photo but all of these fabrics that were used in this quilt are polka dots.  Now 2 more to quilt and the puff/biscuit quilt needs to be finished and I'm not even close to having it done. 

 Here is the other baby quilt that I showed in the last post.  The binding is also finished on it. 

 I also worked on a few more of my hexies.  I'm not in any hurry to finish this project, it is just something that I work on while watching tv and such. 

 I did get curious to see how many that I actually had finished.  I put them all up on my design wall.  I guess that I will need twice this many in the end.  I roughly measured what I have on the wall and it was somewhere around 66" wide and 53" long.  I would like to have this at least large enough to fit on my bed.  I need a wider range of fabrics too.  I need to work on that.  I also need to decide on how that I want to finish the edges.  Any ideas on that?

 A closer view....

 I have some of them sewn into sets of 2 and some are still singles.  I have a total of 124 of them finished so far. 

I talked to Andrew earlier and he is doing fine, just tired.  I miss him but he does call me after every shift, IF he has cell signal.  He works 12-6am and 12-6pm everyday.  So every 6 hours he is working and the 6 hours that he has off, he is eating and sleeping and does this for 28 days straight.  Needless to say that when he comes home he is exhausted!  Speaking of exhausted, Richard was exhausted when he got home from work last night.  I felt sorry for him.  I thought he would fall asleep before he finished his dinner.  

Also please say a prayer for Richard.  He has a very important eye doctor appointment with the retina surgeons on Wednesday.  When he had his eye exam she saw a spot on his retina.  She said that if it was smooth then she wouldn't be so concerned but this one was not smooth so she was concerned enough to send him to a retina surgeon to make sure that it is not cancer or anything to be concerned about.  
-Kristie 

Catching up....

I haven't posted in a few weeks so I will get you all caught up on what I have been doing.  :)  I have done very little sewing and it has been my hexies.  This is an old pic but nothing much has changed with it. 

 I need to get to work on the baby quilts as we are having her baby shower the end of February and I don't have anything finished.  :(  I am soooo behind so she might end up getting the quilts after the baby shower.  :)

I have a one track mind....I have a hard time balancing more than one thing at a time.  This is not a good thing because I can't even concentrate on that "one thing" that I am supposed to be doing.  Anyway....I will get to that in a minute.  Do you remember a few weeks ago when I posted about my BP running so high, like this?

 So after a couple of doctor appointments and tons of meds hopefully all will be well soon.  I won't bother you with all of the details but after lots of blood work and tests, I am now on 9 pills a day!!!!  UGH!  So not what I wanted at 42, but that is what I have to do right now.  The doctor said that it is very possible after some diet and exercise that I could be taken off these meds so that is what I am shooting for!!!  I am currently on BP meds, cholesterol meds, and diabetes meds.  :(  So as hubby nicely put it, maybe this is God's way of giving me a chance to make things better in my life.  Soooo.....as a start I have lost 6.6 pounds this week!!!  Tons of walking, a little bit of cardio, and a change in eating habits.  My wonderful hubby and kids are behind me all the way!  Not much sewing is getting done because my mind has been on this stuff.  :)

Been having some snowy weather here in KY.  I took this pic one day last week.  That is Bullet, our stud horse.  He loves the snow!

 Here is a pic of Hunter that I snapped!  He was snoozing on the couch.  He was laying there with his eyes closed because he had something in his eye and fell asleep.  You can see the red spot from rubbing it. 

 Andrew leaves back out for work on Wednesday.  :(  I will sure miss my boy.  Another 28 days without seeing him, that is sure hard on this momma.  He turns 22 later this month so that will be hard not to see him on his birthday too.  

That's all for now, hopefully I will have some quilty stuff to post in a day or two!
Kristie