What is your opinion?

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had a great Christmas! I'll show a couple of photos of our Christmas and then move on the house update and quilting.

Christmas Eve we went to Richard's sister, Vanessa's cabin for dinner. His family met for dinner and gift exchange. Richard's grandmother was there, she is 91 years old and he is very close to her. After dinner we headed back home so that Hunter could get in bed before Santa came. Hunter was up this morning by 6am! Andrew had to work a 12 hour shift last night and didn't get off work until 8am this morning. He has to work tonight 8pm to 8am. So here are my boys! Hunter was excited to get to open the gift that Andrew got for him. This is Andrew's first job so he was very proud to get to buy things himself.

We had a wonderful day together. I fixed dinner and my sister and her boyfriend came out for dinner. I got a nice call from my brother and mom too. We will have Christmas with mom and my brother will be there too, next weekend after she gets home.

Here are a few photos of the house progress...everything is sooooo dusty out there right now with the construction still going on. First off is the light that will be over my dining table. I know it would look so much better if everything was painted but paint is just not in the budget right now. :(
This is the light that will be over my kitchen island....that is not there yet! :) My upper cabinets, island and all the doors are not done. So after we hung the light I am very anxious to have my island built. You can see in the background where the recessed lights are that will be in front of my upper cabinets. I still need to put the covers on them....I just haven't had time yet. Oh and you can see that I have a ton of dishes on my counter that needs to be put away. I'm just trying to unpack most of the kitchen stuff before I put it away so that I can better organize everything.
This is the bathroom sink and all of the mess on the counter is the shower head and faucet that Richard was installing. See all of that dust in the sink? I still need to take the shopvac in there and clean it a little better before I get the walls painted.

Oh, I actually didn't mean to load this photo on here but it's here anyway! LOL! This is just the kitchen BEFORE I used the shopvac to clean the dust out of the cabinets. :)
This is the ceiling over the living room. You can see the area down there where the white is showing...Richard still needs to put the trim up there where the ceiling angles. It looks much better in person, this ceiling is 22ft high so the wood doesn't make it look closed in as it might if the ceilings were lower. Oh and you can also see where the ceiling fan/light will be installed.
This is the guest room where I am storing all of the stuff right now until I can sort through it and put it all away. I've run out of boxes! :( I think I have been to every business in town bumming their old boxes. :) BTW...this photo was taken several days ago so there is much more in the room now.
Now on the quilting! The other day I needed to take a break from working so I sat down in my sewing room. Laying on the table in front of me, was my Courthouse Step quilt pieces. I've had this thing sewn into 4 sections for a while. I just haven't taken or had the time to finish it. I layed it out on the floor to see how it would look, and this is it. There are a total of 224 of these little blocks. Now I have a question...after I get the four sections sewn together...do you think it will need a border or not????? If you look close in the upper corner, I have a fabric laying there to see how it would look.
Here is a closer look at the border fabric. It has a small stripe in it, and if I use it, I want to miter the corners. Without the borders it will measure 84 x 96, with a 6 inch border it will measure 96 x 108. So what do you think????

I would love your opinions on the border. I just have too much on my mind right now to even really think about it very much. :)

Merry Christmas!

Kristie

Just a little update...

If I don't get to post again before Christmas, I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and let it be full of Blessings. We, well Richard, finally got all of the ceiling covered in my sewing room and the open part over the living room. A total of 1200 sq ft covered with wood. These are very high ceilings so it doesn't feel dark and heavy. This is the part over my sewing room, part of it was done for a while but he finished it and did all of that over the living room. The beams will be covered with stained wood as soon as we get to it. We just mostly wanted to get the ceiling wood up to cover the insulation. The bookshelf in the photo measures 4x6 ft so that can give you an idea of the size of the room and the ceiling. Still have to install the ceiling fan/light in there, which I don't have yet because it is a Christmas gift from my mom. :) Sorry mom, but I know. LOL!

I tried to get a photo of the ceiling over the living room, but they didn't turn out very well. I'll try that again as soon as I can. Richard is sanding the drywall in my kitchen right now. I can't wait to get that mess cleaned up. After he gets it done and I can get all of that dust and building materials out of there I will start unpacking some of my kitchen stuff. It will look a little odd because my upper cabinets and island are installed. I don't even have cabinet doors on the bottom cabinets, but that's okay with me....for now. :)

I started painting the bathroom the other day and that didn't end well. First, I couldn't get the ladder to fit right in there. It would go in the bathroom but I couldn't get it positioned right so that I could paint around the edges of the ceiling or the very top of the walls. I even tried to stand on a bucket but that didn't work, my ceiling is 8ft and I'm only 5ft tall so you can see the problem. LOL! Richard said he would paint the trim areas as soon as he could get to it, so I decided to go ahead and paint the walls in there. I only got one small section done, the roller was leaving tons of lint/fuzzies all over the wall. I stopped because it looked so bad. I picked up more rollers but haven't had a chance to get back to it yet.

Hunter was sick for a few days. He is feeling so much better now, but he had a chest cold and cough. I couldn't go out to the house and work because I didn't want to leave him in here by himself and didn't want him going in and out in the cooler weather. So while I was in here with him, I packed up more stuff. It is a bad sign when you have packed for what seems like forever and you still can't tell that anything is gone. :( Most of what is packed up is stuff out of cabinets, under beds, closets, and stuff like that.

I guess that is enough about the house, this is what I have been doing this morning....making my Goat Milk Soap gift baskets for gifts. I think there are a total of 20 of them all ready to go!

Late last night Richard was putting some trim up on the living room ceiling to finish it and while he was doing that, I loaded a quilt on the frame. I know, I know, I said I was done, but......all of my customer quilts that needed to be done before Christmas are done but I had forgotten that I still needed to quilt 3 large lap/twin size quilts for my brothers little kids for Christmas. :( Which I've still got a little while because we will not have Christmas with them until Mom gets home which will be about a week after Christmas. I haven't started the quilting, I just loaded it on.

That's all for now....back to packing....
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

Weekend progress...

Our weekend started Friday evening by going to the high school football game. It was the last home game of the season. Hunter and several other kids were being "recognized" during halftime for scoring so high on their CATS and MAP testing at school. Hunter and I were ready to go when Richard got home, he had just enough time to eat and change clothes. Little did Hunter know that Andrew was going to be there too! I thought Hunter was going to cry when he saw his brother at the game, he misses him so much. I don't think Andrew would have missed it for anything, he is proud of his little brother too. I woke up Saturday morning and felt like poop! :( I think I may be getting a cold or something. I've not really done anything this weekend other than lay around the house. I had so many quilty things that I wanted to accomplish this weekend but that did not happen. Why is it that when you have something that really needs to be done and finished you find every excuse in the world not to do it? I had planned on binding that Camo crib blanket, making the two matching pillows and making the bumper pad for the crib. Anyway, none of that happened! :( I figure that I really need to sit down and concentrate on cutting and piecing that bumper pad. I don't think it will be hard but I don't want to mess it up. I just didn't feel like I could concentrate on it this weekend. So what did I do??? Something really dumb!!!

I started on my Red/White quilt!!! I know it was very silly of me but I did it anyway. I wasn't even ready to start it, I don't even have all of the fabrics yet! How silly is that? I have a ton of other things that need to be finished but crazy me started this thing. I didn't actually get very much of it done. I need 128 of these blocks and I think I only got 32 of them done. I promise that this will NOT turn into a UFO! I really like this quilt and I planned on making it AFTER I got my holiday sewing done.

Here is a photo of the quilt that I plan on making.

I did end up making 9 of these bowls! I took the photo before I finished the others. I plan on filling them with some of my homemade Goat Milk Soap and giving as Christmas gifts this year. I guess I will make up about 20 of them. So that is about all of my weekend so far. I think we are having some good friends coming over in a little while for a visit, so I had better spruce up the house.

Kristie

Fleece Crib Blanket....Quilted

This weekend I got a total of 4 pot holders finished and have several more that just need the binding finished up on them. I just love making these little things. Today I finally braved the camo fleece crib quilt that I was so nervous about. I've worked with fleece and minkee before but not together and this brown has about a 1/2" nap so I wasn't sure how well that it would quilt or even if my machine would quilt it with a batting between them. Would you believe that it quilted up perfect!?!

The camo fleece is actually the front and the brown fuzzy is the back. I loaded it on the frame with the brown on top because I was afraid that the longer nap on it might mess with my bobbin.
Anyway, not one problem! I was so happy! No thread breaks, no skips....nothing! Now why can't everything else go that smooth??? I still need to square it up and do the binding on it. I also need to make the matching bumper pad for the crib and two camo pillows.

I'm starting to work on some Christmas gifts now. Tonight I plan on cutting out one of those little fabric panel story books for my great nephew. He just turned "1" a couple of weeks ago. I've never put one of these together but they don't look that hard. That will be one thing that I can mark off my list.

Kristie

If only I had the time...

I had such plans for today but that all changed last night when Hunter woke up vomiting. :( It was a long night for us both, we spent most of the night on the couch and he ran back and forth to the bathroom throwing up. Needless to say, he did not go to school today. When Hunter gets sick he wants his "MOMMY" which is great for me. I don't like for him to be sick but I do love that he thinks he can't be without me. My sister works at the local pediatrician's office and I was telling her about him this morning and she said that they had a ton of kids coming in with the same stomach bug. Anyway....he seems to be feeling a little better right now he just says his "belly feels hot"

I had planned on quilting that camo fleece baby blanket this morning and loading another one on this afternoon but Hunter comes first. So I just thought I would update you on what I do have done. Remember my 4 Patch Flips that I was cutting out? Well, I cut 3 out of 4 out and got the blocks pieced for them. Hopefully this evening I can get at least one of the tops completed.

Here are 60 blocks enough for 2 lap quilts of these warmer tones.

Here is the pile of 30 bright blocks. Here is where I was trying to arrange some of them. I will probably try to get this one pieced tonight since I have already figured out my block placement with it. Then I just need to dig out borders for all 3 of them.
I still have my pile of blue scraps that I will cut out the 4th one in a few days. So in the end I'm hoping to have 4 lap size quilts to have on hand for last minute Christmas gifts, and not to mention I've cleared a ton out of my scrap basket.

I ran on to my box of pot holder blocks that I was working on last Christmas. I pieced a bunch of blocks from my string bin to make some pot holders for gifts and of course a few for myself. :) I found 22 more of the string blocks today that I had put away. I squared them up and they are ready to finish. I actually thought about piecing a few more and just making another lap size quilt but just decided to stick with the pot holders since I already have the 3/4 other lap quilts going. Here I went ahead and dug out some scrap cotton batting and my insulbright batting and layered them with some scrap backings that I had leftover from machine quilting. This orange was leftover from Hunter's Halloween quilt.

I'm hoping to work on the potholders later tonight, if I have time and Hunter is better. I didn't have enough scrap cotton batting for all 22 of them I think I ended up with 8 or so.

I'm sure I'm not the only quilter to feel this way but I am just itching to start a ton of new projects. Some of them I don't even have fabrics for yet, others are BIG projects that I think I would only to be able to work on it and nothing else. I want to start on this Red/White Quilt, I want to work on Andrew's Red and White Quilt, also that Scrap Quilt on the cover of Quilt Magazine. I've slowly started cutting on this one, just a little at a time as I am cutting other things from my Civil War stash. Oh and I can't forget.....I need to finish this. I have all 224 blocks pieced and sew into blocks of 4, now they just need to be pieced into a quilt top and the borders added. Oh......and I need to try to find more of this navy fabric so that I can finish this quilt. My mind is going a million miles an hour but my body can't keep up! :(

All of the leaves have turned their pretty fall colors. This is my favorite time of year but it always seems like it just goes from Summer to Winter. I will Fall would last a little longer. I took a few photos from the yard. Yesterday it rained and today it is windy and most of the leaves have fallen. :(

I guess that is all for this post, I need to get supper finished, work on doing some laundry and all of that stuff so that I can get back to quilting tonight...

Kristie