Will this be the one?

 I got all 20 of my big strip sets finished!!! 

 I was hoping that I would get them done yesterday and I did!

 Now I am moving on to the next step of making 17 of the small strip sets that consist of 4 strips.  I will get those done today...hopefully.

 A few of you have asked what the quilt is going to look like (hopefully) and here is a photo of the original. 

 This is a Edyta Sitar design for Laundry Basket Quilts that she is doing as a Craftsy class.  The quilt it called, Trail Mix.  

I'm sure that this quilt will take me a while but I am not in a hurry.  Lots of pieces in this one!  I will consider this my Fall/Winter machine project.  I always have lots of hand sewing projects in the works but I will consider this one my main machine project right now.  

I have this quilt hanging on my upstairs balcony wall.  I've had it there since we moved in.  As you can see in the photos below the house was not finished or the wall painted.  :)

 That is 22ft to the ceiling so I want something that will be substantial. 

I've been thinking that I need to change it....will this be the quilt that I replace it with???????  I don't know, I will have to wait and see. 

Log Cabin top....COMPLETE!!!!

Hunter had a dentist appointment first thing this morning, all went well, I suppose.  No cavities at all, but his problem is his baby teeth will not loosen up so that his permanent teeth can come through.  So they are having to pull them one by one.  So he is finished for now and has to go back in November for a cleaning.

My thread order finally came this evening.  I was beginning to think they were not delivering it today but it finally showed up around 5:30pm.  I already had the quilt top loaded on the frame and have just been waiting for the thread.  I went ahead and got all of my bobbins ready and such.  So now I am ready to start first thing in the morning.  I hope to get a lot of it done tomorrow.

Richard still isn't home yet.  It is 9:20pm and he is still working in the hay field.  I know he will be exhausted and hungry.  Hunter is at Church for VBS again tonight.  He had a wonderful time last night and that was all he talked about.

So while I was waiting for my thread to arrive this afternoon I decided to finally get my borders sewn on my big log cabin quilt!  I don't know what it is about borders but seem like a have several tops that just need borders on them.  If you remember back in April, I pieced the center of the top and was trying to decide on borders.  I decided to go with the blue in the end.  Here it is on Andrew's bed!  Andrew's room is right beside my sewing room so I use it sometimes to lay my quilts out while he is at work.  :)  BTW...you can see Andrew's deer mount and wild boar that is still on his couch.  I'm trying to wait until I get his walls painted before I hang them up in there.

I know this is an odd angle but you can see the quilt is pretty big.  His bed is a queen.

Still not the best photo but here is it hanging up on the wall.  It isn't really straight on there but it is so heavy I was afraid to do much with it on the wall, I didn't want to stretch it.  In total, it has over 2900 pieces in it.  The finished size is 96 x 112.  I can't wait to get it quilted but I have several that belong to others that I need to quilt first.  I looked back on my blog and the last quilt that I quilted of my own was back on the 4th of January!!!  WOW!!  I didn't realize it had been that long.  Actually I had even started quilting it before Christmas and just got it done in January, the move in the house, slowed the quilting down on it.

I am so pleased to have this top finished.  I know it still needs quilted but it will be a while before I can do that.  Right now I'm just happy the top is finished!!!  

It is 9:47pm and Richard just walked in the door and went straight to the shower!  Got to go warm up his supper!!!!

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

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

A little Progress...

Today has been a busy day but I really didn't accomplish anything. Ever have one of those days? Richard was home today and decided to paint everything is a big mess around here. I'll show paint photos later in this post but right now I will talk about quilting...

First off, I've decided that I am not going to post about customer quilts in every post that I do. Trust me, I am working on customer quilts somewhere around 4-5 days a week, sometimes 6 days a week. Anyway, I figure I will post about them every couple of weeks or so and show a bunch of photos of them in one post. I do enjoy machine quilting and showing the quilts that I do for others but this blog was started years ago because I wanted to share my stuff, my family and our farm life, I miss talking about that stuff. As it is right now, I do the machine quilting through the day and take breaks every little bit to let my legs rest and instead of going downstairs I will work on a block or two of my own stuff. Also if you have read my blog for a few years you will know that every once in a while I take a spell of not being able to sleep at night and do alot of sewing then. The past several nights I've had trouble sleeping again and since my sewing room is directly above the master bedroom I can't use my quilting machine during the night because I don't want to wake Richard up. My regular sewing machine is not as loud as my quilting machine so I am able to do a little sewing then. So here it goes...

Here are my log cabin blocks! I counted and I have a total of 140 of them finished and I need 28 more of them to piece the design that I want. I'm getting anxious to get them finished.

And as bad as I hate to say it.....I broke over and bought the Farmer's Wife book!!! I know I really shouldn't have but I did it any way. I am going to try to catch up on Randy's Sow-A-Long. I think they have 9 blocks of it finished right now and tonight I pieced one of them.

Here is my first block. It is Basket Weave. I must say that I love the look of the finished quilt in the book but I absolutely don't like how the book is setup. It shows the blocks, then you have to flip on back through the book to see how it is pieced and then there is a cd with the templates that you can print but there are no cutting sizes in it. The blocks all seem to be common blocks and would be very easy to figure up the sizes for the pieces but just aggravating that you would have to do that and it not in the book with the blocks. Oh well....just my opinion. I'm almost embarrassed to show this but look what I found today all wrinkled up....my Civil War Love Letter quilt top. It will take me hours on end to press this thing. :( All 121 blocks are pieced and sashed, I just need to sew the outer border on it and quilt it. The sad thing is, it has been at this point for a few years now and all it needs is the outer border on it and it is even a solid border. I even have the fabric for it. This will be something that I plan on getting done soon. Here is an upclose shot of one of the blocks. They are all pieced in pinks and browns. I love this quilt.
Now on to Richard's painting....this is the stairway wall. He worked a little more on the stairway post today too. See all of the dust on the stairs? He was sanding on the post and I hadn't swept it up yet. Anyway, he has more of the post done now and hopefully it will be done in a few days and we can start on the railing.
This is upstairs. This wall is a 40 ft wall that goes down the center of the upstairs. You can see it is still dusty up there. The door on the end will open to an upstairs balcony out there....someday. :) If you look close you can see all of the mess that I have stored in the guest room up there too. We still have tons of trim to do but I am pleased with the painting so far. This is the same color that will go in my sewing room too. He has part of it painted but I'll show it after it is finished.
Mom and my sister, Chantal came out for supper this evening. I made a big lasagna! Mom has been sick for a week or so but is starting to get a little better. She has bronchitis. I guess that is all for tonight......
Kristie

Weekly update...

I mentioned in my last post a week ago that my back was hurting pretty bad and didn't know why.....well....that night I ended up at the ER. I just went to our little local hospital and they are not that great but I just didn't feel like making the hour trip to the other hospital. When we got there their first question was, "have you ever had a kidney stone?" I was in severe pain at the time so my BP was over the moon. Short story....my pain was in my left lower back and hurting through to the front side, but most of the pain was in my back. They did blood work, urine tests, and a CT scan. No kidney stones! But something did show up on my ovary. So then they did a pelvic ultrasound and told me that I had a 4.1cm cyst on my RIGHT ovary and sent me home. Well, that still did not explain why I was having so much pain on my left side and as a matter of fact, I have no pain whatsoever on my right side. They told me to follow up with my family doctor and gynecologist.

Tuesday I saw my family doctor. Still don't have a clue why I am having so much pain on my left side. He gave me some pain medication, muscle relaxers and set me up for physical therapy starting on the 20th.

This afternoon, I had an appointment with my gynecologist. Still don't know anything really other than I am to have another pelvic ultrasound in 2 months. She said by the size of it, she really didn't think it would go away on it's own. So I guess I will know more about that in 2 months. As far as the pain in my left side, she mentioned something about diverticulitis. My mom has that problem once in a while. So now I guess I will be going for more tests next week.

As for now, I am still in pain, not nothing like it was Thursday night. It is just hurting just enough to drive me crazy. It's all not a big deal, just slows me down on things that I need to do.

Very little sewing has been going on but alot of laying on the couch and in the bed! LOL! I sew at the frame for a few minutes and then have to lay down, I am more comfortable laying down instead of sitting. I've had the same quilt on the frame for a few days and I really need to get it off soon.

I have sewn a few more log cabin blocks. I now have 100 of them done. I have a design planned that will take 168 blocks so I need to get the other 68 of them done. I really like working on these blocks.
I used EQ to figure out the design that I wanted to use. My stupid computer has had the lick and I've lost some of my programs and EQ was one of them. Now my problem is that I can't find my disk to reinstall it! With all of this moving stuff going on, who knows where it is. I just love playing around with EQ so now I'm a little down that I don't have it on here anymore. The good thing is, I still kinda remember how I was going to set up the blocks for this log cabin quilt.

I know this post is not that interesting to most of you, but hopefully I will be back in a couple of days with more quilty news!
Kristie

More Progress...

Today was a much better day...at least for me. :) I'm sure Andrew would not agree with that, he is soooo sore. The day after is so much worse, that is when the soreness sets in. He still still finding bumps and bruises everywhere, but he will be fine, thank God. This evening, Hunter crashed on his bicycle and skinned his little arm. Nothing major but he needed loved on too. :)I did get some sewing done late last night (I couldn't sleep) and today. I'm working on a customer quilt too. I'll post a photo of it tomorrow. I think she said it was called "Happy Hour" I'll have to look at the paperwork to make sure, anyway it is cute.

I worked on more log cabin blocks last night. I now have 50 of them and I still haven't decided on a setting for it yet. I'll decide on that later, right now I just want to get all of the blocks made. As I was sewing my log cabin blocks, I decided to play around with a pattern that I've had for a while. It is called Everlasting Wreaths. I got it at Laundry Basket Quilts and it is by Edyta Sitar, she has beautiful patterns. I'm thinking that I will just leave this by my machine and that way I can make one or two while I am working on something else.

After I get several more blocks made I will switch the blocks around so that I don't have the same fabrics so close in the quilt. I just wanted to show you how it was looking so far.
I mentioned the other day that I was thinking about using my Courthouse Steps on my bed. I put it on there to see how well it would fit.
I like it on there pretty good. Now I can't wait to get my walls and bed painted and it quilted!! It was a little long but I just tucked it up under the pillows sorta like a bedspread. I would rather have a quilt that is too big than not big enough. That's all that I have for today! Hopefully tomorrow I will have more quilty stuff to show you!!!

Kristie