This and That...

I got my customer quilt quilted and off the frame at the last minute. I still need to do the binding on it and it will be ready to be picked up. Got my frame took apart and moved to the new house, but still need to put it back together again and get back to quilting. I have a few more customer quilts to do.


I did get my new couch and chair on Saturday! I was so excited since this was the first new set that I had gotten in 17+ years! I just wish that I was moving it in the new house and not in here but hopefully in a few more months I can move it out to the house.

Well.....Andrew turned 18 on the 24th of Feb. He is still in high school and doing great, still making the honor roll. Already enrolled in college for Fall. He needed something dependable to drive back and forth to school in the Fall so here is what he got yesterday!!!! A Nissan Frontier! He loves it and he bought it with HIS own money!!! I'll post photos of him with his truck as soon as I can catch him home! Hehehehe! All he wants to do is drive. I'm sure all of that will change when he has to fill it back up with gas again.
As far as quilting.....I have a big mess right now. Trying to sort through some of this stuff and move part of it on out to the house. Well, I'm moving quilting stuff that I don't think I will need for a while. Finding some things that I didn't remember having, so that is sort of fun. I have found a zillion UFO's! :( Some of them that I want to finish and others that I'm not sure about. I did find one that has all of the blocks pieced they just need to be sewn together into a quilt top, so I may work on that.
Kristie

3AM...

Why am I still awake at 3am??? Well this is why...my blood pressure is 128/105. It has been running high like that for a month or so. I take medication for it but usually after a while it stops working and I have to have it changed or adjusted. I went to bed but got back up because I was having some pressure in my chest, headache and felt like I was smothering while I was laying down so I got up. Feeling much better now and my BP has dropped back down to 124/90 so I will probably go back to bed soon.

So what have I been doing??? Quilting of course...and watching tv. Yesterday I got a few more spools of thread in and wanted to try it out. This is Monopoly and Bottom Line. I had not tried the Monopoly myself and wanted to see how it would sew on my machine. I have a quilt of my own that I want to quilt with it, but it may be a couple of months before I get to it. I had never tried any type of invisible thread before.
I used this little thing to practice on. I made it a while back out of fabric samples. It measures 24x30. No fancy quilting, just wanted to try this stuff out. I used Monopoly on top and Bottom Line in the bobbin and they worked perfectly. The only thing I think I will do differently when I do my bigger quilt is use a smaller needle. I didn't change the needle that I had in the machine and you can see the holes. Anyway, I am very pleased with it. Hopefully I will work on the binding tomorrow.It is now almost 3:30am, I think I will bake me a little pizza, finish this movie that is on and then head to bed. Good night...

Kristie

Why O' Why??

Why do I keep finding things that I want to make??? After yesterday's post I had made a list of what I wanted to try to get done this week and this month! I have lists laying all over the place. A few years ago, the doctor told me that I had adult ADD. So I will use that as an excuse as to why that I have a hard time concentrating on projects and getting them finished before I jump to something else. :) Actually, I think most quilters have "quiltiers ADD", don't you? I have a few customer quilts so they take top priority. I HAVE TO GET THOSE FINISHED!!!

This morning while in town, I picked up the March/April 2011 issue of McCall's Quilting. After thumbing through it, I found something that I really want to make!!! I think this would be the perfect thing for my mom! Since she had her surgery, she chills a lot and of course can't move her arm very well to get a jacket or sweater on, so this would be perfect for her. I just wished that I had found this pattern sooner, so that she could have had it when she first had her shoulder surgery done.

It is a QUILTED SHAWL! How neat is that?
Here is what it looks like laying flat. It also has big pockets on each end.

I'm thinking that I will work on one of these as soon as I get these customer quilts quilted. This only being about 24 inches wide it wouldn't take but just a few minutes to quilt up. Mmmmmm....I'm also thinking Christmas gifts for this year. Maybe for Richard's grandmother...

I was craving chocolate earlier so I made some of these, chocolate drizzled pretzels! Yum! They are soooooooo good. Not sure how many I will get since Richard and Hunter were picking and eating them before the chocolate hardened. :)

Back to quilting....

Kristie

A Better Day

I'm in a much better mood today than yesterday. LOL! I'm sure Richard is happy about that. Oh well, I guess everyone has days like that. I slept in this morning and it felt great but wasted alot of my day. There has not been any school at all this week so far and probably will not be.

Today I did manage sewing the center part of the blocks for Bonnie's Mystery quilt. I don't have all of the 600 half square triangles finished yet so I will have to work on those maybe tomorrow. I have loved how everyone elses mystery quilts are turning out so that makes me that much more excited to get mine finished.

Oh and this morning I did cut up all of those pieces of scraps that I sorted the other day. I cut them into usable sizes and put them away. But I do have more sorting to do so there will be a bunch more scraps.

This evening for supper I fixed a huge pan of baked spaghetti and garlic toast. We had plenty so I had Richard to take out some to Mom and Chantal so they would not have to cook this evening. Then after supper Hunter was asking for something sweet.....so I made a batch of these...

"No Bake Cookies" We all love them and I'm sure most everyone in blogland has ate them. I can remember that mom used to make them for us all of the time when we were growing up. They are my favorite too. They are almost gone already!

Oh....and I am punishing Richard for calling me "CRANKY" yesterday...he is watching "Gone With the Wind" with me right now!!! LOL! My favorite movie and he hates it!!! LOL! That will teach him to call me CRANKY!

Kristie

Block of the Day!

Just wanted to let you know that the Quilt Pro Systems website has a Block Of The Day. Just sign up at their website and you will get a new block pattern sent to your email once a day!!!
Kristie

Well, Heck Ole Betsy!

Yep! "Heck Ole Betsy" is something that I say all of the time when I get excited! :) Anyway, I was thumbing through the channels on the tv and I think it was on the PBS channel or something, I ran onto a show called "America Sews with Sue Hausmann" Now I have never watched this so I watched it as I was cleaning the living room. I know that I need another project like I need another hole in my head but I thought this was the neatest thing!

A Patchwork Rug!!!! So I got on the internet and looked up her show and found the exact directions to post on here. Maybe some of you all would like to have the directions too! I will certainly be making some of these for my new house!!!!
Kristie

Not Going To Be A Good Day!

This is my blood pressure reading this morning! 140/111 I noticed when I first got up this morning that I did not feel well and felt some heaviness in my chest. I take 2 blood pressure pills a day and this is how high it is this morning. Needless to say this is not going to be a very productive day for me. Just lots of rest and probably no sewing. And as bad as I hate to say it, if it doesn't go down, I'll probably go to the doctor. Stresses me out more knowing that I DON'T have health insurance! :( I figure this is all due to stress anyway.
Kristie

This and That

As most of you know we have lost several animals over the past few weeks. It has been very hard on all of us, like a lot of people we are very attached to our babies and they become more like family instead of pets. One of the pets that we lost was a beagle that was Andrews. Loving rabbit hunting like he does, he asked for another beagle for Christmas. So I had told him to look around for one. So long story short, Sunday afternoon we drove to pick up his Christmas gift! A new beagle!!!! This is not a good photo of the dog, we had just got him out of the truck and he was wanting to check everything out and Andrew was trying to hold him still so that I could take the photo. Anyway, Andrew is happy!!!! I told him that Christmas morning he would have to bring the dog up on the porch so that I could tie a bow around his neck so that he would remember that the dog was his Christmas gift!!! :) Of course, I will try to get him a couple of other little things to open too, like clothes!! Do you know how many clothes that a 16yr old boy goes through? He wears them into rags!
Now for some Donkey photos! Here he is snoozing in a LITTLE shoebox that I was storing quilt pieces in. He doesn't look comfortable to me, but he sure did sleep a long time! :)

Here he is snoozing again, this time on his new quilt that I made him. :)
And here he is getting in the way while I was trying to work on this wreath. I think he was trying to get the cord to my glue gun that is hanging there.

I had made this wreath for mom about 13 years ago and it had fell apart after so many years. So we striped everything off of it and started over. This morning while we were at Hobby Lobby she picked up some new things for it, the grapevine was still in wonderful shape so it just needed redecorating. So that is what I was trying to do, when Donkey kept getting in the way.

And here is the wreath after it was finished! Don't know why is looks so bright, but it is not as bright as it looks. Maybe I should have turned my flash off. The wreath measures 30" so it is pretty big. Now it is back at mom's and hanging over her fireplace.
Now I am off to bed, and hopefully tomorrow I can get some quilting done. I picked up some batting today while at Hobby Lobby for some customer quilts that I need to get quilted. I have one on the frame now and 3 customer quilts that need quilted also.
Kristie

Quilt Of The Month!

First off, still no sign of Jazz! My boys are heartbroke! :( But I do have some good news!! I have stopped Ole Jim's antibiotics!!! He seems to be doing a lot better but he did lose a lot of weight and it will be hard to get that back on him.

I have been so sleepy today, I guess from lack of sleep last night. I had to make my weekly trip to town today. :( That makes for a long day. I also had to go pick up Richard's sawmill blades from being sharpened. While I was up that way, I stopped by Walmart! Got some good deals!!!!

I'm not big on buying Holiday fabrics, mostly because I don't know what to do with them. I'm never sure what pattern to make and stuff. But today at Walmart, they had 2 Halloween fabrics marked down on clearance for .60 per yard!! I bought all that was left on both bolts!!! So I ended up with a total of 8 1/2yds of Halloween fabric for $5!
Not all Walmart's have the Quilt Of The Month pattern and fabrics but this one does. I like to get it when I can. It usually sells out fast! Here is the photo of the pattern and here is the link to the website where you can print it if you want and they also have a lot of past month patterns on there too. I really like the fabrics in this quilt! I scanned them so that you can see what they look like! A great deal for $2.44 yd! I'm not sure when I will make it, but I will get to it someday!

After I got back home and put all the groceries away, I took a much needed nap! After that it was time to go pick up my MOM!!! I was so glad to see her! It is hard when she is gone 28 days at a time, but it is also nice when she is home for 28 days! She will be home for Thanksgiving, but she will be gone during Christmas! :( That breaks my heart. Christmas 2007 was the first Christmas that we all had not been together. We will have Christmas with mom when she gets back home in January.

No sewing for me today! I haven't had time and if I sat down long enough to sew, I would probably fall out of the chair....I am that sleepy!
Kristie