Weekend update...

Still waiting on my machine but the tracking number shows that it should be delivered TOMORROW!!! That is good news! Actually since I live out in the middle of nowhere, UPS usually doesn't get up here until late in the evening, but that's okay, at least it will be here.

I really haven't been in the mood to sew. I guess I was just stressed over that machine. My spiderweb quilt still looks like this... It hasn't been touched since I last posted. I will probably finish it up in the morning so that I can have it out of the way and my sewing room cleaned up for when my machine arrives.
And since I really don't have anything quilty to show you, I found this quilt that was saved on my computer that I did several years ago. :) Sorry that the photo is sideways but you still get the idea of it. I just love this simple pattern, it goes together so quick and works great with scraps too. I've made a few using this pattern. Now on to other things...Here is a photo of my boys yesterday. I think they were playing games on Andrew's IPhone. I love my kids and I am the happiest when we are all home together. BTW...you can see my log cabin is still hanging on the wall in the background. It is still unfinished. All I have to do it sew the borders on it and the worst part is....I already have them cut, but just too lazy to sew them on. :( Here is Hunter that I just snapped a few minutes ago. He is such a sweetie. After Church this morning, Hunter rode home with a friend to play for a little while and Richard and I drove in to town to visit with his mom and grandmother and make a quick stop by the grocery store. Anyway, Hunter is back home now and Richard is gone to Church for the evening service. I didn't go because I had a slight backache. I know that really isn't a good excuse but still that is why I didn't go tonight.

I mentioned that I stopped by the grocery store while in town, I needed a few HOT peppers. I woke up this morning wanting some Mexican cornbread so bad that I could almost taste it. I had everything except for the hot peppers. It is made and I am just waiting for it to cool just a little so that I can get started eating it. :) That's all for tonight. I'm off to eat some Mexican cornbread....Oh and I will leave you will a photo of the little spoiled girl that I have been babysitting 5 days a week for that past couple of weeks......My sister's dog, Zoey! She is so spoiled. Anyway, she has seizures really bad and they had switched her meds and my sister is afraid to leave her alone while she is gone to work. My doggies love to play with her.
Kristie

My first 3 blocks...

This being Saturday and the fact that we didn't have alot planned we slept in this morning! I just hate when we do that, I always end up with a headache. We actually slept until 7:30am!! :) We are always up somewhere between 5:30am to 6am everyday. Anyway, Richard and I got up and I let Hunter sleep in until breakfast was finished. We ate and Hunter and I headed to town. I had a few errands to do, grocery shopping and had to pick up a load of horse feed.

After we got back and got everything put away, I had to take a break because my back and side were hurting. I have an appointment with a GI specialist soon so I'm hoping they can figure this out. After my little rest I cleaned the house up a little bit and went upstairs to my sweat shop.

I worked on a customer quilt for a couple of hours but I just kept looking at the mess that was everywhere up there. So much stuff was piled in the middle of the floor because Richard needed to paint that main wall up there yesterday. I had moved that pile of 100+ quilts into Andrews room and piled them in the corner. He will kill me when he sees that. LOL! I will get there out of there in a day or so, I just needed to move them quickly so he could paint. Today I also moved the loveseat that was in my sewing room to Andrew's room. He had mentioned that he wanted it in there and I wanted it out of my sewing room. Moving it out of there gave me so much more space.

This is the wall space where I had the loveseat and the 100+ quilts piled. I moved the old ironing board and my featherweight over there. I will probably move the thread rack but I just needed to put is somewhere until I cleaned and sorted more stuff. Actually I am thinking that I will end up building me a big design wall and putting it there and moving the ironing board in a few weeks. I want my design wall to have hinges so that I can fold it and put it away when it's not in use or I have company coming over.

I also cleaned off my sewing table. I'm not sure how long it will look like this but right now it looks all clean and neat. I was watching season 1 of the Games Of Thrones as I was cleaning and quilting.

After I cleaning up this side of the room I decided to work on a couple of the Farmer's Wife blocks. This being the weekend I didn't want to work on customer quilts ALL weekend. As of right now with the Sow-A-Long they have a total of 9 blocks done so I would like to get caught up with everyone else.

This block is Block 21 in the book and is called Contrary Wife. A very simple block to do.
This is the second block that I did today. It is Block 6 in the book and is called Big Dipper. I will probably redo this one because I'm not happy with my center. It was an easy block but I'm not sure why my center is off so bad. Here are my first 3 blocks of the Farmer's Wife quilt. These take care of week #1 of the Sow-A-long. After that I went back to cleaning and sorting. I saw this on a blog the other day and I thought this would be a great way for me to sort my scraps. I saw it here! She has a ton of fabrics and scraps, I'm amazed on how she organized it all. I picked up a couple of these little containers this morning at Walmart and got started with a few of my scraps. Right now they are piled in baskets and big totes on the floor and it is hard to find anything. These are pieces that are smaller than a fat quarter, leftover border pieces and stuff like that, but things that are too big that I don't want to cut up as strips or small squares and sort them in other tubs. I have other totes that hold strips of 2.5", 2", and a few other strip sizes and also precut squares that I like to use for scrap quilts. I already had a bunch of comic book boards that I had bought and wrapped some of my fabrics that are in my drawers. I cut those up into 2.5" strips so that I could wrap the scraps around them and they would fit in my containers. As I get more of them wrapped I will sort more by color and add more containers. I'm thinking that I may store these containers on the back side of my sewing table. My table is 36" wide so I could put them on the back side of the table against the wall and they would be in view from my machine and easy to get to them when I needed to.
While I was doing my thing today Richard worked more on our stair post. He even did more on it after I took this photo but it is almost ready for stain. You can see that he sanded more on it today while he worked because it is all over the stairs again. :( I'm really pleased with his work and he has made every piece of it....the trim and all, even the small dental mold on it.
After he worked on the post and did some farm work outside he had some "special time" with Hunter. Hunter wanted Richard to play the PS3 with him. Please don't look at the messy room. Trust me it doesn't always look like this. :)

Mom and Chantal came back out this evening because Chantal wanted Richard to help her trim up her dog's hair. Giggle....she has a FAT poodle that was hot because she had too much hair and needed it cut. They did that while mom and I watched them and talked. After they left I warmed up leftover lasagna for supper and that was it. Tomorrow will be a busy day....Church in the morning then going to visit Richard's 91 year old grandmother, then Church again at 7pm. Then Monday morning will be back to work on customer quilts for me!!!!!!

Kristie

Sleepless nights have paid off...

Another sleepless night...it is 1:08am and I am wide awake! :( This is driving me crazy! So I've done what I always do when I can't sleep, SEW! They are all finished! All 224 Courthouse Steps!! Can you believe that???

224!!!

I never meant to finish these anytime soon but there is nothing else to do during these sleepless nights except to work on them. All of my other sewing projects and fabrics are in the new house, so the only thing that I have in here is one machine, these strips, mat/ruler/rotary cutter.
Now I don't have a clue as to when I will sew these together. There are so many of them that I will probably take them out to the new house so I will have plenty of room to lay them all out. But first I have some other things that need to be finished up that are already out there waiting for me. I mentioned before that I was paper piecing these and I'll tell you why. Most of these pieces were just scraps and some where strips. The scraps were all just a bunch of odd sizes and I really didn't want to go through the whole part of measuring every little piece. This way I could just pick it up and sew, perfect when you can't sleep and are too tired to concentrate. :) Anyway, I made a huge mess when I was trimming them up and Donkey had to get right under my feet. I looked down and he was covered! LOL! Crazy cat! Poor Donkey is not doing too well, he has glaucoma and it is pretty bad so I don't let him outside much now. I'm afraid that he will not be able to see well and get hurt. So he now spends his days inside doing exactly this...
And of course, Jasper had to get a pic taken too! Isn't he so cute? I didn't get a photo of Smokey but he was snoozing in the recliner and snoring very loud! :)And last a photo of Zoey before she went home. Hunter had some clothes and a quilt on the couch and Zoey just made a bed out of them. She was so happy to see my sister when she picked her up. I'm off to clean up my mess and maybe do some laundry or watch some tv.
Kristie

Meet Zoey!

This is Zoey! She belongs to my sister Chantal. I am dog sitting for a couple of days. She is the sweetest thing. She is soooooo fat! She has FAT ROLLS! And when she wears her bikini she has a "muffin top" LOL! She has a huge fat roll that hangs out over the bottom part. :) Most times she has her tongue out panting, so funny. She is not so big that she is unhealthy, just "pleasantly plump"

She thinks she is human too! I swear she does. I laugh at her every time that I am out to mom's house. She will only drink bottled water and loves her clothes, it's almost as if she feels naked without them and is embarrassed. Anyway, I love her and enjoy dog sitting her. Smokey and Jazz just love her. I tried to get a photo of them together so that you could actually get an idea of her size, but I can't keep them still long enough.

My silly sister is on her way to Virginia Beach! My first reaction was...."silly girl, don't you know there is a hurricane on the way?" LOL! Actually She and Ronnie are on their way out there to buy some kind of a boat motor about 20 minutes from the beach. They may drive on to the beach if the weather is not too bad, they have been on the road for about 4.5 hours so far. Anyway, hope they stay safe and they should be back late Saturday night.

As far as quilting goes....NOTHING! Lol! Actually, late last night I did try working on a table runner. I am trying to take apart an antique quilt top that most of the seams have came apart. I was trying to repair some of the blocks last night and found that some of the fabric was shredding from my stitches. So I will probably try to figure out some on it today.

Andrew loves college so far! He calls me all of the time so that makes me feel better. I'm sure he knows how much I worry and miss him and I can't help but thinking (hoping) that he misses me too. :)

Kristie