Cutting the day away...

This morning didn't start out as I had planned. Seems that Richard and I had different plans for today. You see, I had planned on getting up early, getting all of my chores done and put a quilt on the frame. But that didn't happen! Richard had planned on getting up early, getting his chores done and sanding the drywall upstairs and my frame is up there. So with all of that dust I could not load a quilt on the frame. I will have to wait until he gets all of the sanding done on the second level before I can do that, just too much drywall dust.

So I ended up taking a bucket and a scrub brush and scrubbing the floor in front of my cabinets and around the wall in my kitchen of our current place. It was horrid!! I was ashamed once I started that I had let it get that bad. That took me forever and now my back and knees are paying for it, but at least my kitchen floor looks better.

After that mess, I went to the mailbox and my Dresden Plate ruler/template had came today. So I started digging through scraps! This is what I got cut today.......over 400 wedges!! Enough to make 20 blocks!This is only part of them. All of the pieces were cut from my scrap bin and didn't have to cut into my yardage so that made me feel great to be able to use those pieces first. I'm not going to be in a big hurry with this quilt, I just want to work on it when I want to and enjoy the whole thing. I think I will work on one block at a time. I will piece one block at a time until I get them done and then I will do the applique on them. I'll have to pick up some background fabric when I can too. Kristie

(Sorry about the clipart but I could not get this to post with a space between my paragraphs)

Sample Dresden...

We've had very high winds today and now thunderstorms are moving through. We were without power for most of the day today. I had planned on loading a baby quilt or table runner on the frame and quickly quilt it to make sure that my tension was okay before I loaded a customer quilt on but that didn't happen. Like I said we had several hours without power and by the time it came back on, it was time to fix supper. While I had supper on, I played around with these... And ended up with this...The big white circle in the middle is just paper, I was trying to find out what size I would need for the center fabric. I was just practicing to see how it would come out. I printed a paper template off and cut them out with that, it worked okay but if I made a quilt later with these, I would like a different size. I ordered a Dresden Plate Acrylic template a few days ago online and I'm waiting for it to come. I figured it would be cheaper to order it and pay the $2 shipping then it would be to drive 40 minutes and buy one, gas is just too high. I'm not sure what I will do with this sample one unless I make a wall hanging or pillow or something like that with it. I even thought about making a table runner too. I still need to clip all of the little threads and cut out the center circle, I haven't decided on a fabric for that yet. I guess I had better cut this post short, it is storming really bad and my lights are going dim, don't want to lose this post. Kristie

Just tinkering around...

I've had many "family things" going on this past week and just haven't been in the mood to sew. I did work on a little bit of binding but not enough to really show a photo of. But I guess this week I will just suck it up and get back to quilting.....maybe. It's just been a very stressful week.

Anyway...I have been tinkering around and boxing up a few things and moving them out to the house. I figure if I do a little at a time it will not be so overwhelming. Boxed up some China and stuff like that. I had three sets, one set was my grandmother's and the others are just mine. So they are boxed up and out in the house. Not sure what I will do with them, I really don't have a way to display them, I just keep them stacked in the cabinets.

Another thing that I boxed up was these....I'm really embarrassed for you to see all of the dust in that cupboard. I have this little cupboard that is only about 32 inches tall and it has a solid door so you can't see anything in it but when I opened it I was embarrassed by all of the crud/dust in it. I have collected odd china cups over the years. I usually pick them up for about a quarter a piece at the junk store or yard sales. Some of them are not real old but some of them are really old. So these all got washed and packed up and I also cleaned the dust out of the cupboard too.

When I went to get the box to pack these in this is what I found...

I also took my big tote of orphan blocks out to my new sewing room too. There is probably enough orphan blocks in here to make 3 or 4 bedsized quilts. There are also a few stitcheries that I made a few years ago.

I did get my new sewing room cleaned up some in the new house. Richard had a bunch of scraps of sheet rock and plywood piled everywhere in it. Of course, he will still be making more messes in there. He still has to run the electric wire and install my rescessed lighting over my frame and finish mudding and sanding the walls so that I can paint. This will have a wood ceiling so that will have to come later. He doesn't have all of that sawed out yet. Anyway, he had a ton of stuff piled on my frame so I cleaned that off too so now I can pin a quilt on there and get back to quilting. You can see that I have some stuff already stored in there. This is the view of the other side of the room. In the end I will not have all of those supports in there, I will still have a couple of them, but they will be replaced with huge oak beams when the time comes. If you look close you will see that I have some hollow core doors laying in the floor over there. Richard is going to make me a sewing table out of them. I put them over there because I was thinking that I might sit the table there. They measure 36x78 each so that should end up being a good sized sewing table. I'm sure I will be moving everything around once we actually get moved in. But I do know one thing, I don't want anything blocking my window. I love my window and we had such a hard time getting that thing in there it is 4ftx8ft and with me being only 5ft tall, I feel like a midget when I stand in front of it. LOL! I guess that is about all for tonight, hopefully I will be back in a couple of days with some quilting to show you.

Kristie