Decisions, decisions

I've been playing with my diamond string blocks and can't make up my mind which layout I like best. If I do the straight set, it looks good and I have a plan for some borders. But I like the look of the stars. They have to have sashing to show the stars and the center will be square--I have enough for 9 blocks. Because of the amount of fabric I have left from the green and white (it was a border print) I'm thinking I'll use the white for the center sashing and the green for in the borders. Hmmm.

When I thought of making this quilt I was going for the green and white framed blocks. Then I put it on the wall and saw the star and now I don't know what to do. I've looked at the photos on the Quiltville page but no one has made the blocks like I have.

So I will post this and hope someone can tell me what to do. Pretty sneaky, huh??? For now, I'll leave it on the wall, I have other things to work on. Or not.

Design Wall Monday-Week 9

Mondays are my favorite blog day. I love to go to Judy L's Patchwork Times and start clicking links and go blog cruising to see what every one else has on their design walls.

I spent part of a day sorting my scraps again and was inspired to work on my strings project. I love sewing on phonebook pages. This is my newest version of Quiltville's Diamond Strings. I had planned to work on Basket Weave Strings but the Diamond blocks are farther along so I am working on that. I had to sew a few blocks together to see what it will look like. I love when you can turn a couple blocks different and get a new design.

We are having a "heat wave" here this week. Our heat wave consists of 5 days of 95 degree plus and is the top news story of the day. (When we get snow or ice, that's breaking news and we get a flake by flake report.) Anyhow, I am going to do my grocery shopping early this morning, get more onions on the dehydrator, and then I will get to sew the remainder of the day.

Oh, the microwave tray, I don't have to replace it. :) That's a good thing--more fabric money.

Why Must I Learn The Hard Way?

I continue to learn things the hard way. Things I already know. These lessons cost money. Sometimes lots of money!

Ian spent the night last night. I forgot to tell him to put his flip flops up so Tony couldn't get them. This morning as he is getting ready to leave, he couldn't find them. I told him to go look out in the front yard. Yip, there they were, chewed up and ruined. I gave mom money to buy him new ones.

I was grinding wheat for bread this morning. I don't let my Kitchenaid Mixer/grinder run more than 8 minutes so I set the timer. OK, I have had the microwave for over a year. Do I know how to use all the stupid buttons??? Yeah, but I didn't pay attention this morning and thought I pushed the timer button, pushed the time and start. The mixer was running and Ian and I were talking. I looked up to see how much time was left and noticed the light was on inside the microwave and there was a little flame!!! Holy crap! So I opened the door, blew out the flame and look what I saw. I've ruined my turntable and the little turner thing. So no microwave.

I wonder how much this will cost me.........and how much crap am I going to take from hubby? NONE, I tell ya, I will take none!

Summer Time...

...and the livin' is easy

Design Wall-Week 8

I did it, I caved in and started a new project. Last year sometime, I started playing with the graph paper and crayons. I worked this scrappy quilt top out to use some of my batik strips. Yesterday after finishing the baby quilt, I decided I would try to make up a block or two. Well, I sat down, cut all the pieces, sewed up the 12 6" blocks and put them on the design wall.

After hearing hubby snore, I knew I had a good hour to sew up a few of the long blocks before I had to fix dinner. After 8 of them were done, I put them up. I don't know how this is going to turn out. I think it will turn out great, but will I like it?

You see, I am not much of a batik fan. Don't get me wrong, there are some gorgeous batiks. But there are also some just butt ugly batiks. I have lots of the ugly ones. We have been swapping batik strips at our retreats for a few years--2 or 3 retreats a year. I have a small collection so I pulled out all the batiks with designs on them.....you know the surfer, flip flops, flowers, swirls, the ones that look rather ummmm pukie. But I am going to keep working on it, rearranging the blocks and make the quilt. Someone is going to love it. Who knows, it may even be me.

Go on over to Patchwork Times and see what others have on their wall.

Do You Ever Wonder Why???

Why does blogger not let me upload pictures in the direction I want them? Or why did I put this little baby quilt away and not finish it? Well it's finished now. It took about 4 hours to load it, quilt it, bind it and machine stitch the binding down. Now I will give it to Clella like I had planned to last year!

I wonder why I have spent the last 45 minutes reading my old posts to find where I had written about this quilt top. And no, I didn't find what I was looking for! But I am going to keep looking.

This quilt was UFO #4 for our small group and I will now call it Finish #15. This is called Pinwheels on Parade from Pat Speth's More Nickel Quilts book. (I didn't know there was a third book called Amazing Nickel Quilts. Exciting! Now I must get it too.) From my notes, I see I have it dated as being started in 2008 and I tell myself it was left over from another quilt. I wonder if I am loosing my marbles! Don't ya hate it when you do stuff like this.

Oh well, I have another UFO to mark off my list and my baby girl gets a new cuddly.

Simple Pleasures

Last night I had the pleasure of talking on the phone with my friend Sharon and if you know me at all, you know I don't like to talk on the phone much. We talked about how much we enjoy where we are in our lives.

Both of us are trying to simplify things. I have been working really hard on decluttering but sometimes it's hard to let go of my stuff. Like the hoarder people you see on the talk shows, I understand how they feel about letting go.

My big thing is to get my UFOs done. I'm happy to report that finish Number 13-the Christmas Redwork Project-is now official and small group UFO #7, aka my version of Quiltville's Diamond Strings, is also done and has become Finish Number 14.

WooHoo, now I need to load this month's UFO which just needs quilting and binding.

Inspiration

As I cruise around blogland, I find inspiration all over the place. Recently I "met" Debby at Quilty Pleasures. Debby has challenged herself to have 50 finishes for the year. I was impressed with how close she is to her goal. She is at number 30! That is amazing.

I went through my blog posts for the year and tallied my quilt finishes. I have finished 12 of my own quilts, including 5 of the 9 I have started this year. 1 of the 9 is a BOM that I am current on and 3 are in the waiting to be quilted pile. I have quilted 10 quilts for other people. Out of my UFO bin, I have completed 2 tops that are ready to be quilted and I have several small projects that I've done but didn't count. That UFO bin is looking pretty good right now. I hope I can keep this pace up. I'd really like to start 2010 with an almost empty bin (being realistic here!).

Today is sewing at Marian's and I have my Christmas red work to finish. The binding is on, I just need to stitch it down and sew on the buttons and a few stars and snowflakes that with be the quilting. I think I will call this project Number 13! Thanks Debby. :-)

I was feeling like I haven't accomplished much this year but now I feel like I've done very well! Now if I could just figure out what to do with this boat that my darling father thought I needed. I think I'm going to have hubby fix it so it sits level, fill it with dirt and plant it with wild flowers! I miss having a boat full of flowers.

What's On My Design Wall-Week 7

Can you believe Judy has been hosting Design Wall Monday for 7 weeks now?? It has been fun to see what others are working on and it has been fun for me to work on things I have had hid out for such a long time.

I decided a couple weeks ago to get out this little redwork Christmas project and since I had been thinking about Christmas in July stuff, this needs to be finished. I had 2 blocks finished and the other 2 went pretty fast. And the tablerunner from last week, I still need to go to the quilt shop for the border fabric. I'm going to try to get there Wednesday.

This morning I started to work on the pieced blocks. I pressed and cut the stitched blocks, made the pinwheel block (that I will be taking apart and fixing the center!) and my iron died. I thought maybe it would happen soon. It didn't stay hot and yesterday, it got hot--really hot! I plugged in back in this morning and it got hot again so now it is cooling and will hit the garbage can. Why can't things be made to last? Now I have to go buy another iron. (After posting and clicking on my photo, the pinwheel looks scorched, I went in and looked and it is-darn. And boy does that flanned need to be cleaned off!)

So much for my plans......maybe I'll go to Taco Bell for lunch. Hmmm

A Surprise and Another Finish

This morning as I was gazing out my kitchen window, I saw something moving in the garden. The big chickens have learned to fly over the fence but this wasn't a chicken. It was a pheasant. There were 4 of them in the yard. Then later in the day while I was checking for eggs, I saw something in the little chick's run. It was a baby pheasant. That little bugger is fast. He must have seen me move because he was out the door and gone.

We have no clue where they came from. As I was getting ready for bed last night around 11--yeah, I know, that is very late!--I thought I heard someone drive in. Our driveway is right beside the neighbors and it isn't unusual for them to be coming in around that time. Then I thought I heard a car door so I came out of the bathroom just in time to see headlights and see the car turn out onto the road......hmmm, did they drop those pheasants off here knowing we would give them a good home or were they looking for some place to rob??? Kind of makes us wonder.

Now my finish, this is my 3rd finish in 2 days. I impress myself sometimes. I loaded this Carol Doak wall hanging on the frame this morning and after a bit, it was ready for binding. I just copied the quilting from the picture in her book, Easy Mix & Match Machine Paper Piecing. I looked on her website for the book but I didn't see it. That makes me doubly happy that my friend gave me this book.

I decided instead of making just one of these, I may as well make 3. What was I thinking?? Number 2 is ready for quilting. Number 3 still needs to be assembled but all the blocks are finished.

I Found It...

...and I finished it. The green monster is finished, folded up and laying on the end of the couch waiting for me to take a nap. But not tonight, I am going to lay my head down on my pillow and cover up with the big quilt.

The binding was right where I put it. On top of my gadget drawers right smack in front of the sewing machine. If it had been a snake........well you know.

A Finish and An Almost

I am happy to say that I have finished a bag for Granddaughter Amanda. Finally. I think this has been in the works-meaning sitting on the table--for about 3 months. Today, as I was looking for the binding for the Almost, I picked up the bag and decided to finish it before I moved on to anything else. It only needed the straps and a couple details.

The bag is from Quilting Arts, Project Series 300, Episode 302-1. It's called One Of Everything by Anna Marie Horner. It's a very nice size bag and after I make one for Ashlee, I am going to make one for myself. Of course I didn't follow the directions completely. I changed up the straps and added some buttons just for the fun of it.


This quilt is officially Almost finished. :~) I can't find the binding. It's all made, I had it, placed it where I was sure I would remember where it was and now I can't find it. I know it's in there somewhere. So I will finish cleaning off the cutting table and then if it doesn't magically appear, I will have to do something else. This will be finished today!

This was a mystery from Cyber Quilter's Yahoo group in 2007 and UFO #6 on my small group list. I put a fun frog flannel back on it and I'm going to use it as a nap quilt. I played around with the layout and decided I liked it quite a bit off center. Kind of like me.

TTFN, I must go find binding. Think, think, think.

What's On My Design Wall-Week 6

I'm writing this post in advance of Judy L's Design Wall Monday because Monday I will be at Crystal's with the kiddos while she and Mike go to her ultrasound and maybe do some running around.

I can't believe this is week 6 and I finally have something new on my design wall. It isn't a UFO and won't be. It's a tablerunner from the Moda Bake Shop called Sugar Cookies. I need to take it with me to my favorite quilt shop, Country Manor and get some fabric for the sashing and the border. I didn't know what I wanted to do with the charm pack when I bought it until I saw this. I'm hoping she has some of the red for the outer border. If she doesn't, she'll have something else that will work. I'm sure of it.

Week 2 and Week 5 had this beauty on my design wall and I am happy to report that it is put together and ready for quilting! I'm excited. I'm going to play with some free motion quilting, nothing too fancy because this needs to be done. So for my small group UFO challenge, I am going to call this one not quite done for the month. But gee, I do have until the 10th. I don't think I'm going to make it. Because I lost my mojo, I am a little behind in my UFO completion for the group. No worries though. I'll get it. After all, this one only took 8 years to get to this stage.

Oh, about the glove...I wanted to toss it but the tightwad in me says it's brand new and those things are like $5 a pair but he buys them by the dozen so they are a little cheaper. That is why I have a couple boxes of gloves....dirties that need to be washed 2 or 3 times to get them clean--yukkieness! and a box of clean. They are all the same so it's like having a clean sock basket only it's gloves.......... Do you have a sock basket???

Earning A Couple Good Wife Points...

...and saving Mr. Tony's rear end!

I have a dog that thinks it's OK to chew on things. Gloves, socks, toys, firewood, rocks, whatever--he doesn't care. When Big Dad saw his almost brand new glove in this condition, Mr. Tony knew he was busted. I knew I had to save the poor little thing. We think the glove fell out of the truck when Dad came home from work and someone found it on the ground. So I put it on the mending pile in hopes that it would be forgotten like the rest of the mending.

The other day at Marian's we started working on a sweatshirt jacket that needed the cuffs taken off. I brought them home with me knowing that I had to fix the darn glove. Crud! So this morning when I got to a stopping place in my project and I needed to replace my needle, I decided to fix the darn glove and so it worked out. I got out my super deluxe ripper and in a jiffy the raggety cuff was in the garbage and the "new" cuff was on.

I think that takes care of mending for a while, what do you think???