Salting the stump and thread bed progress

After my wellness appointment I stopped and did a bit of shopping while I was on the east side of town. My purchases included salt for my stump. I gathered supplies

and headed over to the stump. I salted both the stump and one of the roots I had drilled holes in.  Let us see what happens to that root. The stump is now wrapped in plastic, so now we wait. How long? I have no idea! LOL!! I guess I will check on it in a couple weeks and see if anything has changed.

I then got to work on those three thread beds that were almost done.

Next it was time to add the snaps. This step doesn't take long with my set up and The Hulk at the ready!

While I was at it, I found two other thread beds that just needed snaps. I had been holding off because I didn't have the right color of snap that I thought looked good with that purple fabric. KAM snaps was having a sale so I recently bought more of the long shank snaps. Here is a picture of the snaps I had and that same case with the snaps rearranged and the new colors added.

I still have a few colors in bags. I will have to get another storage case.

Here are the finished thread beds.

I am excited to get this bin filled up with thread beds!

Flannel arrived, a bit of sewing, and fawns

The flannel from my friend, Cherie of seemorequilts.blogspot.com, arrived on Monday! It was scheduled for Tuesday so that's a win! There was also a beautiful handmade card inside. That will be going on my design wall!

I didn't get much done last evening - I was tired. I made food for lunches and did a few things around the house. I did get the flannel pieces sewn for those three thread beds. All that is left to do on these is press the self-binding, stitch that, add snaps and these will be done.

The fawns greeted me on my way to work. They were having breakfast in a neighbor's yard.

The rotary cutter and iron got a workout!

I spent a huge chunk of time Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday in the studio cutting out thread beds and project bags. That also included pressing the zipper pieces to size which is two pieces for every project bag and three pieces for every thread bed. I also pressed on the interfacing for the lining then trimmed those to size. With the thread beds I had worked on last week and this weekend I have 66 almost ready to sew together. I ran out of white flannel. A friend in PA said she had some she wanted to get rid of and it will be arriving tomorrow, but there are a few I have the flannel pieces for so I can get started on sewing them together.

Some of the fabric pieces that Wanda sent me were big enough that I was able to get a few project bags cut too! I ended up with 12 and they are ready to be sewn together.

Just to give you an idea of how much I have cut, here the fabric I laid out before I got started cutting and after.

I did have to stop and cut some fleece interfacing pieces for the project bags.

I did find these three thread beds that are almost done. I will finish those first to get into a rhythm.

I did get a new toy. It took some fiddling around to figure out how to get them unlocked, but once I did I have to say they worked good! Much easier than using loppers. They do have an alarm if you get your fingers close to the blade, but you could still cut you finger off if you are not careful! The loppers take brute strength; this self charging battery powered pruners cut like butter a branch up to 1".  They can adjust to have the blades set for smaller branches - that is how it is set in the picture - or the blades can open wider.

I also spent a little time removing the loose bits from a stump. The pine tree was taken down maybe 8 years ago and the stump was getting spongy. I wacked away at it with a maddox. This tool is heavy so I would have to stop after about 6 swings.

I cleaned up two wagons of woods; this is the second load.

Here is the stump before and after

I used the maddox to loosen up the roots

but they were going anywhere! I then decided to get out the drill, put in the biggest bit I had and drill holes in the roots and the remaining stump. I saw somewhere I should dump salt in the holes, but I didn't have any regular cheap table salt. One of these days I will get rid of that stump!

A little progess on TBs and PBs, and more mowing

I forgot to push the right button for my post on Thursday so I just did that. Last evening I got the blue lining pieces cut and interfaced for the previous day's thread beds and project bags. Then I started cutting two more thread beds and two more project bags out of this beautiful and very interesting batik from Wanda.

I still need to press the zipper pieces.

It was time for me to put on my big girl pants and mow the backyard. The grass/weeds were long; about 8 inches! Here you can see the first couple of passes I made.

Every two passes I had to empty the mower grass catcher so there was a lot of starting and stopping. I ended up getting over 3/4 of the mowing done. It looks like I will have another evening to get the rest mowed as the rain is not due until Saturday. I put an arrow showing where I stopped. There are a bunch of weeds down the slope I will have to get after with the trimmer. It is too steep to mow. The bugs were driving me crazy so I stopped. It won't take much to finish and then I will be done - well, at least for a while! LOL!

More cutting and delivering quilts

I got started on cutting thread beds last evening and realized I only had one more piece of fleece left in my parts bin. I pulled out a partial bolt of the iron-on gleece and started cutting. I ended up with a nice pile. There was a small left piece at the end so I cut that for the scissor pouches.

Out of a marble looking batik from Wanda, I was able to get two thread beds and two project bags cut. I still need to cut the lining pieces. I did realize I ran out of the interfaced flannel pieces. I thought I had more white flannel, but I don't so I will have to order some. That won't slow me down from cutting.

I got to deliver quilts to the ladies at the home office. They always write such sweet notes for me! Sara wanted to give me a little something for a baby quilt that she wanted for a friend; I had forgotten all about it! LOL! Here was her note.

I gave Sara the two quilts that I finished for a friend of her's. They were made by her friend's mother who had passed and she wanted them finished. Everybody that saw them thought they were great. Then I handed over the pink quilt to Dina. She was happy with it. She told me August is the 20 anniversary of her sister being a cancer survivor. The whole family is going to Ann Arbor to take a tour of the University of Michigan stadium. They are going to present the quilt to her at the party they are having. I can't wait to hear what her sister thinks of it. The sister knows a quilt is being made, but that's it. This was Dina's note.

It was so nice outside last evening. I got out about a half hour to do more trimming since I got the batteries for the weed trimmer charged up. I can trim for a total of 25 minutes before I am out of power. I got almost all the trimming done. I charged up the mower battery too while I was at it since it was down to one bar. It looks like another nice day, not too hot, so since the backyard is in the shade by 6 PM I am going to get after that tonight.

More cutting and some mowing and trimming

I spent some time in the kitchen last evening making food for lunches. I then headed down to the sewing studio and cut out fabric for two more thread beds and two project bags. I pressed the interfacing on the lining pieces and pressed the pieces for the zipper units.

At lunch I did get a few more scissor pouches cut.

There was a dark cloud rolling in, but I went outside anyway after 6 PM when it was cooler to at least trim the front yard. After I ran out of battery power for the trimmer, the cloud had moved out so I had no excuse not to mow at least the front. The grass was still somewhat wet from the rain, but dry enough to mow. Here is the before

and the after. It doesn't look that much different in the pictures, but the grass was long and weeds at the edges of the driveway and flower beds were crazy thick!

The front looks so much better. I am going to have to try and get out after 6 PM the next couple of evenings to continue to mow the sides and the back.  At least this way I can get my steps in at the same time.

Cutting scissor pouches and thread beds

At lunchtime I worked on cutting out scraps for scissor pouches like these

I got a small stack cut to size. I had noticed that my rotary cutter blade had a tiny nick in it so I decided to change it before I started cutting scissor pouches. WOW! What a difference!

When I got home I decided to start cutting out thread beds. I was moving kind of slow since I was still tired from the weekend.  I decided I would press the pieces I needed for the zippered pouch to size and press on the fleece to the lining piece then trim to size as I cut each group of thread beds. I also married each set with the flannel already interfaced and cut to size, and the vinyl from the parts trays. Add the zippers and there is everything all together that is needed for two thread beds.

I stacked everything up and placed them in a bin along with two other sets I cut last evening. This will make it easy to have everything ready to go when I sit down to sew. I have everything ready for six thread beds; many more to come!

It rained hard this morning at 4:35 am when I got up. There was some lighting too. It probably won't be dry enough to mow tonight, but I can at least do the trimming.