Harley progress

The quilt is now 30% quilted. I finished quilting the two black shirts at the second to the last row. I needed to take a break from quilting on black and quilted the pale green shirt at the bottom.

I am so glad it is Friday. My plans for the weekend are to quilt on the Harley quilt and to pulled weeds weather permitting. Rain is in the forecast for Saturday and Sunday so let's hope I can still get in some desperately needed weeding.

Back to the Harley quilt and scissor cases

I was starting to feel better last evening and got back to the Harley quilt. The emblems on these three shirts are now outlined quilted. All that they need is the background space meander stitched and they will be done.

I just had to try making a scissor case with that pattern I found. I mounted the pattern on mat board - one for the fabric and one for the interfacing. The interfacing template also will be used for punching the holes for the snaps. It took a couple of tries to get the holes positioned just right.

First, I made the sugar skull one and then the other one adjusting things as I went. I decided to use the iron on fleece interfacing to give them just a bit more body. The first one I used a piece of interfacing that was the same size as the fabric. It made it difficult to top stitch the closing seam because it was so thick. For the second one I cut the interfacing so it would be just at the seamline, and that worked much better! I was able to use the shorter spiked snaps and The Hulk did a great job of attaching those snaps. These were fun to make!

Here is the picture of the blue torch cactus I saw at my brother's neighbor's house. It was much bluer in person and a real stand out!

What a day!

I spent some time looking for a embroidery scissor pouch I could make as a giveaway at my next cross stitch retreat, and I found one I liked. I had to do some searching around to find the PDF pattern. I will be making a couple prototypes to see what kind of interfacing I like so I can use the plastic snaps with the shorter spike.

I made another copy of the pattern and cut it out. Here it is folded. Simple but sweet! I have some cute blue fabric coming with embroidery scissors on it which will be perfect to make these out of.

Yesterday was rough. I fasted so I could get my bloodwork done after my doctor's appointment at 3PM. It was a battle not to eat all day. Once I got done with Doc I headed down to the lab. There were not a lot of people in there, but enough that I had to wait. Meanwhile I was getting the shakes from not eating for 17 hours! My named finally got called and I was out of there at 4:30. I had some cookies to snack on until I could get home. By the time I got hot food it was 5:30 and I bonked. It was all I could do to brush my teeth, wash my face, and crawl into bed at 6:30. My next appointment will be at 8 A.M. so I don't have to go all day without eating! While I waited at the doctor's office and the lab, I did get a bit of stitching done. I got the letters A, B, and C stitched and worked on the zig zag border which was only finished up to letter F so I did the part going left of F.

I am still feeling a bit tired today, but I will be ok. Maybe tonight I can get back to the Harley quilt.

Plant parenting

I had an appointment with my wellness guru yesterday afternoon. While I was on the east side I stopped at Menards to get some cottage cheese (they carry the best cottage cheese ever!) and look what jumped into my cart.

The tall cactus looks like a blue torch cactus. I have been wanting one ever since I saw one in California at a neighbor's house when I was visiting my brother a couple years ago. I don't have a picture of that with me.  The older the cactus gets the bluer it gets.  The soil was very wet and so I had to get this repotted right away. It would take way to long for the soil to dry out and mixing cactus with a succulents looks nice, but they had different watering needs so they needed to be separated. I carefully knocked of the soil to get the plants separated. The blue torch was planted way too deep also. The blue torch needs some extra support until it roots itself well. Here they are repotted.

While I was at it, I had another start that I had picked up off a floor a month ago that needed potted.

I picked up these pieces off the floor yesterday and they needed to be set up for rooting. If they make it fine, if not it's no big deal.

After playing in the dirt for over an hour, I sorted out my supplements I got at the wellness guru's office. I had no time to quilt last evening.

Progress on the Haley quilt

I spent a fair amount of time working on the Harley quilt. It took more time than I thought it would to quilt the center tie dyed shirts, but I am happy with how they turned out. The black shirt above the tie-dyed shirt is done along with most of the black shirts to the right. I have just a little bit to quilt in two of the black shirts to the right. I have some quilting done in the black shirt at the center bottom.

Friday after work I headed to the mall. I wanted to get a couple more charms for my new bracelet since they were still buy 2 get one free. When I finally got there - the traffic was horrible - I saw there were cops cars everywhere! I decided to ask a woman with her kids getting into their car if she knew what was going on. There were gunshots so the mall was getting cleared out. Geeze! This mall is very safe and it turned out to be a 17 year old kid with a gun in the parking lot that shot twice. They caught the kid and no one was hurt. I went a backway home to avoid the traffic on the main road. The mall opened back up a couple hours later, but I waited until Saturday morning to go back and get my charms. I got the purple heart for my baby sister as purple is her favorite color. After all we had just spend a great weekend at a retreat. By the time I left the mall it was packed so people are not staying away because of this incident. There were two other malls in the area and both of them are closed because of violence. I am sure mall management will revisit their security plan. After all, they are spending thousands of dollars putting in new tile floors to spiff up the place.

It stormed Saturday late afternoon - lots of thunder, lighting, and rain - so no mowing happened. Things started drying out Sunday with the sunshine so I worked out in the yard for an hour and a half. Raked up sticks, mowed, and trimmed. I still need to get the thistle pulled before it goes to seed.

Harley quilt top done!

The Harley quilt top is done! I am happy with the result and how fast this one came together.

Tonight I will pin baste it together and start quilting it this weekend. I also plan on trying to get some yard work done if I can get some time in between the rain that is forecasted for Saturday and Sunday. I have some weeds that are getting out of hand and need to go! Have a great weekend!

Progress on the Harley quilt

As soon as I got home I did a little mowing, trimming and raking; only about a half hour. I am trying to put a dent in the yardwork a bit at a time. I then headed inside to work on the Harley quilt. I now have all the columns of shirts sewn together. Tonight I will start sewing the columns together. I think this will look so good with black binding to frame it.

I needed to get my table cleared off so I could lay out the rows to pin them together. I also vacuumed up all the bits on the floor and emptied the wastebaskets; the studio looks so much better!  Again with the blurry pictures - ugh!

I did have to add a piece on to this shirt to make it big enough. It won't show once it is quilted.

I also pulled a couple of fabrics for the backing. I am going to use the one on the left since it has just a touch of purple which goes with the purple in the tie dyed shirt. I will get it washed tonight so it will be ready to sew together when I pin baste this top this weekend.