Back to the library

I went back to the library yesterday to add the five pieces I needed the Command hooks for. While I was there I moved the large green piece on the right up higher just to make sure that the sun did not shine on it. Tomorrow I will post my list of stuff I needed to take to hang the quilts. It will be helpful to me in the future since I will know where the list is and maybe it will be helpful to someone out there in blogland.


I added three 9" x 12" pieces on the posts by the windows. I still don't like where the far right piece is hanging, but there is no other place to hang it in the room.


I added a piece to the left above the fire extinguisher and one by the door. It like playing where's Waldo! I need to make and hang labels for the five small pieces yet.


I was looking for some mindless sewing last night and so I went into the UFO pile and pulled out this piece. I had done some hand quilting on it (that's why it is thread basted), but I am going to finish it with machine quilting. I don't plan on pin basting - I will just remove the thread basting as I go along. I will probably double check areas that all the thread basting is gone by the edges before I quilt them just in case.

Show is hung

Thanksgiving was all about finishing up all the odds and ends for Friday's installation. Here are the hanging rods drying in the garage. I took a long scrap of wood, pounded in some nails, numbered the nails, and hung the rods after I put in the screw eyes and painted them. It worked out great.


Friday morning I was up early to get to JoAnn's. All I really wanted was a bolt of batting. I was at JoAnn's about 5:40 am and as we walked into the store at 5:50 am (yes, they opened early!) they handed out $5.00 gift cards. I got my batting, some linen with a half price coupon, some crayons and markers for little gifts, and some Command reusable mounting squared and got the heck out of there. It really wasn't bad execpt JoAnn's clogged up the aisles with extra racks with the flannel that was on special which made it really hard to get around. I got this bad boy of 40 yards for 50% off plus the extra 20% off my total purchase.

I loaded up the car and headed to the library about 11 am. I had to make a quick trip back to the house to get a taller ladder. The 5' step ladder was way too short for me to reach the ceiling. I was required to hang everything from the ceiling gridwork except for the front wall of the meeting room which is one big tackboard. I bought some nifty hooks made for hanging stuff from gridwork and they worked great. The hooks were kind of expensive (100 for $47.00!) and I had to buy 100 of them which I will never use them all. If anyone is interested let me know and I will sell you some for $.50 each.

I had all the pieces hung up by 4:30 except for the five pieces I had mounted on canvas. It took me a little longer than I had planned - several people stopped to look as I was hanging and they were asking questions. The comments I have received so far were all wonderful. The lady at the library said it was ok to use the Scotch Command products on the walls so I will have to go back to JoAnn's (they have them on sale 30% off plus the 20% on your total purchase) Saturday morning and get some hooks. Here are some pictures of the pieces hung. The first pictures are in the entrance and the hallway heading to the community room where all the rest of the pieces are hung. I tried to group the pieces together that had a similar look to them and it turned out pretty good.










Saturday I ran again to JoAnn's at 7:00 am to get those Command hooks and the crowd was very small. I was in and out in a flash! I threw together a pumpkin pie (I didn't make my own crust this year), put it in the oven along with some sweet potatoes, and did dishes while it baked. I had a short visit from an x-cousin then I headed out to see my son. Somehow I ended up at The Material Girl quilt shop which is near my son's place. They were having a 40% off inventory reduction moving sale. I tried not to buy too much, but I needed pinks and I scored some great deals. Several of the Praire Gothic prints from Free Spirit were only $3.00 a yard with the discount!
I just love this piece.





Sunday mission was to not leave the house. I needed to clean up my sewing table and get prepared for the projects I have to get done for Christmas. Here is the before and after of the table. The pile of clothes in the back corner are alterations I need to get done.



My goals for December are:
1. Pillowcases for the nieces and nephews
2. The family xmas quilt - I have a simple block already in mind that will incorporate the scraps I still have from my Mom's stash
3. A flannel quilt for my son
4. A baby quilt for a woman at the hair salon I go to (needs done by Dec. 18)

I can't think of anything else right now - this is enough, but I am sure something else will come up!

Another busy day

It took me 1 hour and 50 minutes to do my errands after I left work - 2 hours was a pretty good guess! I finished hand sewing the rod pockets on the five pieces I prepped the night before and pinned on the pockets on four more. I have two left to do.


After I finished sewing on the rod pocket for each piece, I laid it on the table and measured out the hanging rod length.


Here are the hanging rods marked for length and I wrote the number of the piece it goes with on it too. I will get my handy dandy miter saw fired up and trim these tomorrow. Then after drilling a small hole in each end for the screw eyes I will hand them on a long piece of scrap which I will hammer in finish nails (finish nails don't have a head on them), prop the wood on a couple of ladders and then hang the hanging rods thru one of the screw eyes on a nail so I can spray paint them. Did that make sense? I will take a picture of this operation and post it next week.


I am taking a break from blogging until Monday, 11/29, but I will have a lot to post - the hanging of my exhibit, the start of the family xmas quilt, and who know what other kind of work (trouble!) I will get myself into.

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

The work

I spent my half day vacation and evening doing mostly handwork. I now have all the bindings hand stitching done and moved on to the hanging rod pockets. I have 3 done and here are five more ready for the hand stitching. I underestimated how long this part of the work would take and I am learning a lesson. That lesson would be to take the time and just sew on the rod pockets when I finish a piece.


Last night I slept with the window in the bedroom open! It was 57 degrees coming into work this morning. I know it is going to end soon, but it sure has been a lovely warm fall.

I am taking another half day today, but I have some running around I have to do. I need to take back a HD cord to Best Buy to get a refund on my Visa, stop and get a piece of foam core, and stop at the grocery store for a couple of items. Doesn't sound like much, but I am estimating this killing 2 hours of my half day.

My goal today is to get the rod pockets on the five pieces I have ready and get more rod pockets ready for the next group. I plan on having 16 pieces ready for the exhibit.

Stage 17 - Thor is done.

Stage 17 - Thor is done. I photographed it on a dark background so you could see it. It is about 32" x 36". I am happy with the way it turned out and glad I got it done so that I can hang it this coming weekend. I have a day of vacation to use up - if we don't use our vacation we lose it - so I am going to take 1/2 day today and tomorrow to get all the last minute details finished like hanging pockets, hanging rods, and signage. It was confirmed that my presence is not required anywhere on Thanksgiving so I have all day to work on the exhibit too. YEAH!

I got my car back on Friday. The bill was a little less than the quote _ $1064.18. It feels like a new car when I drive. I am just glad to have my wheels back!

Now where did I put that?

Last night was a mish mash of tasks. I measured all the pieces I am going to be hanging so I can get some wood for hanging them. I was looking then for two things - my Keim wood trim catalogue for one of the men at work and my bill from when I had my oil changed in October. I found the bill, but not the catalogue.

I wanted the bill because they always do a Multi-point check on the car. Well the boxes for the struts and components is marked in the green ok box when I had the car in to get the oil changed on Oct.5. So five weeks later the strut is completely rusted thru and breaks? When I pick up the car tonight, I am going to have a conversation with the service guys and discuss how disappointed I am with their inspection. After all if they would have told me there was a problem, I would have gotten it fixed before it broke so I would not be without a car for almost 4 days. Sounds like someone at the shop needs retrained!

Here is the before of the right side of the garage.

Here is the after of the right side of the garage. The big box has t-shirts that I need to make a quilt out of for the rec center. My brother is highly involved in the baseball program for little kids and these t-shirt were left over from years past. He thinks a lot of the woman that runs the program and thought it would be cool to have a quilt made from the shirts that could hang in the rec center. One more thing to do - by the way this is a freebe job. I also have two boxes of stuff from work that needs shredded. We don't have a shredder so I have been storing it for quite awhile until I can deal with it.


Here is the left side of the garage which I did not have time to deal with last evening. I wanted to show you this so you didn't think I was some kind of superwoman - yes there is still work to be done! The blue buckets have my canna rizomes in them and I need to get those wrapped up and taken in the house before it gets any colder. There is also two doors that I painted and need rehung, my vanity for the upstairs bathroom, and miscellaneous renovation supplies etc.


I am going to be spending all weekend getting my pieces ready for the exhibit so the finishing the garage cleanup will have to wait until next weekend. Have a great weekend!

I'm a winner

I received my winnings in the mail last night. I won a sketchbook, pen, and pencil case from Colleen of http://colleenkole.blogspot.com. Thank you Colleen!


Here is the crock pot of chili I made last night. I eat it over brown rice. I will freeze half the batch and it will be enough for lunches for two weeks.


After some conversations with a couple of my brothers, I think I get to stay home all by myself for Thanksgiving! YEAH! No pie making, no cheesecake making, no making sweet potatoes, no taking a shower, getting dressed, and leaving the house. I need the time to work on my exhibit so I am elated!

Baby is broken

Poor baby needs some work. The shop called and she needs a new strut assembly on the driver side rear, all the stablizers need replaced, and the fuel tank neck has a crack. The cost - $1,142.00. Baby had been paid off for years so $1,142 is equal to about 3 car payments so I figure I am still ahead of the game. I won't get it back until Friday because they had to order several parts. My sister-in-law picked me up this morning and I think my brother will pick me up after work. I would walk or take my bike, but the weather is rainy and windy and then you never know when you might get mugged in this town. I say it is a good time to clean out the garage since I don't have the car in the way. Humm? I may have to do than either tonight or tomorrow evening.

I decided to take the leftover pieced fabric from "Thor" and make some small mounted pieces like the orange and blue ones. Here they are just cut up and ready for sewing on my design wall. I would like to have a lot of these smaller 9" x 12" pieces to sell to people would could not afford to buy a larger piece. I was thinking about selling them for $40.00. Too cheap? Too expensive?

What the heck is that noise?

I got in the car and headed to work. I drove over a bump and CLUNK - there was an awful noise coming from the driver's side in the back. Sounds like a broken spring or shock. I slowly drove over to the dealership clunking all the way and left the car. I have not heard yet what the issue is, but I am sure there is one! It could have been worse, and I am just grateful I could still drive the car.

I worked on Thor a bit last night. This is a shot of the back. Those rows of stitching are 2' long. I used more than a bobbin of thread quilting the first full section.

11 days and counting

With the wonderful weather this weekend I managed to get the yard work done that I absolutely needed to get done. The weeds and crabgrass have been pulled, the bush trimmed, the cannas dug up, and the mugo pine transplanted. It was hard to stay indoors and sew.

I worked some on the Thor piece. I love the way it is coming out. I am so happy with the way the white on white stitching looks.



All three of these are finished and mounted on canvas. I will just have to add hanging wires.

Both of these pieces are ready for the hand stitching on the binding and a hanging sleeve.


I also managed to get the laundry/utility room and the kitchen cleaned up. I still need to wash the kitchen floor and do a little more organizing/pitching in the laundry/utility, but it sure is a lot better than what it was. If the weather holds out a little longer I would like to attack the garage. It has gotten a little out of hand.

It's Friday already!

Wow this week has just flown by! I decided to take a half day of vacation today to get a jump on the work I want to get done this weekend and because the weather is so darn great!
I finished the quilting on the third small piece and started on one of the bigger two colored pieces. I got most of the blue areas quilted.

Of course I have a million things I would like to get done this weekend and I would really need a couple of weeks to put a dent in that list, so I am going to try to be reasonable about what I can actually get done. I have some alterations for a cousin, of course quilting and binding the pieces I have been working on all week, trim a bush and clean up the weeds in the flower beds, and get my laundry/utility room clean up before I break my neck tripping over the stuff on the floor.

Have a great weekend!

15 days and counting ...

until I hang my show. Slowly I am making progress. I finished the second small 9 x 12" piece and started on the third one. I really like making these small pieces. This weekend will be all about putting the binding on these and whatever else I get quilted.

I ended up spending most of my day wrestling 40-50 pound file boxes. I had to make sure they were in some kind of order and then cart them down to the new file room. It takes about 10 minutes a trip and I can only take one box at a time if they are really heavy. I made 10 or 12 trips yesterday. I was so tired I decided to mow the grass instead of going to the library. I was so nice outside I just wanted to enjoy the weather. I think this will be the last mowing this year. I just needed one more haircut before winter.
I did manage to finish one of the small pieces.

Today at work is wrestling more file boxes. The upstairs file room is looking somewhat better, but I have a long ways to go. I am finding the former boss who is a neat freak is also a pack rat and doesn't throw any broken equipment away. All the junk has taken up a lot of room in the upstairs file room. No wonder it was overflowing!

Productive evening

After I got home from work I hemmed two pairs of pants for a neighbor - a little more to add the car kitty. I threw some towels in the wash, then did the handstitching on the Garmin piece while I watched Oprah and the beginning with DWTS. I had been up since 4:45 am so I was getting tired and headed for bed around 8:45. I was up so early because I had to go to Home Depot and pay my bill and pick up my brother's mail at the p.o. before work. The Garmin piece is about 38" x 44". The blue fabric is a piece of wrapped shibori I did and the orange is low water immersion.




This morning I was up early and had a little bit of time to start quilting the small 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 pieces.


When I visited my son the other day, he asked me to fix the quilt I made him when he graduated from high school. His dog, a boxer, had done a little chewing on it. I still have some of the same fabric I used on the back and for the sashing. The batting was polyester and has just about disappeared. I am debating on whether to just take it apart and repair the damage or rip out all the quilting (it is not quilted heavy) and put in new batting and requilt it. It doesn't need to be done right away - just something to do in my spare time!


After work I am going to the library to measure the wall space so I can put together a plan for the exhibit. I need to spend some time in the yard this week and get my cannas dug up before the ground freezes. The weather this week is going to be near 60 all week. Highly unusual for northern Ohio.

18 days and counting

I managed to not goof off too much and got a lot done. I finished quilting the Garmin piece. The binding is machine sewn on so all I have to do is the hand stitching. 18 days until I hang the exhibit. I have some vacation so I may end up taking a day or two off just to make sure I get everything done that I want to be ready for hanging. This is not a picture of Garmin after it was quilted and bound. I know I took a picture, but I must of accidentily deleted it. I will post a picture when I have the binding hand sewn.


The Thor piece is pin basted and ready to quilt.


I pieced a couple more of my rectangular pieces. I took the left over fabric from Garmin and the rectangular pieces and sewed together some smaller 9 x 12 pieces that I will mount on canvas. I just can't throw away those smaller pieces.






Sunday I did go with my brother, his wife and son to see the "Who shot rock n' roll" exhibit. It is a very nice show and there are costumes on display that were borrowed from the Rock and Roll HOF.