2nd and 3rd finish of 2012

Now we are cooking with gas! The aqua quilt is finaly done! Here is the finished quilt, the back, and a detail shot.

So then I decided to quilt a baby quilt that I already had pin basted. I quilted it on Saturday and bound it on Sunday morning. This will go into my stash of quilts for when I need a quilt on short notice.

We had our annual company meeting yesterday and I knitted as I watched and listened. The space between the needles shows how much I got done. I hate just sitting and doing nothing.

Look at this lovely linen I scored a deal on. I am going to use it for baby quilts - something improv pieced. There was a good 10 yards of fabric and at least 7 1/2 of the large plaid which will be wonderful for the backs. The orginal price tags on the fabric was $74.00 a yard! I paid about $4.00 a yard for it.

Last evening I started quilting the last pin basted baby quilt left from last summer. I should have it done by the weekend then I can work on pin basting a few more baby sized tops I have laying around.

Are you tired of seeing that aqua quilt yet?

Well, I mitered the corners, trimmed and got a little more than half way around the quilt with hand sewing the binding. I am like a turtle on this quilt - slow, but steady!

Yesterday I had made salmon bisque soup and this morning tomato basil in my Vitamix. I having been sharing my soup with a woman at work that just got braces and she can't eat anything but soup. She has been a great guiney pig for my mad experiments! I am having the leftover salmon bisque for breakfast this morning. Yum!

Here is a picture of my desk this morning. I have been getting stuff done and this is the best my desk has looked since I have returned from surgery. Remeber last summer when I was wrestling file boxes and drawings for storage? Well, I have been working and prepping more stuff for storage and I can handled the drawings and file boxes without feeling a thing from my surgery!

My plans for the weekend include finishing the aqua quilt, I am going to get that suit altered, and figure out what my next project will be. I plan on staying home all weekend and sew except for a haircut appointment Saturday morning. I just hope it quits snowing - it is coming down hard this morning.

Binding is on, but ...

I still need to miter the corners, trim the edges, and do the hand sewing. I did give the quilt a good pressing before I attached the binding because one of the edges was a bit wavy with all the rows of quilting.

I got a new toy

I have wanted a Vitamix every since I saw it on QVC. Well, they had them on special and I bought one. Last night I made hot soup in it. I made Smokey paprika pumpkin soup. There is no heating element in the unit - just the speed the soup spins so fast it causes enough friction for the soup to get hot - pretty neat. Tonight I am making salmon bisque. Being single I have a tendency not to eat a nutritous dinner. It is a pain to cook for one person, so now I can come home and make a batch of soup as quick as I can open a couple of cans, toss in some veggies, and in less than 10 minutes have tasty hot soup.

Today's lunch - yum!

I got the binding cut for the aqua quilt. Here it is on the design wall. I cut some of the strips into shorter pieces to mix things up and so the binding looked more like it was made with scraps.

The quilting is finally done!

I finished the last three areas of the aqua broken log cabin quilt last evening. YEAH! I did forget to take a picture so here is a picture of my desk at work. I have a lot of stuff to catch up on still for the time I was off and we had a school bid right after I came back so I am trying to get all that paperwork together too. My desk is not nearly as bad as it looks.

I will be working on the binding tonight after gathering up the recycling and trash for tomorrow's pick up. I only have to take out the recycling and the trash once a month and its time.

Funny how plans change

We had received about 2" of snow Friday night so traveling 20 miles to get my perm was stressful. Instead of 55 mph I did 25 to 30. I made it in one piece so that is all that mattered. On the way back home the roads were much better. I messed around doing a little of this, a little of that, and then got ready to go see my nephew play.
He played with the guitar behind his back during "Cold Shot" - he is not in pain; he is just very instense when he plays.

Then he played the harmonica for "Roadhouse Blues"

Sat and played with Jammin' Paul

Then a little behind the head guitar playing for "Pride and Joy"

He finished the night off by playing "Maggott brain" and got a standing ovation.

Father and son in front of the marque

Sunday I started on moving the fabric and shelving from Peg's bedroom back to the fabric storage room after I got the baseboards done. I needed to fill the nail holes, put on a final coat of paint and caulk the gaps.

Now lets move the fabric and shelves from one room to another

I still have a few things to move out of Peg's bedroom, but at least I have room to set up the bed frame. You might notice that the window treatments have changed. When I moved my bed upstairs I needed something for the windows so I borrowed the ones from this room. The ones here are just temporary until I can get ones made for the master bedroom. I still need to finish the window trim and there are four pieces of tile flooring I need to install and then this room will be done.

I did work on the baby quilt and this is all I have left to quilt - see the areas where the safety pins are? I didn't get the suit altered either, but I feel good about getting the the fabric storage room on its way to being finished.

Yeah is is Friday!

My plans for the weekend are to finish the aqua improv quilt

Finally alter this suit for my neighbor

Saturday is perm day and going to see my nephew play

then it is planning my next project. I have two pin basted baby quilts that I think I will work on next.

I have a feeling this weekend is going to go by fast. What are your plans?

Sweating bullets

I finished quilting the green and blue striped sections last night and I was sweating bullets if was going to have enough teal thread to finish. Here is what I had left - plenty!

I got the machine threaded up with the cream thread for the Kona snow areas left to quilt and quilted a few areas. Only a few more areas to finish.

Next I decided to start thinking about what fabric I wanted to use for the binding. I may use several fabrics - using one would look to static to me. Here is the fabric I pulled - the fabrics I used plus a few more that were from the same fabric line - Jane Sassaman Prairie Gothic - and an olive green dotted piece. I guess you will just have to come back and see what I ended up using.

A little quilting and a little organizing

I wasn't that eager last evening to do much, but I did do a little quilting. I did not get all of the green and blue striped areas quilted. I will finish them tonight after I watch the season premier of Southland I taped last night.

I have been doing a little organizing and I decided to use this over the door rack (I got on closeout at Home Depot) in my studio for my TO DO items. Right now I just started hanging things. I must have TO DO stuff in four different rooms! So far I have 5 quilt tops, a pair of pants to hem, and a suit to alter for a neighbor. Now I know there is more stuff to hang here so don't think that I am some superwoman and that is all I have on my list! I will keep adding my TO DO items rack as I find them and hopefully get them done since they now will be in my sight all the time. The out of sight out of mind method is not working - I need to get this stuff done. I also hung the binding I have cut so I will be able to find it when I get the quilts quilted.

Making progress on finish number 2

I finished quilting the solid aqua areas of this quilt. Next I will be on to the striped areas. At this rate I should easily have this one done by the end of the week - yeah! This will go into my stash of on-hand baby quilts.

1st finish of 2012, but where was my brain?

I finished the pink, gray and brown zig zag quilt. But just look at it - where was my brain?! When I trimmed the sides I should have trimmed them the same. You can see what I did wrong can't you? I did not see my mistake until it was too late - like the binding was on it! Oh well, the kid is going to get it anyway.

Look at all the deer that were in my backyard on Sunday - eight of them in two groups. They were digging thru the snow looking for breakfast. We didn't get that much snow - only about a couple of inches.

Hancock's have been having some good sales lately and here is was I received Saturday. I loved the rock n' roll roses and bought 6 yards of that. It was only $3.98 a yard.

Here is my next project. I started this quilt last year, but never had time to finish it.

Quilting, snowing, reflecting, and babies

I am now half way done with the quilting on the pink, gray, and brown quilt. I need to mail it Monday to my brother in California along with his glasses he forgot.

So far we have not received much snow, less than an inch so far - just enough to make it nasty to drive. I am just now seeing the plows out to throw down some salt. I thought at first the kids didn't have school since the roads were so bad. When the kids don't have school the city is not in a hurry to clean up. This is a shot out my garage door this morning. The wind just howled and there was no point in shoveling with wind blowing so hard.

I keep my my spools of cottong quilting thread for the year and it gives my a chance to reflect on what I have accomplished. Karen, at The Selvage Blog (a great, interesting blog - go check it out!) posted a picture of the spools she emptied in 2011. I saved mine too so here are mine. I emptied 32 spools and I posted on January 3, 2012 that I estimated I used 34,100 of cotton quilting thread. I have no idea how many yards of regular sewing thread or Sulky rayon I went thru, but one can only be so anal about what you keep track of.

Babies - well, I was cleaning out my e-mail and found some pictures I had forgotten about of babies on my quilts. I copied them over and will get them printed to put in the album.