Progress on the applique

I made good progress on preparing the lettering last evening. I traced out the letters, pressed them to the white duck cloth, and got all except three completely cut out.

Tonight I will press them on the table cover after I finish cutting those three letters and then I will satin stitch around them. Not a hard project, but it just takes patience and a bit of time.

Another project!

I have several new projects on the agenda. When it is too windy to put up the merchandise banner I thought it might be good to have the name of the band on the front of the table cover. See here how it is a big blank space?

I took one of my t-shirts and enlarged the lettering for a pattern. I found some heat and bond and I had some white duck cloth in my stash so I will be appliqueing the letters to the table cover and then satin stitching around them.

Then I have to order more car cover fabric so I can make equipment covers for the band. After the storm we went thru on Saturday, it is time to realize that we need to protect the amps, guitars, and other items from the rain. Friday we have a show and all the equipment will be set up so I can get measurements.

My friend that wanted the flamingo boxy pouch for a little girl's inhaler

now wants one for her friend. She mentioned Anna fabric from the movie Frozen

or possibly Minnie Mouse fabric. I have neither of these in my stash so I stopped at JoAnn's on my way home and took pictures of what they had.

The sunrise this morning at 5:50 a.m.

A crazy weekend

I made cookies - oatmeal pecan raisin, chocolate chip, and toasted pecan sandies - so we would have a snack for the shows this weekend.

We left at 1 p.m. on Friday and headed to Lorain. It was hot and I was sweating bullets. I wasn't able to get any pictures because I am pretty much tied to the merchandise booth. The show went great, we had a big crowd, and I kept busy selling t-shirts and CD's. After we got the booth torn down I did get to watch the Dirty Deeds Band play. Michael ended up playing one song with them.

I got to bed at 2 a.m. and was up at 7 a.m. I wanted to make more oatmeal cookies without raisins for my brother and Oatmeal raisin without pecans for my SIL. We left for Sandusky at 11 a.m. for two shows. We got the merch booth set up

but about 4 p.m. all hell broke loose. A storm blew in and it was crazy. I had started to put some things away, but when the wind started blowing 35 - 40 mph it was a matter of just keeping the tent from blowing away. The rain was pounding down and next thing the top of the tent blew off. So there was my SIL and I standing in the pouring rain trying to keep the tarps on one of the merch cases. Finally the wind quit and my brother came over to put the top back on the tent so we didn't have to huddle under a tarp. I stated we needed some paper towels to dry stuff up so I grabbed my wallet and took off in the pouring rain to look for a drug store/variety store. There are no drug stores in downtown Sandusky. I finally went into a casual restaurant/bar and explained my situation to one of the waitresses. She was so nice and got me some paper towels and wouldn't take any money. I apologized for dripping all over their floor. She didn't realize how I was soaking wet until she went to give me a hug. I ran back to the merch booth and we started cleaning up. The next show was at 8:30 so by that time we had the booth pretty much back together except for the table cloth - it was hanging on some barricade drying out. The sun had come out so I pretty much dried out except for my socks. I was so glad to get those wet socks off when I got home at 12:30 a.m. I was so busy I didn't get any pictures except for the water in the gutter about 15 minutes after the storm ended.

There was a couple that got married by my nephew's bass player between shows.

There were a lot of cool motorcycles at Sandusky as it was Ohio Bike Week. Check out this guy.

Sunday and Monday I stayed home and worked on quilting my JB piece.

I did run out on Monday to get gas for the mower. Rain is in the forecast for the next four days and I had to get at least the front mowed. I waited until 6:30 to mow and it was still 90 out. I managed to get part of the back mowed too which I will finish tonight if the rain misses us.

I almost forgot to put the label on a baby quilt. I did that this morning. The woman maybe coming today to pick it up so I had to get the label on it.

More pouches and mowing

I got the rest of that batch of boxy pouches finished last night.

I have another dozen or so that are cut out so I will try to get those done between baking cookies tonight and tomorrow.

I had to mow last night since rain is coming in again. There was no gas left in the can so I mowed until the mower ran out of gas. I was able to get the front done and one side. Here you can see how high my grass/weeds have gotten with all the rain.

The good thing is that the grass I threw down on the dirt to fill in that hole in the back yard and where I took out the fire pit is growing!

I am taking tomorrow off so I am looking at a four day weekend! Yeah!! Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

I forgot to post the progress on the rock edging. Here is where I left off

After working for two hours on Saturday here is my progress. It was humid and hot so two hours was all I could handle. It doesn't look like much, but those rocks get heavy quick! I did carry over rocks for the next section so that should go a bit quicker. I also needed to get more weed barrier fabric. I am putting that under the rocks and up the front and back of them to try and keep the grass from getting into the bed.

I did get six more boxy pouches done last night. I sure hope my friend sells some of them at her booth this weekend. I did have a friend call me and she wanted the flamingo pouch I showed the other day.

My brother picked up the new merchandise table and table cover last night. He brought me two bags of t-shirts for a quilt. The quilt will be for my nephew's cousin. I always have something to do! LOL!!

Living a nightmare

It has been busy, crazy and annoying. I did manage to get 30 boxy pouches made this past weekend

and I have 13 that need the corners at one end with the handle sewn and then they will be done.

My brother sent me measurements for three equipment covers he needed. I had the car cover fabric on hand so I got them cut out Sunday afternoon, got one and a part made, and finished them last night. I need to get them in the mail today.

Work has been a nightmare. People can only do so much in a day and for this job that is not enough. Add to that that the company has changed all our computers is not helping. Of course, the lasts version of all the Microsoft office, etc. come along with that and nothing is getting done very fast on my part. All the icons have changed so I spend way too much time trying to figure out what I am looking for and by the time I find it I can't remember why I was looking for it! All of Microsoft office when from pretty simple to it trying to outthink what you want to do which makes it more complicated and extremely annoying! Thanks Bill - NOT! Instead of working thru a hard drive we now have to work through a think pad. I hardly have any room to work at my desk because of all the addition equipment and cords.

I did get two hours of work on my rock edging in on Saturday, but I forgot to take a picture of it. I needed more weed barrier fabric to continue, so I managed to stop yesterday and get that.

Good progress on the 9

I managed to get all the seams stitched down with the decorative stitch. Next I sewed the end of the pouches and cut out the corners.

I like to tack the end of the zipper for extra security and that is done on all nine.

So these nine are very close to being done! All that is left to do is stitch the two corners, stitch the other end closed, cut in the corners, stitch those corners and insert the handle. My goal this weekend is to see how many I can get made of the remaining pouches that are ready for sewing. I think I counted 47.

I had to take a break from sewing last evening to mow the grass. Gosh, it has been growing fast! Of course after I was done I had to go next door and check out their landscaping project and the let the neighbor across the cul-de-sac that he could bring the tree limbs he was cutting over to the woods at the back of my yard where I let him take his other yard waste.

Have a great weekend!

9 in progress

This next group of boxy pouches is nine. I can use the same color of thread so that makes for quicker construction. Last night I sewed in the rest of the zippers, pressed them, and topstitched next to the zippers

The next step was to sew the two halves together and pressed the seam open

I was happy with getting this much done on all 9. The next step will be to stitch down the seams. I like to do this to keep the seam flat, keep the seam from fraying, and it adds a bit of stiffness and structure to the pouch. You could use any kind of decorative stitch; I use a staggered zig zag.

Are you following along and making one for yourself?

Another 4

I had the slows yesterday. I was sore all over from moving those rocks so I didn't get as much done with the sewing because I was so tired. I did manage to get those four boxy pouches done

and I got the next group started. I had to wind some bobbins and I got the zippers in sewn in four of the nine future pouches. I also got the handles topstitched and trimmed. It was at least a start.

I feel better today as the soreness is gone.

4 more done

Last evening I finished those four boxy pouches

and I got four more started. These four won't take long to finish. I would have finished them but I had a chicken that had been in the crock pot all day and I needed to pick the meat off the bones.

What a weekend

My brother brought over the new table for the merchandise booth for my nephew's band. We have more merch and the table we were using is just too small anymore. I will have four different CD's to sell now instead of the two we had and this season we added patches.

So with the table my brother brought me fabric to make a table cover. This was my job Saturday morning. I was happy the way it turned out. The zippered pockets come in handy and I made this side shorter so it would be easy to get stuff we store underneath easier to access. Look at those rounded corners!

I got a delivery of 3,360 pounds of rocks on Saturday. My plans are to re-do the borders of my flower bed.

I got started on digging out the old plastic border on Sunday.

What drove me crazy was the amount the flower bed had sunk in relationship to the yard. I have been adding sweet peat to the flower bed over the years, but it was still so much lower.

I got started on digging out the grass, putting in barrier cloth, then setting a few stones. Oh, this is going to be a lot of work! What on earth did I get myself into? LOL!! I will just do a little bit at a time and eventually I will get it done. Once I get the border set, I will dig out the plants, dump a bunch of the new dirt I bought into the bed, and replant the plants. I am using bricks to fill in underneath the decorative rocks. This is what I have done so far.

I decided to sort out the rocks by size. I spend about a half hour and am about half way done. I needed to dig out the bigger rocks. Here they are with the smaller ones in the front.

I spent Saturday afternoon ironing on the interfacing and pressing the handles to what will become 65 boxy pouches.

I got these four that had been partially put together finished.

Then I have these four almost done. I had sorted the cut out pieces by the color of thread I will use so I could just keep sewing in an assembly line fashion and not change thread color. I have someone who is going to sell these for me at a show on the 25th so I have a lot of sewing to do in the next 10 days.