Yeah it is Friday!

I had an appointment to get my car serviced after work. Then with a quick stop at the grocery store afterwards, I didn't get home until 6 so I didn't have much time to sew. I did managed to get most of this shirt quilted. I ran out of bobbin thread so I called it quits for the evening.

I have big plans in my head of what I would like to get done this weekend. I feel like since we get an extra day this year - February 29 Leap Day - I am thinking I should not waste the day. My list includes trying to finish the t-shirt quilt and working in the laundry/utility room. I need to get painting done in the laundry/utility room before the plumbers come back to install the hot water heater. I also want to put in a new floor. I will have to get the floor started up to the point where once they get the old water heater removed, it will only take me a few minutes to get the floor installed where the hot water heater sits. Before any of this happens I have to find a home for all the stuff I have stored in this room! I also have a contractor coming to give me an estimate on replacing my rotted deck.

On the way to and from work there is a busy intersection that I noticed a spot that started sinking. Here is how the spot has been fixed. LOL!!

On my walk from the far side of the bridge where I have to park now, I stopped and took a picture of the wall we are installing for the bridge abutment.

Here is what the other side looks like

Then across the street I hadn't noticed that they had installed the posts for the noise wall. I circled the posts in yellow

While I was waiting for my car to be serviced, I spent my time quilting on the DWR quilt. I keep trying to put a few stitches in this everyday. That pink is much brighter in this picture than what it really is.

Have a great weekend!

Two more shirts quilted

I got another basketball jersey quilted

and this Michigan shirt quilted

I am now 87% done with the quilting. I drew a line around the area I have left to quilt

It's time to think about binding so I dug around and found this gray Kona cotton that I think will look good.

I was at the hospital yesterday for the Owner's meeting so I took a look at how the operating room were coming along. The rooms are close to being done and we plan on having final inspections and the rooms construction clean by the end of March. The floors are covered to protect the terrazzo. There are lots of little things that need to be installed over the next couple of weeks.

Big progress again!

I managed to get the Mickey Mouse block quilted. Gosh it was hard to see the gray quilting thread on that gray fabric! LOL!!!

I then found some cut off bits of the knit basketball jersey so I could make a sandwich and try out FMQ on it. I didn't have any problem FMQ so I went for it! I just had to sew a bit slower and not pull the fabric too taut.

I am now 81% done with the quilting! The area inside the pink is what I have left to quilt.

Can I even tell you how much I love that Le Creuset cast iron braiser pan I bought? I have been cooking my salmon in it. I like a little browning on the salmon and the pan is a breeze to clean. It was worth every penny I spent on it! With this pan I just have to remember to use potholders because the handles get hot and not drag the pan across the glass top. I still need to try cooking eggs - maybe an omelet this weekend.

A bit more quilting

I had an appointment after work last evening so I didn't have much time to quilt. I did get started on the Mickey Mouse shirt. Here it is under the machine where I had to stop. I have about 1/3 of it quilted.

Here is what it looks like from farther away. The Mickey t-shirt is right in the middle so it is slower going to quilt as I can only quilt a little bit before I have to stop to move my hands and make sure the layers are nice and smooth.

Parking at work has become a big problem. I now have to park under the bridge in a lane that we have sectioned off.

I then have to walk to the trailer in the street if no cars are coming or step over and walk in the mud. It is not as far as it looks like in this picture. The arrow is pointing to the trailer.

Where we used to park is now full of sand and equipment for building up an embankment for the bridge that will be going in. The bridge in the background is where my car is parked.

I vacuumed some of the floors in the trailer this morning; I just can't stand all the dirt! With the trailer also being a place where materials are stored, the field guys are in here all the time with their muddy boots. It gets to be a real big mess in here! This is before I vacuumed.

I saw on the news yesterday that Swagger had to be put down. Swagger was the mascot for the Cleveland Browns. In January of 2018, I met my son at the Verizon store. He was going to talk to them about giving me a better plan at a better cost. When we walked in there was a dog laying on the floor with several people sitting with him giving him lots of love. The dog got up and greeted my son. The dog was Swagger! Swagger had a hand tooled leather collar on with his name and was just the sweetest dog. Here is my son with Swagger; he wasn't feeling good, but meeting Swagger made his day!

productive weekend

I spent most of the weekend quilting on the t-shirt quilt. I am now 76% done! The area I have left to quilt is outlined here

The two scarves took over two hours each to quilt. The one had lots of color changes and the other one with the hands took some slow detailed stitching.

I think I saved some scraps from the basketball jerseys to practice quilting on. I have never free motion quilted on this type of shiny knit fabric so this ought to be interesting!

Yeah it's Friday!

Another bit of progress on the t-shirt quilt. It took me 2 hours to quilt this Girl Scout scarf! Lots of detailed quilting around each one of the symbols and the lettering. I had to take it slow and easy to make sure I kept the fabric smooth and taunt.

Then I quilted this little filler piece.

Here is my tip of the day when quilting t-shirts quilts. For each shirt I detail quilt around the design first then meander quilt the background as I can. Say for instance there is wording 2 or 3 inches down from the top of the block. I would quilt around those letters and then meander stitch the space between the letters and the top edge. Next I would work my way down to the next area that needed detailed stitching and quilt that. I found that if I meander the background first then do the detailed stitching, it is harder to work in any excess.

I am now 40% done with the quilting! This is for the daughter of a lady I work with for the daughter's graduation so she doesn't need it until May, but I plan on having it done in the next two weeks. I want to try and get as much as I can done on the quilt this weekend between all the other things weekends usually entail. It is suppose to be in the 50's on Sunday so if nothing else I will have to wash my car. It is so dirty with all the dust from the job site.

Have a great weekend!

I did good!

I am now 35% done with the quilting on the current t-shirt quilt. This is what I got done:

At work the crew is busy filling in the piling footers with a special type of compacting sand. On the left you can see some concrete wall units - the light gray bits. More will be added to increase the height as the area gets filled in.

I was standing on the steps to get in the job trailer when I take these pictures. The dump trucks of sand pull in the gate and it is close to the trailer.

They dump their load then the excavator and skidsteer spread out the sand. There were guys with shovels yesterday filling in areas between the pilings.

They are at it again today and the trailer shakes with the vibrations from the roller, sheepsfoot and the trucks. A sheepsfoot is a roller that has dimples on it - kind of like if you would reverse the spaces in a waffle. There are a lot of backup beepers constantly going off. This will be my first time seeing a bridge being built so it is pretty interesting.

not much to show

I went to dinner with a friend so I didn't have time last evening to do much. I did get some bobbins wound this morning for the next two areas I want to quilt on the t-shirt quilt

I did wrap up the baby quilts to send to my sister today after I did get home from dinner

I needed to put a cake knife on the pile of stuff to take to work. Monday was one of the guy's birthday, but he was away on vacation so we will celebrate today. I dug out the cake knife I bought to cut my wedding cake so many years ago. It needs to be used or I need to get rid of it! My son wouldn't use it to cut his wedding cake because he said it had bad energy since his Dad and I had split up. LOL!!

If you see any good sales on flannel will you let me know? I want to make another flannel quilt, but I am out of solids and only have a few plaids left in my stash. I am looking for manly man plaids. I have a gift card for JoAnn's but they don't have much in the way of higher quality flannel. Thanks!

Labels and boxy pouches

I needed to get two baby quilts labeled so I could ship them to my sister. Someone she works with just had twin girls. I will hand stitch the labels on at lunchtime.

There is an young lady who is an intern on the highway/bridge job. We get along great and we learn a lot from each other. She is so smart! Yesterday the conversation was about what a roux was. She had no idea. I had brought creamed spinach to work and how I made it led to the roux explanation. Then we have a bunch of carpenter pencils in the cupboard and she asked if they would fit in a pencil sharpener. I said I have a sharpener for that type of pencil so she could sharpen them. Here is the sharpener. I had bought it at Home Depot for just a few dollars since I have carpenter pencils at home.

Now we have a nice handful of sharpened carpenter pencils

The intern and my conversations also lead to talking about my boxy pouches. I brought my bag of pouches this morning and gave her one for herself and one for her Mom. Here is one that I use for different things. Right now it has the thread and a scissors I need for stitching on the labels.

My SIL the other day said she would like another boxy pouch as she uses the one I gave her all the time! She also asked if I had any extra she would like to give one to her Mom. I found a Tyvek envelope and stuff 8 in there to mail to her. I still have 27 left out of the 100+ I made.