No rest for the wicked!

I got home from work early because I had a doctor's appointment and by the time I got out of there it didn't make sense to drive all the way back to work. That gave me more time to get some stuff done so here is what I did: 1. Mixed up a double batch of cutout cookie dough for cookies to take to work 2. While the dough was chilling, I mowed the front and side yard. 3. Baked the cookies - orange and white pumpkins with sprinkles!

4. Since there was 100% chance of rain, I wanted to get the leaves blown down the hill on the other side yard. Here is before and after. It is raining today so I am glad I got this done.

5. Quilt on the red- t-shirt quilt. I got all of the border areas quilted except for the ones next to the one t-shirt that needs quilted. I like to quilt the shirts first then do the border. So here is what I have left to quilt circled in blue. I am 93% done.

6. I sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes at the doctor's office before they called my name so I used that time to work on the red sampler. I saved the inner border/bands for the waiting room so I wouldn't have to look at the picture of the sampler for guidance if I would have worked on the letters. I had pre-threaded 3 needles and was just about to have to thread a fourth when they called my name. So between a little at lunch, the doctor's office, and this morning I made some good progress. Here is where I was yesterday and where I am now. I did notice that the large letters are not quite in the correct order. I was stitching the V and then the X was right beside it. That's not right. The W is at the end of the row above on the original sampler. Oops! I wasn't going to change it and it gave me a chuckle!

The top of the list this weekend of course is the t-shirt quilt. I would like to work on resizing the frames I bought since I have two pieces that need framed. Who knows what else I will get into! Have a great weekend!

Progress made!

I buckled down last night and made some progress on the t-shirt quilt. I am now 90 percent done with the quilting. It took almost two hours to quilt the white shirt with tracing around all those letters! I have outlined the areas that still need quilted.

Since the stitching is going so fast on the little red sampler I thought I would post again and show what I have gotten stitched since yesterday morning. Here is where I was yesterday morning and where I am now.

Distracted

I only got a little bit more done on the t-shirt quilt. I had to wind a bobbin then quilt the motif on this shirt first before I can stitch the background and around the letters.

When I first got home from work I wanted to sit and put a few more stitches in that new cross stitch piece. Well, I got totally distracted and an hour and a half later I made myself stop! LOL!! I like stitching on this Italian linen and using the new Cosmos floss. Here is where I was on Monday morning and where I am now.

This is a small sampler - 5 3/16th wide and 5 5/16" high.

Binding - decisions, decisions!

It is time to decide what I am going to use for the binding. I dug thru my stash and came up with two choices - red and olive putty. I am leaning toward the olive putty color because I think it would tie in the camo sashing and it looks fine with the backing. All opinions are welcome! I thought about navy, but I don't have any navy fabric and I am not buying any. Gray was another option, but if I am going with a darker color I figure the olive putty color would be a better choice.

I finished the Birds of a Feather sampler. I changed a couple of things from the chart. I made my first initial P in the gray color instead of caper, I added the skull, put the date where initials were suppose to go, and I made the birds black instead of caper. Now I need to get this framed.

My next cross stitch project will be a red sampler. I have pictures from books and other sources that I have accumulated of several red samplers and plan to use those only as a guide as I stitch my own version. I was waiting for some floss to come in the mail that I bought from an ebay posting. I kept watching the item for three weeks.  The listing time would expired and then it would be posted again at a lower price. After three week and a price reduction of $18.00, I finally bit and got it with no other bids. Even with shipping and tax I got 141 skeins of a beautiful Japanese made floss for almost a quarter of the price! Here is what I received in the mail yesterday including 11 skeins of a gorgeous red.

I know that is a lot of variegated thread! I will share some with my sister if she can use any of it. I got a small start on the red sampler. I had bought some of this 28 count light brown Italian linen a while ago and thought I would try it out. The floss stitches beautifully and the linen is easy to stitch. I checked the linen and it is more like 34 count as I am getting 17 stitches per inch, but it is easy to stitch. I really like the darker red floss against the light brown linen too.

Almost quilted

I am now 83% done with quilting the red t-shirt quilt. I have circled the areas that still need quilted in gold. My goal was to have this done by the end of the month and I think I will meet that goal.

The vinyl arrived for the backup cover I need to make so I think I will work on that once the red t-shirt quilt is done. I did some shopping for the next t-shirt quilt. I guess I will call that the shooting t-shirt quilt since that is the theme of the shirts. I got a king sized batt on sale and bought another bolt of interfacing just to keep my stash well supplied. I have two bolts on hand, but this king sized quilt is going to take a lot of interfacing.

New projects

My company came last night and it was wonderful to see these friends after such a long time. It had been since around Christmas 2019 since I had seen Kris. Her and her significate other, R, brought me projects. R likes to shoot in competitions with vintage military weapons - WWI type guns. He had loads of t-shirts and wants me to make a king sized quilt with them. There are around 45 shirts and this is going to be a fun project. No deadline which is nice in one way and dangerous for me in another, meaning it would be an easy thing to let it drag on when other things come up. I am going to try not to let that happen!

Kris had a little quilt that was made with her mother's clothes and it needs some TLC.

No quilting happened on the red t-shirt quilt, but at least my house is a lot cleaner!

A little progress

I only got a little bit of quilting done last night on the red t-shirt quilt. I managed to run thru just one bobbin of thread because I had to spend most of my evening cleaning house. I am having company tonight so there were dishes that needed done. I also ran the steam mop over the kitchen floor and vacuumed a bit. Here is what I did get done; not quite half this shirt.

Quilting and yardwork

I am now 45% done with quilting the red baseball quilt. I plan on quilting the rest of the red t-shirts then the shirts in the corners. The area circled in gold is what is quilted.

Before I went inside to quilt, it was so nice outside I decided to do some cleanup in the front yard. I pulled weeds, trimmed a bit of one of the mugo pines, cut the dead flower stems off some of the Shasta daisies, and pulled out the zinnias that were expired. This was just a start; I have so much more that needs tidied up before winter. I ended up with one overflowing wheelbarrow of debris. I took this out back and dumped it at the edge of my woods.

Cross stitch and grout

No quilting yesterday, but I was plenty busy! I was digging up plants that will be going to Wanda and my neighbor arrived home. We talked a bit and he was going to mow his grass. I was looking at mine and it definitely needed a haircut too so instead of quilting I mowed and trimmed the front and side yard. After that it was a load of laundry and making another batch of black bean soup. I dried the cross stitch fabric I had dyed. It turned out good except the upper left was suppose to be more blue. It is still useable. I can always dye more and try again! Dyeing this Lugana/Monaco fabric closed up the spaces between the threads so it will be interesting to see how this fabric now stitches.

I made some great progress on the Birds of a Feather cross stitch. Here is where I was last Tuesday and where I am now.

I was running out of the dark olive green thread called caper. A trip to the store for one skein of floss - ugh! I was looking around and found some floss I had hand dyed a few months ago. I was just playing around and cannot remember why I was dyeing it, but the olive green I had dyed is a perfect match to the caper! How about that!

Another stroke of luck was that when I went to the Home Depot to see if they had the grout I had used before for the tile floors in the bathrooms was still available. Yes, it was and they had little containers of the color I needed! Some of the grout came out of the joints in one area of the upstairs bathroom and I need to fix that. The grout that was leftover had gotten hard and yucky so thus a new container was needed. I think I might have gotten too much water on the floor when I was cleaning up the excess grout. This needs to be done as part of getting this bathroom finished. I will show pictures once I do the work.  I had taken a picture of the old grout container before I pitched it so I would get the right color. 

Now that the weather is cooling off I will be walking instead of stitching at lunchtime. Meanwhile, I had a big day yesterday walking when I went to Home Depot and Walmart to pick up a few things. I always park way out from the entrances so I get some walking in. The cheddar dot is where I parked.

So with all those steps I got in yesterday, I received my Fitbit Russian Railway badge for walking the length of the Trans-Siberian Railway. I haven't been walking that much this summer; it has been just too hot, but it was fun to get this badge anyway.

T-shirt progress, case done, keeping busy

First I will start out with the t-shirt quilt. I have it 36% quilted. In this picture I circled the area quilted.

I found this spool of quilting thread that I have had for a long time; it was marked $4.95 so I know it is probably at least 10 years old. 

I have no idea why I would have bought this thread, but to me it read camo all the way! I used it to quilt the camo fabric and it worked out great.

Friday after work I took apart those pictures and on Saturday I went to a local glass shop to have them cut the biggest piece of glass for the case I am using to display smalls. I got the case stained, varnished and installed the glass. Here is what it looks like all done.

While I was at the glass place,  I saw the displays in their showroom and asked about a mirror and shower door for the primary bathroom. The bathroom functions, but I have never finished the punch list and this will be the motivation to get 'er done! I don't want to even think about how long this bathroom has been sitting unfinished! It functions; just those finishing details need done. I had gutted this bathroom down to the studs. I had help with putting it back together, but I did the finishing work including installing all the glass tile which is floor to ceiling on every wall of this bathroom. The fellow is coming to measure Nov. 3, so that means I need to get a few other things done in that bathroom before he comes. Here is the space that needs a mirror.

I also dyed some cross stitch fabric. I will show it once it is done processing. It is soaking to get any excess dye out right now. I spent 3 hours cleaning up the garage; I finally found the animal that died in there - yuck! I also worked on that Birds of a Feather cross stitch which I will show tomorrow.

Back is made!

I had to piece it together, but I had enough baseball fabric to make the backing for the t-shirt quilt. The fellow who commissioned the quilt wanted a baseball print for the back. I also got the batting cut so you know what I will be doing this weekend!

I was watching a floss tube yesterday, Two Tarts and Our Starts, which is the ladies that have The Attic cross stitch shop in Mesa, Az. They showed a display case with some smalls and it dawned on me I have something similar. I was going to use this case for some items I saved from my son's childhood, but I didn't have it made deep enough so now I will use it for my smalls. I will take the largest piece of glass from those picture frames I bought the other day and find someplace that will cut it to size for me for this case. It is unfinished so I will be staining and varnishing it.

My big plans for the weekend are to work on the t-shirt quilt, stain the display case, and dye some cross stitch fabric. There won't be much football watching this weekend. Notre Dame doesn't play on Saturday and unless DISH gives us back NBC I won't be seeing the next three games. I don't know what the beef was between NBC and DISH, but I know as soon as I retire and move I am ditching DISH. Cleveland plays Sunday afternoon at 4 so that will be a good time to wind down. have a great weekend!

All sewn together!

I had to mow the front and side yard last night. It was looking like a hayfield! After that I got to sewing on the t-shirt quilt. I sewed the last seam this morning! After I press that last seam, trim the bottom and top, then I will start on sewing the back together tonight. I will be FM quilting it this weekend!

Yesterday I saw the bass player for Wham!, Deon Estus, passed away.  He also worked for many other people including Tina Turner.  I opened the article and instantly recognized the fellow and remembered our paths had crossed once. I remember meeting him at a memorial service for a friend of my brother who was a tour manager for many rock acts. There were several musicians that worked for Tina Turner at the memorial as my brother's friend was her tour manager for the tour in 2000. I got to go to four of Tina's concerts that year because of my brother's friend. All the the band members that were at the memorial were so nice and laughed when I told them a story. I remember distinctly that Deon had a fabulous smile.

Two more seams sewn and a big score!

I didn't get much sewing done last night becasue I had a hair appointment right after work. I did get the bottom three t-shirts in the middle row sewn together. I forgot to take a picture so I just have this one marked to show the three seams I have left to sew.

The planters along the sidewalks were decorated for Halloween and I thought this one was really cute.

I stopped at the Goodwill store that is on my way home and scored big! I was looking for picture frames that I can cut down and use for framing cross stitch. The store had lots of frames and they were inexpensive. I bought this group. The smallest frame was two dollars and the biggest one was eight dollars. The outisde measurement of the big one is 28 1/2" x 28 1/2". The other three were six dollars. That will give me lots of material to work with. I will just take the pictures and glass out and cut apart the frames. I need to figure out what to do with the glass. From now on when I have a hair appointment I will be stopping at this Goodwill and see what is new in their framed art department!

Borders done!

The borders were made long enough and have been sewn on both sides of the top. I have marked the seams left to sew.

I finished stitching the pastel deer pillow cover.

This is the cross stitch piece I am working on now. Here is where I was on September 30 and where I am now.

This design is called Birds of a Feather and the chart was gifted to me by one of my blog readers. I am using 28 count natural linen, Leo & Roxy floss for the birds and DMC for everything else.