Busy weekend

I made some progress on the Harley quilt. It is now 17% quilted.

The weekend was busy with laundry, dishes, cooking, cleaning, repotting plants, grocery shopping, stitching on my sampler, and a visit from my nephew to pick up the pants I had fixed for him. We had a nice visit and I was excited to hear about some projects he is working on.  He is the one that is a musician so it takes a lot of hustle to keep the money coming in.  I made a pizza on Saturday. What was funny is my sister texted me and said she was making pizza too using the recipe I had given her!

The sun was out Saturday and Sunday although it was still just above freezing. That was enough to thaw things out. My big white pine in the backyard was covered with ice and the limbs were down on the ground. By Sunday they had returned to their normal position.

I found these at the grocery store. So good!

Rough week so I am glad it is Friday!

Things in my world ususally go pretty smooth, but this week I had several challenges. The patient advocacy department for the health care system I am in did a great job of helping me out. I needed to change my doctor. Too many communication issues and foul ups including my prescription. All of this was stressing me out. So after many phone calls including three to my health insurance provider, I got lined up with a new doctor and my prescription refill showed up yesterday so now we are good.  I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted off my shoulders!  Throw in a head cold and it was a rough week. Last night I did get one of the smaller t-shirt pieces quilted.

We were forecasted to get snow overnight, but instead we got ice. My trip to work went fine; I drove slower than usual. Several times I had to go around branches that had fallen in the streets. There was freezing rain the entire trip, but the road crews had started salting the heck out of the roads yesterday morning so the roads were not slick at all. Here is what my front yard looked like at 6 am; everything is coated with ice.

This weekend I am going to have to breakdown and do some grocery shopping. After that I plan on staying home and getting some quilting done on the Harley quilt. I think I may start on the placemats too. My coworker brought me the pattern for the bench cushion so now I will have to watch for a coupon so I can get some foam. Have a great weekend.

Two new projects

Somehow I roped into two new projects for a woman I work with. The first project will be new placemats. She said she just couldn't find any decent placemats and brought me a very worn one that she liked. I dug thru my stash to come up with something she might like and was successful on the first try! Here are the fabrics for the placemats.

I will FMQ some yardadge then cut that to size and bind. It will be like making little whole cloth quilts. The next project is to make a cushion for a bench. She is going to make a pattern and this is the fabric she picked.

Once I get the pattern, I can then source a zipper and the cording.

The big plant project

Yesterday and this morning at work I have spent some time redoing the plants. It was a lot more work than I thought! I shopped for plants and potting soil on Tuesday at one of the local greenhouses.  I could have spent a lot of money there!  I didn't have enough potting soil and I needed three more pots so I stopped at a big box store this morning at 6:30 am. So here is the parade of before and after pictures. People have noticed and like the refresh. Conference room entrance. These were just ratty!

I think the snake plants fit the area better and on the plus side they help clean the air!

There was some philodendron plants in those pots so I pulled that out, cut the ends off, and stuck them in water. Once they root, I will pot them.

The receptionist asked if I had some extra that she would like a plant. I broke off a piece of one of the snake plants, and now she is very happy with her little plant.

Here was the plant at the president's assistant's desk. It was sad!

Here is the new plant. The president said he saw it this morning and wondered where it came from. The assistant is very happy with her new plant!  It is low maintenance, a slow grower and grows in a clump.

Next Big Bubba had to get moved. Big Bubba is a rubber tree. One of ladies near where this plant sits just hates this plant!

Well, Big Bubba got replanted into a bigger pot and moved into the conference room. The size of this room is more suited for the size of this plant.

I bought a different variety of snake plant to fill Big Bubba's spot.

When I get ready to leave work I will cut off a couple of Big Bubba's branches that are growing horizontally and need to go. I am going to try and propagate what I can from those branches so maybe I can get a plant for my booth aka cubical.

It's 2-22-22!

I didn't get any quilting done on the Harley quilt last night. I was tired, But I have to post something on this historic day so here is what I came up with. I did get the f and e stitched on the cross stitch piece.

The daffodils next to the house where the brick absorbs the south facing sun are coming up. This area has it's own micro climate and is warmer because the bricks radiate the heat.

At work I have been tasked with replacing the pathetic plants. This one is by the president's office. It was just wild and I trimmed it a couple weeks ago. It is just not a very nice looking plant.

These two plants are outside one of the conference rooms. They are pretty ratty too. I am going to replace these with snake plants because the snake plants are low light plants, survive with little maintenance, and grow up rather than outwards. There is also some philodendron mixed in these pots which doesn't do very well. I plan on pulling out the philodendron and repotting them. I have a place to put the pot that will look good with a plant.

Then there is this rubber tree which one of the ladies hates. The plant has to be 7' tall. She wants me to replace it with a snake plant. I will try and get a big one to fill the space. I think this plant is cool! It might be coming home to my house.

The president's assistant is excited to get a new plant and since it is warm today, I think I will be making a trip to the greenhouse despite the rain. I was given a $200.00 budget for plants, pots, and potting soil so I will be reusing the pots that I can.

Harley quilt, pants fixed, cross stitch progress

I stayed home all weekend and just went outside long enough to get the mail. The Harley quilt - I got two shirts quilted - the yellow ones - so I am 6% done with the quilting. Hardly enough to even bother calculating! LOL!!!

I finally got myself motivated to fix my nephew's pants. He ripped out the back seam.

I can't believe he is skinny enough to still wear these. He called me and said he had some gigs coming up so he needed them. They are patched up now. I tried to give him just a bit more room in the seat.  I get to cross this off the to-do list.

I did spend a lot of time working on that cross stitch piece. I just couldn't put it down. Here is where I was last Monday and where I am now. I am getting close to having this done.

Getting there

I only have 7 or 8 more shirts to pin baste - yeah! Then let the FMQ begin!

It was 55 degrees when I got home from work, so I hauled out the hose, power washer, and step stool so I could get the salt off my car.

There is still a film on the car, but at least it is not white anymore! Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are forecasted to be between 48 - 57 degrees, so I will hand wash the car one of those days.

Linen alterations and car salt

I had a hair appointment after work so by the time I got home it was almost 6:30 which didn't leave me any time to pin baste. So for today's post I will show you where I am on my cross stitch. Here is my marked up chart as of a couple days ago.

Here is the chart with the linen on top.

Do you see the problem? I knew for awhile that the height of the linen was too short, but I was not going to start over!

I experimented on a small scrap and stitched two pieces of linen together after cutting them along a thread.

I then tried stitching and it worked just fine.

So I trimmed my stitched linen and added a piece. I had been thinking about how this would work as I got inspiration from that Heartstring Samplery Berry Bowl cross stitch piece I saw on a floss tube Just Keep Stitching with Pam and Steph.  This piece is designed to be stitched by two different people using two different colored fabrics then sewn together. 

I thought about using a different color for the add on piece, but I just used the same color. After I sewed the two pieces together, I pulled two threads from the seam edges to soften the edge a bit. Here is my piece as of this morning. The linen is now big enough! LOL!!! Geeze!

The temperature is forecasted to get up to 55 today so if it is not too windy - there are wind warnings today and right now it is blowing at 17 mph - I need to wash my car. The poor thing is coated in salt. If nothing else, I will hook up the power washer and just rinse the car down and not get the bucket with soap. It is suppose to warm with rain Thursday, cold Friday, then warm again this weekend so I might have and opportunity to hand wash it this weekend.

Some progress and fun mail

I didn't have much time to pin baste the Harley quilt last evening. I had an eye doctor appointment in the afternoon and didn't get home until a little after six. My eye doctor is where I use to live. It takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes to drive there, but I am not interested in changing. I hadn't been to the eye doctor in a very long time and I needed to get my glasses' prescription changed. On my way back, I stopped at the meat market and got some ground steak for chili.  Can you believe the price of meat these days?!  I did get a little bit more pin basted on the Harley quilt. Every little bit helps!

I found for sale a sampler kit from 1978. This would have been when I was doing a lot of cross stitch. The kit was a decent price and I thought it would be fun to stitch a vintage piece. It showed up in the mail last night, but I won't start on it until I get my current cross stitch project done. I did notice in the kit the needle was rusty so I will just discard it. After all, it is 43 years old!

T-shirt quilt progress

Saturday I received a big box of Harley t-shirts. There must have been 20 shirts, but only one light colored shirt. That was all I needed so I got to work.  By Sunday I had the top sewn and I started to pin baste the quilt top. I circled the spot where the dark red t-shirt was and substituted the light gray shirt. Why did I make this quilt so big?! LOL!! My table is 96" x 96" and the quilt top almost covers the entire top.

I also spent some time sewing together scraps to make blocks and worked on my cross stitch piece. The mailman also brought me a package from my sister. She sent me a salt and pepper sugar skull set - aren't they cute? I will display them with the large pink sugar skull she bought me in Cozumel.

Scrap progress and trash bin update.

I got a few more blocks out of the scraps made. They are now pressed and trimmed. The pink ones are 5 1/2" and the brown, green, tan ones are trimmed to 6 1/2". There is not enough for a quilt yet, but I still have more scraps to make into blocks.

I laid out some orange scraps into block units and I have some gold and aqua blocks ready to be sewn by the sewing machine. I will keep working on these until the box of t-shirts arrives.

My sister received the small I sent her so now I can show it to you.

Yesterday when I got home from work the neighbor's trash bin had been moved. I didn't get to text my other neighbor to find out if she saw the guy move it or if the city had come. It is technically still in the street, but at least it is not out near the middle of the cul-de-sac. Next, that trailer has to get moved!

I don't have any big plans for the weekend. I want to try and get the current scraps sewn and sorted out and will I probably watch some of the Super Bowl. Have a great weekend!