Road trip and quilt sandwiches

This is a long post, but I will try to make is short as I can. This is Women In Construction (WIC) Week. Yesterday 25 of the women in the company I work for, took a road trip to visit three of our job sites. Many of the office ladies don't get to go out to job sites and it was an opportunity for all of us to see different ones. First, we went to a renovation project for a courthouse. This is the original courthouse and an addition that was built. I don't know the dates, but in this picture the original looks turn of the century.

The renovation is going on mostly in the addition. They had to install an elevator by first digging the elevator pit in the basement and cutting holes thru three floors. There was a lot of steel that had to be added to carry the loads.

This is where the public can come to pay tickets and do other business. There will be three bulletproof windows and those things sticking out will be for ledges so you could set your stuff on like paperwork. The room on the other side will be for the clerks.

Here is a kitchenette outside the judge's office

The judge's restroom

What the finishes will look like in the judge's office

This is the judge's courtroom. There is another courtroom that is bigger.

Next we headed to Cleveland and ate lunch. I had a bowl of black bean chicken chili which was very good. I forgot to take a picture before I started destroying it! LOL!

a cheeseburger which was one of the best I have ever had! I could only eat 2/3rds of it, so I wrapped the rest up and had it for dinner. Look at the beautiful toast on that bun!

For dessert, which I had to save for later, they had cookies. We had been sent the menu a couple days before so I needed to know what a five dollar cookie tasted like. I got the peanut brittle cookie, and it was very good. They also had oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip. Look at the size of it!

After lunch we headed to the next job which was renovating a building for Cleveland State University. It is a 1920s building and is a dorm. It is 21 stories with the dorm rooms from floor 4 thru 19. There is a lot of repair work that needs to be done on the exterior which was well underway. Then all the dorm rooms are being renovated including adding new bathrooms.  

Here is a view of downtown Cleveland from the 19th floor.

There were still many 1920 details in the lower 4 floors in what I would call general public type areas and elevator lobbies. The plaster work in what will be the game room for the students is stunning!  All the furniture is from the building and will be reused.

I was taken aback by the crazy floor in the lobby restroom. I am assuming it is vintage.

The ladies running the WIC road trip had put together goodie bags for each of us. I took most of it to work today for the guys.

By the time I got home I was pretty tired from being bounced around in that bus all day. I heated up my leftover burger for dinner and ate 3/4th of the cookie. I managed to muster up enough energy to quilt three pieces for curved top pouches.

I was asked which thread bed I kept. I kept one of the flaming scissors since I already had made myself a project bag out of that fabric. Making the two thread beds used up almost all of that fabric. I just have a few scraps left. I should have bought more! LOL!!

Thread beds done, quilt labeled

Here are the last 9 done!

I have a nice stack of them to hand over to a lady I work with that has a cross stitch retreat. I am keeping one for myself.

I got the label on the green zig zag baby quilt. I will be seeing the mom-to-be today.

I went thru the pile of tote bags I need to make for the merch booth and found one that my friend from PA precut that would be good for the baby quilt. I whipped that together last evening; I didn't want to present the quilt in a plastic bag.

Installing snap on the thread beds

I worked on installing the snaps on the thread beds last evening. It didn't go as smooth as I thought it would, but I figured out some little techniques that made it go better. The fabric was still a bit too thick so it was hammer time! I had a scrap piece of fabric I positioned where I needed to hammer using the template I had made.

I removed the template and then pounded the fabric to flatten it.

I repositioned the template and used the punch for the hole.  The punch and maul worked great!

I stuck the cap thru the hole and used a piece of tape to hole it in place.

Next was adding the female part of the snap

Then I slide the snap into the plier tool and press it with all my might! I took off the tape and press it again.

The side with the flannel was thick so I had to hammer it hard. Here is this one done.

I got half of the thread beds finished. I wasn't feeling that great so it was hard to do these. I did go at lunch to get more of that elixir and I am feeling a whole lot better this morning!

I may need to invest in a better tool to install the snaps. I will be making more of these thread beds and it is just so hard to use the pliers.

These thread beds are bigger than the ones I first started making. Here is a comparison

Thread beds almost done

I took a half day's vacation on Friday; I just had a lot to get done. I made a road trip to the bulk food store I like and needed to go to the credit union in person. After that I headed home; it was a 124.9 mile round trip. I first trimmed these blocks. I never had time at lunch last week to trim them.

Some of the blocks had just enough fabric left that I needed to do something with that.

I made some tiny four patches. It would have been so easy just to pitch those cut off bits.

Next I worked on getting the rest of the pieces I needed for the thread beds. By Saturday at 11:30 am, I had all the pieces cut and the thread picked out.

By 6:30 pm Sunday, all 16 of the thread beds were sewn. The finished 10 1/2" x 13".  They still need snaps.

The punch, maul, and board showed up on Saturday!  Tonight I will be installing snaps. 

That was pretty fast from Texas! I didn't get a chance to try the punch out. By 6:30 pm I was just too tired. I had only taken one does of that elixir on Saturday, and on Sunday my chest, neck and teeth were hurting. I was almost out of the elixir so I was seeing if I needed to get another bottle or not. I got three doses in on Sunday and I am going to get another bottle today.

Cutting out more thread beds

I decided to get eight more thread beads cut out from those fabrics I paired up yesterday.

I then pressed on the fusible fleece. This is the fabric the shows on the inside of the thread bed. I oversized both the fleece and fabric so that after I fused them, I could trim and get a clean edge.

There are a lot of steps to make a thread bed and lots of prepping of the parts. Here are the 4" x 11", 2" x 11", and 2 1/2 x 11" pieces ready for the next step.

The 4" x 11" get pressed into quarters (press in half then press the raw edges to the center and the 2" x 11" get pressed in half. These two pieces get sewn on to the zipper

The 2 1/2" x 11" gets press into quarters and is the binding for the zipper unit. I first baste the pocket lining at the top edge then add the binding.

Pressing all the pieces takes more time than sewing the thing together! LOL!!

I hope to get a big dent in the thread beds this weekend. Have a great one!