Getting so close!

One more t-shirt is quilted so I am now 97.4% done with the quilting; that is how the math works out! LOL!! I did the smaller shirt last night. I was having a hard time seeing since there wasn't any natural light.

I only have this shirt to finish quilting and then I will be on to the binding!

T- shirt quilt almost quilted, a thank you card, and an old movie

The t-shirt quilt is now 95% quilted. I quilted this shirt which wasn't as hard as I thought it would be

Then I got the top area of this shirt quilted

This is the last shirt to quilt

I found a lovely thank you card on my desk yesterday. This was a card with a token in it for fixing those ski pants. The lady wrote a lovely note inside and was very happy with the job I did.

Since football season was almost done except for the Super Bowl, last Saturday I flipped on TCM to have whatever movies they were playing to keep me company while I sewed. The movie "Door-to-Door Maniac" was on; it was in black and white. I had never seen or heard of this movie. I didn't even see the beginning of it, but I looked at the guy on the screen and it was Johnny Cash. He was playing a bad guy. So as I would glance at the movie there was a lady that was calling her child for breakfast. Who pops up on the screen but little Opie Taylor aka Ron Howard! He had to be all of six years old and just as cute as ever! I wonder if Ron remembers anything about being on set with Johnny Cash?

T- shirt quilt - more progress and pecan bites

I worked real hard last evening and managed to get three more shirts quilted. I now have 90% of this quilt done with only the three black shirts to quilt.

Before I sat down to quilt, I made a batch of pecan pie mini muffins. These are so easy to make. Not too sweet, and nice and chewy.

Here is the recipe. I got this from blog Crafting Memories with Molly, but I added vanilla and salt which were not in the original recipe.  Don't fill the mini muffin cups to the top.  Leave about a 1/4" space for the muffins to rise.  Let them cool a few minutes in the pan then knock them out to cool completely on a rack if you can wait that long.  So far at work I have gotten a very good from everyone who had eaten one ... or two!

T-shirt quilt progress and the green baby quilt top

I am still not feeling great, but I did manage to get some work done. The T-shirt quilt is now 83% quilted. I outlined the shirts that still need quilted.

All of the green strips have been sewn and cut to size. The blocks are now arranged on the design wall. I changed out the fabric for the final row at the top from a very bold print to something more subtle.

I have more than enough blocks left over to make another baby quilt.

I ended up with a stack of the end pieces that I will sew together and make 4-patches out of them.

My goal this week is to get the quilting done on the t-shirt quilt, get it bound, and mailed.

Strips cut, caps arrived, weekend plans, soothing lotion, and allergy pills?

The white strips are cut for the green zig zag quilt.

The caps with the longer spikes arrived. That was fast! I ordered these on Monday and I saw the package sitting on my mailbox this morning. The mailman must have showed up last evening when I fell asleep about 5 pm while I was watching the news and sitting in front of the space heater.

I also bought these little scissor charms

They included a little freebie which was this sewing machine charm. Nice!

My weekend plans are to get back to working on the t-shirt quilt when I have good daytime lighting. I will then work on sewing the strips together for the green baby quilt in the evenings. I just want to get the t-shirt quilt done.

I also need to figure out how many curved topped pouches I need to make per month and week in order to make my deadline. I have them all sorted by what color of quilting thread I will be using.

I am trying to ween myself off of using the steroid cream the dermatologist prescribed for my eczema. I had a sample from her of this itch relief cream and tried it out the other day. It worked pretty good. One of the drug stores had it on sale this week so I stopped and bought two bottles. I am liking it so far. It absorbs easily and is not sticky or greasy. On sale it was $14.99, but it is worth every penny if I am not scratching!

I had been using this other cream and it was like rubbing crisco on my skin. It didn't absorb and seemed to just lay on top of my skin. I was still using the steroid cream along with it. I didn't want to waste it, but I don't like it so goodbye!  I have a tube of Eucerin cream that is not thick like this stuff, and it is fine on my hands at night.  I probability won't buy anymore, but I think I will head back to the drug store and get some regular CeraVe for my nighttime hand cream.

A woman I work with suggested I try allergy medicine for my cold. I had some already so I started taking that. It seems to work better than the Coriceden. My nose is not nearly as runny and my ears are not clogged up any more. That is a win-win as far as I am concerned!

There was freezing rain all the way to work this morning. I saw the salt trucks out. I can't tell if it has stopped or not. It is just ugly looking outside right now. Snow is coming shortly; I hope no accumulation. Have a great weekend!

Green strips cut

The green strips are cut for the next baby quilt I want to get made for a woman at work. It will be a zig zag. She is not due until June so I have some time. Tonight I will cut the white strips

The time will blow by quick because I have a heck of a list!

Quilt labeled and bills paid

My friend at work picked this quilt

I made a label and got it sewed on so I could give it to her today. I had some bills that needed checks written, so I got those done and dropped them in the mailbox this morning. I was kind of tired last evening so I didn't get much done.

Productive evening

Well, I guess I am feeling much better since I was busy last evening. Did some more dishes, made some cornbread muffins, washed sheets, and dug around to find green fabric for a baby quilt. One of the women at work is having a boy and avocado green is the main color. I pulled out my bin of 3" wide strips to see what I could find. I need to color sort these!

Then I dug thru what green fabrics I had on the shelf.  I even dove into my scrap bin and found a couple pieces. I plan on making a zig zag quilt with a white or off white fabric between each color. Here is what I found.

Then I got an email from another lady I work with that needed a boy quilt. I sent her pictures of what I had on hand. Zig zag

Courthouse steps

Improv

16 patch

Log cabin

She picked the courthouse steps quilt. I will get a label on it tonight since I will see her tomorrow at the meeting I need to go to at the home office. I ordered the longer spike caps for the snap closures and they are already on their way to me. This is the first time I have ordered from this company so it will be interesting to see how long it takes to get product.

Just a bit of sewing

I felt awful all day Saturday, but Sunday I was feeling better. I did some dishes, made a pot of soup, did two loads of laundry, and made two thread beds.

I wanted to put snaps on them with my new KAM tool rather than using Velcro as the closure.

I even made a plastic marking template so I don't have to measure where to put the hole for the snap

The problem was the fabric is too thick for the length of the cap spike. I am going to have to get caps with longer spikes.

I wanted to get some thread beds made for a woman to take to a retreat she is having. With being sick all last week and now running into the snap issue, it doesn't look like I will be able to get any done for her. She works at the Columbus office and I only see her when she comes to the home office for meetings. I will see her on Wednesday, but not again before her retreat. Oh well.

TGIF

I had a hard time dragging myself out of bed this morning. Besides still not feeling all that good, it was -6 degrees. Last evening I was tired when I got home from work so I didn't do much. Over the last couple of days I have been knitting a bit. I had knitted a scarf out of this yarn, but I didn't like the size of the scarf so I tore it out and I am starting again. This was expensive yarn.

It is going to be very cold all weekend so I may not leave the house. Have a great weekend.

Progress on the t-shirt quilt

I made good progress on the t-shirt quilt yesterday. I am now 58% done with the quilting.

It was so cold yesterday. It was -4 when I got up. By afternoon it was up to 12, but there were windy conditions. I didn't bother to look and see what the wind chill temp was. I bundled up and took out the recycling and trash. Then I had a small amount of shoveling at the bottom of the driveway where the plow had been by. The snow was very slushy and if it froze, that would make a big lump of having to get thru to get into the driveway so it needed to be removed. I did a bit of cooking and sat in front of the space heater. It is only day 6 of this cold and I feel a bit better today, but my head is still very congested. I'll be ok in a few more days.

Catching up on the goings on

Monday we get to work and the parking lot wasn't plowed. I got stuck a couple of time trying to figure out the best place to park and rocking the car back and forth to try and pack the snow down. Eventually one of the superintendents brought up a loader from the job site and cleared the parking lot.

I went to lunch with a couple of guys. I don't do that very often. We went to an Asian place and I got crab ragoon and a Philadelphia roll. The crab ragoon was great but I thought the sushi was mushy. I couldn't eat it all, my appetite is not great with this cold, so I took the rest with me. I felt so bad I had that for my dinner and did nothing the rest of the evening except sip tea and sit in front of the space heater.

Tuesday I had to go to the yearly company meeting. I took my box of Kleenex, cough drops, Excedrin, and sat and sipped tea all day. Here we are in line for breakfast. The eggs were barely warm.

The room was packed

The speaker in the afternoon talked about the Mexican dry cartels and how the majority of the drugs from Columbia and Venezuela are funneled thru Mexico by the Mexican cartels across the boarder and not by boat. I ended my day with this.

I took a sick day today since I feel lousy.  All the foreman, superintendents, project engineers and managers are at company training today. No one is working on site since it is -4. No reason for me to sit by myself all day feeling bad.

Quilting and shoveling

I worked on quilting the t-shirt quilt as much as I could, but between feeling lousy with another cold and having to shovel, at times it was a struggle. I am now 40% done with the quilting

I did get a few more pouch sandwiches made too. I don't remember exactly how many are in this stack, but it about 54. I am done with this step for now, so I will start quilting them soon.

I finally went outside Sunday about noon and started shoveling. There was 7 inches in the driveway.

I only got 2/3rds of the driveway done. My fingers were so cold I just had to go inside.

I warmed up, fell asleep and got something to eat. The snow plows showed up around 4 so I headed back outside.

There was another 3 inches! I had found my ski gloves. They are very warm and kept my fingers from getting cold. My neighbor came over and helped me shovel the rest of the driveway. This morning there was another 1 1/2 to 2 inches of snow so I shoveled that before I left for work. It was a slow crawl the 5 miles to work. Our parking lot had not been plowed so I got stuck a couple of time trying to park.