T-shirt progress and TGIF!

I made good progress on the upper left section of the t-shirt quilt. I am finding that I have to add filler pieces to almost every shirt and that takes time, but I think it is a design element that I otherwise would not have done. It is does take a little more time also to decide what color of fabric I want to use for each shirt. I pick a color, audition it, mull about it, then go with it or change the color and repeat. I only had a couple more seams to sew and then this section will be done.  I am adding the filler pieces so I can make this quilt at least a full size.  If I were to go and square up the shirts, the quilt would only be about a twin.  

It was drizzling yesterday with a wind chill of 37 degrees so no yardwork happened. That 13 mph wind was cold! It looks like Saturday and Sunday will be good for being outside and finishing up that bed by the fence. Once that bed is done, my next project will be working on the Lenten Rose bed.  There will be some serious digging and rearranging of plants involved!  Have a great weekend!

t-shirt quilt progress and hauling mulch

First, the t-shirt quilt progress. I didn't have much time to sew after I went inside. I spent way longer working in the yard than I had planned; I will get to that in a minute. Meanwhile, I did get the t-shirts (outlined on the left of this picture) sewn together. I had to add pieces to the gray Key West piece to make it wide enough. I also pressed interfacing onto a couple t-shirt backs for inserting where I need more width or length. Here I am auditioning the insert pieces to the white and the odd colored red shirt.

The step-mother brought me two plastic grocery bags of t-shirts this morning which I will use for adding bits for width and lengths. She brought me some good stuff! It is forecasted to rain this afternoon so maybe I can make some real progress on this quilt tonight.  As soon as I got home from work I was outside working. I wanted to get the rest of the sweet peat mulch up to where I have that fence. I was planning on working an hour, but it turned into two. LOL!! It took about a half hour to finish weeding and then the rest of the time I hauled and spread 11 wheelbarrows of sweet peat mulch. Here is what it looks like now

Next will be cleaning up the far end of this bed. I could use a few more rocks.  This is where I planted some chunks of that ornamental grass.  The chunks kind of blend in with the weeds! LOL!!

T-shirt quilt - now we're cookin'!

Thanks for all the lovely comments about the zebra sampler. I made this from photos; I couldn't find a chart. I think I now have four pieces that need framed. Sometimes the hardest part of making a quilt is getting started. Well, I finally started and have a plan. With the t-shirt fabric I got from my pile of shirts and a bag of scraps that were going to be rags which I found in the garage, I am putting this quilt together! The section at the lower left was sewn together last night. I am doing a combination of inprov, and ruler cutting and squaring up for this quilt.

My plan is to put this quilt together in four sections. I rearranged the shirts a bit. I will fill in the gaps with the scrap t-shirt pieces.

It was a beautiful evening last night so I just had to do a bit of yard work. I decided to fill in the space between the Shasta daisies with three of the plants I had pulled up from that other bed. This ought to give me a big display of flowers in a couple months. I circled the ones I planted last night.

I was dreading the next job to tackle. Look at this hot mess! Weeds, leaves, grass, oh my!

Much to my surprise the dirt was nice and moist so most of the weeds came out easy, I cut off all the dead leaves from the Lenten Roses, raked the bulk of the stuff down to the far end to put in my big pile of yard waste, and got out the leaf blower to finish it off. I spread two wheelbarrow loads of sweet peat and this is how it looks now after an hour and a half work. Much better and it cleaned up faster than I thought!

I did have one mishap. The first load of sweet peat was too heavy for me to dump so I lost control.  The wheelbarrow fell over and half of the load went into the grass. Oops! LOL!! Made myself more work. I scraped up what I could, threw it in the bed and raked the rest to spread it around.

It is going to be another nice evening so I plan on pulling any weeds I missed then dump and spread sweet peat. The fence I had was to keep the deer from eating the squash flowers on the plants that I had here last year. I will reinstall it once I plant this year's plants.

Sampler finished, t-shirt plan, lunchtime project

Thanks goodness it rained most of the day yesterday so I had an excuse not to work in the yard. LOL!! Instead I finished the zebra sampler. I only had four 12" pieces of floss left. Talk about cutting it close! LOL!!

Next I cleaned up the quilting table a bit and fixed two pieces for the t-shirt quilt. I had this shirt

and now it looks like this

Then there was this piece. Really? Cut it from the t-shirt like this?

I managed to save it. I don't think it looks too bad.  I used a t-shirt from my stash and the color match is pretty close. 

A mosaic design was asked for so here is the first section I am working on. I am going to need more gray t-shirts to cut up for joining fabric.

Here is a picture of my niece with the quilt I sent her. She is the sister of the nephew that got the yellow and gray quilt.

I made this quilt in 2005. It was the biggest improv quilt I had made to date. It wasn't quite long enough so I just use the leftover bits to add a row at the bottom.

So since I finished the sampler I will go back to working on the 2010 quilt at lunchtime if it is too hot to walk or if it is raining. It looks like a hot mess in this picture! LOL!!

Right now I am working on the gold section at the top. I would love to get this UFO done by the end of the month, but I think that would be pushing it. I am using No. 12 pearl cotton to quilt with.

Don't you just love "befores" and "afters"?

Where so I begin? What a weekend. I worked on the zebra sampler while I rested after doing some long hours out in the yard. Here is where I left off on Friday and where I am now

I circled the motifs I have left to embroider. I only have 9 strands of floss left, but I think I will have enough to finish.

Fiday when I got home there was a pile of sweet peat mulch in the driveway to greet me.

I got to work on Saturday morning in the yard. I got this flower bed weeded, mulched, and seeded with marigold seeds I saved from last year and some zinnas. I finished off the front for the day with mowing and trimming before I had to stop and take my neighbor to the Cleveland airport.

Sunday at 7:30 a.m. I was at the yardwork again. I was determined to finish cleaning up the front bed along the street. I dug up the Shasta daisies, removed the excess plants, dug up the divided the two remaining ornamental grasses, replanted the grasses, and then mulched. Where the blue line is located I put in a row of marigolds seeds. Last year the Shasta daisies died out by the end of June so this year the marigolds will give the front some color when the Shasta daisies are done blooming. Here is where I left off, and here is the result of 7 hours of work.

I did stop and get a bigger tarp on Saturday so I could cover the sweet peat and keep it dry. There is rain in the forecast for the next several days. This is the pile after using twelve wheelbarrows of sweet peat for those beds. Still a very big pile, but oh I have plans!

I put all the excess Shasta daisy plants and a few ornamental grass clumps in this bin for my neighbor, and packed up the peach colored day lily I dug out of the bed near the street into two boxes for a lady at work. The deer would come along and eat the buds and blooms off the day lily so there was no point of keeping it.  The only thing I threw back into the wood were some daffodil bulbs. I never like them; they are some mutant looking ones.

I also made a banana bread, cooked at chicken, shredded it, and will make soup tonight for lunches, and did ALL the dishes. I never seem to get all the dishes done, but they were done last night. Maybe I will get back to making that t-shirt quilt if it keeps raining; that will keep me out of the yard!  LOL!!!

Ready for mulch, pillowcase, and sampler progress

As soon as I got home from work I laid out the tarp for the fellow that is delivering my sweet peat mulch today. It was windy so lots of bricks were needed to hold the tarp in place. It was going to rain - and it did -  so I had to get this done.  I will be busy this weekend spreading sweet peat in all the flower beds.

Since it did rain there was no working in the yard last night thank goodness! I'm tired! LOL!! I did make a Happy Birthday pillowcase for a lady I work with. I bought the happy birthday fabric from my friend that was downsizing her stash. I think she had a whole bolt of this and now it's mine.

I worked on the zebra sampler a bit more at lunch and after work. Here is where I was

and where I am now

I am using a hand dyed black floss and I am on my third skein. I am sure glad I bought four because I am going to need four. I was just guessing about how much I would need. This is what I am using

I had nothing but fun at work the last couple of days. I needed to add revised drawings to the file that had all the previous drawings. Each drawing has a name and it's own file such as E1-3 Demolition Level 1. The drawings are in a software call Bluebeam that the contractors can access and we also keep them on the company cloud. It took a lot of trial and error, watching videos, and one email to complete the task. I wrote how to notes so I don't forget how to do this since I don't know how long it could be until I need to do this again. Bluebeam is not user friendly as far as I am concerned!

Have a great weekend!

Sampler progress and digging more

Here is my progress on my zebra sampler. It has been too hot to walk at lunchtime so I stitch instead. Here is where is was

and where I am at now

I spent another two hours working in the yard last night digging up another ornamental grass. I decided to go after the big one and get it out of the way.  It has been in the ground for at least 10 years. 

Here is how wide this puppy was! I was dreading this.

Remarkably this one came out much easier than I had anticipated. I used the mattock to cut it into pieces instead of the chainsaw.  I had to pause every 4 or 5 swings to catch my breath.  That darn mattock  probably weighs at least 10 - 12 pounds so it takes some effort to swing that thing!  I ended up getting eight plants out of this clump. Here are the four I planted at the fence.  FYI- that pile of leaves and branches was dumped there by my neighbor several years ago.  Half the pile was on my property.  I moved some of it last night so I could plant those last two clumps.  I don't like looking at it so I guess I will have to move it farther down the hill.  Ugh!

Then I threw the other four clumps into holes at the end of the new bed I put in last year. This is just a temporary placement for them. I may need a few more of these in the future so I want to keep them alive.

Here is my row of plants. I am anxious to see them grow! It was forecasted an 80% chance of rain today, but that changed and now it's down to 50% later tonight. I am glad I gave the plants a drink of water last night.

So I am down to two clumps to dig out. I will divide these and replant smaller chunks in this bed and find a home for anything I have left. I need to add soil/sweet peat to this bed so I ordered 5 yards of sweet peat. I don't want to dig these up until the sweet peat arrives which is Friday. I can't wait to see that mountain of goodness/pile of work when I get home from work on Friday! Tonight I will start digging up the Shasta daisies I want to thin out and loosen the soil so I can work in the sweet peat on Friday. At least that is the plan unless it is raining.  I figure I should have this bed done this weekend and then I can spend the summer enjoying it.