Progress all around!

It was a good weekend. I managed to make good progess on the t-shirt quilt. It's a lot of messing about, but I only have one more section to sew together. I got the left hand side sewn together.

and the lower right hand side is sewn together. The gray long strip above this section is just pinned to the design wall. It will not be sewn on until I get the upper right hand corner sewn. I am taking my time and making sure everything is laying nice and flat.  There are three sweatshirt pieces in this quilt too.  They are kind of heavy, but I have been seaming the heck out of the seams so they don't leave a lump at the seam area.  

I did do some yardwork. I finished up the shade flower bed. I had the far end to finish.

All done! It took 19 wheelbarrow loads of sweet peat to dress this entire bed. I ended up using some chunks of concrete to edge the far end along with a few rocks I pilfered from other areas of the yard.  That is some ornamental grass chunks I saved.  I had just stuck them in this bed in case I needed them.  This bed is where I will grow my zucchini, but there is a lot space that is going to need some plants!  

I decided to clean up under the pine trees too. I had put weed cloth and mulch on them years ago, but it was all overgrown. I pulled out the worst of the weeds, put a double layer of weed cloth down, then topped with sweet peat. I have one more planting bed to redo and then everything will be in good shape. Since the weather is going to be on the cool side for the next week I need to get it done. The good part is that it is located on the NE side of the house so it is in the shade in the late afternoon.

I have a new cross stitch project, but I found the vinyl project pouch I had made.  The bag I had used for the zebra piece was not big enough for the chart I was making so Sunday I made two more bags - one for the chart and fabric, and the other for the floss, scissors, and needles. The big one is 12x14 and the smaller one is 7x10

Here you can see the difference in size from the old one 

I have made progress on the 2010 quilt since the last time I posted a picture of it. I have been working on the top gold section. I only have two more rows of stitching and this section will be done.  Here is the before and after/current

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!