Making progress on several fronts

I picked up my second batch of photos and put them in the album last evening along with the thank you note that went with the quilt. I am now down to about 6 thank you notes I need to link up with the right quilt picture. It is hard to remember who you gave what quilt to! I will never let this get out of hand again! Gee, it only took me 20+ years to get a handle on this!

I also made progress on the pink, gray, and brown quilt. I need to get this done asap because I also need to mail to L.A. my brother his glasses and I thought the quilt would be perfect padding. My brother has other glasses, but the pair he left in Ohio are his favorite.

Photos and a little quilting

I had been working on getting my quilt and remodeling photos into albums and labeled. The remodeling albums are caught up so now it was time to tackle the quilts. I had about 25 - 30 thank you notes for quilts that I had given away and now it was time to rack my brain and try to match up the quilts with the thank you notes. I went back thru my blog and that helped connect the notes with the quilts. I needed to print pictures of the quilts so I copied them over to a file and had them printed at Walgreen's since they had a printing sale. I picked up the first batch of photos last night and the rest I will get tonight. A local discount store had photo albums cheap so I picked up some of those so now I am all set to get this job done. I am finally getting my head around the best way to store and organize my photos so I have no excuse to let this become a mess again.

I quilted a bit more on the pink, gray, and brown zig zag quilt.

Again I wish I could take pictures when it is dark, because this morning there was a 6 or 8 point buck in the backyard. He was big! He was sitting there in the beam of the security light with a doe. When I left for work I open the mandoor of the garage and there were four more deer wandering thru.

Spring weather

It was so warm this weekend (mid to high 40's)I decided to get out and do some of the yard work I was not able to do in November because of my surgery. The brush had gotten out of hand at the tree line in the backyard. I worked clearing the brush for 3 hours on Saturday using a pair of loppers. It is hard to tell in the pictures, but this on a hill so I had to drag all the brush up to the yard. Here is the before

And the after:

On Sunday, I got up and put together my fire pit I bought last summer so I could cut up the brush and burn it. I spent another three hours cutting material with the hand clippers down to a size to fit into the fire pit.

Here is the pile of brush before. It is about 20' by 20' and 3 - 4' tall.

The after - this is going to be slow work since most of what left is sticker bushes with these nasty thorns. The plies the left - the far left is larger sticks I will have to use the loppers to cut down so they will fit into the fire pit and the pile to the right of that is material all cut to size and ready to burn.

I found some daffodils that are confused. No it is not spring yet go back to sleep!

I did squeeze in some sewing. I got the pink, gray and brown zig zag top done. I trimmed it

Pinned it

And started quilting it

I will try to continue cutting up the brush after work this until it gets to dark, to cold, or rains/snow then I will head indoors to quilt. I think I have a busy week ahead.

A little sewing done

I started sewing together the pink, gray and brown zig zag quilt that has been hanging on my design wall for at least a month. I have the first two rows in the lower left sewn together. Now I like to live on the edge so I will let you know that the outside triangles are half square pieces so the outside edge of this quilt will all be on bias. I have done this before and as long as I am careful with my pressing and machine quilting, I have never had a problem. I would not recommend this to beginners though.

Here is the next row at the machine ready for assembly.

Wednesday at 1:30 in the morning I was up for a natural break and looked out the bedroom window. There were five deer sleeping in the back yard. I couldn't take a picture so here is a picture I took as soon as I got home when it was still light. You can see the oval areas where they were laying. The other two deer were on the other side of the yard.

When I took the trash can out this morning I could see where the deer had come thru the yard last night and stopped to investigate the front flower bed for anything eatable.

Dutch wax quilt pictures and snow

Here are the pictures of the Dutch wax quilt I promised. I forgot to measure it as usual, but it does cover a queen sized bed with plenty of overhang.
The front

The back

We now have snow on the ground. We had another day last week that the ground was covered, but it warm up that day and it all melted. It has gotten cold - 20 degrees - so the snow is staying. We have lucked out with the weather up until now, but we did not get as much snow as those crazed weatherpeople said we were going to get which is a good thing! I was concerned about shoveling because of my surgery, but I haven't had to shovel since we haven't had much snow - another good thing. I have slowly started to exercise to strengthen my core and uppper body and I can tell the difference already. I need to be able to pull the starter cord on the mower next year and it takes a pretty good yank to get it going!

Finishes and looking back

I have been keeping track of how much quilting thread I use - the cotton only not the rayon Sulky - for the last couple of years to gauge if I have accomplished anything or not. At the end of 2010 I estimated I had 111,000 yards of quilting thread. I bought another 19,200 yards during the year so that is a grand total of 130,200 yards. I took pictures and counted what I have on hand and I estimate it to be 96,100 yards. Than means I used 34,100 yards in 2011. Here are the pictures.

Dec. 31, 2010


January 3, 2012

Dec. 31, 2010

January 3, 2012

I finished the binding on the two baby quilts.

I post pictures of the dutch wax flag quilt as soon as I can hang the quilt to take the pictures.

I spent Sunday visiting the twins.

After I got home from visiting I had a voice mail to call my quilting buddy, Peg, who lives an hour away. I had just talked to her and her husband on New Year's eve so it was strange that she called me. We usually talk about every 2 to 3 weeks. She called to let me know her husband, Russell, died in his sleep. He was only 52. Russell was such a charater and I will miss him. Do you watch American Pickers? He looked just like Frank on that show. RIP Russell.

Finishes 16, 17, and 18 on the schedule

I plan on finishing these two baby quilts and the Dutch Wax Flag quilt before the end of the year. I am having a quilting friend over this evening and she needs to learn how to attach and finish binding so we will work on the baby quilts. See there was a reason why I did not get these finished sooner!

The binding on the dutch wax quilt just needs the hand sewing done.

I need to get the fabric room baseboard done and the trim the windows so I can move my fabric back into this room. I just couldn't get it done over the couple of days I had off at Christmas.

I wish everyone a happy and safe new year!!!