What a weekend

I had a hair appointment Friday so by the time I got back to the house it was 12:30. Some how I got involved with the contractors and next thing I know the afternoon was gone. It seems he always leaves me with something I need to take care of so the day was shot with no quilting done. He did do a fabulous job on fixing the foundation wall, installing the drainage, and forming up the steps where the brick and block fell apart due to moisture over the years.

The foundation had cracked and fell off the footers due to the previous owners lack of downspouts and gutters on the garage. Settling and water erosion caused this to happen. A section of the foundation was about 2" out.

I know it doesn't look like it, but here is the foundation shoved back in place, pinned with rebar, and the gaps filled in with high psi concrete. He is going to pour a concrete curb to underpin the footer and the foundation together. I was very lucky that Don was able to do this, otherwise it could have been a real expensive fix.

Drains. Don forgot to leave me the cap for the one downspout so I couldn't hook the downspout up. I again was lucky because he did not have to saw cut the driveway to get the underdrain piping installed. Saw cutting would have cost me more money.

The steps are formed and ready for concrete. He also pulled in the back wall of the garage as it was bowing out like someone had hit it with a car. The bowed wall had been bugging him and he figured out a quick and easy way to bring the wall in and anchor it down. What a guy!

They were suppose to place concrete this morning, but look what showed up

Yes, so far we have gotten about 3" of snow and it is still coming down. I think they should have poured the concrete on Friday!

I worked very hard Saturday and Sunday on the Moda Halloween quilt. As hard as I worked I only got 13 blocks quilted. So now I have 15 out of 48 done.

I wrote out a schedule to try and figure out how I am going to get this quilt done by the deadline. Glory it is going to be hard. Every moment that I can will have to be dedicated to putting a stitch in this quilt. I think I will have to take another day of vacation too. The kick in the teeth will be me busting tail to get this done and then it is not accepted into the show! Oh well, that is a risk I am going to take!

Next DP project

My next DP project will be to use up the leftover fabrics from the two challenges - the American Made Brand and the Michael Miller. Between working on the Moda Halloween quilt and the garage project, I didn't have any time to do anything on the DP except to gather the fabric.

Garage and Halloloween quilt progress

The garage project is moving along. Yesterday they dug a trench for the downspout hookups and laid pipe, worked on stabilizing the foundation wall and skim coated the exposed foundation which spalled due to water laying against it over the years.

I sure hope they place the concrete by end of day Friday.

I was still pretty tired last night so I only got the other half of that second block I had started on the Halloween quilt. I am taking tomorrow off so I have to hit the Halloween quilt hard this weekend. I have only 2 of 48 blocks quilted. How many more blocks do you think I will have quilted by Monday?

Have a great weekend!

Can you say tired?

I ended up taking Tuesday off as my concrete guy, Don, for the garage work called me Monday night at 8 p.m. to say he was coming late Tuesday morning to start demolition of the garage floor. Holy cow Batman the garage still looked like this when I went to bed Monday night!

I got up at 5:30 a.m. and got to work. By 10:30 a.m. I had everything out of the garage except the drywall which I could not move by myself. I then had to move that pile of sweet peat.

15 wheelbarrow loads of sweet peat, 2 1/2 wheelbarrow loads of debris, and the pile was gone. Don had a spud bar and tore apart a pallet that had been in the driveway for 3 years so now the pieces are small enough I can put them in the trash bin.

Next it was on to ripping out the floor of the garage. At least I didn't have to do anything!

While they were ripping out the floor I dug up some of my canna rhizomes to overwinter in the house since the temperature was suppose to drop. I only had the energy to dig up enough to fill two buckets. It is not as cold today as I thought it would be so I may dig a few more up tonight. I was so tired last night I went to bed at 6:45. I was exhausted! I was up about 5:15 a.m. this morning since I needed to do a couple of jobs before I left for work. I needed to put the spigot handle on the outside water spigot in case they needed water and I needed to dig up a patch of daffodils that were in the path of where the new downspout drain pipe was going to be installed. I will plant the bulbs tonight after work. I was surprised to see the daffodils peeking up thru the soil! I think they are confused with all this warm weather we have been having, but I am sure glad they did! I don't think the guys would have saved them when they dug them up.

Since I have spent at least 25 hours cleaning out the garage and time doing things related to this project, my quilting time has suffered. There is not a lot of other things I need to do now for this project so I have to hit the sewing machine hard and get something done on the Moda Halloween quilt. Here is a picture of a little of the quilting I have done.

Around the World Blog Tour, DP top is finished

First the DP top. I have it now all sewn together. It won't get quilted for awhile as I have other projects that I need to finish first.

I was tagged by Joanna of to participate in the Around the World Blog Tour. I will do my best to answer the questions that were given to me.


How does my work differ from others?

I don't use any patterns for making quilts. The majority of my work is improv cut and pieced. I have developed techniques that produce sets of blocks that can be used in different ways. I work mostly using commercially printed fabric and have figured out how to make sophisticated quilts for adults out of novelty fabrics. I also use solids fabrics if that is what is needed in a piece I am working on. Here is a quilt I made last year for my brother. He was born on Halloween and so all the fabrics in the quilt are Halloween fabrics.

Why do I write/create what I do?
I learn to sew as a kid out of necessity. We never bought school clothes; we didn't have money for that. My Mom would make clothes for my sister and I. As I progressed thru 4-H, I started making my own clothes. I had no experience of going to a store and buying clothes. I had a job in a drapery shop and learned to make curtains and drapes. I would never go and buy them. I feel the same way about quilts. I would never go to a store and buy a comforter. Since I can't paint, draw, sing or dance, I can at least express myself thru my quilts.

Quilting was also a way to give someone a gift that didn't cost a lot of money, but was something personalized and had some thought to it. Over the years I made many baby quilts for coworkers and their now adult children still have the baby quilts I made them when they were born.

Fast forward and I was making quilts for my brother's bosses - people in the world of rock n' roll. My brother works as an independent contractor so he gets jobs by word of mouth. Dropping a hand made quilt in their lap keeps his name in front of them. I have made many large quilts and baby quilts for rockers. Here is a picture of a picture of the quilt I made for Jimmy Buffett. This was taken before I had a digital camera.

How does my writing/creating process work?

When making a new quilt, I think about a starting point. This could be a theme, a color combination, a vibe I get from a person, or a fabric. I design the quilt in my head. I usually don't have a design fully worked out, but I have the concept and the colors I want to use. The design develops the more I think and as I construct the piece. I am flexible with adding or removing elements. Sometimes the search for the fabrics I want to use can be a challenge. For the "Where's Jimmy?" piece I recently finished and exhibited, I searched for months buying fabrics that would work for the sky, ocean, sand, and rain forest. I had a number of fabrics in my stash, but I needed mostly ocean fabrics and sand. The pants are a pair of J.B/'s pants. The wardrobe lady was giving my brother fabric to give to me and in one of the boxes was these pants. She had been trying to downsize the amount of clothing she was hauling around.

What are you working on?

Currently I am working on an improv piece for QuiltCon, a flannel Drunkard's Path sew along piece for , and a flannel quilt for the family Xmas raffle quilt.

Next on the tour is Glenda of http://quiltswissy.blogspot.com (I can't get the linking to work). Glen has made many wonderful quilts using a vast array of techniques. She uses lots of color and her quilts are lively and fun.

Next phase

I finished pin basting the Moda Halloween quilt last evening. I ended up poking every safety pin into the strawberry to make sure they were sharp as my fingers were getting sore. The sharper the pin the easier it was to get thru the layer.

I am taking vacation tomorrow and have a lot on my plate for the next three days. 1. quilt as many blocks as I can on the Halloween quilt, 2. make a dent in removing as much stuff as possible from the garage, and 3. finish moving the pile of sweet peat out of the driveway.

I have been tagged for the World Blog Tour so I will be posting my answers to the set of questions that were provided on Monday, November 10. The questions are: How does my work differ from others? Why do I write/create what I do? How does my writing/creating process work? What are you working on? I then will tag someone (I asked permission first!) and the tour will then continue around the world!

Winner!

Look what I won. This lovely stack of half yard pieces of Tidal Lace from Windham Fabrics. was participating in a group of bloggers giving away these bundles. So that is another 8 1/2 yards in the stash!

After I rested a bit after work and got some dinner I worked on pin basting more of the Halloween quilt. I ran out of open safety pins so I had to get out my box of pins and start opening them. My emery strawberry comes in very handy as some of the pins need a few jabs in the strawberry to sharpen them.

I dropped down one of the table leaves so I could get to four blocks in the center that I just could not reach.

I pinned those and then finished untaping the rest of the quilt so I could fold it and move the unpinned bottom two rows up on the table. I will tape the backing down and hopefully finish pin basting this quilt tonight.

I managed to move a bit more stuff out of the guest room closet in preparation for the bit of demo I have to get dome before Mike comes over Friday morning.

I have a girlfriend who has a man friend with a huge pick up. She is going to ask him to come over and get the easel out of my garage for her son and then take any furniture in the garage I don't want to the Habitat resale store. I will probably hit the garage hard on Thursday night after work and just work on it a bit every day trying to find places to store the stuff I really need to keep. I sure hope it will be ok with the fellow that the stuff on the shelves can stay.