Lots of progress

First, the commission t-shirt quilt. I now have 30% of it quilted! The area inside the pink lines is quilted.

The plumbers showed up on Saturday and finished fixing the tub faucet. They will be back in March to replace my hot water heater that was manufactured in 1998. They also trimmed out a window for me. The father has rental properties and can do just about anything. I tried to figure out for years how to finish out this window. It is deep set because of the way this house was built and how we had to build out the wall when I remodeled the bathroom. I got some birch plywood and the guys made wide extension jambs to fill the gap between the window and wall. I need to sand, paint, and then trim out the window, but the part I couldn't do is done!
Here is the before and after. It is a good thing I have tools because they had to use my compressor and nail gun, and my Multimaster.

Between helping out the plumbers with tools, I worked on the Harley quilt. I want to put an X on the quilt to symbolize this would be the 10th anniversary of Andrea' death and it also stands for a hug. Here is what it looked like in progress.

I didn't think there was enough contrast between the colored t-shirts and the black background t-shirts. Black t-shirts with a prominent design were kind of muddling up the look. I decided to try and get more black into the quilt, but how? The Andrea's mother, also named Andrea, had sent me 22 more t-shirts. In the past I would have taken this t-shirt

and cut a few inches around the emblem. The light bulb went on and I cut bigger pieces so I could add mostly black squares to the top and have just that bit of color to get a better contrast between the colored blocks and black blocks. Lesson learned although this is a more unique situation with the design of this quilt. I didn't have enough black t-shirt fabric so is it cheating that I went thru my stacks of old clothes and found 3 black t-shirts, cut them up and added them to the quilt? LOL!!! Here is what the top looks like now

One more quilted

I got another t-shirt block quilted. Once I get a few more quilted I will start to figure out how much I have done vs. how much I need to still quilt. I will probably have a number for you on Monday.

I was outside at 5 a.m. to shovel the snow.

There was only about an inch, but it was sloppy wet. It was like shoveling concrete! We are now getting more snow and I didn't want to drive over the wet snow and pack it down on the driveway. The plumbers are coming Saturday so I want the driveway to be clear and safe for them. It has been snowing again this morning and this is what my car looks like right now.

Machine quilting and early V day cookies

I was happy to get another t-shirt quilted on the commission quilt. No, I have not begun to figure out the percentage done since I only have two shirts done. I know I still have a long ways to go without crunching the numbers! LOL!!

I baked V day cookies for work last night. Since so many people are not going to be at work on Friday and we may shut down the job because of the weather on Friday being predicted to be down to 5 degrees. Thus cookies early!

Busy Monday night

I made cookie dough for cutouts for V Day. I will roll and bake them tonight. I had several packages show up. I had bought Aurifil that Bear Creek Quilting had on sale. What a great deal. Three spools in a color range for $20.00! I bought colors I needed for the t-shirts quilts. My spool of yellow thread that has a touch of green in it came too.

I sat down to watch the Oscars. I got thru the first hour and saw Brad get his first Oscar for acting.

Then this popped up on the screen

UGH! I missed an hour and 45 minutes of the show because it was raining! I have DISH and hate it, but I am too lazy to change.

I got another hourglass block made. I use Sujata Shah's method of cutting and piecing the hourglass blocks, then a six minute circle method. I will post the whole tutorial over at https://adhocimprovquilts.blogspot.com

I tried

Friday after work I had to run some errands - Home Depot, Aldi, and Earth Fare - so by the time I got home I wasn't much in the mood to do much. Saturday I thought the plumbers were coming so I was up early to get a bit more cleaning done. I as waited on the plumbers I fell asleep in my sewing chair. I guess because I couldn't find the half sheet of plywood I needed, the plumbers didn't come. I didn't get much of anything done the rest of the day.

Sunday I got moving. I had 28 Harley t-shirts that I cut up and pressed on the interfacing. That took me most of the day. I hung a few on the design wall and the rest are in a pile ready to be used. I leave plenty of extra fabric around the motifs for flexibility since I am not sure what size I need them to be yet.

I have quite a pile of leftover bits from cutting up the t-shirts. These make great rags. I will keep some for myself and take some to work where the guys always need rags.

This will be the fifth Harley quilt I have made for Andrea's poker run which she has in honor of her daughter that died in a car accident. This will be the 10th anniversary of her passing. Every year I have t-shirts pieces that are leftover so I keep them for the next year. Here is my pile of leftovers which some may make it into this year's quilt.

I didn't get any of the commission t-shirt quilt quilted. I just couldn't muster up the energy on Saturday to work on it. I did get my sewing machines switched out. The machine I got back from getting the walking foot fixed works like new. So quiet and smooth.

Here is what the blocks look like for my AHIQ hourglass quilt. I am using the six-minute circle technique to set the hourglass piecing inside the various colors of gray I am using. In the picture it is hard to see the variation of color - there are a couple of grays that look like they are the same. I am going to have to dig thru my solids again to see if I can find some other grays that are between the medium grays and the very light gray. I have no idea how big I will be making this quilt.

Yeah it is Friday!

I have a busy weekend planned. I have one t-shirt quilted. I plan on quilting a lot more this weekend!

My design wall is now empty

so it is time to cut up t-shirts for the Harley quilt. Here is the box of t-shirts that I received a couple weeks ago. I have another 22 shirts coming so I will have plenty of shirts to work with. What ever shirts I don't use for this year's quilt I will keep for next year's quilt.

I want to get a few more hourglass blocks made for my AHIQ project.

Saturday the plumbers are coming to finish up the master bathroom faucet and reset the toilet that moves. The new hot water heater will be for another Saturday. They are going to have to take apart some of the piping for the furnace in order to get the hot water heater out of the corner it was wedged into. I am feeling so much better I will have the energy to get some stuff done! Have a great weekend!

Pin basting done

I got the pin basting done and pulled out my quilting thread to see if I have all the colors I need. I have this wooden thread holder my Dad made which makes it nice to put all the spools and bobbins I need for a project. For t-shirt quilts I like to match the thread to the t-shirt.

There are two shirts I don't have any thread the right color for so I will have to search and buy thread for them. I need a pale lavender and a yellow green.

I have some gift cards for JoAnn's so I will try there first.

Thanks to all of you for your get well comments. I think I am over the worse of it now thank goodness!