Life goes on….around me…

Seems like forever since I’ve even visited this site…but this time there is a reason.

Nearly one month ago, my husband of 32 years announced that he was filing for a divorce. He is claiming ‘irreconcilable differences’. I, obviously, was blindsided, shocked, devastated, whatever you want to call it….and still am living in a shattered world.

I don’t know if, or when, I will be back to blog again…but I know there are several friends who read here that haven’t heard my news. Sorry to tell you this way, but didn’t know how else to reach everyone.

Sunday Stashbusting Report, August 8

Not a whole lot this week, but in the right direction!

In – 0

Out – 3

YTD In – 21

YTD Out – 33

Net Busted – 12

This weeks yardage was used for a border for a charity quilt (1 yard) and the other two went for a VERY EXCITING PROJECT….

DH is in Michigan for a few days playing music with his brother. So I decided that I would get a LOT of quilting/sewing done while he is gone. Decided to have a ‘girl’s night in’ at my house with my daughter and both son’s girlfriends. Yesterday, DD and DS2GF came out to work on the paper bag quilts our guild is making. Midway through the day, DD asks, “Mom, I think I know your answer, but is there any way I could quilt my own paper bag quilt?”  I am quite sure she expected me to say “No way!”…but little did she know that in my grand plan for the day was to put some practice fabric on the LA and let the girls ‘play’.

So I said “Sure!”. I think she was really surprised! So loaded up two yards (that’s the other two yards in my stash busting for this week…) and let her practice for a bit. She did some meandering and settled quickly into making loops…  She tried some spirals, but my table makes smooth circles very difficult…and she tried some butterflies, and had some good belly laughs at those! The practice piece will get cut into smaller pieces, the edges serged, and will be donated to the animal shelter for puppy pads.

I loaded her paper bag quilt and let her loose….I think she is hooked!! I may never get to use my machine again! It turned out pretty well. DH has the camera with him, so I will post pictures next week.

Overall, we had a very productive day….followed by rib eyes on the grill, baked potatoes in the crockpot, garlic bread on the grill…and chocolate lava cake with ice cream for dessert!! We watched the movie ‘Julie & Julia’. The girls had all seen it, but I hadn’t. It was a fun chick flick to watch…

The girls all agreed we need to do this again….

Sunday Stash Busting Report, August 1, 2010-Week 30

Doing ok so far, not as much busted as I would like, but going in the right direction!

This week, 0 in, 1/2 yard out.

YTD 21 in, 30 out

YTD busted, 9 yards!

This weeks 1/2 yard was used for this:

What the *&^%???  It’s a scrap bag!! In my last post, I shared the link to Stash Manicure’s post which mentioned using a pillowcase to store snippets of fabrics. When full, you sew it shut and donate to an animal shelter for puppy/kitty beds. Not having a pillowcase I wanted to donate, I just stitched three sides of a couple FQ together!

Dug through the trash baskets in the sewing room and pulled out quite a few narrow strips of batting trimmings, some fabric too icky to even use in scrap quilts, and a bunch of snippets trimmed when making crumb blocks.

My ‘pet pad’ is about 1/2 full already!! Yeah!!

Hop on over to Judy’s site to see how others are doing in their stash busting!!

LoOk Ma, No LeFtOvErS!!!

On Sunday, I posted a picture of the crumb quilt that I made and donated to Quilts for Kids. I am TOTALLY ADDICTED to these little crumb blocks. To the point that at our monthly sewing days with my fellow  Scrapyard Junkies, they are even giving me their crumbs, or starting their own crumb collections! Very little fabric gets wasted or thrown away. But still…some little bits do end up in the thread catcher bags.

Today, I found a use for those teeny tiny pieces that I must trim off to square up, and for the pieces that are smaller than 1″!! There is a blog site called Stash Manicure. This site features guest bloggers who all have good ideas about ‘manicuring’ your stash. Manicure has been defined as “trimming carefully and neatly”.  (Not so sure my methods can be described as careful and neat, but I am trimming, none-the-less!) There are lots of scrap projects, organizing tips…grab a soda & plan to spend some time on this site!

Today’s tip was to take all those tiny bits and pieces that are leftover and put them in a pillowcase. When the pillowcase gets nearly full, sew it shut and donate it to the animal shelter for the dogs and kitties to use to sleep on!! Completely washable, and the scraps can be manipulated to support a sore leg if needed! No need to buy a pillowcase, just take a yard of fabric (even ugly stuff!), stitch three sides and voila!! You can bet there will be one of these in my sewing room before the end of the day!!

Sunday Stash Busting Report – July 25, 2010

I don’t very often find time to work on projects of my own, so my stash busting is a long, slow, drawn out process. But this week I do have some stash used!

In=0

Out=2 2/3

YTD In=21

YTD out=29 1/2

Busted = 8 1/2 yards!!

2 2/3 yards were used for border, backing and binding on this crumb quilt. I didn’t count the muslin or the crumbs… This quilt was sent to Quilts for Kids along with the one from the kit that they sent me.

I named this one “Beach Glass in a Box”. It reminds me of a special someone who collects beach glass and keeps it all over her house in jars and boxes…all the bright colors in varied shapes and sizes.

The next crumb quilt will be stars…don’t have a name for it yet, but I can see the quilt in my mind.

On the frame this week, a commissioned quilt for a friend. Queen size, pattern ‘Dream Weaver’ from Cindy Casciato’s ‘Block Explosion’. Here are a couple pictures of it before it went on the frame.

And one block:

Customer chose fabrics and pattern, her bedroom is purple and green. I found a King Tut variegated that is the perfect purple. I am using it in the outer border, small purple border, and in the square in a square made with the floral and purple triangles. I’ll see if I can get some pictures of the quilting later in the week.  Did piano keys in the outer floral border; undulating freehand feather/leaves in the green border; and created a design with shallow CC & feather/leaves for the SIAS part of the block. I am liking it so far.

No idea yet what I am going to do in the lighter ‘stripes’ that are formed. I had thought to repeat the undulating freehand feather/leaves, but that stripe is so wide that I am not sure how it will look.

This happens to be the same pattern I used for the quilt I made for myself. So now I will know how I want to quilt mine…whenever I get around to it…yeah, right!

Hop on over to Judy L’s blog to see how others are doing with their stash busting!

The floods of 2010…

We received more than 6″ of rain since last Saturday…on top of already saturated ground. Many cities are dealing with flooding problems. Several, including mine, are dealing with overflowing and backing up sewer systems.

DS called yesterday morning around 9…”mom, I need you to bring in your big shop vac..I have water in the basement and with my little one, I am having to dump it every two minutes..”  Ok, says I…load it up and head to town.  I called DD , asked if she had water, “no”…”well, keep an eye on it” says I.  About 1/2 hour later…ring, ring…”hello?” “MOM!!! Come quick! The basement is flooding” yells DD…

So, back to town goes I…DSIL and I used shop vacs for an hour before we realized we were fighting a losing battle. I had a brain storm, remembered a high faluting pump we had at the ranch when one of the cabin basements flooded. I decide to run home and get it…unfortunately Mother Nature had other ideas. Another torrential downpour (1 1/2″ in about 35 minutes) and roads were flooded. My little Prius couldn’t get through. So…DH manages to get through, brings back pump and the guys get it hooked up.

During all this, DD & DGS age 7, had managed to carry most toys from toy room up to the dining room. The water continued to pour in around the foundation…into DGD age 4, bedroom. So all had to come out of there. We passed dresser drawers up the stairs like a water line fighting a fire. Her bed is a Select Comfort on a plastic pedestal with no legs, so we just pulled the bedding off and piled it on top. If the water got that deep, we were in serious trouble!!

DD sewing room is also in the basement, but has a false floor under it that raised it about 3″ from the concrete floor. Most everything stayed dry there, but anything valuable, electronic or wood was taken upstairs, along with any fabric or quilts that were not in plastic bins. Those were placed on top of her large sewing table.

DD was understandably upset…several crying jags…but is doing ok dealing with it I think. They found out that several friends were in worse shape than them…one guy’s basement walls are collapsing from the water and he had to take his wife to ER in the night with exploding appendix! Several in our town have 3′ of raw sewage in their basements, so I convinced her she has it pretty good…

I didn’t manage to take any pictures, but suffice it to say…it is a mess! I brought the older two kids home with me.  I had put some chicken in the crockpot before I left, so DD & DSIL came out for dinner and brought the youngest. All three spent the night with Grandma & Grandpa. Middle one (4 year old) was awake and wanting to play at 5:45 AM. Grandma was NOT a happy camper!!

DD went today to buy Damp Rid and charcoal briquettes to help absorb the odor. No idea yet how much will be lost, but for sure the carpets.

They were trying to decide what to do with the basement rooms…make another bedroom, another bathroom..?? Now they have a ‘clean slate’, well, sort of….

Here is a picture of one fairway at our local golf course. Kind of gives you an idea of how much water was moving out there…and this was BEFORE the last 1 1/2″ fell mid morning….

On the quilting front…have a HUGE (30 – 15″ blocks) t shirt quilt on the frame. DD pieced..and although I brag about her piecing skills, she goofed on this one! I think she forgot to square one edge of one of the blocks. It was only off about 1/3″…but when you start out with that much angle going the wrong way…by the time I got to the bottom, it had multiplied into a 4″ issue!

So, unquilted…unstitched…squared up…restitched…requilted…and all is well. Took me the better part of an hour, but at least it is back on the frame.

Here is a shot of it:

This is the bottom row before I fixed it…if you look closely, you can see the big wrinkle going on at the right edge, just above the clamp.

Today was spent in the office…and on the computer….and now I need to get back to this quilt! I need it off so I can do three small charity quilts, get them bound, and to our guild charity chairperson before I leave for Michigan next week.

Wish me luck!!

Another flimsie!!

Remember my crumb blocks? Here is what I made with some of them! This will be going to Downy Quilt for Kids…

This is why I very seldom have anything on my design wall for Monday…I finish things on Saturday!! LOL

Have a wonderful 4th! Supposed to rain here all day so hope to get a lot of quilting done! I might get caught up one of these days….nah!

Back to the frame!!

Nine Hundred and Twelve….

That is how many 2″ squares there are in the quilt I just finished quilting! Nicely pieced, thank goodness!!

CC’d all the 2″ squares (all 912 of them!!) with 3″ tabbed circle from CQT, piano keys in paisley border, diagonal cross hatch in large paisley triangles (customer wanted a paisley/froo froo thing, but nothing showed), free hand vining leafy thing inner borders…King Tut top/So Fine bobbin, customer provided batting, 100% cotton.

Here is the whole top finished:

One corner:

Inner border:

And here is what you have to do when you find that you missed the CC in one of the four patch corners. Sure glad I decided to take some pictures. I had already trimmed to 2″ for ‘presentation’ and decided to take a few pictures…whew! Pinned to back zipper and clamped the front to the belly bar. Worked!

I did have some ‘issues’ with the bottom border not wanting to lay flat, those bias edges were really ripply. Wish I had taken some before pictures. Steam, starch…and some not nice words…finally tamed it.

Next up: t shirt quilt with 30 shirts, custom quilting…ick!

Day After Design Wall Monday….

Nothing on the design wall/floor/table…so no post!! LOL

The weather has FINALLY turned around here…beautiful sunny skies, temps in the low to mid 80′s, NO humidity!

Yesterday I got past the half way point on the CC’d quilt. I did decide to turn to do the side borders. I had four stop/starts each side, every time I advanced, and sometimes I still had to roll to reach the bottom of the design. So I feel it will be quicker to just turn and stitch. I am stitching the very outside triangles as I baste. Hopefully I won’t need to take any of that out due to wrinkles….

I am seriously considering the purchase of these LeaderGrip systems.  I have zippers now, but really dread the sit-down-and-sew-the-zippers-on part of the process.  And when I do need to turn a quilt? How easy would this be!! Wonder how quick their shipping is…hmmm…..

Going golfing this morning, then home to put some ribs in the smoker. Youngest DS & girlfriend coming for supper. Then I will tackle the quilt again. Hope to get it finished tomorrow.

DH just called, vehicle needs to go in for service and he forgot. So I have to drive it to the dealer, wait for a ride to the golf course, then call to be picked up again….ick…better get going!

Another Downy Quilt for Kids

Our guild president organized a sewing day at our local YMCA (she also works there) for Downy Quilts for Kids. Our guild had ordered 12 kits which were distributed to members, and all were encouraged to come work on them today. There were five of us there this morning.

I packed up Little Dot along with accessories…and away we went. Got there, set up…uh oh…forgot my quilt top! I have already finished the kit that was sent, and have been assembling my crumb blocks for my additional quilt to send to them. So..the YMCA had donated some fabrics that Frances had cut up, so I assembled one of those. Kind of wild…

We decided it would have been really nice with a black border, but navy was all she had to work with. There is kind of a plastic-y feeling to the white hibiscus flowers…strange fabric. I think I’ll quilt mashed potato flowers on this one.

Guess I’ll work on that CC nightmare quilt for a bit, then maybe finish piecing the crumb quilt…