The good and the bad

The good: I have gotten all the stems appliqued on my borders and have started on the flowers. The three borders on the design wall only have their flowers pinned on but I do have one border completed: all appliqued.

I appliqued the stems with a green thread but the flowers are being done with mono-poly.

Just seeing the flowers on the borders really makes me happy/excited. Doesn't it look like spring?

The bad: yesterday the light didn't come on with I opened the refrigerator. And, it didn't come on when I opened the freezer. Fortunately we have two refrigerators so I moved everything into the smaller one (everything but what needed to be thrown out anyway). I checked the circuit breaker but all were still on. Then later in the day I discovered that one of our lamps also didn't come on. So I have decided that we have a bad breaker. Tomorrow I will check it by switching a good breaker and if that is the problem, will get a new one and we will be back in business.

Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to clean the refrigerator. Top picture is the very clean, and smelling of bleach, refrigerator. The picture to the right is the many containers that were cleaned out during the purge. Not a fun afternoon but certainly well worth while.

Tomorrow, after my electrical experiment, I will be back in the studio. I want to get a backing put together but I am being called by those borders.

OPAM finish/Design Wall

This is my design wall for this week, my outdoor mannequin and the purse I finished Saturday.

This purse was created using the fabrics from City of Roses so I call it City of Roses 2.

I should explain that not only is the fabric covered with roses but I was born in the city of roses, Portland, Oregon, and have a very soft spot for it.

Anyway, again there was no pattern so I am not sure how I wound up with this but it is a little bigger than the purse I made earlier, more square.

Even the handle was made using some canvas strapping that I found somewhere and covered with the yellow rose fabric.

I probably won’t start carrying it until June but, if I can find the right outfit, will carry it to the end of the year dinner at guild.

This weekend I have been on the road for three straight days. Thursday DD and I went shoe shopping in Pensacola, FL (180 miles round trip) and bought her some Sketchers to wear to work: nursing in a nursing home. I got mine a couple of weeks ago and really have enjoyed walking in them. While we were in town I just happened to stop in at Joann’s and bought one piece of fabric (R). It is a printed canvas that I am going to use to recover some outdoor pillows that have seen better days.

Friday DH and I drove down to Mobile, AL (240 miles round trip) to see if we could purchase something. He had called and found they had the item in stock but when we got there they were sold out. Not only that but we found that the Mobile Barnes & Noble is closing, not relocating but closing. We don’t frequent there often, note the miles, but when we are there it is one of our “must” stops. So sad!

Saturday DH and I returned to Pensacola. I picked up a pair of Sketchers sandals and he got a new computer. Not being the brightest computer bulb in the pack, he is now having to learn Windows 7: really funny. Oh, and I stopped at a favorite fabric shop and got this beautiful black and white piece (and little shades of green) (M). I have no idea what I will do with it but it was so very different from everything else I have.

And to finish off the weekend, on Sunday we drove to Crestview, FL (110 miles round trip) to have dinner, and visit another fabric shop that is celebrating her 39^th business anniversary. My fabric purchase was this hydrangea print (L) that will be used as the backing for this as yet unnamed quilt.

Despite all that driving, I did get one more string block done and even have done most of the appliqué of the stems for the appliquéd borders I am making. Tomorrow I should have the stems done and will start appliquéing the flowers. And, oh, by the way, I don’t plan to go anywhere for quite a while!!

One last thing. Please pray for the Gulf coast. The oil slick is going to cause another devastation to the area, this one covering four states. It seems our area has more than it’s share of this sort of thing.

Dad and other stuff

Who is this handsome man? This is my father as he was when I was a toddler. He has been gone for 19 years and today would have been his 89^th birthday. Happy Birthday Dad.

So far this has been a very productive week. First I finished quilting Purple Rails, a comfort quilt.

I had a lot of tension problems but when I decided to quilt it unregulated, the problems went away. I am not sure why it worked that way but it did. The other problem I had was that I positioned the panto about 4” down from the top so I had to go back and fill it in so it looked like I knew what I was doing. I still have to make the binding and get it bound but it has moved back down the “to do” list for the time being.

The 5^th Jelly Roll Sampler block was announced Monday and here is mine, today.

Once again, I was not impressed with the block when it was presented, but with these fabrics it really looks good. When it was done I just had to see how it looks with the other blocks and this is what I have.

I am not sure how many blocks we will be doing but it should be interesting to figure out a layout.

And as though I didn’t have enough projects going on all at one time, I got these out to start another.

Design Wall & Birthday parties

Today's Design Wall is a hodge-podge of blocks. On the left are two string blocks. I decided to use up some of my saved strips and start a string quilt. This will be my first one and I decided to work on them while I was embroidering the shirts I posted about on Wednesday. Next to the strings is the third of the borders for my sampler quilt. It is ready for flowers and now I only have one last border to sew stems on. Do you think I will ever get this quilt done? I still have my Jelly Roll Sampler block on the wall and it is next to the Bunny Hill BOM block #2.

No other sewing/quilting was done this week. Thursday we attended a high school Dinner Theater (Romeo, You Idiot), and on Friday we attended a Community College play (Stand & Deliver). Saturday we went to the first of two birthday parties for our great grandson, Skylar.



While he waited for the party to begin he shot a little pool.

And then it was time to blow out the candle on his cake. Wasn't it nice of our granddaughter to get a sugar free cake?

Then it was time to open presents. Here he is amid all of the gifts he got from Uncle Jamie.

And then came the big moment his grandma and grandpa had waited for. They have been looking forward to getting him this truck for several months. It is electric, goes forward and back and I am told it will go 3.5 mph. Because of the storm we got to see it work up close and personal inside the house.

On Sunday it was time for birthday party #2. This one came about because his Daddy was working on Saturday and his Mommy wanted Daddy to enjoy the fun, too.

And once again Skylar got a lot of help blowing out his candle.

We had both pizza and cake and Sky enjoyed it, both inside and out.

And the afternoon was capped off by fun and frolic in the lake. You know, it is really fun to watch both the children and the adults having fun. And I didn't have to do anything except come, have fun, and take pictures.

This is the second of the two shirts I have embroidered for our great grandson's second birthday on Saturday. I love this little bear and Sky loves fishing. And what we found out tonight is that the birthday party is a fishing theme. Isn't that great?

These two shirts comprise my first "finish" for OPAM for this month.

I have been working on 3 BOMs and one new quilt as well as two tops but I fear this will be another month on no finished quilts. One day I will have several, if they all get done at once.

And this is one more thing I have finished. I read this book in two sittings. I found this to be one of her best books. She incorperated a lot of Hawaiian history and by the time I finished the book I really wanted to make a quilt in the Hawaiian style. Excellent!

Design Wall, embroidery, and….well….

My design wall would have been empty if I hadn’t had a Jelly Roll Sampler block ready to sew together. Isn’t it beautiful? I wasn’t too excited about this block when I first saw it but didn’t it turn out nice. This is really going to be a beautiful quilt.

Be sure to stop by Judy's blog to see what other's are doing.

I also worked on appliquéing some stems but that is so boring (both doing and looking at) so I won’t show pictures until the flowers start to show up.

I did, however, do some embroidery work. Here are two of six new kitchen towels I am working on. I haven’t had any new towels for about 7 years and although most of what I have are still serviceable, I decided we needed something fresh. The designs are from Artistic Thread Works.

The other embroidery is a shirt for our great grandson’s second birthday later this month. Here it is on the heater in my studio: I don’t have a child sized mannequin.
The color in this close up is not too good but I wanted to show the windows. I used plastic so they look more like a real window. I chose the truck because he is getting an electric riding truck from my DD and DSIL and I wanted this shirt to fit their gift. I have one more shirt to do before the big day arrives.

And lastly. On Saturday the postman delivered this to DH. Since he had not sent for anything he was intrigued, an especially when he saw what it was. It seems that this is what his mother-in-law sent him as a belated birthday gift. Interesting! But to better understand a person would have to know that for Christmas DH sent her a “travel emergency kit” which was a small box with a miniature corn cob in it. Some family I have, huh?

No Sewing

This is how my day starts. I wake up with this puppy, snuggling.

Then I am greated with "Mornin' Mom" and lots of playing.

Up for breakfast and then off for our morning walk. We have a 23' leash. She runs ahead, finds something to check out and falls behind but usually as soon as there is even a slight tension on the leash, she comes running past me and is out in front again. We have been walking the 2 mile trail around the community college and we switch the direction every other day. AND, I did walk my 5 times last week so I am one quarter of the way to my new shoes.

However, when we get home I have a choice of doing the regular housework or this:

And since I still have this to do, I guess I will get off the computer and get back to this.

Sewing/quilting starts again on Thursday afternoon, I hope.

Edit: 4/15/10 = DONE!! After I finished figuring everything out we decided to take it to an accountant who found additional deductions....yea!! I spent all this morning cleaning to keep my mind off of what she was doing but then took myself out to lunch after dropping the envelopes (AL has income tax, too) at the post office. Sewing, here I come!!