Saturday, January 31, 2015

January 2015 Wrap Up

I feel like I blinked and January was over. 

While I love doing the project for the We Support You Blog Hop, I had a hard time getting a whole lot accomplished this month other than that project.  I have been trying to make sure I get lots of rest with my early schedule, and the cold to try to remain healthy so not much going on.

Today I started to clean up my sewing room.  I put away all of the yardage which I had sitting around tha tI was not using.  I also put away a bunch of the scraps I had cut up. I also finished cutting all of the parts for step 2 in the Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt...which is no longer a mystery.

I got all of my little rhombi (I think that is the plural of rhombus) cut out, I needed to cut out 200 of them!  After getting a bunch cut out I discovered that I had made a slight cutting error.
Luckily it was only a small handful.  About 6 total so I was not totally devastated.   I finally got all of the parts cut out.  Including the pink HST, and black HST and started to sew the parts together. 

I have 6 done and squared up. Only 94 more to go! 

Today I also prepared the backing for my basket case quilt, and started to load the quilt on my frame. 

While getting it ready I figure out I only had a queen sized bat which was white.  I needed a twin size, and did not want to waste the queen size.  Luckily for me it was on sale at JAF;  I purchased 4 so I am ready for the other twin size quilts that need quilting.  I also had to go to the grocery star to pick up some hot dog buns. 

***Reminder:  Do not go to the grocery store on the Saturday before Super Bowl it is insane. 

While writing this post I realized I did not do my monthly goals for January....but this is what I finished.

Aurifil block of the month for December 2014.  I was not thrilled with it but it is finished. 


I am lovin this quilt!  I am looking forward to finishing it up, and DH talked me into using their block setting. 

My project for the We Support You blog hop.  You can read more about the quilt here.  There was a lot of embroidery in this quilt, and I did the quilting too. 

I also played with some of the Christmas fabrics which I bought and made this cute Christmas ornament. 
I got quite a bit accomplished on my cross stitch.  I went from this....
 To this.  I still have quite a bit to go. 
I only finished 3 books this month.  I did read one called The Amber Keeper by Freda Lightfoot which I would recommend.  I loved the characters, and the telling of the story from a governess's point of view during the Russian Revolution was done very well. 

While not much sewing was completed, DH and I managed to prime and paint the ceiling in the dining room, finished painting the dining room walls,  moved the family room furniture to the dining room, put new underlay flooring down in the family room, moved the quilter to the family room, a 2nd couch to the sun room porch and the china cabinet to the family room which was not an easy task. 

Friday, January 30, 2015

We Support You Blog Hop Day 2

Welcome to day 2 of the We Support You Blog hop.  These lovely ladies are prepared to delight you with their creativity.

Jan 30th 






Thank you again to the lovely Mdm Samm of !Sew We Quilt for the wonderful pattern and Pat from Scrapatches for organizing and keeping us in line.  I am sure at times it probably feels like you are herding cats.  
 
Lets go and support these lovely ladies.  

Thursday, January 29, 2015

We Support You Blog Hop

Welcome to the first day of the "We Support You" blog hop.  The very talented Mdm Samm of !Sew We Quilt created a fabulous pattern for the ladies within our blogging community to make last year to show a special someone how much she was loved and appreciated after losing her home to a fire.  You can see that fabulous quilt here

Fast forward a few months only to discover that several of the beautiful ladies within our blogging community were battling breast cancer. Mdm Samm came up with a wonderful idea of a blog hop, where we could make something using her fabulous pattern from the previous We Support You Quilt,  (You may e-mail her directly to purchase the pattern which is $12.00- madamesamm@me.com) to show our love and support for those who were struggling with breast cancer. The wonderful Pat from Life in the Scrapatch has been keeping us focused and on task.  Mdm Samm, and Pat both deserve mega hugs for all that they do for us!

Breast Cancer touches many of us in one way or another.  According to the National Breast Cancer Organization 1 in 8 women will have breast cancer in their lifetime. While I do not know anyone currently with breast cancer personally, my great grandmother who helped raised me had breast cancer at 80 years of age.   That was many years ago and I can still remember what kind of treatment options were available and how it affected her.  I must say that things have progressed tremendously since then.  Anyway on with my submission. 

First of all please forgive my photos. The best time to take pictures is in early morning sunshine, or late afternoon sunshine, with my job I am working at those times so my only opportunity to take photos was smack dab in the middle of the day, and of course it was a cloudless day with gorgeous blue skies, and bright sunshine reflecting off of the snow we had left.  

I decided to make one bra. I reduced the pattern by about 25%,  chose my fabrics and put it together.

I called it my Wild Child bra.   Making it reminded me of a couple of  our daughters (we have 5!)  Then I got to thinking.  One in 8 women!  Between our 5 daughters, 7 grand daughters and myself there is a high probability that one of us will have breast cancer in our lifetime.  So I decided to make some more to  match the 5 daughter's personalities. 

I found this cute ribbon, love the pink gingham, and the fabric for the bra almost looked like pink denim.

Then I found this sweet rosebud edging and just knew I had to use it with some polka dots. 

I then picked up a fat quarter one day of this sweet pink to use in my Grand Illusion Mystery quilt and thought I really want to make a bra out of that.  So I went searching and found some online and instantly ordered it. I love the sophisticated look of the pattern in the fabric.

Of course while I was looking for the fabric above I saw some fabric on sale, and who can resist the Michael Miller Fairy Frost, and this yummy edging with pearls and organdy flowers.  I thought it was so sweet looking.

Now I have 5 bras and didn't have a clue what to do with them.  So I decided to make a big flower wall hanging.  Wow my flower did not end up centered very well....artistic license. 

I embroidered the center and appliqued my petals down and had a wee bit of a problem.
I explained I had lost my glue baste here.  I tried pinning but I ended up with this.  Yuck!  But I decided I was going to make the most of it.   I refused to take out all the stitching. Design feature! So I sewed all the petals on this way.

I would make a couple of pleats, which gave it some poofiness, and I was not even going to attempt to quilt that.

I then embroidered the logo and that was my flower center.  I learned from my previous mistake.  This time I used a glue stick....which is not the optimum to use on such a large piece to stick down, but hey whatever works.
I stitched around it with a variegated yellow Mettler silk thread.  (One of my only two outside pictures)

I quilted with an all over meander, don't look to close to the quilting there was some tension problem, which I will fix later on.

I then finished it up with some magic binding.


I love how it all turned out.

Here are the rest of the ladies participating today.

                                    Jan 29th 






and the rest of the hop.

Jan 30th 








Feb 2nd 







Feb 3rd 








Feb  4th 







Feb 5th  







Feb 6th  






Feb 9th 









Feb 10th  









Feb 11th  






                                        Sew We Quilt

Thanks for stopping by. 


Sunday, January 25, 2015

Eggcitement and Choices

I grew up around chickens so I know the sounds they make.  When they are just clucking around, when they are afraid and when they have laid an egg.  DH and I were preparing to go to lunch and he made a comment that they were making a lot of noise.  I told him that is not noise that is their sound they make after they lay an egg. 
No this is not one of mine.  My girls are pretty girls!  They are Buff Orpingtons.  Now most chickens produce an egg every 25 hours.  Which means that you should get an egg every other day.  Somehow we end up with an average of about 12 eggs a day from 16 chickens.  Shhh!  Don't ask don't tell.  What makes them such good layers?  May be the Pella window that gives them an outside view, the solar heater, or the new radiator the DH put in their pen to keep them toasty.  The fact they get fresh veggies and fruits on almost a daily basis, as well as some bread.  I don't know but they sure love DH.  They run up to get a pet on the back from him.

These are two of the eggs which we got today.  The girls layed 13 eggs yesterday and 14 eggs today.  DH gathers eggs every day. 

I am sure one of the girls is going to need one of those donuts to sit on after laying this one.  The egg on the right is almost an extra large it weighs in at almost 2 1/4 ounces.  
The egg on the left bottomed out our scale.
Yep that is over 3 ounces.  So we found the regular food scale.


Yep you can see that egg is almost 3 1/4 ounces!  It is huge!

While I blog, I am not much of a joiner.  It is hard for me to join a group, so the fact that I joined the quilt guild last year was quite the stretch.  Most of their quilts are traditional and mine are a bit "out there" when it comes to design choices and colors.  They have a group called "The Bag Ladies".  The premise is that you choose a block and several fabrics, enough that the bag of fabrics can be passed to 9 different ladies.  Every month you make your chosen block from their fabrics, and then pass it on to the next quilter, and whomever has your bag makes their chosen block from your fabrics. 

My dilemma?  I have to choose a 9 inch finished block and I cannot choose.  Part of the problem is that it is hard to find a 9 inch finished block.  What I would love is a Jacob's Ladder block.  Something which is low stress and easy for me to make each month?  What would be your choice? 

Saturday, January 24, 2015

A Week of Goodbyes

Where ever did this week go?!?!  I know I am always lamenting about how fast they seem to fly by.  I posted on Monday, January 19 and here it is Saturday, January 24, 2015.  While I don't feel like I get a whole lot accomplished life seems to rush by before you know it.  It was a week full of good byes a few tears, but small signs of change.

Tuesday morning, I had a message on my cell phone from DH which said---  Grand Am gone. 
He sent it to me while I was at work so I did not see it until I was heading home.  I just sent him a text which said, "Huh?"  Thinking that since it was kind of icy and icky that morning, and the snow was falling that maybe a Grand Am had wrecked in our front yard.  We seem to have several people wreck every winter and end up in our yard.   

DH called me back said something to the effect of darn auto correct and I could instantly tell something was wrong.  DH's grandmother had passed away early that morning at the age of 93, due to complications from a combination of diabetes, and kidney failure.  She has been failing for about 6 months so, and we knew that when they put her in hospice two weeks ago it would not be long. 

DH spent a lot of time with his grand parents growing up.  He actually has an uncle who is only a year or two older than him, and they grew up more like brothers.  Gpa and Gma had a home on Swan Creek just a couple of hundred yards from Lake Erie and DH has fond memories of riding motorcycles, building go carts, swimming, boating, snowmobiling on the creek, ice skating. He loves to tell the story about year the lake and creek rose so high that the water was battering at the old basement door trying to get into the house. DH went to spend time at the rest home with is mom, two aunts and sister to wait for the funeral home to come and pick Grandma up, he tries to be and tough and gruff, but he is a big softy at heart.  Gma had been at that home since it had opened, and almost everyone who worked there stopped by to express their sorrow at her passing. 

Grandma said she was not going to have a service, she just wanted to be cremated because if they didn't want to come see her alive they sure as heck weren't going to come and mourn over her after she passed.  I guess I can appreciate the sentiment.  So we have been kind of just going through the motions for the week.  DH has been on bereavement leave, and to top it off has had a pretty nasty cold. 

Finn update!  Finn got his cast.

Yes he broke his tibia.  Actually he probably broke it a couple of weeks ago when he took a dive off of his brothers' bunk bed steps which he is not supposed to be up on anyway. The children's hospital saw that the bone was already starting to heal and so it had been fractured and he refractured it Sunday night.  Says a lot about the difference between a regular hospital and a children's hospital.  Poor little guy had been hobbling around on a broken leg for over 2 weeks.  Finn is sporting this royal blue cast for a couple of weeks, they told him he could walk on it, but he probably won't want to because it is pretty heavy, and it goes up to mid -thigh.  Later on Finn will get a new cast that is shorter.

Since DH was home, I insisted that he had to do something to keep busy.  I was hoping he would work on his antique tractors which he loves so much, but also meant he was tasked with bringing the family room floor up even with the kitchen floor.  We moved furniture, essentially rearranging the front room, dining room, family room/great room, and the sun room.  Part of the floor was done and my quilter was brought into the main house from the sun room/ mud room.  That was a task in itself.  DH build this for me, and it is solid, and heavy.  I can't wait to get the room cleaned up a bit so I can use it.  I have lots of quilts waiting to be quilted 

I needed a change of scenery and so we moved all of our furniture into the freshly painted dining room, and the dining room table, and china cabinet will be moved into the the great room.  It is nice having a smaller more intimate area to watch TV, and I am closer to my sewing room, so I can sneak off for a bit here and there while DH is watching TV. 

I wrote last week that I have visited Joann's Fabric on Saturday and had made some purchases.
I think I am going to try the spool idea for the 2014 Aurifil quilt blocks.  The red kind of reminds me of the grunge fabric line , and the white was very sweet looking with the little doily looking motifs.  I also bought a couple of yards of blue for my We Support you blog hop piece.

Makes you wonder what I have been doing.  Lots of slow stitching. 
I have 1 1/2 more pieces to finish the embroidery then I can put it all together.  I may have my project done before my day to post!  Which will definitely be a first! Shhh!  I should not say anything to jinx it. 

I also did a bit to help the economy.  Pink Castle Fabrics was having a sale.  I don't know why I even looked I was just curious and I found this cute blogger bundle called Cool Flower Power, and just could not resist how sweet the fabrics were.  I still want to make a swoon quilt and I may just about have enough floral and solids to match to make the quilt. 
I also saw this bright yellow polka dot which had to come and live at my house too! 
Finally I said good bye to a friend at work, and one of the children on my route.  The friend at work, he was hired before me, but didn't get his license until after me by just a few days but he had seniority and a route long before I got one.  I was surprised that he actually took this job it was about 30 miles from his home (he lives nearer to the youngest daughter) and that area is always hiring bus drivers.  Anyway since the holiday break, the kids have been a wee bit rambunctious- kind of like starting all over again from the beginning of the school year, the roads have been bad, some more than others and he decided to leave.  Friday was his last day.  The young lady on my route, I was sad to see leave also.  This young one lost her father over the Christmas holiday.  He had an aneurysm, which brought on a fatal heart attack after spending several weeks in the hospital with pneumonia.  He was only 38 years of age.  They could not afford their modest home anymore and had to move in with her grandparents. 

I wish I had a picture but I can't take one when I am on my bus route, but my sign of hope was that I started to see trees budding up.  A small promise of spring being on its way. 




Monday, January 19, 2015

Three Day Weekends

Today is the birthday of my great grandmother who helped my mother raise me.  I don't have any pictures of her that I can find.  She was born in 1896, the youngest of 13 children.  Her next closest sibling was 13 years older than her, a brother named Winifred. 

The past week was busy.  I have been taking extra jobs whenever available.  Friday was a meeting after the morning runs, then I needed to have a meeting with the operations manager, then the afternoon runs.  When I returned I said I would help get my bus and another ready for a charter trip over the weekend.  Everyone who was taking a bus was supposed to bring it up to help get them ready.  Let's just say that no one came to help, and by the time I got all 5 buses prepared it was almost 9pm. 

Saturday DH started mixing up the primer to prime the ceiling.  Something did not seem right.  We discovered we bought enamel/oil based primer, instead of the regular latex primer.   I cut into the corners and DH did the rolling or the ceiling so it was all primed after we had removed the popcorn texture and fixed some problems with the ceiling.  After we were finished we cleaned up and were out the door.  Feed store, Joann's to pick up some fabric and ribbon, to Toys R Us to find a toy for Finn for his birthday, and to the home improvement store for a new angled brush to cut in the ceiling paint, and finish painting the wall.  Let's just say not much sewing was accomplished and the house smelled horrendous because of the oil based primer, and it was too cold to open up the windows to air the house out.  Oh and DH and I are too old to go to Toys R Us without a minor in tow!  It was overwhelming so we actually ended up leaving and going to a different store because there was too much that we actually felt like we had sensory overload. 

Sunday morning I had a charter at 5 am.  I was home by 9 am which was nice.  DH had already finished painting the ceiling so it was my turn to paint the final wall in the dining room.  I cut in along the moulding around the windows and floor and the ceiling.  He rolled.  We are a great team. 

There is still wainscoting to do, but we decided that we would at least move the family room furniture into the dining room since it is a bit warmer, especially during the winter.

Sunday afternoon was Finn's birthday party.  Yes we did find a gift for him, which he absolutely adored.  Not long after we left his house my daughter called that Finn had fallen.  Now about 2 weeks ago he had tumbled off of the bunk beds and sprained his ankle.  He wouldn't walk for over a week, and he was still limping. 

The youngest daughter took him to emergency and poor little guy!  He broke his leg.
Here is a picture of his splint and grippy socks.
Finn hanging out with his baby, sportin his new Spiderman pjs.   He is not a fan of the splint, and he doesn't go to get a cast until Thursday. 

Monday-  We do not have flooring in the family room, so we are going to move everything out and at least get OSB down so that the levels match, and we will then move the dining room table, and my quilting machine in here so that I can use it easier than when it is in the sun room.

While we were busy moving furniture from one end of the house to another I did manage to get a bit of stitching accomplished.

Hand stitching some trim.


A bit of embroidery and learning how to use the couching stitch on my sewing machine.  I was surprised at how much I accomplished in just a couple of hours.  My only problem was that I lost my Roxanne's glue baste, and Joann's didn't have any.  I keep hearing how if you use a bottle with a fine tip and some Elmer's school glue it works the same way, so I purchased it. 

Let's just say that I created quite a mess trying to fill this bottle and use it.  Ugh!

How was your weekend?  Did it seem crazy busy too? 



Thursday, January 15, 2015

Slow Sewing

Slow sewing.  No not hand piecing, or anything of the sort.  I hate squaring up, especially where there are a bunch of small piddly pieces.  My slow sewing is that I finished another set of quilt blocks! 

I decided I needed a break from my blog hop project, and from cutting the 100's of diamond type trapezoids for the Grand Illusion so I decided to do the December 2014 Aurifil block of the month.

I will say for all of the cutting, and trimming and squaring up I did, this block did not turn out wonderful.  Sigh*  But I did finish all of the blocks. This one block ended up taking me at least 3 hours with all of the cutting, trimming, sewing, squaring, trimming down, and trying to get it all to match.  I am not a fan of set in seams either. 
Aurifil posted a finishing technique which was making the blocks into spools, setting them on point with a lovely center motif, but I am not too sure if I am loving it. You can see their interpretation here.   I think I may leave it and stew on it a while.  DH says maybe use white to make the spool and red for the rest.  That way I can stick with my red and white theme.  I could add blue but that defeats the purpose of me working so hard to keep with the 2 color quilt.

As to the Grand Illusion I have one block from step 2 done. 
It actually came out to the correct size even.  Only 99 more to go.  I worked on cutting out the parts today for a while.  Maybe tomorrow I will get more accomplished. 


Sunday, January 11, 2015

We Support You Blog Hop is Coming

The lovely Madame Samm from Sew We Quilt has came up with a new challenge.  Take a gorgeous pattern, make it our own to support those we know who have had, or have breast cancer.  Make a comfort quilt, wall hanging, something.  I better get crackin since I am up on the first day.  Below is the schedule for all the beautiful, and inspiring creations.  














We Support You Blog Hop Full Schedule


Jan 29th 







Jan 30th 








Feb 2nd 







Feb 3rd 








Feb 4th 







Feb 5th  








Feb 6th  






Feb 9th 









Feb 10th  










Feb 11th