Sew Many Days

Holiday weekends are always busy for us.  Normally we have a family get together but this year because the dining room is still in progress being remodeled, and the kids had other places to be, we decided that we would not have a get together.  We offered to go out but no one took us up on that option either, so we decided to have a low key weekend.

What was great about that choice?  DH because he works for a municipality had three days off, the weather was spectacular and the ground had dried out soooo-

Friday-
Went to the minion's home and made them waffles for breakfast until their mamma got off of work
Took the lilacs that had been taken out last year because of excessive poison ivy to the burn pile
Picked up all the downed limbs from around the property and at the neighbors property and took to the burn pile
Burned that brush pile
Cleaned up all the leaves that accumulated under the front porch over the winter
Cleaned up the woodpile and a lot of the rotten wood, chips, and  bark were placed in a pile and  burned-- yes we had two burn piles going
Strung  the wire for the raspberry and black berry patch
Weeded that berry patch and cleaned up all those weeds and threw on the burn pile
Raked and Cleaned out the garden

Saturday

Cleaned out the barn
Moved furniture from the garage to the barn so that I could work on them
Prepped that furniture for painting by cleaning, sanding and removing hardware
Took out a tree that did not survive the winter
Cleaned out the leaves and stuff from the ditch which was making it so it did not flow well
Strained several tractor bucket loads of compost to remove the rocks, and garbage
Spread that cleaned compost throughout low spots in the yard

Sunday

Made chalk paint and painted one piece of furniture
Pruned the berry canes, restrung the wires, and then tied up all the berry vines
DH processed firewood until the splitter ran out of gas
Transplanted some strawberry plants that had started to take over the main garden
Dug a hole and planted an old telephone pole for a bottle tree
DH changed a fuel line on a tractor
DH then fixed a friend's FIL tractor which had not ran for several years
Started to remodel the chicken house so we can get some chicks and they have a place to live
Sprayed our apple trees
I cleaned up the little spot where I grow herbs and got the chives all cleaned up

The downside to all of this outside work?  I didn't get much done on my scrap pile. 

I do know that I had to change out two boxes and get larger ones. (The two cardboard boxes on the right) Those boxes were the 1 1/2 inch and 2 inch scrap boxes.
  
Taking breaks between all the cutting I did finish up my propeller block for the Green Tea and Sweet Beans quilt.

And with all those scraps that I have been cutting up I actually threw together some lozenge blocks which are the next section for that quilt.

I actually reworked this block from the original design which was an elongated hexagon and triangle template to just cutting a 3 1/2 inch square and doing easy triangle corners using 1 3/4 inch squares. Worked out beautifully.

I have also been working on my fabric folding so that everything will be all neat, and ready to move around soon.   DH and I are going to reconfigure the sewing room to  hopefully make it more usable. 

The larger pieces which are 1/2 yard or bigger are on the bottom and are wrapped on comic book boards  pieces which are larger than a fat quarter but smaller than 1/2 yards are the smaller folded pieces and to the left is my attempt at a fat quarter fold.  I am sure I will get better with practice. 

My scrap box had lots of large pieces of scraps near the bottom so today I dug all of it out and started prepping the larger pieces for cutting by ironing several pieces at a time. 

You can tell just looking at these scraps how big those pieces were.   While they may not have been big enough to make 5 inch squares; they were big enough to make lots of strips and squares.  These were scrap pieces from dresses, shorts, and tops which I made for my daughters when they were little so they are huge odd shapes. 

It is very nice getting so much done lately but the downside?  Not much sewing getting accomplished.  I keep telling myself once it is all completed my area will be so much more user friendly.