Lots of going on's

Seems there has been a LOT of stuff going on around here for the past 6 weeks. Not much of anything in the sewing room though, even though I thought when April got here and dear hubby went on swings I would have LOTS of sewing time. Nope..........too pooped when I get home from work, or too many other things to do. Won't bore you with all the little stuff, but our youngest, the one that got married last June......she graduated from Basic training a month ago already. I was going to blog as soon as I got home, and well here it is a month later already, really?!?!?! Someone please slow the time spinner down a tab please!

First off she did not even know we were coming. So she was really shocked when we were there, and very happy too. Here are a few pics out of the couple hundred I took during the week we were gone.

Here they are coming for the coin ceremony.

 This is her flight, the last one of 8.

 Here they all are, standing proud.

See the girl on the right............she is right behind her, you can see half her face.

 and here she is in the center..........man she looks so mad!

 Had to laugh at this.....she is standing in line to use the bathroom at Popeyes chicken, and she is standing at ease with her hands crossed behind her back. LOL!

 The reunion with her husband...........

 after the hug, she was like. "Hey what is up with the hat, and OH MY GOD! Look at your hair, don't you remember how to go get it cut?"

 Real food!!! Stuffing her face.

 Now it is time to take care of that haircut situation.Yeppers, most of it came off. Much shorter than he normally gets it cut too.

 Next day. Graduation! Here they are lining up on the field.

 Here comes the parade of flags...........

It is all over! She is done. She is trying not to smile, because she can't move till she has been touched, and we are all standing in front of her just smiling and taking photos, not touching her. LOL!

 Ah, there is the cutest couple, haircuts and all.

 That night a Hockey game. She gets to stay off base later if she goes to it, so we went. Had fun too.

 Here I took a pic of them taking their pic to post on FB.

 Next day Seaworld, the 4 of us got in free. His parents had to pay, but not bad for 6 of us.

 Last day there we went down to the Riverwalk, here they are in front of one of the big waterfalls.

 Here are the 6 of us. His mom and step dad, then me and dear hubby and then she and her hubby too.

This was some of the cool mosaic that was on the wall under one of the bridges on the Riverwalk, I thought it looked really cool!

Now she has left basic training and she is across the city of San Antonio stationed at Fort Sam Houston for some tech school. When she finishes up there in about 3 more months she will be an EMT and some kind of nurse, I can't remember. Then she goes on for more tech school some place else I believe. Her and her husband can't wait till she gets done with the schooling part, so they can be back together, can't blame the newlyweds for wanting that. Next weekend her husband is driving out there for the weekend, and going to fly back so she can have her car while she is there, now that she can finally have it. That was last months vacation, Another one starting this upcoming week. :D Two in a row, I could get use to this.

For the most part the only thing in my sewing room that I did get done, was I managed to get all the Texas teardrop blocks traced, bonded, cut, and now I am matching all the pieces back together with the different colors, so I can iron them down and stitch them all together.  Oh yeah, I did manage to make 28 crazy quilt blocks for our bi-annual Flamingo Swap we do with some of the ladies from the quilt guild too. I forgot about those. So I guess I did get some stuff done. More than I remembered too. I will get pics of all this quilting stuff next time. Hopefully a lot sooner than 6 weeks from now. I can't believe 6 weeks has flown by already. My oh MY!

Finding the sewing room again..........

Out of the past two months I think I only seen my sewing room 5 days. But now that dear hubby is back on swing shift, I can get back into the groove. I sewed up the last of the pink 4 patch bow tie blocks that I had pieces for. Now I am starting the Texas Teardrop QAL. I don't normally buy too many patterns at all for quilts, mainly because looking at them I can duplicate them. But I did buy this pattern because it was priced low, and I didn't want to try and draw out the piece. I already had the perfect fabric bundle for it too. So I am using from my stash, minus I did have to get some more background fabric which I got really cheap ( I realized after I got home) The lady rang it up wrong, even after she asked another girl if it was right. So if you want to make this quilt

Click here to go to the page!

These are the fabrics I am using for mine. They have snowmen on them too!


 Yes I am starting another one...............but I am also goign to work on some UFO's too.
I will also blog my progress.........onto the sewing room I go. I have bunches of pretties waiting for me.

photos in blogs

What program do you use to store and upload your photos to blogger?? I am trying to find something besides picassa. They use to take way too much time to edit the photos to a smaller size to keep uploading for free, and now they make it impossible and even more time consuming. I was trying to do a blog post and uploaded 7 pics to the site, but now I can't find the 7 I uploaded they are not in the file I put them in, they have recently done a lot of changes again, and you can't even scroll through all the pics and see which ones you need to shrink with out clicking and waiting clicking and waiting. So do you use something different? If so what do you use. I have heard you can use Flickr, can someone tell me how? PLEASE!!! I beg of everyone, help me out here please.

FNSI

Last night was a FNSI, and since I was reminded the day before that I had a deadline of today for the next clue to a mystery I am sharing with our guild in the newsletter. I needed to get that cut out, sew together, with photos taken along the way, and the article wrote and submitted. It was a race to finish before bedtime, but it was done. Here are the photos of what I made.

24 Shaded 4-patch blocks. Other than that, I didn't get any other sewing done. I am linking up to Handmade by Heidi for the FNSI.

4th finish for the week

Wow.......another one off my list! After arriving home this morning @ 430am and going to bed, only to be woken @ 9am with Hershey's kisses, I went to the sewing room. I took scraps of batting and zigzaged them together to be big enough for the Quilts 4 Kids quilt. Pinned it all together and then quilted it up, and then took the left over binding from the yellow one and got it all bound too. Woo Hoo. Here is this weeks pile with the newest one on the top.

I have two more loads of laundry to wash, then these are getting washed too, so they can do their crinkle magic. :D
Yesterday in between other stuff I managed to get 14 more pairs of blue jeans de-boned. Plus I think I did 12 the night before too. One whole stack is now gone, well at least off that shelf, now it is just a pile of usable blue jean fabric in bits and pieces.Only 2 more big stacks to go. I will be using some of it to bind those 5 dog beds that are calling my name.
Now do I bind those dog beds too, or go back to piecing for awhile so I don't get burnt out on binding and finishing too?
While I think on that for awhile, I am going to piddle with my Dear Jane blocks that I was working on during break and lunchtime this week, see if I can get a few of them finished too. Wish me luck on these.

Turtle Bay is finished.

Woo Hoo, number 3 for the week! Gotta love it! Here is a quick peek, as we are getting ready to leave for game night, I will try to take full pics of all of them tomorrow and post them. Amy did a fantastic job quilting this one too.

 When I finished and came down to finish up dinner, dear hubby was snoring away in his chair taking a short lab nap ( kinda like a cat nap, but with a lab in your lap) Everytime he covers with a quilt and flips back that chair, one of the two chocolates cover him with a little bit more heat and snore city happens instantly. Hershey was the extra warmth today.

RSC purple saturday

I haven't done too much with my purple scraps, one because I haven't done much sewing at all so far this month. Also I cleared off the table to do bindings. Did the two earlier this week and number 3 is almost done, will probably finish it after I write this, while waiting for dinner to finish. Then it is off to a friends for game night. All I did manage to get done before I cleared my table was the 4 crossroads blocks, and they were done 2 weeks ago. Just didn't get a post wrote before helping our friend out for Mardi Gras the past two weekends. Here they are pinned on the board on top of the pink ones.

I am linking up to Angela's for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and now I am off to finish me another binding!

2 finishes this week so far!

Well I decided to push everything off the table and get to the binding pile. It is driving me nuts that I have 8 in that pile and so close to being done. So first up........that yellow monochromatic quilt I pieced more than 2 years ago in January of 2011. It is 100% finished! Now for a wash and a tumble in the dryer.

Then I took the next one in the pile. My wounded warrior one. This one should have been mailed last May. Sad I tell ya, very very sad. But it is done, wash and dry, then I will mail it on Monday. See Merlin's feet sticking out from under it, he didn't care.

I am not pleased with the quilting at all on this one, but it is done. It was a lot of practice too. So they are getting better and better as I go along.
I have the binding picked out, cut out, ironed in half and waiting for the third one. It was just waaaay too hot in the studio last night to finish that one and my left nostril won't quit running, just the left side. Maybe tonight when I get home.
Then all that is left is the 5 dog mats, and I am de-boning  jeans for that. Figure I will use strips of jeans for binding since the dogs can be destructive for sure.

Bonnie & Mickey's Retreat

Finally have a little info on Bonnie & Mickey's joint retreat in August. Get those sewing machines ready to rock and roll. I so want to go, just because. Go over to Mickey's blog she gives some info here and a sneak peek of what we will be making. A Bonnie special with Mickey's pieced hexi's on it too.The info to sign up isn't available yet, hopefully within a week or so.

January is over already???

Whoa.......where did this month go already? I can not believe tomorrow is the first of February already.

Well it is that link it up time again over at Patchwork times. Well I had set goals for January:

My goal for January is:

1. Get the Christmas strings quilt, quilted and bound.
2. Get the quilts for kids quilt, quilted, bound and mailed.
3. Get the wounded warrior quilt bound and mailed.
4. Get the mono yellow quilt bound.

 January: All I can say is for that list. Failed, Failed, Failed, Failed. WOW. I kept saying, I will get it done in a few days..........well 31 of those days have flown on by.
I did do lots of sewing though during the month, so I don't feel like I failed. But I am going to put that same list up for February, I know BORING right?
I almost have all the HST L&E's done so then that corner of the table will be clear, and as soon as that happens I AM going on a binding frenzy. I have the rest of the table cleared and waiting.

Now that the pink is almost done, it is time for purple I believe. That scrap basket is already been purged, so  it will be quicker to make all my blocks and move on to other things.

Scrap Happy Saturday pink overview & FNSI

I am in the pink, that is for sure.

I whipped up 2 more for Crossroads.

I have a bunch more 4 patches made. I have been turning those 4 patches into these blocks.

I have done these cool swirlygig pinwheel looking ones too. I like this block, quick and simple too.

Using different sizes, I made up a bunch of these 9 patches with neutral in the centers. They will make 2 totally different quilts. To make sure they really look different that is why I chose to use 2 different sizes too.

This is a pic of the entire design wall, it is really PINK! These are the pieces to 6 of the quilts I am making in this challenge. Not all the quilts will have all the colors in them though.

Not everything is up here yet, still have a bunch sitting at the machine waiting to be fed through the feed dogs.
Still have the last 3 swirlygig blocks, for a total of 5 and all these 4 patch bowties too. Notice the bowties went to the floor on the board.

Friday night it was spent sewing the last of the 4 patches, and working on 4-patch bow tie blocks I think I managed to finish another 12 more after all those 4 patch pieces. Then I cut out the rest of those swirlygig ones and called it a night. This week has wore me out. I might have some 4 patches leftover when I am done, I am not sure but we will see.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, I also started to do a paper piecing block.............well I did say started, and not finished.

Do you see where that ripper is pointing?????? There is NO fabric right there...........urgh! That was as far as I went.

I am linking up with Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Also with FNSI at Heidi's.
What have you been up to???

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