Is it really June already?

Wait, didn't May just start? Wow time is flying by waaaay to fast, wish I knew how to slow it down. It has been 12 days since my last post, really? Let me try and think, what have I been doing for the past 12 days?

I have sewn a few more blocks for the raven stars quilt I am making.

 I have been stringy along like crazy....

don't like string blocks at all! I make myself do some of those almost daily before I begin something else I might want to do, or on days when I ask myself, what am I going to work on today? and I don't quite have an answer, I string. I want them done more than anything else I have going on, because I hate doing string blocks with a passion! These are for the RRCB, when I get these done, I need 600 HST, don't remember how many of those I have done, not too many that is for sure. I have found a few ways I am going to try to do them up quickly, will see which way I like the most, and then give everyone my feedback on those different ways of doing them. Then when I get this whole quilt top finished, I might do one out of all HST!!!

Remember the bright beauties? Well this is what they look like now.

50 of those along with 49 white 5 inch squares, and a small border. Looks really cool, except it is little!!! Very disappointed in how much this technique shrinks. Plus it hurts my hand something awful to cute around the Twister template too. It is a thick template, plus there is little rubber feet to help it from sliding, and holds it above the crisscrossing seams, but it is so thick that you can't cut the left side (right-handed) pushing away, it is too thick to let the blade go up against it, you have to come from the top down, or go all the way around..........well I couldn't walk around that table, I could go on two sides, but man it tweaked my hand something awful. So since this isn't even big enough for a crib size....I am going to make 3 more of these (torture) and hook the 4 together to make a lap quilt. I already have the bright beauties cut for 2 more sets, so I need to cut 50 more of those and then 150-  5 inch white squares, good thing I bought an entire bolt of  that nice white fabric some years ago when I seen it on clearance someplace, nice and thick (not that see thru crap) and I think I only paid $1.00 a yard for it too!!!

I have 1/4 of my Christmas table runner quilted......

.it is on my PhD list, and that list needs to be cleared by the end of June!!! Whoa.......I had 6 months to do this short list, and now I only have 28 days left!!! My O' My! I will finish my 3, I will finish my 3, I will I tell ya, I will!!! I also have Turtle Bay pinned and ready to roll it out next,

Then the Black white & Red one is sitting and waiting to be pinned as well, along with the Monochromatic yellow one

even though that one wasn't on my PhD list, it isn't going to go on a list except the start to finished in 2011 list!!

Other things I have in the works....still need to make a back for the Red & White one.

.....still need to make a back for my Layer Cake Quilt Along one, I had a piece of fabric I was going to use, but now that the top is done, I don't like that piece of fabric for the back anymore..........has that ever happened to you before????

......I know there is still at least 2 BAP blocks I haven't finished, but I did buy the center fabric, and got 3 of the 6 GO! dies I need to finish the center,

so until I get the other 3 (birthday coming up in August) I am in no hurry to finish the other two blocks, what is the point if you can't finish the whole top, right???

Oh and then there is this little bucket I started cutting out 2 inch diamonds, purple and white ones for a scrappy quilt ......more to come on that one later.

 Want to take any wild guess what I might be making with all these, I am sure I will need more, lots more. These were but from one strip of each of the purple fat quarters I have, and all the white ones came from my scrap bin only!

I have another idea in my head for the other nine scrap bins for a really cool scrappy quilt I don't see many of, but I need a lot of white to go with it, and since I don't have much of that left (don't want to use that thicker stuff), I just need to buy a bolt....looking for a coupon and a good sale first though, no hurry since it isn't started.
Then I have this pile calling my name........

I had flipped it, don't know why it flipped back, sorry......but I haven't found "THE" pattern yet to use this wonderful pile of fabrics, got any suggestions, send me a pic via email, or post me a link to a picture, that is all I need to make a flimsy, a photo and I am good to go. Turquoise and chocolate!
My computer is still broke, hubby says it is in a thousand pieces out in the travel trailer........safest place to work on it, so all the pieces will still be there to put it back together. no cats, and no dogs out there :D  Just got his computer back up and running yesterday, finally, and this one I am using at this time had to be rebuilt too.  Looked at buying a new one, an IMac, but didn't want to spend the $2000-$3000 on a new computer right now, too many other things needing to be done. Garage doors, A/C fixed in my truck for starters! Breaking heat records again this year already, and I don't do heat well at all, so I am making an appointment to get the A/C in the truck fixed ASAP, and the garage door guy is looking for a place that stocks 1/2 doors ( only 4 feet wide ones)

Wow this post got long, I need to stop by more often and fill you all in, but I think without having my own computer is what is messing everything up, especially when I didn't have "A" computer at all for a little while, and this one only has one shift key that works when it wants too, drives me bonkers. Well I started this post at 3am and  it is now 5am, I am going to attempt going back to sleep now that my leg quit cramping and flexing all over the place, maybe I will be able to get some sleep before that alarm goes off in 3 hours. Wish me luck, I might need it.

Oh and I just remembered, sit n stitch is tonight too. Took about 10 minutes just now to locate my tin with my project in it..........my purple project from back in February when my husband was in the hospital.

Finally got the other notion I needed to finish that project, so I am going to shoot to finish half of what I have left tonight.

MMMMMM

Just took the Strawberry Rhubarb pie out of the oven and put in the deep dish apple pie! MMMM MMMM Good. Remembered to talk to my dad about shipping me some Rhubarb plants too. Should have them by next week. Going to build me a small garden to plant what we eat a lot of.

Been doing some sewing here and there. It had been pretty hot in my sewing room on the third floor. Yesterday was nice though, When I went up there it was 86° and 100% humidity, 2 1/2 hours later it was only 72° and barely any humidity. Woke up this morning and it was only 58° YIPPEEE.  I was suppose to bake these pies yesterday but didn't feel like going to the store for some tapioca, so I went on my way home today. But I did work on those brightly colored squares, they are hanging on the design wall right now. Been stringing a lot of those string blocks I hate to do for the RRCB, going to do a tally count this weekend and see if I am at least to the halfway point or not. Got a few more blocks on the Raven Stars done too. Binded a few of the hotpads, not impressed at all with my work on those, the premade binding was too small. Maybe I will either buy some bigger stuff or sew two strips of that together and use it that way. I have another mystery I am starting, the one out of the Quiltmaker magazine with Debbie Caffery.( I think that is how it is spelled). So many other quilts sitting on the drawing board just isn't enough time to cut them all out and sew them all back together. I sooo wish I was retired.

I should go sew, but got one more pie in the oven and a massive headache brewing. So I will wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow is also Cinco de Mayo and our sit n stitich, hmmm I wonder what I should bring with me tomorrow. I don't think I have any hand work to do right now. Maybe some colored pencils and coloring sheets for a quilt design?

Just wanted to check in to say Hello, and I am still alive. How is everyone else doing?

A few more blocks done

Today has been a rollercoaster ride I don't ever want to be on again.





But lets move on to my blocks I finished. Oh yeah finished embroidering hubbies other 10 shirts for work. Wow I miss my embroidery! Got another quilt in my mind and it's going to have embroidered blocks on it. Just gonna clear off some of the tables first. Well onto the sewing part of what I did.
I got 4 more blocks for my Raven stars done tonight.

Then earlier this week I got 3 more block a palooza blocks done. We are finished with this QAL. I have one block I still haven't found my little missing goose for. Will have to make another one tomorrow for it, and finish that block. Another block I need some wonder under, going to get that in the morning, all pieces are cut and waiting. A 3rd one is sitting on the cutting table debating if I want to use those fabrics for it. And that made 15.......crap I was missing one, back to the main page, and looking to see which one I missed. Oh yeah, I never made the last one yet, duh....Ok so get those done, and then I can start piecing the top together. They gave 3 layout options for you to follow, I chose option number one, but I am going to do my own flowers in the middle, I am thinking of doing a flower garden. I think that would look cool, now to order those flower dies for my GO!
So here are photos of 3 more of the blocks, lets see 15 on top, 14 in the middle and 10 on the bottom.

Then I did block #11 for the Layer Cake QAL, woo hoo, only one more of these to go too! I am not caring for the one block every 2 weeks thingy. Too far apart. But since this was my first quilt a long I ever did, now I know if it is going to be this spaced out, I will have to really think if I want to be doing the quilt a long for sure.

Over all this was a slow sewing week for me, got the DVR all caught up, watched Inkheart pretty good movie. I think I might have seen it before. I suck at remembering movies, I could watch the same one 10 times and not realize I had seen it before sometimes.

Wow 12 days since my last post

 I had lots of helpers this evening, here is Jethro keeping track of the pile on the ironing board, he didn't want me pulling the chain piecing out from under him to iron them. You will see later in this blog what I was ironing........

 Here is Riley, sleeping! He is part of the 16 Muddy Feet gang. My furry Lunatics!!!!!Earlier before I took this picture all 4 of them were running around full speed in my room. When they about knocked the chair over on top of two of them, that is when they mellowed out and all took a nap, and then I remember I actually had my camera still up there to take photos of them. So here are the rest of them too.

 Bailey, guarding the staircase.



Hershey sniffing the scraps that are not quilting fabrics, she steals them out of the basket, and I find them all over the house sometimes.






Reesie just chillin!

 Here is Hershey and Reesie again. Don't they look so innocent?? Ha! Don't let them fool you. Hershey and Riley (the white one)are my two BIG trouble makers. Reesie is the watchdog, while the other 3 are goofing off, she will be alert to every little noise she hears, and she will go investigate them too. All it takes is one bark from her, and the rest are right behind her adding their barks too.

And Bailey again, all curled up in a ball.  She usually lays here, so I can't leave without her knowing it.
She is the oldest at 3.5, Riley and Reesie are 1.5, and Hershey is the youngest, she is almost 9 months old now, but she isn't the littlest, that would be Reesie the watchdog.










Down in the south they have what they call Mardi Gras, well the past 3 weekends we have had Mardi Gras festivities around town. Every year we help our good friends JB & Lori in their Big Bead tent they have. Yesterday was #3, and the 4 of us are all glad it is over. It can get exhausting when you do them all back to back, plus working your fulltime job during the week. Poor JB he needs a relaxing getaway on an island someplace. But even though I have been busy on the weekends helping my friends I have still managed to get a little bit of sewing done over the past 12 days since I last blogged. And I made progress on the endless supply of scraps my room seems to have.

This is actually a laundry hamper, but for years I used it as a scrap holder. It was STUFFED to the max. It was round, and you couldn't pull it out it was so fat. Well it is empty now, I got all the scraps 100% sorted out. At least from this container, only one more 16X16X16 box to go. This worked great as someplace to put the scraps because the shelf above the bag has slots in it, so you could just drop the scraps on top, and they would fall into the bag, to stay for years to come it turned out. Well I am living up to my resolution of getting rid of scraps, and shopping from the stash too. I had some of my scraps sorted, but the colors were sharing bins, and the bins were getting full. So I found some bins at the dollar store the other day, and resorted the sorted ones, and then started on this hamper too. Here are all the new bins on one of my sewing tables.







                                                                                                                                        



Jethro is getting ready to claim his red bin, but sniffing the other ones to decide if he wants to change colors today or not.

















 Here is Jethro hanging out in the red bin, his favorite at this time.Elly didn't hang out upstairs today, because the dogs chased her away. She didn't come back either, found her hanging out with Willow downstairs on the fuzzy blanket.

I started to get caught up on the Block a palooza here is block 5

 and here is Block a palooza block 6

AND Block a palooza Block 7. Still have 8,9,10,11,12 to do and 13 comes out tomorrow!!

I am caught up with the Layer cake quilt along here is block 9. Block 10 comes out on Tuesday.

 This is 2 piles of 2.5 inch squares piled 3 inches high each.......for Raven stars that I cut out finally.

 This is all of the HST sewn together waiting to be ironed.

 This is them all ironed out nicely.

 Here they are sewn with those 2.5 inch squares.

 Here is a full block, for Raven stars, now I have 41 more to go to finish the quilt top. I still have to finish cutting out the white that goes with the blue triangles though. But it is coming along quickly. I am ready for some of these quilt alongs to be over with, because it is camping season, and I don't want to get even farther behind when I start camping out on the weekends. Haven't touched my Dorinda, and I am 3 clues behind on that one as of tomorrow. Maybe I will just have to pick one day and only work on that one! Rainbow Scraps challenge color is green this month, haven't decided if I am making anything or not. I don't care for green, unless it is outdoors or in my pocket. The Monochromatic challenge is Brown this month, I have hardly any brown, so that one won't be happening either this month. I am almost done with the purple yo-yo project I started last month. Hopefully will have that one done by the end of the month, need to order something to finish it. But for the UFO challenge, it is quilt number 1 which is my Black White & Red quilt, I got the 12th block pieced (forgot to take pic). My youngest daughter wants that quilt, so I have been looking for fabric for the back, and trying to decide how to piece the top together. Probably on point to make it bigger, might have to put a few more blocks together as well. But I should have the top at least done by the end of the month.The whole thing depends on if I can find suitable fabric for the backing. I got quite a few more of my string blocks done for the RRCB too. I will have a HUGE celebration when I sew the last one of those. I soooo dislike string blocks!!!!

Over at Freckled Whimsy a week or so ago she blogged about these carpet replacement blades that fit the Olfa 45mm cutters. At the time they were on sale $1.49 for a 2 pack!! They are $1.79 as of this post. I jumped on over to Harbor Freight and ordered 5 packs. So with shipping I paid about $14.00 for 10 blades, sure beats the heck out of the price of $7.99 PER blade around town! You never realize how dull your blade really is until you change it out. Then it is watch out fingers because the blade fly's down the side of the ruler. I have since read about this same thing on about 4 other blogs I follow. Wonder what those guys over at Harbor Freight are thinking with all of a sudden huge surge in carpet replacement blade sales! Shhhhh don't tell them quilters use them, they will raise the price on them. Well I think I made up for missing the blog last week I normally try to post. What are you working on today???

Christmas is officially over.............

Yes I know it is almost St Patrick's day, but in our house it isn't officially over till something happens.  I finally got around to taking down the Christmas tree this weekend. So that means Christmas is officially over. It is in the box in the middle of the living room. But the alcove is cleared out now. That is all that matters.

My husband is doing great, got his last 4 out of 22 staples taken out today. He has at least 4 more weeks at home before being able to return to work. (Lucky him) I went back to work today after be off for the past 2 1/2 weeks........it sucked! I sooooooooooooooo want to be retired!!!! Someday. Anyways.............

I have been busy, just not as busy as usual in the sewing department.




Here is my new ironing board............HUGE! It is 23X75! Your probably wondering "Where in the world did she come up with that oddball size?" Well my office desk is made up of kitchen cabinets with drawers in them, with a plywood top. It use to be a corner desk, and just recently I made it all on one wall. So I needed a new top, didn't want to cut the old one in case I want to make it a corner again someday. So when I went and bought a new sheet of plywood, I had him ( the guy at the store) first cut the piece to length for my desk top, that gave me a 48X9 extra piece, then had him cut it to width, so I could have the biggest left over for an ironing board.:D It fits into my room good right now, but it is only sitting on top of the actual ironing board, and I want more stability, so I will probably be putting it onto a book case or something, still thinking how and where.....

Ely Mae strutting herself down the iron runway!

Remember the god awful green on the snowman quilt???
Well I got rid of that.....

I was trying to find something snowman-y to go with it........but the blue was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off so I tried to find something that would kinda seem like winter time.

 But that blue was waaay off too!

Back to the stash, there has to be something in these huge piles of blues somewhere.......Ah Ha!

 I had found this really dark navy print with Khaki colored hearts on it too. Since the snowmen seem a little folk artsy to me, I think that is what I am putting on the back, and it is 3 inches bigger than the quilt top all the way around........I was like NO WAY!!!

So here it is on the design wall with the new borders............much better than that god awful ugly green. I made this quilt about 10-15 years ago when I was teaching myself to quilt. Looking at it now, what was I thinking...........glad I taught myself a lot since then.

So I was on the No Fab Feb, and the Fabric Diet this month, remember??? Well I knew I was going to fall off for one day, just didn't know it was going to be this bad. I needed that green 1/4 yard in the top right corner, see it. I needed that for Block-A-Palooza quilt along. So I grabbed the pink too while I was there, well I started looking for some fabric for some backs of quilt, couldn't quite find what I needed, and the local quilt shop was having a fat quarter blow out sale, so I bought 60 of them!!!! OOOOPSSSS!Jethro said he likes them all, they feel great!

 Ok while unrolling them I found a few surprises too. grabbed two of these because of the turquoise little itty bitty dots, but when I unrolled them seen there are other colors on them, COOL!

  

Then when I unrolled this beauty. I love these blue and white flowers, hubby grabbed these for me, I got 6 of them.

 There were teacups and teapots on them WOO HOO. I love teacups and teapots, and these match my kitchen too. I need some hotpads, guess what I will be making next! YES, I scored on this one and didn't even plan it out. I even told my husband the day before, we will have to find some fabric so I can make some hotpads, didn't even think about that when I grabbed all these. Until I unrolled them. :D

 Ok this little mess is for the Raven stars quilt along, still have some light to cut to go with that tall stack of blue on the left. But it will get there, a few at a time. My daughter is a Florida Gator fan, but doesn't really care for the cobalt blue they use, she likes the turquoise and orange, so I am making this one for her for her 21st birthday in June. I will have to put something Gator wise on the back of it for her though. In time.



Ok now that it has taken me 2 hours to write this post, because the pics would not behave today. I am done and going to bed, no sewing for me tonight. Will make up for it tomorrow. I have 5 yes 5 BAP blocks to catch up on, and a layer cake block, 2 Dorinda mystery blocks, cut more for Raven Stars, Think about the Gayle Bong quilt, and make the back for the red and white quilt too. So something will get done tomorrow. Oh yeah, still stringy along with the RRCB, and those HST's are awaiting me too. No links to click on today, sorry. But the coordinating buttons are on the right.