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.

Did your easter Hop???

 Well we left town early Friday morning on our motorcycles to go visit the in-laws. Me, my husband and our youngest daughter decided to go too. Poor thing owns a crotch rocket......boy were her wrists sore. We had a very lovely, way too short visit as usual. Wish I could go for a visit and never leave, love it at my in-laws house, and love where they live too. We couldn't have had better weather for riding if we had ordered it, even if it does look like I am still wearing sunglasses. LOL!

 When I got home I had packages delivered the next day, I bought a big box of scraps and here are a few pics of what was inside........

 and more goodies......there was fabric with chickens, paper clips, big funky flowers, about a fat eighth worth of popcorn fabric( MMM taking a break to go throw a bag in the microwave) can you see it towards the bottom? Sorry these pics aren't turned, my monitor on my laptop died Thursday evening, so I am borrowing hubbies computer, and he doesn't have the very easy to use photo editing software.

 Ok since I thought we were coming home Monday, I took the day off of work, but we ended up comig home Sunday so dear daughter could be in class by 12:30 and turn in her project worth 20% of her grade. I had LOTS of free time on Monday to quilt after hubby went to work at 2:30pm.
See this pile of little triangles..notice they are half of a square inch, well these are the results from finishing the top of my Layer Cake quilt along!!! Woo Hoo

And here is the finished top. The sashing and borders are really deep purple.
It is kinda hard to notice in this pic that there are tiny little stars in the sashing and that is what made that pile of little triangles. By the way, if you want that pile of triangles, send me an email with your address, and I will be glad to send them to you. There are12 different colors in that pile. Otherwise I am trashing them possibly. Oh I love how this one turned out. All from my stash, and my very first quilt along too.

 Ok and then today I made some more string blocks for the RRCB, yes I am still working on that one. I hate string blocks!! I have been trying to make myself do at least one while I contemplate what I want to work on. Today I made 3 of them. Then see this pile of bright beauties? Well there are 52 different 5inch squares in this pile, and I have 3 identical piles. I cut 52 white squares today, and paired them up with one stack, keep watching to see what I am going to do with these. But then.........

 @ 9:30pm it was still 78° in my sewing room, 86° outside, I had had enough, had to come back downstairs and cool off. I am too cheap to turn on the A/C quite yet.

So what have you been working on lately? Find anymore cool quilt alongs to do?? Please share.

First week accomplishments

Well last week was the first week of DH being on swing shift, it was lovely. I didn't get as much sewing done as I had hoped to, but did get some done. I did 2 kids taxes last week. Going to do mine probably tomorrow and Wednesday. Lets see the Layer Cake quilt along I was doing finished up last week on Thursday which was also my sit n stitch night. So I haven't put them all together yet. But here is the last block.

 and the one before that that I didn't show.

Then all 12 blocks together!

Block a Palooza is also done, here is the applique block from that set. I have one still left on the cutting table that I found today. and I still haven't found my lost lil goose. So I will have to make another one. Then I need to go buy some yardage for the center, and then it will sit there till I get the dies I want to use for the center portion to go with my GO!

Jethro helping me thread my machine. He is sooo helpful sometimes!!

When I was looking at the top of my fabric shelves I was thinking, then got another thought about breaking up those bundled fat quarters that were up there, and putting them on the shelves by color like everything else. So I pulled down some and threw them onto the table to pull apart and sort by color, and when I started to do that, I noticed that 3 bundles that were not stacked together went together very well, and well I had been looking for something to use for my TWEETS quilt. Ta Da, I found it. What do  you think??

 Well I pulled out the black white and red one this week as well, because I finally figured out what I was doing with it. But first I had to fix a small problem of having one block that only measured 11" and the rest that measured 12 1/2" so I made up this block to replace the one smaller one. I made these blocks when I first started to quilt some 9 years ago, and looking at the back of the one that is too small it is because my seams allowances are everywhere and there are a LOT of pieces in it. I didn't feel like picking it all out and resewing that one, so I will just add it to the back of the quilt instead.

 I was kinda limited to what I was going to do and how I was going to do it, because as I was looking at this piece of fabric I thought I had recently bought, the seam allowance told me probably not. The year is 2000 printed on the selvage. During the time I had been doing a lot of piecing of quilts, then everything went on the back burner for the past 5 years. Now I am here to clean it all up!

 So here is where the design wall sits as of an hour ago. Still adding the sashing, I will maybe finish it tomorrow. I want this top done before Friday. That is my goal!!!

 

Then sometime during the week, I took all my tiny little pieces of left over triangles that were in a neat but towering pile and stitched them all together to form lil pinwheels. Haven't a clue what I am going to do with them all, but they are put together and that is all that matters at this point.

 

The little pinwheels here in the front only measure 1 1/2 inches. The big pink one I think measured 4 "

 Another one of Jethro, napping.

And Ely Mae, not letting me touch that pile of fabric!!! Well till next week, happy sewing may your seam ripper have a week of vacation!

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???