A day with Jack the Ripper, and a finish!

Well before I tell you how much I didn't get done today, lets see what I got done since last Sunday.
I spent a few days working on rows 2 and 3 from the Rockin Row Robin. Already have row 4 done.

  Here I have them sewn together, finally. Lots of pieces.

 My daughter wanted to know why I had one really BIG house, well that is because.......

 This is where Santa stays!!!

I have all the HST's from RRCB, sitting on top of their block, waiting to be sewn. I had other things to get done this week first. So I haven't touched them since I finished all the HST's

 Can't have a blog post without Jethro getting in there someplace. That poor cat is going to be sooo lost when my daughter moves out and takes him with her. He isn't going to know what to do without me around.

 Inside that bag he is guarding is 32 stockings, that needed hemming for the guild. The first one took me 8 minutes........Oh No. Push another button, need to find quicker fancy stitches, did these on Wednesday and they needed done so I could go to bed. Guild meeting was afterwork on Thursday. I think they are going to Covenant Hospice if I remember correctly.

Now the only thing left with a deadline is the last row on the Rockin Row Robin. I started playing with hexies today, and Jack the Ripper was in full swing...........is it a full moon or something??? Nope, I checked!! But for every 10 I put in, I would rip out 20......some seams I even ripped out 5 times before kinda getting them where I wanted them. It was one of those days, that if the deadline wasn't tomorrow, I would have left the sewing room and not went back today. But on I went with Jack right there with me, 10 in, 20 out, 10 in 20 out. Well I finally got this cool hexi block done....but see the points, they are right at the edge. Nothing I did wrong, the tutorial made them that way, next time I will add a little more to that strip so I have my 1/4 seam allowance. But for today, I will end up chopping off my points.

 I had one piece of striped fabric, managed to get this one done without too many issues.

 Here is the whole row, finally done.

 and the view from the other end.

 My whole quilt top!!! Woo Hoo, I made the deadline!! Wish me luck.

Now they only did 4 blocks wide in theirs, I did 6 so my quilt is wider than it is long...........so I am thinking up another row, or two. So it will either be square or longer than wide.

Happy Birthday to meeeeee!!!

 
Oh yeah, it is my birthday, but they aren't all that big of a deal around here most of the time. Got up and went to work as usual. Well actually didn't get to sleep till about 1am, and I was back up again at 5am.......I went and sewed till after 8am, then I got ready and went to work.  As soon as I got to work the power went out, and stayed out for more than 2 hours. We had flashlights trying to find peoples mail.  The girls I work with brought in a veggie tray, and fruit tray, chip, salsa, bean dip and a cake too.  Took me 20 minutes before I even noticed it sitting there. Opened up the veggies and fruit since it was really dark and told everyone to come try the surprise buffet, it was a surprise because when you reached out and grabbed a piece of food to eat it, you didn't know if you were eating a grape, or a grape tomato!!!!   I didn't even get to eat any cake till 4:30pm we got so busy later in the day.  When I went home for lunch dear hubby and I went to the Pizza Hut buffet for lunch since he is working swing shift still. Then when I got home from work the oldest daughters boyfriend took us all out to dinner. Went and got mexican, and have enough leftover for dear hubby and me for lunch tomorrow too!!!! All in all it has been a great day, now I am going to do more sewing. Almost done with my Rockin Row Robin top, deadline is Monday, so I am trying to get it finished today or tomorrow.

Yesterday I had a Manic Madness Monday sewing session. First off let me tell ya something else. You know those sci fi movies where machines come to life and have a mind of their own??? Well for years I have said that is how my sewing machines are.....when I am too tired to be sewing and to stubborn to go to bed, my machines will purposely do thread lockups so I quit and go to bed, only to come back the next day and do nothing but turn on the machine and push the foot peddle and it works perfectly, even though you never fixed the problem. Well Sunday was one of those nights........both machines did that too me. I guess they were tired after an 11 hour sewing marathon. But yesterday, turned it on, and pushed the peddle and it purred! Sweeettttt!!! So, I had a Manic Madness Monday sewing session!!!  

I finished ALL the rest of the HST's!! They are all sewed into 4 rows of 5, waiting to be attached to the 29 blocks, so I can assemble RRCB!! Yippeeeee, it is almost finished.  Then I finished 2 rows on the Rockin Row Robin too. Started doing hexies.......not the little itty bitty hand stitched ones, bigger 6 inch pieced ones all done by machine. I need them for my RRR, and the Hexalong too!

I would post pics of all this, but the camera is on the 3rd floor in my sewing room. So I will have to post all the pics either tomorrow, or Sunday when I do my weekly update post as usual.

Alright my daughter told me she got me some solid brown for my Garden Fence QAL, so I need to go check out my prezzy, not sure if I want it brown or white. She bought all they had, and left it on the bolt, in case it isn't right, and I want to exchange it. Cool!!! I know the other daughter bought me GO! dies, the other flowers, so I can finish my BAP quilt, that is waiting on the flower garden I am adding to it. Well off to my other world, stayed tuned for more pics!

Super Sewing Sunday 08-15-11

Wow, what a week it has been. Let me see what I have gotten done, Monday started out by pressing 100 HST's again, and getting them chain stitched into 4 rows of 5, so I have 5 more blocks waiting for them to be attached. Then I quilted The lil Lion quilt. Got the binding all done.

 And Embroidered a label, got it sewn on , then washed and dried it so I could gift it to the new mom.

She asked me how I knew.......I had to asked her know what?  She said they decorated Laith's room in the same print. NO WAY!!! I told her I had no clue, that I made that quilt just for him. What are the chances of that ever happening again????
Tuesday I had a migraine, so no sewing for me. Then on Wednesday I embroidered all 20 of my friends shirts, needed his name on them. Whew glad that is done and off the list. The machine ate the last shirt.....dang it. Good thing it was the last one and not the first one, otherwise I wouldn't have kept trying. Made these Cinnamon Crumb Cake Muffins for dessert Saturday, MMMMM they are good too.

No sewing for me on Thursday, Friday or (usually) Saturday, but this Saturday I was up at 4am, so off to my room I went. I started by picking out fabrics to join in Myra's mystery quilt along. I want to use up a few fat quarters I started using for a different QAL, but couldn't get into it. Since they are batik's I picked a rainbow of batik's out of my stash, and this is what I came up with. I think my color wheel is severely lopsided wouldn't you say???? Maybe it is because I have been using up alot of the warm colors?

 Sewed another 100 HST's together, that is 5 more blocks worth. 19 blocks worth to go.

Then I started working on 2 of my Rockin Robin Rows.The stars and the houses. Then hubby finally awoke so off we go to run errands, and work on the rental house a little bit, I so want that remodel job done. Can't wait till it cools off, it will be much easier to work on it then.
Now it is finally Sunday my super sewing day of the week. I started out by doing another 100 HST's so now there is only 280 more left to go, woo hoo past the half way point. Sew them on the respected blocks and I can start piecing the top of RRCB together, FINALLY!!!! Doesn't look like it will be put together by my Bday, but it is getting there. :D

I went back to working on my 2 rows of Rockin Row Robin, after about 6 hours, my machine started throwing tantrums. GO 3 stitches and it would thread lock underneath. For no apparent reason. Everything was the same as it was for the past 20 minutes or so. So I unthreaded it, still not working. Took out the bobbin and unthreaded it, still not working. Put on a new needle, still nothing. Took the machine apart and cleaned it out, rethreaded it, put the bobbin back in, and it STILL did it. URgghhhhh.

So I got out the ol Kenmore machine. WOW, what a difference!! There is a lot of things I actually liked better, and some I didn't. First off, see the left side of this foot, how it is going UNDER the seam allowance, that is on the good machine, drives me nuts.............

See this one, how the left side is raised up, so it NEVER grabs the seam allowance, this is the trusty Kenmore foot, LOVING IT!!!!

 I did have to rethread the Kenmore about 45 times while using it. But if I would remember to turn the fly wheel so the needle was down before hitting the foot pedal, I wouldn't have that problem. Oh yeah, I found out the reverse isn't working on the Kenmore. Also Kenmore doesn't have auto needle down no biggy today. I did manage to get a lot done on the two rows of the Rockin Row Robin though, here is the left half of the row, not all put together yet..........

 and here is the right side, I was trying to finish those two little stars, one is done, and the other one almost done, when the Kenmore decided to do the same exact thing the Big Brother is doing.........URGGHHHH!

Time to quit for me. Tomorrow, I will go up there, and both machines will probably work fine, that is usually how it rolls around here. I have less than 30 minutes to sew and these two rows are finished. One more to go. But since they are only doing 5 rows, and I added two more blocks wide, I am going to do another row of my own design so the quilt will be square at least. This way it isn't wider than it is long. Didn't think that one through when I started it. Well it is after midnight as usual so I am off to bed.

What have you been up to?? Know of any good QAL's going on right now. My table is almost cleared off, so I need to find a few more to work on. Still have lots of scraps and stash to use up before the end of the year. Resolutions.......still sticking with mine!!!

Super Sewing Sunday 08-07-11

 Well I got quite a bit done today, and even quit 4 hours earlier than normal. Was at a point of boredom, or not knowing what to do next that I wanted to do. So I know it is best to quit at that point before you lose the MOJO. First I spent a couple hours making a back for another secret project quilt I made last week. Here is a sneak peek..........................

 
Sorry that is all I can show you for now.

 Then I got these 100 HST's pressed open. Chainstitched together in rows of 5, and now there are enough to sew them onto 5 of the 29 blocks I have yet to finish so I can start piecing together RRCB. Remember I want the top done before my birthday is here, and I am running out of time. If I do this each day this week. Then next Sunday I can spend the whole day piecing it together, and just in time too! Keeping the fingers crossed. I want this one off my ironing board, and my tablessssss. Then it can sit in the pile to be quilted.

 I am thinking I might use this bunch of fabric to do my Garden Fence QAL. Will think a little more on that subject. PS See Jethro stretched out in the background.

 Here is a closer view, of him hanging over the little scrap basket he is sitting in, with his arm all stretched out, like usual.

Just as I was about to turn out the light, here comes Ely Mae to start cleaning Jethro.....silly cats.











Normally during the week, I sew Mon, Tues, & Wed evenings. But this past week, I only did some sewing on Monday. I worked on the Rockin Row Robin. Here are all my fabrics cut out, stacked assembly line style next to the machine.

 Here they are layed out on the floor.

and here from the other end. There is no background fabric on these, didn't think about that till after it was all done. Oh well that is ok. Still have 3 more rows to do. Using scraps, takes along time to cut out all the pieces you need for a row. I will work more on these 3 rows again during this week as well.










I also have 20 shirts to embroider this week. I keep putting it off, and I need to just do it and be done with it. So I can give my friend his work shirts back to him.

The Happy Quilting Stars QAL starts tomorrow. Are you going to QAL too????

Not so super, sewing Sunday 07-19-11

Hello everyone, what have you been up to?? Sewing anything fantastic at the moment, I would love to know about it.



Me well, I was working on my RRCB, trying to get to the assembly part and I sewed half of these pairs together and started working on the 22 blocks I forgot I didn't do, and somewhere in working on the others, I thought, well instead of burning out doing the same thing over and over I can sew the rest of those string pairs.......well. I was NOT suppose to do that!!! Crap, now I have to rip out 9 of them. I was on a roll for sure, because I was Rollin, Rollin, Rollin, Cotton, Bollin, Bollin, Bollin!!!!

I do have the first two blocks of my turquoise and white one started.......

Then I started and finished a secret project, here is my sneak peek of it. Isn't this cat cute!!! It is pinned and going into the machine next for quilting.

 Then last night I started the Rockin Row Robbin QAL. Here they are started in pink and red. They did theirs 4 blocks wide, I did mine 6 wide.














From the other end of the spectrum, kinda faded out the light colors on the end, guess the flash was too close.

Then here are they are finished and sewn together, longer than my table was! 95 different pink and red fabrics, all from the scrap bins too. I did find one repeat when I was sewing, oh well.

I am going to do row 2 today. Then see how tired I am, only got 3 hours sleep last night.

Do you like Round Robins? How about one that is Rockin???

Jen of Reannalily Designs 

is having a Rockin Row Robin and has gotten 4 other hip and modern bloggers to help her out, starting next week the 5th of July for 5 weeks on Monday thereafter. Click her blog name, or this button in the list on the right to find out more details.............