Last night I was innocently reading through some blogs and somehow I ended up at this post.  I just LOVED the quilt pictured there (a modern scrappy baby quilt) and remembered that I had a mini charm pack of High Street that I bought during the summer. 

I quickly pieced these 21 blocks, fun-fun.  But then what to do? I have yardage of a couple of the High Street line but not enough. (of course)

So this morning I pulled out some leftover batik jelly roll strips that coordinated and cut a bunch (168) squares and the grey background squares  and had a fun time chain piecing.  

See all those little triangles below the blocks?  Yep, they're the cut offs that I couldn't throw away--I'm going to sew them together for what... I don't know yet.

 With the batik ones, I sewed a 2nd line 1/2 inch from the 1st one so when I trimmed the triangle off it was already sewn together.
 It took only a little more time

  and now these are all done and pressed too.
I'm going to trim off all the little dog ears while watching the Pens game tonight.

In between chain piecing, I pressed the Metro Ring units I had 90+ to press and it seemed to take forever.
They are finally all done and now to trim them all to size.

I took a little break and gave Mr Otis a bath.  He was not too pleased with that but I'm happy to have a clean pupper doodle again.  He was exhausted and took a nice long nap by the fire.

I'm going to need my design wall to lay out the new baby quilt blocks, so I was forced (heh-heh) to start the sashing on the bl-a-days. I'm pretty sure these will be 2 lap size quilts instead of one twin.  I don't have enough of the green fabric I'm using for all the blocks anyway.  I spent about 20 minutes messing around with a scrappy sashing but just couldn't get into it and didn't want to spend more time than necessary to get these done.  

I've done another row of SID on Jonquils & Stars but it's languishing.  

I'm hoping for at least another pass or two tomorrow.

******

Old St Nick

He was finished last night, well I don't have a label on him yet but I'm going to make one today, but technically he's finished.
I just couldn't wait another day hour to hang him up.

Once again my crappola photography skills are shining through and I see the lens of my camera needs cleaning. I noticed that a week or so ago and forgot....
...and the quilt is straight, I should have smoothed it before taking the picture. agghhh.

64x80

This picture shows the colors better.

Here's a shot of the other side of the room and my new skinny tree and Otis waiting patiently for breakfast.

he's still waiting....

It's a flimsy!

Strings & Stars (70x70)

Otis was happy to help hold that pesky red star in place while I took the picture.

He's trying to get on my good side again over the fact that after having a bath yesterday and looking quite handsome, he lost his mind this morning and rolled in something quite delightful  awful and had to have another bath.
 He feels terrible about this weakness of his.

He should.

Good Morning Day!

Let's see where to start.

I finished the binding AND the hanging sleeve on the Evening Shadows quilt. It's good to go for the show in November. 

I do need to put a proper show sleeve on Stargazing but I'm going to let that go until Monday.

Since Wednesday this is the progress on the little jack-o-tops.

The checkerboard on the left I pieced L/E style while sewing the little jacks together :) It's from a free pattern I got on the shop hop in June, for a E Reader Cover.  I DON"T HAVE AN E READER.

But I saw the pattern and thought it would be cute and fun and quick and easy-- and it was and it satisfied my compulsive need to make something, to keep pecking away at the binder of  "Quilts I'd Like to Make"  and it used 66 two inch squares that I already had cut out. 

The fact that I don't have a Kindle or Nook and have no plans to get one or the other seems irrelevant.

The deconstruction, construction has started up again (yeah).  New plumbing in the ceiling so that a drop ceiling can eventually be put in.  Since this old house was built with no thoughts that the basement would ever be used for living space the original pipes were put in way below the joists.

  CRAZY.  But now it's all fixed and hooked back up. (Yes, they're still below the joists but now they're up enough that a bulk head can be built and blah, blah, blah.....it will look nice) Sorry I sorta zone out when they start explaining this stuff to me....JUST so it looks nice and works!

 Today they're working on wiring-this is the hardest thing for me to tell them where I want outlets, switches etc. I want to just say EVERYWHERE!!

Yesterday I worked on these:

I traced the appliques for the 3 patterns in the front there (all are from old Fons & Porter magazines) and I haven't subscribed to that one for a while. 

The batik quilt to the back right; I figured out fabrics for a baby quilt. 

 I made a baby one with that pattern in '09 but of course, didn't write down the fabric adjustments. I never thought I'd be making another... but still would have been nice.

I'm not going to really consider the 3 appliques "real projects" until I fuse the fabrics, these could just languish and I'd be guilt ridden over 3 more UFOs (ha!) 

Well, I need to get moving here.  It's not raining so my walk is next.  I've been very good

( am really afraid to put this in writing and jinx it)

and have been walking every day since we came home from vacation in August, and most days twice a day; about 2.5 miles in morning and again in the evening. 

**well I did miss 2 days because of rain or some other really good reason excuse that I can't remember now**

As it's getting dark earlier, I think one 3.5-4 mile in the morning will be good.  I've lost 11 pounds.  I'm real happy to be back to my ''normal- all my adult life- after having kids 10-15 pounds- overweight self".

10 pounds according to the doctor charts

15 pounds according to my inner self who would like to be "thin" just for once and it NOT be the result of stress cuz my son was in boot camp. (yah, I got real skinny that summer but it wasn't worth it!)

  If I lose the rest, that will be a woo-hoo, but if not well hell that's OK too. I feel a lot better. 

It's been so difficult to get into the habit of walking...changing the routine is soooo hard.  And I still think it's too new to be a really cemented habit in my life.  I'd so rather stay in my jammies and sew, quilt, blog, drink coffee, daydream, not think about what's for dinner...

I'm not talking about this anymore, I think I'm gaining weight just typing about it. 

*****

And now a picture that made us laugh.

  Paul comes home from work everyday and goes to the sofa and reads the paper and within 2 seconds Otis is on his lap.  Meg and I happened to sit down and were talking with Paul. (this is unusual-we leave him alone to unwind for a bit) all of a sudden we realized Otis was sleeping ... 

...begs the question: who had the rougher day?   HA!
couldn't be our boring conversation, right?
don't answer that. :)
Good weekend to y'all


fun times, fun times, Life is Good!

McTavishing or is it McWerleying?

I've never done McTavishing on a quilt yet.  I've practiced on paper and my white board.  

 So I'm still quilting my Mariner's compass quilt.  I have all the borders, sashing and outlining around the compass done. (that was in blue thread so it matches pretty close...I spent almost all the time quilting it in the dark so I could see the stitching).  I started the background today. I almost chickened out on the McTavishing...I have already done a fair amount of frog stitching before I was happy with the quilting I did on the compass (ended up just SID and had to pick out the "fancy quilting design I though would look so good-not) 

so I didn't want a repeat of that.  But I went ahead and tried it.

I quilted around 2 of the star points and then changed from a regular thread to Sew Fine (which I had in the bobbin anyway). 

I'm pretty happy with it so far.  I'm still getting the feel for the direction changes. So 1/2 a block done...24 more to go.  

I came up from downstairs to get my camera to take the picture above and look what I found.

It's good to be the King.

I made my first block for the Jelly Roll Sampler Quilt Along that I joined.  

I'm using an Evening Mist jelly roll and yardage from Serenity by Diawabo that I already had in the stash.

The view from my deck door

It's a lot of snow when you have to start shoveling the deck!  Mr. Otis stopped when I opened the door for him and gave me a look as if to say "it's deeper than me; I think I can hold it".  So I got the shovel and made him a path to the steps and a path to the birdfeeder...
the path to the feeder is for me not Otis! :)

*******

I get to look at this view when I'm at the computer.  Sometimes when I do I get a thick feeling in my chest; I am a very lucky person.  My life isn't perfect but it's damn good. 

*******

A New Week

And hopefully the weather will improve here.



I quilted the diamond strings quilt on Friday, I think it was. I quilted it with a baptist fan design, free-hand since I don't use pantos. I like how it turned out. The second picture is of the backing. I pieced together random 'chunks' of fabric I had. I'm trying to get over my need for matchy-matchy backings and use up the stash.
I must say, I think it takes a long time to piece backings like this, it seemed like I'd add a section, measure it and dang, I still need 13" on the length. I'd find a 13" or so piece of fabric, but it wasn't long enough, so then I'm adding a section to that to get the length: trim, press and sew.....boring too. Oh plus more than once I got confused and sewed the length to the wrong edge----agggghhh. But I did feel very good about 'making do' and using up this yardage.

So this is my blog...

So this is my blog. It's a quilting blog, but I don't just quilt. So this is going to be a little look at what I think about in a day/week whatever. It should be mostly quilty but for example right now I'm thinking of our little dog Otis.Hubby cut the grass  it has been cold and the grass is covered with dew....

So Mister Otis comes in from his morning duties with green feet, both stained and with little tiny grass clippings stuck to his fur.
This is Annie:


Today I am marking a quilt top that I made in 2004, I think. It's a sampler but the setting is different leaving 4 large corner triangle areas. I've never quilted it partly (mostly) because the thoughts of all that hand quilting in those triangles was overwhelming. Now I have the HQ and it's time to finish this. I drafted a feather pattern yesterday and today am going to just mark the spines of the feathers on the top and then load it. I'll just free-hand the feathers. But I wanted to flow of the spines to at least be uniform when the quilt is done.
Tomorrow, I take my Folk art quilt to the drop off point (at 7:30AM!) for the Beaver Valley Piece makers show this weekend. It's about 45 minute drive, that's so early for me. (whine, whine, whine). Meghan was going to go with me, then we'll have breakfast on the way home, but she's really sick now, flu like so I may be going alone. Thank goodness for the GPS and Nyquil/Dayquil for Meg!
Also today, I will work on the diamond string quilt that is on my design wall I think I have 24 more blocks to make I know I have enough strips cut for another one.