Another Busy Week

It has been a busy week even though I haven't had any job interviews. It actually is nice to not have interviews.
I have gotten my sciatica pain under control somewhat which helps tremendously. I have had sick grand children for a couple of days because they couldn't go to day care. Wednesday for the most part I sat on the sofa while we all dozed off and on. Poor Katya has diarrhea and she threw up just before Mom got here to pick them up.

I have started on a new lap size quilt for me. I have had the colored squares cut out for a month but I have now started on the 9-patches and rails so I can see what it is going to look like by putting it on the design wall.

I bought this fat quarter bundle from Connecting Threads a while ago and have been thinking about how I wanted to show case the fabric. The fabric is dotted swiss in a beautiful array of colors. The nine patches and rails will be in black and white. This will be set 7 X 9 and should be a great size for watching TV.

I have not been able to do allot in the quilting room but some of the projects are seeing a little progress.
So this is all for now. See you next week.

This is what I have been up to this week

I am finally feeling better. It has been a long 2 weeks.I have been able to catch up on the house and clean some in the quilt room and this sure makes me feel better. I think for the Quilt Retreat we have planned for the 6th of April that I will not have the HQ brought down.  It will be a little crowded with 7 people working on different quilts so I will wait to bring it down after the retreat.

The room is very comfortable as it is now and I will bring another large table in for 3 more sewing machines. So when you count the cutting table and the ironing board it will be cozy.

I have several options for everyone to choose from and I hope that they will team up on the projects.  There is the tumbler quilt that I have started, I talked about it in the last post. There is the 4 patch quilt that Lizzy started last week and I am sure she will work on that along with Tanner and Emma. There is also the pink 9 patch that is ready for spacer blocks and borders and I think Chelsi and maybe Laura will work on this project.

I have also started the string quilt using used dryer sheets. I have saved these dryer sheets for over 2 years and I thought it would be a great quilt to get going on since I have this over abundance of strings that are running over the top of the bins.

If you look closely you see bugs and potatoes peeking through.

I would bet there are several string quilts lurking in these bins.

I was able to get the 'Quilt Haven' up on the design wall shelf.  I think it looks great and Chelsi will love seeing them up on the shelf.

I have started 72 blocks for the log cabin quilt that you see above. They are about half done but I am very excited about how fast they are coming together.

I really enjoy making log cabin blocks and these sure look like spring. We had temperatures in the 70's today. I saw many young people wearing shorts and flip flops.

Hope you have a good weekend quilting. Talk to you next week.

Quilt Studio Update

My husband put up my white board this morning and now I can use it. For a few years it has been behind my HQ and not very available for use.

It looks great there and it will be behind the door out of the way when not in use.

My grand daughter Lizzy came on Tuesday for a shadow day. This time the school said the 9th graders didn't have to shadow someone but they could if they wanted to. She shadowed me at work a year or so ago. This time she wanted to shadow me in the quilt room.  I had a few different projects she could have chosen but she picked through my 4 patches and she started a new quilt. When the grand kids, Lizzy, Tanner or Emma, want to sew something I have them do 4 patches. So Lizzy's quilt has some patches that her brother or cousin made and some leftovers that I have made for other projects.

She has sewed them into rows but the rows have not been sewn together yet. She will work on her project again when we have our quilt retreat on the 6th of April.

I have been working on this tumbler quilt for a little while and it is coming along quite nicely.  I need to put on 8 more tumblers for each row to be 66 inches.  This quilt will be a twin/laptop size quilt for charity.

The tumbler blocks are left overs from the Double Wedding quilt I finished last fall. I got a little carried away cutting out and so I have a ton of leftovers. I might have to cut a few more to finish this quilt but that is ok. This way I am using up what I have already cut out.

I showed the log cabin blocks I have completed on my previous blog but my husband put my shelf design wall over the window and I have placed these blocks on it. I have arranged the 'Quilt Haven' on the window sill for now.  I need to get some double sided hanging tape so I can place these on the shelf the way I want.

My husband and I went to Sam's club a few days ago and picked up a TV for my studio. We also got a DVD player that will play BlueRay discs and also will get the internet with another gadget that he ordered off of the internet. So I can play a DVD, a BlueRay disc, Netflex or Pandora radio.  It is pretty cool.

I will get the wires under control once we have got everything the way I  want.  We need to get the disc player set up the way I want before I worry about wires.

Well, this is all for this week.  Talk to you next week.

Progress is Being Made, Yeah!

I feel like I am not getting things done very quickly around here but still progress is being made. Here, there and every where.

My husband has worked very hard this week and has completed the window sill. It is beautiful! The pictures do not do it justice.

He also finished the main door. It is so pretty!

My son and daughter in law gave me these blocks for Christmas. "Quilt Haven" and I will be placing them on the front of the shelf which will hang above the window. The shelf is part of the small design wall I have.  The design wall is a blind that pulls down. It is a little hard to see the shelf because it is wood about the same color as the floor.

I have also been cleaning up and organizing my space in the quilt room. I have 5 of the 6 machines down stairs now. The serger is in the corner under the table.  I have also taken the big machine apart and have almost got it ready to go down. I just need to organize some helpers to get the table down stairs and the file cabinet.

Then I will be cleaning this old sewing room up, have the carpet cleaned, patch the walls and then I will be painting the room for my 3 grand daughters that will be moving out this summer. I will also put up curtains for this room that has never really had real curtains in it.

It will be great looking when I get it done!

I have taken some time to do piecing. I find this most relaxing. I have started a quilt for a coworker and it will be my leader ender project for now. I will add another row to these blocks so they will finish at 12". Then I will decide how many I need to make a queen size quilt. I will be laying them out in the 'Sunshine and Shadow' layout. These colors remind me of spring. We are up to 40 degrees this week and we feel like it is a heat wave.

Well, this is all for now.

Quilt Studio Is Finally Looking Like I Want

I am so excited about the quilt studio. It is finally looking more like a quilting room with the design wall up.
It is not quite as big as I wanted in width but it certainly is bigger than the design wall I had before.
I bought fleece blankets at Walmart to cover the insulation boards. I think these will work very well.

I didn't hold it tight enough on the right side and so there is a very small gap.  I am OK with that though.

We had some trouble with the staples not holding real well and so we tried to use screws.  They really didn't work at all because the screw bunched up the fabric so bad by twisting is around and not going straight through. So I will see how this works for now and then make a fix later if I need to.

I have packed almost all of the stash to the closet. 

This part is a little messy looking but after I get the file cabinet in I will rearrange and it should look better.

I have 4 fourteen inch deep and 4 feet long shelves for fabric. I also have bins below with civil war reproduction and another bin with 1930's fabric. I have a bin filled with flannel and also a large bin of crochet thread. I haven't been able to give them up because I just love crocheting. I haven't done any crocheting for a couple of years now but that is OK.

When I packed the fabric down I unloaded a big bin full of thrift shirts I have collected.  I put most of them in the color where they fit but some were mostly white back ground so I put them by themselves.

I have a large collection of green fabric. My favorite color is green so it shouldn't surprise me that I have so much green. I made a green quilt this fall for St. Patrick's day and thought I had made a dent in my green stash. Apparently not.

These two machines are set up to go. The feather weight on the left I have had for several years now and my grand daughter Lizzy almost thinks this machine is hers because she learned to sew on it. She prefers the feather weight over any of the other machines. The Kenmore was my first sewing machine and I remember very well the day were bought it. I was pregnant with our third child and was so excited to finally have a sewing machine of my own. This machine was bought in 1977. I will bring my embroidery machine down sometime today. It is  a Kenmore/Janome embroidery machine and I have had it for several years now. I use it for embroidery but also for applying all my binding with the great walking foot it has. The last machine to join this group will be my Viking. She is a work horse! I use  her for all my piecing.

I will show another update when I have the room complete with the HQ machine as well as my new cutting table.

How Things are Coming Along

I have been very busy applying for jobs, cleaning the house, and getting some time to piece the last week.
I apply for at least 4 jobs a week and I have maybe one interview a week.
I have been doing some very intensive cleaning of the house that includes cleaning out cupboards. Some of these have not been cleaned since we moved in the house. I am also keeping up with the bathrooms, vacuuming and other regular stuff much better since I have not been working for the last 2 months.
We have been making some progress on the basement too. We are working on staining trims and doors.

We finished the flooring right after Christmas and then was not able to do much else for a while.

Hubby has completely finished the closet/stash room door and he started putting down floor boards this week.

This door is so beautiful all finished.  The main door still needs to be stained.

It is a lovely door but the stain makes all the difference. Our plan is to have the floor boards and this door stained along with the shelving in the stash closet done by this coming Monday.  My husband has Monday off from work.

I set the table up to show how it will look when the floor boards are finished all around the room.  This table will hold at least 3 machines for piecing and there will be a cupboard above to the the right and wall mounted shelves on the left wall next to the table. I have the track lighting above and you can see the various electrical outlets around this table.

When we lived in Japan between 1990 and 1993 I collected many things.  One of the items I got was a Ginza treadle sewing machine. It really looks very much like a Singer treadle machine. I have not got this machine running yet but I do intend to do that as soon as I get my quilting room set up.

I have tried to look this machine up online but I have not been able to find anything.  I am hoping that it will use parts from a Singer because they look so much alike.

Has anyone ever seen one of these and do you know if it will work with Singer parts.

I will eventually have my Grandmother's Singer treadle sewing machine but for now my mother has not given it up to me.  The Singer treadle is the one my mother learned to sew on and it is in good condition. I know she has not used it in the last 30 years because for 20 years it sat in a storage unit.

I will sign off for now.

Scrappy Mountain Majesties!

I love this pattern.  I keep calling it Majestic Mountains but it is really called Scrappy Mountain Majesties from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville. I have made this quilt pattern 3 times. The first one I gave away to a daughter in law, the second is for our son in law and this one is for me. I have enjoyed making this in a graduated fashion by placing the darker fabrics at the bottom and gradually going to the lightest at the top. To me it reminds me of the soil and green growing things at the base of a mountain up to the sky.

I like the zig zag of the pattern and I love the earthy colors. This quilt is a lap size and it now down stairs in our family room.

I used the 'Square Spiral' by Keryn Emmerson pantogram which looks great on this quilt.

This picture shows the quilting better than the other two but you have to look closely.

I love Scrappy!