What is Happening Around Here?

I have had a very eventful week here since my last post. I wish it was all about quilting but it has not been that fun.
I had 3 interviews this week. I also had an unemployment workshop on Monday. Late in the afternoon on Monday I thought I would quickly trim up a couple of blocks and I inadvertently sliced off half my nail and some of my left index finger with my rotary cutter. This is not the first time I have cut this finger. A few years ago I cut it pretty bad and had a few stitches. This time I did a much worse job on it and now I don't have much of my finger nail left. I went to the ER and they xrayed it to make sure I had not damaged the bone. I had not so it was bandaged up and now I am babying my finger so it will heal.

The doctor said I should have my nail grow back just fine but I might have a weird looking nail.

I also took a picture of my design wall since my hubby has put up some wood trim around the edges. We decided to do that for two reasons, one because it looks better and two because we needed to secure the wall a little better than it was. It looks great with the wood trim.

Well, I am hoping that next week I will get a little more time in the quilt studio.  We will see!
Until next week.............

Busy Week and Now a Cold

I have had a very busy week with two interviews and helping my son Doug with the children after he had his gall bladder out last Saturday.

Now I have a cold and have not been able to do my regular chores and therefore no time in the quilt studio this week.
Last week I started an embroidery project. For the last few months I have been thinking about getting a hand project going and I knew I wanted to do hand embroidery. I have seen all over blog land the many different projects that women have going and was very intrigued by some of them.
Approximately 42 years ago I bought these flower head transfers in order to paint with Tri Chem paints. The Tri Chem paints were quite the rage when I was a teenager and my mom bought me a set for my sixteenth birthday. I bought these transfers shortly after that and had planned on painting them and making them into a quilt.
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men........I still have not done anything with the transfers. Until now!
There are 28 flowers in the set and they are quite large.

These are the original transfers.

Cute, aren't they?!

The originals were almost 8 X 10 inches so I decided that was too big to make a quilt out of all of the flowers. I had them reduced by 20% and I think they are just right for what I have planned for them.

Miss Azalea has been embroidered below.

I am working on Miss Camellia now and have her half done.

When I have completed the hand embroidery on all of the flowers I will machine embroidery the name of each flower at the bottom.

By the time I finish hand embroidering these I will have decided if I will make one large quilt or two twin size quilts.  Twenty eight flowers are quite a few.

I have also gotten my quilt studio somewhat complete now with my HQ in its place.

So life is marching on and it seems like April is flying by.  Until next week.

Nielsen Family Quilt Retreat 2013

Well, we had a great time with our quilt retreat this year. We started just before 10:00a.m. and I had a hard time getting them to stop at 3:30 in the afternoon.
These girls and Tanner my grandson loved having such a great time in the new quilt room.

This is Emma. She is ten  years old and loves to sew. She was busy sewing 4 patches to go with Lizzy's quilt.

This is Chelsi working on the pink 9 patch quilt.

This is Laura, mother of Emma, and she is working with Chelsi on the pink 9 patch. They were the last ones working in the afternoon because they wanted to finish this top. They did accomplish their goal and now this top needs borders and then it will be ready for me to quilt.

This is Tanner and he is working on a scrap patch quilt that I had started a few days before the retreat. He really enjoys sewing on the machine.He does a great job.

This is Lizzy and I caught her pressing again. She was very busy with her 4 patch quilt and with Emma's help was able to make good progress.

This is Melanie, mother of Lizzy and Tanner. She is working on a string quilt.  I started these a week or so ago. They are being sewed to used dryer sheets and the sheets will not need to be torn out like paper has to be. I wanted to try this method and Melanie really likes string piecing.

We had a quick break for lunch and the noise in the quilting room was very high. Lots of laughing and joking. They were talking about the kind of swearing that was allowed in the quilting room. Lizzy wrote them on the white board.

Lizzy has enjoyed writing on the white board. Here is a close up the the swearing rules.

This is my son Eli working on my old computer to see if I can get the Magic Box to work on my new laptop. I guess I will need to  upgrade with it in order for it to work.  The Magic Box is a converter for all file types to work with my embroidery machine. Eli spent allot of hours trying to make things work but you know computers, you always need to upgrade everything and it doesn't take long for your computer to be a dinosaur.

Well, this will be all I have for this week. Talk to you next week.

The Excitement is Mounting

This has been another busy week. Some of my grandchildren had spring break this week so I took the opportunity to have Lizzy come over to spend the night. She is 14 years old now and loves to quilt. She is taking Home Economics. Do they call it that now? Anyway she has made a rag quilt and now is making a robe. She is ahead of the class right now and loves what she is doing.

She was a real trooper and helped me on Wednesday afternoon in the front flower beds. We filled 5 large, black, garbage bags to the bursting point off two flower beds.

These flower beds were chock full of dead plants. Now it looks a little barren but the color of daffodils always brightens things up. Today is very cold and windy. We had a couple of beautiful days and enjoyed them allot.

She also came in the house and helped me move a desk, take a heavy file drawer down stairs, and we brought down the rods and rails for the HQ and the inserts to the table. Now the only things left in the old sewing room is the reduced in size table and the HQ itself. This is a very empty room.

Next week I will schedule the carpets to be cleaned in the front room, stairs, hall way and the old sewing room.  Then I will patch the walls in the old sewing room and get the paint so I can start  painting. Yeah!

Lizzy has been very busy in the quilt room.

Lizzy is so busy with the quilt she has been working on. She is doing a great job. She decided what she wanted to do and has been over a couple of times to work on it.

Lizzy always uses the Singer featherweight. I taught her how to sew on this machine and she now almost thinks it is hers. She has no desire to use the bigger and newer machines.

My husband has finished the cabinet he has been building for my quilt room. It is now hung on the wall. He has done such a wonderful job of this cabinet. I was so excited I have already filled the cabinet and the doors have not even been made yet.

He faced the cabinet with the same knotty birch as the doors and trims and got skins for the sides. It looks beautiful!

He is going to start making my cutting table next and will make the doors for the cabinet after it is done.
The cutting table will be the shape of the largest rotary cutting mat and will have storage under the table for all my rulers, GO cutting mats and other fabric cutting tools. The table will be on locking casters so I can move it about the room as needed. I am very excited to have this made and ready for use. He is waiting to make the cabinet doors because he knows how much I want the cutting table up and running.

The excitement is mounting because tomorrow is the Quilt Retreat. I have been working all week to get things ready for this event. I have a few more things to do tonight and then the room and projects should be ready.

We have the 9 patch quilt to finish, the tumbler quilt and a string quilt.

I will take pictures of everyone working on the quilts and will post them next week.

Holding My Own and Then Some

It has been a busy week.  I try hard to accomplish all my house chores and then some.....meaning piecing.
My Quilt studio has not changed this past week other than cleaning up some. I have been able to get down there and piece some and that is awesome.
I was able to finish the dotted swiss top. I guess I should name it but I am not into naming my quilts much.
When I first put it up on my design wall I had my husband come and take a look. He thought I should put it on point. I guess he likes those quilts I have put on point.  I just told him that this quilt would not be put on point. I thought maybe he just didn't like this quilt too much.
Well, I was mistaken. He likes this quilt so much that he is calling it his quilt.

I was able to go outside today and take some pictures of this top but if you look closely you can see the the sky is a little dark over the right side of the quilt.  We are expecting 10% chance of thunder storms today. Needless to say the sky is over cast quite a bit and there is a bit of a breeze.

I really like the rails and nine patch corner stones in this top. I will be adding a 2 1/2 inch border all the way around. I will have to buy some fabric for it and my husband says he will pick it out and buy it too. He really does think of the quilt as his now.

I won't be quilting this until after the 6th when we have our quilt retreat.  I will then have some helpers with the HQ and file cabinet so I can finish setting up the studio for quilting.  I am very excited about this and can hardly wait until the 6th.

Well, this is all for now. I will update next week.

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.