I also knit

I finished this sweater a while ago-started it December 2005, so not too bad. My sweetie's sister is a fantastic knitter-and did this sweater in a week for M- I was inspired and joined in the fun. I learned to knit very basic stuff back as a child from my grandma and my mom. They preferred crocheting-my grandma could do those huge lacy pineapple patterns, I have the bedspread she made for my mom's marraige to my dad. Anyway, it's been long days at work this week and no quilting done. I cleared the non-quilty stuff off the sewing table and found enough binding scraps to put together for the last donated top I quilted. Tomorrow is my charity group meeting day-I have to get it together by then! Lots of plans for the weekend-not all of them quilty. It's a glorious fall day-bright and cool-ish outside. Still plenty to do out in the garden now that the worker bees are all done. I am planning a dump run today of the leftover fencing etc stacked at the side of the house. Parking in the garage feels good!

I sure am looking forward to wearing this sweater as soon as it gets cold enough!

the best kind of mail

Can you believe how much Jeanne
could cram into that small box?? It's not the best photo-fighting the morning light on the kitchen table-but the sewing room is utter chaos. I wanted to say a blog thank you Jeanne, for your kindness- rest assured these fabrics are going to show up in lots of wrap'em quilts! Yesterday was an all day event putting the garage back in order-I enjoyed the clearing/re-organizing/tossing time and both vehicles now fit nicely. My sweetie pulled in late last night and it was great to have that space waiting. When I was done for the day and feeling totally done in! I took myself out to dinner, had a nice glass of wine, and came home to a long scented soak in the tub.
After that, I climbed into bed with Gwen Marston's book, liberated quilting and continued reading until my sweetie arrived home-with a few dozing spells :-)
This morning I am off the hook for Zoe care-they are off on a very long walk! and have enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, several cups of coffee and reading on the computer. Next up: finish clearing the long table in the fabric room as my son will be here in a few hours to take it away. More clutter on the floor in there! My next mission is putting that room totally in order. Once the table is gone, it would qualify for a "clean sweep" episode!
It won't happen in one day however. I have furniture to buy and the bed I wanted is no longer available at the store I found it a few years ago. While I find another suitable bed, I can sort and toss what is in there. It needs new carpet if I can not remove a few stains that have shown up.
I also need to tidy up enough to jump on the next quilty project(s). The design wall is empty! and we can't have that, right??

babies and quilts

I can't believe how fast this week went by-I didn't recover from doing yard clean up until around Wednesday night -which I spent watching my granddaughter Alice-here she is: being held by her daddy. Sorry about the not so great shot, I need to learn how to adjust my camera better for close ups!
I spent Thursday night quilting and binding the comfort quilt- with the last few stitches and label getting done last night. I will be driving out to her home to deliver it - sometime today. It's a gorgeous fall day out - with high temps expected and I have a garage to reclaim from all the junk stuck into it during the landscape remodel project-fencing is supposed to go back up today and it's in the garage as well. Tonight I have a few quilty plans...I hope I still have enough energy by then-last weekend's labor showed me I am just not as fast to bounce back as I once was. I will see how many blogs I can read while I sit here and eat breakfast before heading out to the garage...it's going to be a busy day for me- hope yours is less hectic!

top finished under the midnight wire

If I don't post too much I will get this uploaded right before midnight. I wasn't sure if this would work with only two colors, however, I think it actually turned out all right. It's 40 inches by 56 inches, a nice sized lap quilt. Tomorrow, seam the backing, sandwich, pin, and quilt. I am considering yellow for the binding..as the back will be yellow. This all came from stash by the way!
If I am real brave, I have a wonderful varigated purple thread to quilt it with...you can't have too much purple, right?

before/after yard remodel

don't you love before and after photos of a big project? maybe we should take a photo of our fabric before it becomes a quilt? actually a few bloggers have done that- shown a selection of fat quarters and/or yardage and annouced they would be turned into a quilt. This has been a week of lots of extra time put in at the office job and not nearly any time put in on the quilting fun "job". After some fun baby clothes shopping with my dil this morning-and running several errands, I finally started cutting fabric at about 5 pm. I went from the idea of doing scrappy stretched stars ala Bonnie Hunter over at www.quiltville.com to doing my two color version instead. I need to have this quilt done by Monday. I don't have already cut right sized squares to do scrappy. So, I decided a two color quilt would do-I have been wanting to try my hand at a two color quilt anyway and this will be a comfort quilt for a co-worker. A win-win project. I changed the size of the stars to make this go faster. I have almost all of the cutting done and will start sewing in another hour. With any luck, a few hours of serious sewing and the top will be done. I have the backing cut. I have the quilting design idea and the label written out on paper - ready to be re-written on fabric. Gee, don't I sound organized? :-) okie, dokie-off to finish cutting and start that stitching...will post a photo of the top whenever time that happens...

getting close....to becoming a top!

I have been running scraps through during the week, here and there, as I found time or was in the mood. I realized when I walked in tonight that it was getting close to being the right size-so with just an hour or so of stitching, cutting, measuring,and fiddling-here is a photo of the top, in sections.
I measured but discovered, I still needed to add that bottom left side green strip on to make it wide enough-the rest of the sections are more or less the right size-five sections or "blocks" down the right side then they will join the "middle", two sections to join together on the left side-join to the "middle". the top strip will go across-it's the size I was aiming for as the right width size. add that green strip to the left bottom side- then join that section to the rest. Anyway, thought it would be fun to put up a photo of it nearing completion. I almost forgot that orphan block! I am happy with how it's come together and will do an all over quilting stitch once it's ready to be quilted. It will then be another charity quilt-making 4 to be quilted this month. I still have scraps leftover! Oh, this is about 40 inches by 60 inches...more or less...I really wanted to use all these scraps up...so I guess I am going to have to just keep stitching on them...it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it..

September already

Just chatting for now: don't have any thing ready to take a photo of yet. The wrap up of summer has begun around our home-the landscape guy begins his magic tomorrow. I still need to go take a photo of the completed patio-seems life has been happening at a dead run lately. I have sat and done some stitching-maybe not as much as I would like-but better than none is what I say.
The beach was great-very relaxing-but it always feels best to get back to your own bed-etc. etc.
I will make the rounds and do some catching up...probably not leave too many comments as I try and get up to speed. I shopped at my favorite beach quilt shop-picked up some perfect fabrics to go with the Quilt Pink project I will be working on in another week or so-and a few other fabrics that called my name-all marked for specific projects however....not just adding to the stash. I have been mulling over everyone's ideas on ufos and how some of them need to just go away. I may take them all out and re-evaluate just what I want to spend my limited time working on. Thanks to all for this new approach-or reminder that it's ok to change your mind!
Mostly I have several family projects that need to be done by a deadline that will arrive all too quickly if I don't get them started. Lots of quilty fun to come this month.