Not pieced by me...

As I have mentioned, I am part of a small local charity group and one of the gals prefers to piece tops and turn them in. Usually I end up quilting and binding them-which is what I have done with this particular quilt. The backing is a large blue/white plaid which goes well with the front. I did fast zoom lines as I am fond of calling straight line quilting and thanks to LindaJ
I had go with scrappy binding to match it. I have one more waiting for binding and then I can get back to several of my own projects going on. This is the only quilty thing I accomplished yesterday, running around and picking up Alice for the afternoon pretty much filled my day. It's back to work, pick up Alice afterwards and help care for her until bedtime each evening until Friday when her mama gets back from a business trip. I am happy to be helping out my son in this way, it just doesn't leave much time nor energy for much else by the time I get home. I am trying to get around and read blogs..often I am running three to four posts on some behind! However I do appreciate catching up and by the way, thanks for all the great comments.

what I am up to

As a reward for reaching work goals/deadlines...I had today off. I spent a good amount of the day doing things for myself that had been put on hold-I did treat myself to a great massage-the spa I like going to has really good people who do a great job. I made it down to the lqs to pick up the insert so I can use my latest machine in my sewing cabinet at the right height. I will have to mark the lift that adjusts the platform where you place the machine-the cabinet will host two different machines and I don't want to be guessing each time I switch out a machine. I also did 6 yards of fabric buying-Patti has influenced me- I came home, washed, dried, and ironed all that new fabric. Half of it is earmarked for a snuggle quilt for Alice-flannel both sides with no batting as the warmer weather will arrive eventually and I have this in mind as part of her Easter basket. The other fabric is for a project I am going to make for my sister-in fact I am going to make two, one for her and one for myself. She's been known to read my blog-so sorry, no photos, and no further details until afterwards. That led to a hunt for the pattern I will be using. I found the sleeve, sans directions. Uh oh. Clearly I was reading them somewhere ....well, I had wanted to do some tidying up in here-and I finally unearthed them. Now to organize the rest of the fabrics for the project. As Patti mentioned over at her blog-we are having a cutting party at her house and I am still debating-scrap cutting or project cutting. One thing for sure, I am putting a new blade on my rotary cutter!
We had a lot of fun doing this last time and I am so looking forward to tomorrow.
I don't have huge leaf bags full of scraps yet and with cutting get togethers and more effort on my part, I may have a chance of getting mine cut up and sewn up.

Christmas Angel

We snapped lots of photos of Alice wearing her fancy Christmas dress...however, this is by far one of my favorites-showing Alice poking her tongue out! Her hair is slowly growing in - not that it matters to me, she is simply gorgeous! She is my little Christmas Angel and I am so blessed. I finally have a few photos of her on my desk at work and they always inspire my co-workers to lament that she has not been in to visit in months!
Despite having to work this weekend-I will be sneaking over for a short visit with Alice on Saturday-I mean really? who could resist this charming baby? No quilting time until after Monday - then I will take off an extra day in celebration of meeting this deadline. The snow didn't stop me from going to work yesterday-I discovered how to use my all wheel drive function in my wagon and boy did I feel enpowered. I am leaving early today for an appointment downtown-unless they require chains, which I do not have. I have not put chains on a car in over ten years...and really, the snow has melted so much-there should not be a need for them. It's been fun to see around town, you just can't do much walking around as the ice is slick under the snow now. Poor Zoe- she has been missing her walks, but, it's just too slippery out there for a human to be safe.

snow day

We finally got hit with the white stuff here. I came home early yesterday and my neighbor snapped me in the front of our house. I brought home lots of work and will be slaving away today.
There were so many car accidents and sledding accidents around here! Folks just do not get how to deal with snow/ice here as it doesn't haappen with enough frequency. Zoe loves running around in the snow-and even my sweetie is staying home today due to leaving her car at work. That's great-Zoe will have a playmate and I can actually get more work done that way.
I finished up the quilting on a second charity quilt-trimming and binding of course are next.
I made a large batch of lentil soup last night and picked up a few other items at the grocery store, so we are set. I just need to locate my snow boots...they got moved from their usual place and today I might actually use them! It seems I waste too much time hunting down things around here...good thing I declared this an organizing year of the house.

ostrich round 2

Today was the deadline for putting round 2 on.
I am happy to get this done on time-however I goofed when squaring up and will have to adjust again to get back to a square look-should I decide that's what I want. At any rate, this is something quilty of mine I can at least put a photo up of. I sent off my 4 string blocks and worked and finished another 4 today plus quilted half of the second quilt sandwich I brought home last week. Not bad for the short amount of time
I had available to sew in. I took advantage of the blue skies (granted it's like 35 degrees out and with the wind chill factor...think serious shivers!) to haul the ladder out and take down the outside Christmas lights this afternoon. Nice to finally have all the Christmas stuff nearly packed away. I have a part of a string out-I am going to find the "bad" bulb and fix it before putting it up in the attic until next year. So they are in a tub on the couch waiting for me to leave the sewing room. I don't know, Zoe is in here napping and it's hard to tear myself away. I actually emptied a small wastebasket, finding some long lost items-which I put where they belong-I know, what a concept-and put that container out in my car for donating. Baby steps as we are fond of saying. I will keep it up until this room doesn't look so overflowing. Oh, yes, I also put together and finished Alice's Pooh cloth book. Next Saturday I will swing by and drop it off for her. She loves her books-she has gradutated to being able to turn pages her mama said. We all think she is a most clever baby! I babysat on Saturday-mostly holding her for an hour while she slept-which is one of my most favorite things - watching her sleep is quite peaceful, we hardly had any play time as her parents returned much too soon and I needed to go into the office. She continues to be quite adorable and showed off a few new tricks like tilting her head to one side to flirt with you...giggling ...and jumping up and down while you hold her standing in your lap-you know the bouncing fun they have -she is learning to crawl and to sit up on her own-at just over six months she is about at the same pace as her daddy was at that age...I really enjoy how vocal she is...lots of cooing and singing. ok, ok...soon I promise a new photo of her. I have been trying to catch a shot of her new teeth that finally came through right before Christmas..she is such a moving photo target! I am so thankful to have her close by and so much in my life-which also includes her parents..they are quite wonderful as new parents.

made on time, shown late

As you can see: I also joined in the fun of making string blocks for Nancy's birthday celebration.
I too belong to the HeartStrings group and her post was just what I needed to dive into my string bag and get stitching! Thanks Nancy for that inspiration. I cut lots of red strips from my stash, however managed to leave them behind by grabbing the wrong "string" bag to take to the lqs where my charity group meets.I just pulled other reds from the donated fabric we keep at the shop and you can see they worked out just fine. After stitching a strip of fabric to a backing to make it long enough-I pulled out my foundation squares and shared this project with the other gals. I am hoping next month they will bring some blocks in to add to my start. I cut lots of strips to add to my string bag and just need to cut more foundations next. I brought home two sandwiched quilts to quilt up- one is now done and I am taking a break to do more string blocks before quilting up the other one. I think LindaJ has the right idea-sharing quilts made by my group would add to my blog-as I don't seem to be cranking that many quilts out by myself. Snow is forecast for tomorrow-I have work home to do if I chose to not drive out in it...again, it's those other drivers that concern me. My car is all wheel drive-plenty capable to handle the fairly flat driving I would have to do to get to work.
It's always nice to have a work day at home! We have a deadline of the 22nd of this month and I will have to really put in some time/effort to get done by then. Each morning, however, I am spending at least 15 minutes stitching. Then I feel less deprived when at the end of a work day I am too tired to sit at my machine. So...I may not be posting all that often until after the 22nd.

Happy 2007

I am happy to be able to put up a quilt photo..at last. It's the African scrappy from last November? I think that is when it was a finished top. It was pinned waiting to be quilted and somehow it got buried in the "messy corner threatening to take over the entire sewing room" pile.
I was looking for lost rulers and excavated it! As I also had another quilt waiting in the same color way-and wanted to hand it over tomorrow so she could bind it-I buckled down tonight (very late start, naturally) and was able to quilt both quilts. Being on a roll, I trimmed and attached the binding on the African scrappy quilt. I did what I have taken to calling zoom lines-pretty much straight lines with a quilting foot. When I get bored doing straight lines, I throw in a few leaning ones or curving ones. At any rate, it's done, labeled and ready to donate to WrapThemInLove. Our group meets tomorrow and it will be nice to have something finished for a change. Our group gave 84 quilts last year. Our group is pretty much 5 of us doing the majority of the quilts-with stray donations from folks who hear about us. I love showing up and finding donated quilts-that's the best, second to that is nice donated fabric, and my least favorite is donated fabric that we can not use for quilts. I manage to find a home for that. Tomorrow I plan on doing more cutting-I am working on making up kits, and have promised one to a gal in Texas-I should be able to finish the cutting for at least that kit plus I want to cut up lots of strips to use in the HeartStrings project. As soon as I heard Mary mention it-I was in. I have made one block thus far too. So...after a pretty long break from quilting-I can enjoy many hours of at least cutting fabric tomorrow. I probably will take my machine and do some string blocks too. I don't want to stand all day cutting after all.