two baby quilts so far

This is the two quilts together.


















This one is for the son of my first cousin's daughter. She helped me move this last summer and this is a "thank you for letting me borrow mommy" gift. The colors in this one are red, blue, green and deep plums. The background has teeny little stars in similar colors but they don't match exactly.

This quilt is for my newest granddaughter born the 1st. The fabrics don't want to photograph true in this one. It's peach, lavender, yellow and pink. The background is a really, really pretty pale gray.

it's a done deal

We're going back. Sort of. Hubby is going back to his old job but we're not going to live in Oklahoma.

He'll be going back probably this week or the first of next week to start work.

Some sudden changes. We're going to find hubby a cheap apartment and he's going to live there until I can move in June. We're locked into a lease on this house and there's just no way we can afford to pay this lease and pay for another place to live. So I'll stay until the lease is up.

the job situation

Hubby didn't get the job in Missouri. Not because somebody else got the job, because they took the posting down and didn't hire anybody. I think they found out the position was going to cost them a lot more than they thought and decided they could get along without a General Foreman. Oh well.

So hubby is still looking. Then today his old boss called. They really want him back. His old boss thinks they're going to have an opening before long. I told hubby we could go back there but I will NOT live where we did before. We can live just 37 miles away from the plant and be in Kansas and it's a world of difference. I might be willing to live 5 to 10 miles inside of Oklahoma so we don't have to do two state tax returns every year but it's going to have to be a great house!!

In quilty news I have one baby quilt ready to hand stitch the binding down on the back and the second and third ones are cut. I'm going to finish the third one next since that baby is due soonest. I won't get much done before Friday though. Tomorrow morning they're coming to rip up the bathroom floor and replace it because it's rotted and like stepping on a wet sponge. Then I have to go to the tax office and take a couple of hours of class and take the tests. I don't know that we'll be here thru tax season but if we are I want to have a job.

Then of course on Wednesday I'll start cooking for Thanksgiving. My BFF, her husband and my oldest son will be here for the holiday. I'll make the dough for dinner rolls, make a cheese ball, and do some veggie prep for Thursday.

Friday though there will be plenty of leftovers so I won't have to worry about feeding hubby and I refuse to do battle for consumer goods so I'll have the day to just sew and sew!!

"Memorial to a Bridesmaid Dress"

Turned out totally gorgeous!

In March of 2007 my two sisters in law and I were forced against our will to wear bridesmaid dresses for our in laws vow renewal ceremony on a beach in North Carolina. I threatened at the time to turn mine into memorial pillows or something.

It turned out to be this wall hanging. The large star points and the outer border cornerstones are the bridesmaid dress fabric. It's a bitch to work with. If I hadn't bought that expensive steam iron at the quilt show in May I probably couldn't have made it work. That steam iron puts out some serious steam and made that stubbon poly crap behave. Those seams are FLAT!! Plus, bonus! I could also iron the silk and the cotton with that iron. The bluish fabric in the center and smaller star points is a really nice silk.

The binding is on the second one of them. I need to trim the third one and get the binding put on it. I needed to get these out of the way so I can get the baby quilts basted and quilted.

baby quilts

I always take breaks in what ever else I'm working on to do baby quilts. This time I need to do three at once!! This is the top for the first one. The second one will be from the same fabrics except it will have a blue for the last border.

This quilt is for the son of my first cousin's daughter that helped me move this past summer. The second one from these fabrics is for a great nephew due in the middle of December.

The third baby quilt is for my 5th grandchild due at the beginning of December. It's a girl so her quilt will be from a different group of fabrics. I'll post pictures as I finish them.

"Hold the Lime" preview

I looooooooooove the colors in this quilt!! The places it looks like there's a white fabric are actually a really, really pale pink. There's one block on the bottom row missing because I left it on the design board at home when I went to my BFF's house to lay it out.

Time

I think I'm just going to name this quilt "Time". It's a little smaller than queen size but I hadn't planned on putting this one on my bed anyway. It will probably go on a full size guest bed eventually. The block closeups were taken before the quilt was even put together. Several of the other blocks also have clock faces in the centers.

things change

And then they change again.

Hubby quit the job he got here. It was the worst job ever. From the time he started work until the day he quit he had 1 day off. He worked almost exactly two months. Not only was he not getting days off he was working 12 hour shifts most of the time. In the week right before he quit he worked 9 days of 12 hour shifts in a row, had one 8 hour day and had to go back to 12 hour days because they fired a supervisor. He quit the next day.

Just a couple of days after he quit he got a phone call to apply for a job. He was recommended for the job by his old supervisor in Guymon. It's in another state of course. We both went and he had a really good interview. We'll find out if he has that job at the end of next week. I think he'll probably get it because of the high recommendation of his old boss.

I went to a retreat last week and got several things done. I got the binding on the Time quilt, all three of the "Memorial to a Bridesmaid Dress" wall hangings ready to quilt, another giant bag for Girl made and a whole stack of blocks made for the pink/yellow/orange quilt.

I finished hand stitching the binding on the Time quilt last night. I'll post pictures of it in a day or two. I'm still not positive what its name is going to be. I like either "A Question of Time" or "Galaxy of Time."

the move

We picked up the truck and spent saturday loading. We quit when it got dark and by that time we had the majority loaded. Sunday morning we took the beds apart and gathered everything that was left in the house into boxes and loaded it up. We left Oklahoma by 2 in the afternoon.

We stopped in Lamar for supper and when we got to Limon we ran into a severe hail storm. The rain and hail were so heavy that all the traffic just stopped and waited it out. I couldn't see more than about 2 feet in front of the car. It just cracked the windshield and didn't break it out. It didn't crack any of the other glass. The adjuster was here this morning and said some the dents in the car are from bigger than baseball size hail. It's totaled. The pickup has 6K in body damage. None of its windows got cracked. We drove the rest of the way here in steady rain.

We unloaded the furniture from the back of the pickup as soon as we got here. The hail was so big and hard that it punched holes in the bottom of the love seat that was covered with a tarp in the back of the pickup. After we got every thing out of the pickup so it could dry out we unloaded mattresses and bedding off the U-Haul and fell down into bed.

Monday we got up and got the truck totally unloaded. We waited to turn it in because of the damage. Thank goodness I got the insurance!!! The insurance was $55 and the windshield alone would have been $446.00!! The whole roof of that truck will have to be replaced too.

We didn't get a whole lot done yesterday since we were all so tired. The girls and I have been working on unpacking boxes today.

I'd show you pictures of some of the hail damage but my camera battery is dead and I haven't found the charger yet.

final days!!

The truck is waiting to be picked up tomorrow morning. Hubby, oldest son and the girls will be here this evening. We should get the majority loaded Saturday and we'll finish up and drive to Colorado on Sunday. Monday we'll unload and get the beds put together at least. We have to have the truck turned in by Wednesday at noon.

Tuesday the cable, internet and phone will be installed. I am sooooooooooooo looking forward to getting rid of the satellite internet!! It's almost as slow as dial up! With the added feature of losing your connection every time it rains. Since I did the bundled thing I'm going to get up to 16 mbps! Wohooo!!

Getting the kitchen unpacked and organized is first priority of course. I'm sure we're both ready for something home cooked even if it's just sloppy joes or one pan goulash.

My sewing room is on the small side so I'll have to put some of it over in the guest bedroom. I'm sure it'll end up being a total reorganization since all the 2 yard and up cuts of fabric will go on coroplast organizers and go in bookcases in the guest bedroom. One of the biggest things I'll have to figure out what to do with is the scraps. I hate to get rid of them because I really do use them for the girl's square in a square quilts and I used almost all scraps for the "Year in a Snap" series. I'm sure there will be plenty of other things I need just a bit of something for. I'm sure after I get started I'll figure out some sort of organization method for them.

the thing I'll miss

The sky. As my hubby says "they have great dark here." That's because there isn't much here so not a lot of lights around. We can turn off the porch light and see the Milky Way from the front yard.


We can also see the lights from towns 10 miles away. During the day if you go out on the highway that runs past here you can actually see the buildings of one town 10 miles away. There's a wind farm down in Texas that we can see the very tops of the windmills during the day with binoculars and we see the red lights all blinking right down on the horizon at night. The wind farm is about 20 miles away.


There are no obstructions between us and the horizon for a full 360° so we see full sunrises, sunsets, moonrises and moonsets. I've seen some pretty awesome ones here. We've also seen some pretty wild looking storms.

5900, more or less

That's the approximate number of miles I'll drive from the first time we went for Bill's first in person interview the 10th of May to when I'll take my cousin's daughter home the 6th of July.

The girls and I are just going to shuffle stuff around in the house today so it's easier to get around in.

Tomorrow I'll take granddaughter home to her father's in Alamosa and cousin's daughter home to Lamar. That little trip will be almost 700 miles.

They'll both be back to help load and unload the 4th of July weekend. Then I'll pay them both and take them shopping in Greeley. At least I'll only have to take cousin's daughter home after our shopping, granddaughter will go home with her dad.

16 more days!!

My middle granddaughter and the daughter of one of my first cousins are both here packing. They're both 14 so they still have good backs and knees. LOL

They have the kitchen packed. Tomorrow they'll start the sewing room.

giant happy dance!!

We're moving, we're moving, we're moving!!! I am soooooooooo excited about this move!! We're moving to Colorado!! Home Sweet Home!!! (I think I just used up today's allotment of exclamation points)

one down, two to go!

The first one has all the borders on! It fought me about the last border. I originally bought a really nice Jenny Byer border print. Hated it. So then I pulled a really nice dark purple with a gold wave design overprinted. That one was only marginally okay. So I pulled at least three other prints out of my stash, no, no and no. Then I went to a quilt store 130 miles away and found a tan batik with a stylized shell design. It was better than anything else I had so I got enough to do borders. On the way there I realized that I'd be going past a really good size quilt store the next day so I took the wall hanging with me and found a great fabric for the border. I also decided to put the poly in the cornerstones since it pushes the border fabric to the lighter side and since it's a memorial to the bridesmaid dress it needed more of the fabric from the dress.

a graduate

I'm pretty sure I'm not actually old enough to have a granddaughter graduating from high school but there you are. It wasn't all that long ago I posted a photo of her first car.

I'm so excited!!

I get to have Margaret Gunn quilt my "My Secret Garden" quilt!!! Her web site is http://www.mainelyquiltsoflove.com/main/. She's also on my blog list as "Sewing and quilting Gallery." I'm putting the quilt in the mail tomorrow!

beginnings of a memorial

(Just laid out so you can see the beginnings. The quarter square triangles are the only parts that are done.)

This is the beginnings of a "Memorial to a Bridesmaid Dress" The dress is the solid green on the outside of the seashell print. The fabric in the center is a really lovely silk I found that's very close to the color of the bridesmaid dress one of my sister in laws wore. The green is the dress I and my other sister in law wore.

To say we weren't exactly happy about the whole thing is somewhat of an understatement. MIL decided to do a 50th anniversary vow renewal with the full gown, tux, bridesmaid, and groomsmen attire for every one. Then she picked not exactly flattering dresses for the three of us. We're not exactly ... how shall we say... spring chicks anymore. And two of us aren't exactly skinny anymore either. There were several other issues involved that we'll just ignore.

I threatened, after it was over, to turn my dress into memorial pillows. The dress got shoved in the closet after we got home and mostly ignored. Then a couple of weeks before I went to the quilt show I bought the newest issue of "Quilter's World." In it is a pattern for a wall hanging called "Summer Shimmer." It is totally perfect for "Memorial to a Bridesmaid Dress"!!

I'm going to have to get that fancy new steam iron out and steam that poly into submission though. It doesn't want to iron into nice creases.

My Secret Garden

It's together!! I love how it turned out. I'll be looking forward to getting it quilted now.

hollyhock block

I love how this block turned out. It's from the "My Secret Garden" quilt. I only work on it when I take my old machine to the lock-ins. I have two more blocks to make and then it'll be ready to put together and add borders! One of the last blocks is an appliqued vine and it has to have a template for placement so I'll get that one ready here at home. The other block is just a pieced block.

quilt show haul

I got a few things when I went to the quilt show in Denver this last weekend. The thread was a fortune all by itself!! The iron is a Euro Steam Evolution. I have all of the fabrics to make the "Bride's maid memorial" wall hangings now. I need to finish the pink/yellow/orange quilt first though.

quilt preview

This quilt is going to be soooooooooo cool. The blocks are just laid together so you can kind of see how it's going to look. These particular blocks may or may not end up together in the finished quilt. I think the most blocks of any fabric combination is 4. Most are either 2 or 3 blocks of one fabric combination.

room improvements

You wouldn't think adding two more pieces of furniture to a small room would give you more space but it did. The dresser in this picture is the ironing center. My big board ironing board fits on top of the dresser but it's too low. The weather hasn't cooperated so we can get the riser built for the top yet. It's tough to cut MDF outside in 30 mph winds. It still has a few things parked on it that I need to find homes for. Oh, and if you look at the bottom left of the dresser in that space you'll see my cat. That's her spot now. At some point in time I'm going to paint this dresser. I think I'll go ahead and look for different drawer pulls. It's Early American style and it's the one style that I really don't like. A paint job and new drawer pulls will make a big difference though.




The blue dresser is going to be the cutting table. It has a piece of plywood on the top now but I think when we have time we're going to go to the big lumber yard and get a piece of counter top for it. The space between the cutting center and the credenza is perfect for bagged batting and "ladies in waiting." The two big red bags have quilts that are waiting for binding. The ruler racks and all the rulers have been moved over on to the credenza in front of the bookcase.

this room is a wreck

This end is where the computer and tv are. The bookcase to the left of the tv did have full size bolts of fabric but I rewound them onto the half size coroplast boards and they're all in the bookcase in my bedroom.

I'm getting some new dressers on monday. One of them is the long, low style and it's going to become the new ironing center. I have a big board that sits on top of the regular board so it'll just sit on top of the new dresser right in front of the window where the ironing board is now. I have plastic over those windows because they're so drafty so I don't need to get to them to open them.



Then we have this end. I'm going to take out that cutting table next to the tall cupboard. I'm going to move that blue metal dresser over where the cutting table is and get a new top made to put over it to turn it into a cutting table. Right now it has fat quarters in it. After I get it moved over to where the cutting table is it'll hold batting in the two big drawers and odds and ends in the skinny top drawer. The other dresser I'm getting on monday will go where the blue one is now and the fat quarters will go in it. I don't know if it's going to be big enough to hold all the stuff that is on top of the blue dresser now. If not the wicker basket organizer will fit in the bookcase next to the tv.

This is a pic looking into the room from the door. This really isn't that big of a room and there's a LOT of stuff in here! And here I am going to add two more pieces of furniture! The cutting table is going to go to storage for now. I know I won't live in this house forever so I may be able to use it in the next sewing room.

Girl and bag

She posted to my facebook "this bag ROCKS!" LOL

The bag is supposed to be a quilt carrier. I made one for myself and she saw it and wanted one really bad. She travels several times a year between mother and father's houses so she will definitely use it!

It took forever to get to the store with home dec fabric to pick fabric for her. Her favorite color is yellow and she loved the black and white fabric.

I modified the design of the bag some and added pockets inside and out to each end and one on the outside side and one on the inside side.

She was in a school play not long ago and dyed her hair dark brown because Cleopatra doesn't have strawberry blond hair. People would kill for her hair color and she dyes it brown.

the end…

Of the Census job was yesterday.  Yay!  All that nice money coming the next three weeks is going to buy me the Janome 6600, the Tutu rolling machine bag and a Martelli cutting mat.  Plus a whole lot of fabrics!

Where the deer...

And the antelope...

















and the camels play??

I've been working for the Census Bureau and have done a lot of driving recently. There's an irrigated circle north of town that has a pair of camels, a pair of llamas and a pair of buffalo along with several horses. The antelope are pretty thick in some areas I drive thru and you see them in broad daylight.

new blog thing

I discovered this new blog writing thing today. It should make posts a whole lot easier to do. Go here and get it… Windows Live Writer

Stupid thing won't work. Fine.

Deck the Halls

Deck the Halls is done!! This means I have the entire "Year in a Snap" wall hanging series *TOTALLY* done, done, done!!! I think the February and December ones are my top favorites but I also really love May. I think I need to lay them out four at a time and take pics of them that way. The May block was the reason I decided to do the series in the first place but I improved the fabric selections so much for the February and December blocks they turned out to be my favorites.



This pic shows the background fabric a little. The second close up may show the true color a little better.

The next finish is going to be the monster wall hangings for the grandkids! I love making progress!

candy corn and fall leaves

The first picture is a close up of the bird on "Candy Corn." "Candy Corn" is the October wall hanging in the "Year in a Snap" series. He still needs the bead sewn on for his eye.















This is the picture of the whole wall hanging "Candy Corn." I need to stitch the binding down to the back and it'll be totally done.



















This is the close up of the scarecrow on "Fall Leaves" the November wall hanging. I need to add his face!

A pic of the whole wall hanging "Fall Leaves." I need to stitch the binding down on the back of it too.

Back to School

I have Back to School done! I got it quilted last week and took it with me when I had to go get my mother and take her for an eye appointment and procedure. Anyway, while I was waiting for her I got the binding done. I love the orange pencil.

I also have the beading done on Ornaments. The gold one fought me. I ended up ripping off all the beading and making a new ornament. I'll get it quilted next. It's due the 28th for a challenge.