Productive day

My husband and a friend of his went coyote hunting today, so I've had the house to myself.  I went to JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby, bought some more fabric for my Snowbound BOM.  It is washed and hanging to dry.  I already had the background for the applique blocks so I got those cut out.  Then I played around with the applique pieces, picked out the scraps to use and I have some of the pieces ironed onto the background.  Later I will stitch them down and work on the embroidery for the first three blocks.  It won't be long before the fourth block is posted on the Bunny Hill Designs web site.  These are soooooo cute, they are really fun!  A great way to use the tiny little scraps that I save. 

The wedding quilt is coming along.  I am hand quilting this one, too.  I have all of the outline stitching done and I have been working on the cross-hatching for the background around the cabins and trees.  I have one row all done with two more to go.   I am using the 1" blue painters tape as a guide to get the lines straight.  It works great.  I lined up the first piece of tape at a 45 degree angle and stitched along both edges.  From there, I move the tape and stitch the next line.  The tape is the perfect width and it is just sticky enough to stay in place but does not leave any sticky residue when it is removed.  I do pin through the tape at the ends as added security to keep it from moving, but it works well.  I do not leave the tape in place for too long though, just long enough to stitch the next line.  It gives me nice straight lines that are evenly spaced.   I have a blue water soluble marking pen but the background fabric is a very light cream color and I didn't want to take a chance at messing it up.   I tested it on a scrap of the fabric and it washed out fine, but since this is a gift I really didn't want to have a problem with it.

My husband is almost over his cold, but I have it now.  Yesterday I didn't feel like doing much but today I am feeling much better.  I'm excited about doing some embroidery tonight, so I am off to have some fun!

Happy First Day of Spring!

Here is what we woke up to this morning in Albuquerque, first day of Spring!

Yep, that's about two inches of snow.  My daffodils were really pretty yesterday but today they are a little droopy!  These were taken in color, you can see the yellow of the flowers, but it is so gloomy outside that it looks like black and white.  It should melt later today and by Monday temps are suppose to be back into the 50's and 60's.

I've been making good progress on the wedding quilt.  It has three rows of cabins and trees and I have almost finished the outline stitching in two rows.  Once the outline is done, I will go back and cross-hatch the space between the cabins.  I wanted to get the oulining done before starting to fill in the space in between.  It is going pretty fast.    Each row has three cabins and one tree in it but they are spaced differently.  One has three cabins and a tree; one has one cabin, a tree, and two more cabins; one has two cabins, a tree and one more cabin.  I think it will be kind of cute.

Well, enjoy Spring and I hope you get to quilt all day!

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I hope you are all enjoying today!  I am part Irish but not wearing green today.  I was only out of the house for a little while just to run an errand and pick up some lunch.  My husband has been sick for a few days, so just trying to look after him.  Spring allergies have hit him hard this year and I think he has a cold, too.  Lots of hot tea and soup for him.

I went to the fabric store yesterday.  Picked up a pen to write on my swap blocks and backing fabric for the wedding quilt.  Today I basted it and have started to do some of the quilting.  I am outlining around the trees and houses, then I will do cross-hatching to fill in around them.  It has a checkerboard border so I will stitch through that from corner to corner.  It will take a little while to finish, it measures about 50" X 50".  Not too big, but not little either.

I have also worked on Patriot's Home.  I now have the "flower" shaped hexagon shapes appliqued to the background blocks.  From this point on it is just piecing the rest of it.  My first priority is the wedding gift, then this one.

I have my swap blocks ready to mail, just have to get to the post office with them.  I also want to work on the BOM from Bunny Hill for the Snowbound project.  I hope I can get a couple of them done before the end of this month, then caught up by next month.  Plus, there are the next swap blocks to work on!  That should be enough to keep me busy and out of trouble for awhile!

I took the blocks to the post office and mailed them off today, 3/18.  They should arrive early next week.

OK, off to quilt and watch some TV.

What I've been up to

What have I been doing?  It's been a little over a week since my last blog.  Well, I spent one weekend cutting out most of two quilts.  I finished up the piecing of the nine "flower" shapes for the red, cream and blue Patriot's Home quilt and I cut out the background pieces and the stripes for it.  I haven't cut into the other fabrics for it yet.  I want to get the "flower" shapes appliqued onto the background fabric for the nine blocks first.  I have to press the appliques and remove the paper before stitching them on. 

Before I start that though, I am working on the wedding gift for my nephew.  The wedding is in early June so I want to make sure it is done first.  I have all of the house and tree blocks completed, sewn together and the inner border on.  Next is a pieced checkerboard border, then it will be ready to start quilting.  I have the colored fabrics stitched to the cream fabrics and they are ready to strip cut into sections to stitch together to make the checkerboard.  I hope I can get them cut and start sewing them together tomorrow.  The houses and trees turned out really nice so I'm anxious to get the outer border on to see how it looks.  I'm always in a hurry to see how the next step changes and adds to the project. 

Yesterday I had the colonoscopy my doctor ordered when I had my physical a while ago.  It turned out OK, nothing there to worry about.  It was scheduled for nine am, I was home by 10:30, finished up a milkshake we picked up on the way home and I went to sleep.  It was 3:30 pm when I woke up.  I was afraid I might have trouble sleeping all night after the long nap during the day, but no problem.  It takes a while for the sedative to wear off. 

This morning was a beautiful sunny day so we cut up some more of the branches we had trimmed from our back hedge.  These branches are eight to ten foot sections cut from the tops of the hedge (which is still about tweleve to fourteen feet tall).  We cut the smallest stuff up into pieces that fit into our big garbage bin and put the bigger pieces aside to take to the dump once we have everything cut up.  I'm guessing we should be done with the brush pile in the back yard in three or four more weeks.  Our garbage is picked up once a week, then we fill it up again, leaving enough room for our other household garbage.   After we finished with that, we took a long drive (200 miles roundtrip) in the truck to get some more miles on it.  We went north up through the Jemez mountains (pronounced like Hey-mis), up over the top, by Los Alamos National Labs, over into Santa Fe with a stop to visit a friend who works at the Harley Davidson shop there, then home.  It was a long day.  Tomorrow I hope I can quilt! 

Swap blocks

 I finally got a picture of my blocks for the swap.  Here they are:

I finally see that I put mine together wrong too, but I will just figure my pinwheels are spinning at different speeds and correct the error next time.  With so many of us positioning them the same way, it will add an extra dimension to the swap blocks!

Over the weekend I cut out two new quilts.  Monday I cleaned house a little.  Tuesday I cut up some more of the branches we trimmed from the trees lining our backyard.  That all wore me out!  Yesterday we took our Toyota in for the fixes and I worked on the blocks for my nephews wedding gift.  The pattern is called "Winter Cabins" and has nine blocks with pieced cabins and three blocks with appliqued trees.  It is really cute, in fact I want to make one for myself someday.  I had to stop by the fabric shop and get a little more fabric.  The pattern I'm following is in a magazine from 2004.  It has templates to cut the cabin roof sections for the blocks and they just would not go together right.  So I got more fabric and cut them a different way.  I used a 5 1/2" square of cream fabric (background) and a 4 1/2" square of brown (cabin roof), set the smaller square into the corner of the larger one and stitched diagonally across the smaller square.  Two of these sewn together make the pitched roof section just fine.  I do have to adjust the "snow" applique that sits on the roof just a bit to match the angle, but that will be easy.  The pattern has some other "errors" in it, too.  I'm glad I've had some experience quilting and have learned how to work with the patterns.  My way is a whole lot easier and way more accurate.  Their diagrams for putting stuff together is fine, their written instructions have some gaps in directions and a few mistakes labeling pieces. 

Well, off to add the applique to my blocks!

Marsha