I Hate Summer Colds

I have a cold.  First one in ages.  No more working outside until it goes away.  I just don't have the energy.  Maybe between naps I can actually get some sewing done!  Though with the fuzziness of  my head from the cold and the medicine, I should probably stay away from sharp objects! 

Since I'm confined to the house, I thought I'd show you some of what has been going on around here.  Our sun room roof is now fixed, thanks to my wonderful and talented husband.  Here's a picture of him popping up through what used to be the sky light.  No more sky light and no more moldy roof!  And best of all, no more leaks!

Because the roof is practically flat, we had to use roofing on a roll instead of shingles.  Every time we laid out the roll, Maggie had to walk on it like she was modeling!  It was the cutest thing and she did it every time!

I have loaded our pick-up truck 4 times with trash for the dump.  Concrete blocks, the old roof, junk left around from the previous owners, yard clean-up, etc.  We've sold some concrete blocks and hope to sell the sky light and some more concrete blocks too.  Here's the latest load for this weekend. 

I have been digging up old plants, trying to get the beds ready for new plants and our future garden.  The previous owners loved landscape plastic/fabric and used layers and layers of the stuff.  The old plants were so old and packed that not only the roots, but the lower branches had grown together.  They were as thick as small trees!  When I got to that part, Tony had to step in with his manly muscles and ax to get it out!  I am now on my third pair of work gloves...I keep wearing them out!

It hasn't been all work though.  We celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary September 1!  We went out to eat at a wonderful Irish pub and the food was delicious!

We have found our favorite garden center and been spending lots of time and money there.  I'm so excited...we are getting fruit trees!  Our soil has been tested, we bought the fixes for it and are just waiting for the garden center's order to come in! 

 We've been successfully shopping at some antique stores. 

Found these "antique" quilting books, 1987, 1988, and 1991!  The more things change, the more they stay the same!  Some of the pictures in these books could be in magazines today, very "modern"! However, the instructions do not include rotary cutting, of course, and every picture of the artist quilting showed her with a hoop and quilting by hand!  I'm really enjoying going through these books!

Tony has now been at his new job since retiring from the army for one year now!  Hard to believe!  I've been here for 7 months; time is just flying by!  But that also means we are coming up on the first anniversary of my mother's death on September 13.  It doesn't seem possible.  It still hits me hard sometimes but I know she is happy celebrating her first year with Jesus!

I'm hoping this cold will go away soon...there's still so much yard work to be done!  Maybe I can get some sewing done or catch up on some reading, or better yet, just watch some old movies with a cup of tea! 

Talk to y'all later!

LaDonna

How to Make a Wood Quilt

When I first saw this, I thought it said, "How to Make a Wool Quilt"!  Boy, was I surprised!  This guy is talented!

LaDonna

Quilt As You Go, Part 2

I'm not liking this very much.  This is probably the worst quilting I have done in long time.  All that bias is not friends with my machine quilting.  There's not a lot to hold on to and there's too much give.  For something that was supposed to be a quick and fun method, it sure is causing me some frustration.  But, since I like to win, I'm going to try another line of attack.  Despite the name, Quilt As You Go, I'm thinking I'll make the blocks, put them together, and then do an overall quilting design, maybe a wavy grid.  Not only will that give me more to hold to, but sewing across all that bias should stabilize it better.  And, I'm thinking baby quilt...no way do I want to do a big quilt like this! 

On a positive note, I did make some smaller squares to go with the bigger squares.  Maybe as a sashing?  Or just mixed in somehow?  Don't know yet.  My small squares are made with 2 7/8" cut squares.  Really, it should be closer to 2 13/16" but with all that bias, who cares?!

Kudos to all of you who have made beautiful quilts with this method!  I applaud your patience and skill!

I'll keep you posted as to how this all turns out.

LaDonna

Quilt As You Go

First of all, good news....our insurance is going to help with the cost of repairing our sun room!  Thanks to my sister and dad for insisting we call our insurance company, the bill is not going to be all on us!  Tony and I just didn't think to call because it wasn't storm damage, just an old, bad roof, unbeknownst to us.  We figured we deal with it on our own.  The insurance won't cover the roof, but it will help with the water damage.  So, yay!   Second, we have new front windows!  The old windows were, well, old and ugly!  Now that we are having to deal with the sun room, the other windows will have to wait a bit.  Almost makes me nervous though...when we get the next set of windows, what's going to go wrong after that?!  If the sun room damage had occurred just a couple of weeks earlier, we would have put off getting new windows. Here's the living room before and after!

Now on to quilty stuff!  I belong to 4 quilting message boards; really I'm just a stalker lurker!  I seldom make comments, but enjoy seeing what others are doing.  This week when I checked in on one, someone had posted about a quilt-as-you-go quilt that grabbed my attention.  I've never done a quilt-as-you-go quilt so I started googling and found several tutorials about it.  I followed the instructions.  And it worked!  Only then did I think, I should put this on my blog; so no process pictures of the first one I made.  And then I thought I had better write my own tutorial, with my own pictures,  so I'll have something to refresh my memory later on!

Cut 2 light squares and 2 dark squares.  I used 5 inch squares because that's what I had in my stash!

Sew a light and a dark together.  Press toward the dark side. (I always think of Star Wars whenever I see that!)

Sew those units together, nesting the seams, to make a 4 patch.

Here comes the different part.  With right sides together, bring one edge of the block to its opposite edge.  Pin along the now short sides and stitch.

Trim the corners.  At this stage, there are three stitched sides and one left open.

Now the fun part! Open up the block and bring the short ends together, matching the seams.

Stitch, leaving an opening.  (On this block, I stitched from one end to past the center seam, thinking that would get the center matching really nicely.  And it did, but it made the batting process and the hand-stitching more difficult.  On my first block, I had left the center open, and that's the way I'll do the others from now on.  Makes it easier for inserting the batting and the hand-stitching.)  Use something pointy to get those corners out nicely.

Measure your finished block and cut a piece of batting that size.  My block finishes at 6 1/4 inches.  

Stuff the batting into the block, being careful not to stretch the batting.  (I'm hoping this step gets faster the more I do it!)  Hand-stitch the opening closed. 

Press the block carefully.

Here are my first two blocks!  I haven't quilted them yet, can't decide what I want to do!  And to put them together...most tutorials say to whip-stitch them together, other say zig-zag, or use a decorative stitch on your machine.  Again, I haven't decided which I'll do yet!

This is a fun way to use up scraps!  The front will be exactly the same as the front, a reversible quilt!  Even though this is a technique that has been around for-ev-er, I've never done it.  I do have some concerns but I don't think it will be a big deal when it's all done.  The edges are on the bias.  Can you say, "Stretchy?!"  I'm hoping once they are all sewn together, they'll be stabilized. Will just hand-sewing the blocks together last through all that a well-loved quilt goes through?  And then, what about the outside edges of the finished quilt?  That's on the bias too.  I'm thinking I'll bind it even though the edges are finished.  All my concerns about this type of quilt may be completely unwarranted once it's all quilted.  If you have made a quilt like this, I would love to hear from you!  

LaDonna

Demolition Weekend

We had a deluge of rain Friday night while we were out shopping.  I mean, it really came down.  Our sun room, i.e. poor man's sauna, was a mess.  We were going to redo the sun room eventually anyway, because it was not usable the way it was, but the decision of when we were going to do it made itself after this storm.  Sewing room moves down the list again, and that's ok.

Maggie, a little nervous, kept her eye on me because the last time we cleared out a room, we moved.  Fergus, not so much.

  

Before pictures. Painted paneling, plastic ceiling.

Ceiling down...

and on the floor.

Insulation supports coming down.

Insulation down.  Tony bent up the side paneling of the sky light and immediately, our giant EZ Bake oven started cooling off.  The sky light was like a magnifying glass, beaming heat and damaging light in the room.

Some of the damage.  Evidently, this has been going on a while.

Removing trim so paneling can come down.

Even the trim was bad.

More paneling coming down.

Gross.

 Bags of insulation.

 

Sweeping up.

So this week, part of my to-do list is to take the wall insulation down and bag it up. Clean up the old ceiling with the hopes of selling it and bundling the paneling into the proper size for our garbage collectors.  Another busy week! 

Hope your week is a good one!

LaDonna

One down.......

I know that I will regret saying this.....but I am so ready for cool temps!!!  I am tired of  9o degrees plus, with triple digit heat index.  I do not like being hot. I usually go out into my garden first thing when the sun is barely up but by the time I am finished, I am usually drenched. This garden has been more productive than I originally thought possible, so in that I am thankful. I just wish that it would cool off so that at least the kids could and would want to get outside. They do not like being hot either...not even in the pool!

The garden has been keeping me busy but I have actually been able to finish a quilt. (applause, yay, and finally!)  My granddaughter loves all thing pink (sometimes purple), sparkly, and princess.  When our Wal-Mart here in map-dot discontinued its fabric department and all of their fabric was on super close-out,  I bought..and....bought...and bought....with quilting in mind, of course.  Some of the fabric that I purchased, I knew that I would be using for my grandchildren. So after sorting through, I set aside some of the pinks/purples  for a quilt for my granddaughter. (Other fabrics I set aside for my grandson. His quilt is  in progress.)  After I stewed ( which I know I go overboard on that.) about a design and enlisted the input from my daughter, this is the result.

I don't know if it can be seen very well, but a castle is quilted in the center, flowers, crowns and the word princess is quilted in the borders.

I realise that the quilting is not the best but  believe it or not it IS better than the last time.  I owe that to the thread ( Aurifil) and hints from sister and blogger friends.  The whole time I was working on the quilt, my granddaughter would ask..."Is that for me? Is it my princess quilt?"  I guess she likes it.

Now on to the next one......for my grandson who likes all things with wheels!

~Diana