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Weekend Update

21 February 2012, 9:08 am

Well this weekend was eventful but not quite productive :)   Ryan was away with his friends for a long weekend so after getting the house cleaned up and organized, and doing lots of baking I had a little girl party on Saturday (stitch friends).  One of the treats I made was these homemade strawberry sorbet in chocolate cups treat:

Mmmmm - strawberry sorbet!

Fitzy had his cousin Buddy over to play for the weekend and they really are best buds.

Tuckered out on sunday :)

Saturday was  a long day and after the girls all left I just crashed for the night (after clean up of course).  Sunday I had big plans to be productive – but when i woke up I was still tired so the dogs and I chilled for most of the day (I finished up a good books with them cuddled on the couch).  In the afternoon I did manage to do one little household item that’s been on my list for a long time…

We have this old switch (turn style) for the basement entryway light and it doesn’t always work (the wiring is old and loose).  Since we put in new basement lights when we first bought the house I’ve been meaning to run a new light and switch off of that circuit so I could reliably see going down the first half of the basement stairs with laundry in my arms.  Plus this means I could disconnect a bunch of the knob and tube that’s spliced numerous times for this light/switch and an old outlet.

Took a little while but we have a light.  This isn’t permanent, when we remodel the kitchen we’ll be redoing this entryway a bit but who knows when that will be so for now we have a light!

New switch (see the turn style one to the right - that's now disconnected)

New light fixture (the old one was definitely not up to par)

I also hung up a sheet to keep the dust more contained in our work area (since I’ll be sanding the drawers and shelves of the built-ins as soon as I’m motivated to).

Work area dust sheet :)

I spent Sunday evening over at my uncle’s house for my cousin Maia’s birthday.  Buddy is going to stay the week with them so he made the trip with me.  The dogs must have worn each other out because Fitz was pretty tired most of Monday when I worked from home.  He has completely recovered however and thank goodness it was daycare day – he was driving me nuts this morning!

And last night I decided to do something fun and make a baby quilt for Itty Bitty! I actually only intended to get the strips cut but it went so quickly I couldn’t stop myself.  This is the same pattern I used for the crib quilt for little Jason but this time I used all flannels.   I just have to figure out what to use for backing and binding now.  The one unfortunate thing was that I could only use 10 flannels so I had to limit my choices and now i have leftover favorites so I may need another quilt.  But after I finish this up I need to make an owl wallhanging.  Maybe I’ll make burp cloths or bibs something with my scrap pieces.

Fabrics that I selected for the quilt

Quilt top all put together (crib size)

The corners of the blocks definitely do not line up well but the nature of flannels is that they are stretchy so that was challenging and since the quilt is so busy I wasn’t worried about it.  Plus I plan to lay it on the floor for tummy time – not exactly important that it’s perfect :)   This quilt took only 3 hours to cut and piece (for future reference)!

That was my ‘weekend’ with a work day :)

 

Filed under Basement, Dogs, Quilting.
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Herb quilt

27 July 2011, 10:25 am

Yesterday I worked from home because I had a cold, in the evening ryan had ZBA so I pulled out my herb quilt which just needed borders and got that finished up.

Herb quilt with borders

Borders are my least favorite part of quilting so it’s nice to have it done enough to plan out the quilting part now. Since this piece has stitching I’m not going to do much more than in the ditch quilting, although the border has lots of room for some free-style. This gives me the perfect excuse to buy the walking foot for my machine though :)

Feeling much better today so I’m taking advantage of the extra hours at home (no commute today either) to catch up one work.

Filed under Quilting.
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A day off with my nephew

12 July 2011, 9:31 am

Yesterday I took a half day off of work and went down to visit my sister and nephew. He’s just over 2 months old and he’s such a cutie. He’s tiny but he’s very alert and was looking around at everything all day yesterday. It was a great time to visit because he decided to stay awake all day again for me.

Say Hi Jason!


Let me help you, take that pacifier out so you can say hi.


Waving hi :)


It was a hot day so he spent the evening in just his diaper to cool off a bit and then it was on to muscle shirt number two for the evening and some tummy time (at which time he promptly fell asleep).

Tummy time!


And he's out :)


I even got to spend some time with him this morning (he was hungry though) before heading in to work.
Bye bye little jason, I will definitely see you soon!

bye bye for now


While I was over I added the tabs to the wall hanging for Jason’s room so they can hang it up. I also remembered to take some pictures of it finished since the only time I did it was with my dad’s camera.

Wall hanging for little Jason


Closeups - I designed the monkey based on one of the fabrics in the quilt.


The rest of the animals were part of the pattern.


Just one last thing to sew, a skirt for the crib. Should be a quick one and I was tempted to do it last weekend but it was too hot to go up and spend time in the sewing room!

Filed under Family, Quilting.
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Crib Quilt

27 May 2011, 7:24 am

Well plans don’t always work out and this week no quilting happened Tuesday or Wednesday night due to a continued headache.  Yesterday however I had no headache!  And after work and a few episodes of Castle while eating dinner, I got to work on the crib quilt again and finished up the top!

It’s not done done as it needs to be quilted but I’d say conservatively this quilt took about 4 hrs to piece maximum, maybe 3.  It went really fast and I like the pattern a lot.

Crib quilt for my nephew Jason

I’m very excited to go see little jason this weekend.  And once the quilts are done I’ll have another excuse to go down and visit again in a few weeks :)

Filed under Quilting.
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Baby Quilt

23 May 2011, 12:18 pm

Last night I got started on the crib quilt for my nephew, it matches his wall hanging and I need to get it finished before making the crib bumpers since the bumpers will be made out of the scraps (haven’t designed them yet).

So all the strips are cut and so far I’ve gotten 6 blocks put together of the 20 total.  The blocks are 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches each so it’s a decent size quilt.

Crib quilt

The quilt is very simple, no borders, just a binding after being put together.  Although it might call for rick-rack with the binding, I’ll have to see if I have enough rick-rack.

Filed under Quilting.
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Sewing

10 May 2011, 10:14 pm

I got some sewing done tonight – the valances for my sister’s nursery!

Monkey valance

I made two of them, they go with the curtains I’m still working on (one window done, one to go on those).

Valance with the curtains

Then because I won’t be home tomorrow night to sew, I got some of the animals for the quilt ready to applique and started on those – the giraffe first.  This quilt will have 4 animals total.

Applique giraffe started

In only 10 minutes or so I have more than half of the giraffe body attached already so I realized I need to go back up and prepare a few more pieces to bring, other than just the giraffe or else I’ll be doing something else tomorrow night since this will finish up quickly.

In car news – the relay switch that controls the secondary fan has gone wonky and is kicking the fan on all the time when the car is off.  This is draining the battery and now I need a new relay and a new battery.  At least I know which relay, it’s not too difficult to get to (4 bolts), so I’ll probably get a new battery tomorrow and remove the relay when I park the car until the new relay comes in (had to be ordered).  Pain in the butt having to jump my car to start it every time!

Filed under Quilting, Sewing.
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Quilt Time

4 March 2011, 6:06 am

My Aunt and I have a few quilt kits we bought together over the years and finally we’ve made one of them – it’s Japanese fabrics and I showed the blocks we did a few weeks ago.  Wednesday night we finished the blocks and put them all together with sashing.  All that’s left is a border and then quilting!  It’s a small little quilt and I love the colors.  I think this will have to hang in the tvroom when it’s finished (both it and the tv room finished) :)

Blocks all done!

The paper piecing really helped with the points not getting chopped off – but it took me 20 minutes to pull all the paper off the back when done :)

Today is kind of a busy day, between work, haircut at lunch time and a show tonight in Boston I’m all over the place.  My friend’s mother couldn’t go to see Mary Poppins with her tonight so she offered me her now extra ticket – I couldn’t be more excited about this last minute surprise but I’m sorry her mom couldn’t make it and hopefully she’s feeling better.

Then the rest of the weekend I’ll be working on the gym!  Saturday we’ll put up trim and baseboards and Sunday I’ll be painting while Ryan works!  In 2 weeks my Dad might come out to help us finish up the floor, that should be the last thing no the list besides a coat of paint on the walls by then – can’t wait!

Filed under Planning, Quilting.
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Some Quilting

17 February 2011, 6:57 am

I went over to my aunt’s house last night after work and we had the evening to ourselves so we decided to work on one of the many project kits we have purchased at quilt shows over the years together.  This one is all Japanese fabrics and it’s a very simple, small and elegant quilt that we both loved.  We pulled out the kit to discover it was actually paper piecing which was pretty new, at least for me.  It took a while to figure out and get the first block done but after that we were on a roll and we got 3/4 of the blocks finished last night.  Probably one more evening like that and we’ll have the top all put together.

12 blocks paper pieced

And we’re finally past the halfway point this week – getting towards the weekend!  Lots of house work planned and family to visit and come visit – can’t wait!

Filed under Quilting.
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Insulation scheduled!

31 January 2011, 12:36 pm

No house progress this weekend as we were back in NY visiting family however we did get a date for insulation – this coming friday!  Which means I’m going to have some busy evenings getting this ready (need to move things out of the way, need to get all the nails out of the wall, need to make sure wiring is out of the way and need to run one last switch).

It’s very exciting and I do hope it does not get delayed!

On the quilting front, I got mom’s quilt all quilted and gave it to her this weekend, I did not do the binding because after talking to her she said she could do that part.  I have some curtains to make for my sister up next, then some shades and a valance.  It’s good practice for my own house which isn’t quite ready for shades/curtains but I do plan to make them eventually!

Filed under Family, Planning, Quilting.
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Some more quilting

29 January 2011, 5:07 am

I’ve post dated this so it posts after Mom has gotten her quilt so it’s a bit of a surprise, she knows I’m quilting it but doesn’t know I plan to have it done by the weekend I see her so I can give this to her.  So pretend this is a Friday morning post.

Thursday night I finished up quilting the last 3 blocks on Mom’s quilt and then quickly quilted the inner border with just a wandering loopy design.  I’m actually not sure what to quilt in the outer border, maybe a loopy design with some snowflakes mixed in if I’m feeling adventurous.  Maybe the word snowflake and winter mixed in as well.

So here’s the quilt so far:

Blocks and inner border quilted!

A close up of the blocks/border quilting

I’m hoping tonight (Friday night) I can finish up the border, and sew on the binding.  Then during the drive Saturday I will whip stitch the binding down so it’s ready for her!

Filed under Quilting.
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