No Sewing Weekend

Last week I managed to get a few more rounds on the Valentine quilt during the week, but I didn't get to sew at all this weekend. I also think I might have over estimated just a bit when I said I was halfway done with the blocks last week. As of this morning I have 4 of the 25 blocks fully sewn, but not squared up. The other 9 blocks that have the panel centers need 1 more round of strips and the 12 paisley centered blocks need 2 rounds each. Not bad.

What could be more important than sewing? My front door. Week before last Don slammed the front door and it bounced back and ripped the strike plate and a big section of door jamb out. My suggestion was we use the dead bolt to lock the door for a few weeks while we saved up for the really nice door I've been eyeing. Unfortunately Don can be a little stubborn. He wanted to replace the jamb immediately. So last Friday he went off to the Blue home improvement store and bought the stuff he needed to repair it and instead of just replacing the piece that was damaged he decided to take out all 3 pieces "so they would all be new." I have to say, my husband will whip through car repairs that make me want to suck my thumb and replaced my sewing room light switch when the old one kept blowing the basement breaker and I had given up and was calling electricians, but he generally leaves 90% of things cooking and wood related to me. I'm not necessarily better, but I watched my Dad do a lot of stuff and all those hours of HGTV are good for something. I got home last Friday evening to find that I had no front door, no door jamb, no exterior trim and a husband who was too frustrated and cold to re-install the door and had broken some of the existing pieces getting it out. Did I mention that we had no front door and it was about 25 degrees?

Leaving the oldest boy behind to guard the house we went out in search of a pre-hung door. No luck finding the right size at the Blue store, but we got lucky at the Orange store. There was the correct size door on clearance for $69. Of course it looks like an apartment door, all plain and ugly, but it was the right price and we actually got it in the hole last Friday night and the majority of the gaps sealed up. This week I bought new exterior trim and have been painting it in the kitchen, but I'm afraid the painting of the exterior part of the door is going to have to wait. Every time I have time, the weather is too cold or too wet. Last week when I had to work....gorgeous, sunny, 60 and 70 degree days that would have been perfect for painting. Of course Don is banned from painting...........

What To Do With An Extra Day Off

Sew of course.
I started a new project yesterday. Not the project I had intended, but one I've been sitting on for a long time. It all started with a Moda Valentine panel from 3, maybe 4 years ago. I remember being married when I bought it, so it's no more than 6 years old. Periodically I would pull it out and remember that I'd bought something that went with it and the parts kind of piled up in a bin. I actually intended to steal the pinks and greens for another project, but after doodling around in EQ6 for a while I decided to do what I'd always intended and make a random Log Cabin with some blocks centered with the panel squares and some centered with a pink/green paisley.
Log Cabins go so fast, I'm already about halfway done with the rounds. These are finishing in the 16-18 inch range so it will be a roughly queen sized quilt when I'm finished. I had more variety in the greens, so the pinks are all cut in roughly 3" strips and the greens are 2". I wanted them to finish pretty square but still very, very relaxed, so I cut the strips and centers about 1/4" out of square and try to keep them from going too crooked in any one direction on each round.

I had good intentions of getting lots done today as there was no school and I was home with the boys. My sewing machine had other ideas...running out of thread on one block and bobbin on the next! Add in the shouting from upstairs "He hit me!" "He was touching my stuff!" and I think I'm going to go trade my scissors for a shot glass and a TV remote.

Oh, don't forget to check out the cool pink & green stripe in the first photo that will be the binding because I needed a good excuse to buy it this morning.

A Star is Born (Mostly)

I've completed piecing the star for my Lone Star and am auditioning background fabrics, currently leaning heavily toward black. I'm really pleased with how this turned out, expecially since I was hating piecing diamonds around 10 o'clock this morning. Really the only thing that kept me from dumping this in a drawer was my goal of finishing everything I start this year. The center is even flat. Well, mostly flat. Flatter than I had expected, given that the long seems all seemed to need a lot of adjusting to make the seams match (again "mostly" is the key word here).
I don't have the black for the background, so this is being set aside until payday. But only until payday, I promise. I think I'm going to pull some fabric I've been saving and start on a slightly edited version of this quilt.

On a side note. I'm bad with titles. In fact I can sit here an type for hours and then my brain just freezes up when the time comes to put on a title and then it's either unreasonably dorky (see above) or gives no clue as to the content of the post. Do you write the title first or last?

Night at the Quilt Store

Last night was UFO night at the quilt store. While I've never taken any regular classes there, I really enjoy these nights as a way to spend relatively uninterrupted blocks of time sewing, as well as getting to see what other folks are working on and what's new in the world of fabric. We ate and sewed and shopped a little from 5pm to midnight and I got a lot done on the first quilt of 2009.

I also realized that I set no goals or resolutions for this year. I'm not a resolution kind of person, but I do want to set a goal for the year that NO quilt started in 2009 will become a UFO. I've added a list to the sidebar where I will add a list of each project I start. At this point the definition of "start" is going to be when I cut fresh fabric for something that has no parts partially sewn already. I might add that any UFO projects I pick back up have to be completed too, but there's some unsewing intensive stuff in that bin and we all know how fun that is.

The store that hosts these evenings is one of my favorite quilt stores ever. Someday, when I have a shop of my own, it will look remarkably like High Prairie Quilts inside and if I get really lucky I'll find staff as welcoming and helpful. For anyone reading this in the Denver metro area, it's also their Open House sale weekend, with 20% off all the regular priced stuff and 15% off classes. (I'm going back this morning for some fabric.)

This Lone Star is the quilt I'm working on right now, I cut it last weekend so it's the first quilt on that sidebar list. Last night this went from a baggie full of diamonds to what you see below. Two sets of strips are sewn together which is hard to see in the picture. I'm being careful about matching the corners, but not obsessive, so it's going pretty fast. I was 5 pink diamonds short last night, luckily I have another piece of that. I should have known I was short as the blue fabric had to move up the design as I didn't have enough and the pink was also a fat quarter, I just had two.It was an interesting night at home while I was gone quilting, but that's a story for a post AFTER breakfast.

The End of 2008

OK, so 2008 ended several days ago, but we were travelling and had no Internet for the past few days.

We spent Christmas at home in Colorado, opening a mountain of LEGOs, eating a half batch of Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls & then cleaning up, cooking and eating a very nice dinner of ham with friends & family.

Our plan for the rest of the holiday week had been a leisurely weekend of packing, then driving to Port Townsend to spend a couple of days with my folks. Christmas day, when talking with my dad, he mentioned that we should come earlier than planned as everyone else was arriving a day before us. Friday morning the weather forecast for Denver was 10 inches of snow. We rushed the packing, fueled the truck and begged the kennel to take the dog a day early, allowing us to hit the road around noon. We traded drivers every 200 miles or so and drove straight through to Poulsbo, WA in 26 hours. Despite the horrible forecast, Colorado & Wyoming were dry & windy and we didn't start hitting nasty snow until western Montana, but it lasted right through to Snohomish Pass just before Seattle. Frankly, I'm not sure they got any snow in Denver as our whole yard melted while we were gone.

We saw this Blazer in the parking lot at lunch one day on our trip. It didn't even have a lift, but someone needed a step up. I hope they didn't see me giggling & taking pictures.

While in the Northwest, we stayed 2 nights in Poulsbo, then 3 more at Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend. Both are cute little touristy towns. Poulsbo has a quilt shop, so I picked up a tiny bit of fabric and a couple of magazines to entertain myself as there was no TV to go along with the previously mentioned lack of Internet and in my rush of packing I didn't bring a single book.

We visited with my parents.....and with my Dad's side of the family. It had been 7 years since I had seen most of them so they had never met my husband or the youngest boy.

We had an uneventful drive home and picked up my girl from doggy jail this morning. She's home and all cozied up to her "blankie" in the basement where she likes to hang out with us.
Now the holidays are over and some deadline free sewing can commence.