Still quilting on Joanna’s Chicks!
Month: September 2009
Stash & Quilting Report
- Incoming Yardage to date: 75 yds.
- Outgoing Yardage to date: 56.25 yds.
- Total Stash Busted to date: -18.75 yds.
Ok, so my time in the positive was short lived. But I love my new batiks! (see previous post for the full disclosure with photos you will drool over) So, I’m not feeling too bad about it. Ok, not bad at all. I don’t think I will, either, as long as there is movement going through my stash. Some in, some out…just not all in, in, in.
During my lunch hours, or while I’m cooking something for dinner, and I’m waiting, I’ve been sitting down at the sewing machine and working on the pieced borders for my Boston Commons.
I also got labels made for my friend’s comfort quilt. I haven’t finished trimming the jump threads, so just ignore them. It took me right at an hour to get the first one all programmed into the machine. The stitchout was 74 minutes, and that did not include the time it took me to change thread colors. I thought I was never going to get done with it. I started on it after work one evening, so I was already tired, but it was worth it. I also made a small label to go beside it, just stating that I made the quilt. Couldn’t fit it on the other label. A more experienced embroiderer might have been able to, but this was the best I could do. I don’t have any embroidery software yet, so I have to sit at the machine and program each letter in one by one, and it will only let me put so many characters on a line. So the machine stops after each line of stitching, and even if I’m not changing colors, I have to be close by to restart the machine. I hate to invest a bunch of money in embroidery software that I’m not sure I will use that much. There is a lot about the embroidery that still confuses me. I may address some of that in a future post. Maybe some of you embroidery gurus can clear up a question or two for me.
I started working on Joanna’s quilt a couple of days ago, but until today, I didn’t have anything to show for my efforts, except SID (stitch in the ditch). I’m sure she is anxious to see how it’s coming, so if you can stand a dose of cuteness, I’ll show you a peek!
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday and have a great week, y’all!
The Stash
Judy has challenged us to post pictures of our stash. I’m game.
This is more fabric, and my magazine stash, and the very bottom box is more fabric that I have set aside for two different quilts I plan to make. Someday. One is a chicken theme quilt, and you can see the rooster fabric in the box, that I plan to use for backing. Those two sacks there are full of fabric, also.
And, this was going to be in tomorrow’s stash report, but I may as well spill the beans now! When I’m bad, I’m very bad. 23 yards of batiks were delivered to my door today. It hasn’t even made it’s way to my stash yet. I’m just enjoying it’s beauty as it lays there in my chair and across my ottoman.
In my defense, it was all on sale! I didn’t pay over $4.00 a yard for one piece of it. Thousands of Bolts is having a big batik sale. Hurry! Two days left! There’s still time for you to get some, too! Bwahahahaha!
And the Butterfly Emerges!
Remember the caterpillar post from a couple of weeks ago? I’ve been watching the chrysalis, checking on it everyday. I went to work this morning, came home at lunch and found this:
Beautiful!!
Stash & Progress Report
First, I will get my complaining and whining out of the way. I had great intentions to get so much accomplished this weekend. Then wham! Wake up Saturday morning, early, with a headache. Get up, take Imitrex, back to bed, next time I wake up it is after 9! And I still feel cruddy. Head is better, but I feel cruddy, sluggish, achy all over. So needless to say, my Saturday wasn’t what I hoped it to be. I did manage to get the cute piggie quilt finished and ready to be delivered this week. Today, I felt better, but my shoulder & rib pain has really been ramped up the last few days, as well as my allergies. Some of you know the latest on my issues with my shoulder blade & ribs, but for those that don’t, I am now seeing a physical therapist, at the urging of my chiropractor. I had my evaluation with her Wednesday, and she agrees that it is not normal, the way my shoulder blade is moving. No one can really figure out WHY I am having the issues I am having, which is frustrating.
I go back next Wednesday, and she is going to show me how to tape my shoulder blade, to try to stabilize it, and will have some exercises for me then, also. She has had one other patient in her eleven years that had similar symptoms. She said my shoulder blade is the only one she has felt doing what mine is doing. Apparently, it is moving around way more than it should, and going where it shouldn’t. And, my chiro has to keep putting my stupid ribs back in place. My entire right side rib cage is lower than the left, and there are three that keep “popping out of place”. He can get them back, and within days, they are out again. My shoulder blade sounds like it is grinding against bone. It sounds, and feels, terrible. Pain ranges from moderate to excruciating, and is near constant. I also think it causes some of my migraines. The PT said she hopes that we can get some improvement, but that it will probably never be all the way better. But some better is better than none better. Sorry to bore you with all that, but you never know when someone else might be having the same problems, and either you help them with sharing your information, or they might help you with some advice or answers you haven’t found yet.
So now, back to stash reporting. After today, my stash amount busted is now back in the positive for the year. A whopping 4.25 yards! I busted another 4 yds. this week, backing the comfort quilt for our friend with breast cancer. I got the quilting finished on it today.
I love the pink thread over the cream strips.
I also managed to get zippers attached to my leaders on my longarm. I hope I like using them. I did NOT enjoy the process of attaching them! But they are on, and I am looking forward to giving them a try.
I’m looking forward to getting started on my next customer quilt, but I still have some finalizing of the quilting plan to finish. Joanna, I hope to be sending you some more ideas over the next day or two, if all goes as planned. I will try very hard to be able to get started on it this coming weekend.
Speaking of weekend, I am sad that it is almost over already, especially since I wasted most of Saturday, just trying to feel better. Oh well. Have a blessed & wonderful week y’all!
I love my STASH!
Friday afternoon my Mom called to tell me a dear friend of ours has been diagnosed with breast cancer. And, being the quilter that I am, I ran straight to my stash. Oh yes, she must have a quilt! I had a stack of 5″ pink charm squares, and this is what I did with them. Started on this yesterday morning, by early afternoon today, it was a completed flimsy. I can’t wait to watch it be transformed by the quilting. I’m hoping to squeeze it in, for a quick panto, between the customer quilt that is on the machine, and the next one in line, so I can get it bound, labeled and off to our friend. I am going to estimate that I busted 4 yds in the top. No new fabric in this week.
Speaking of customer quilts…the next one in line is soooooo cute! It is appliqued “Chubby Chicks” in cute colors. I will enjoy working on it. I will be blogging it, so it’s owner can check in on it. I just hope I do it justice! Right now I am quilting appliqued pigs. I really started second guessing my quilting choices a little over halfway through, and had a mini meltdown. I took it off the machine to turn and repin it, so I could quilt the last two borders more easily, and took a some pics before I put it back on. I think it helped to be able to step back and see the whole quilt at once.
I’m sure I will worry about it a bit, until I get to hand it back to it’s owner and get her reaction. I’m such a worry wart about that. And it’s usually the quilts that I think will be the easiest. Somewhere in the process, my confidence takes a hike, and in comes self-doubt and second guessing, and “oh my God, I’m a failure” thoughts. Hopefully, she will love it and all my worry will have been for nothing. Time will tell.
And these are my pretty new flowers that my hubby brought home Friday, to plant in my flower bed. Purple asters…I love them!
Tomorrow, I’m off to Amarillo for the yearly “female” doctor visit. Yucko! Hope your Monday is better than that.
The center is complete!
I think the next step may take me awhile 🙂
Caterpillar Post!
I haven’t posted any caterpillar posts on my blog, in quite awhile. However, if you put “caterpillar”, “swallowtail”, “butterfly” or “butterflies” in the search box in the upper right corner, you will find several older posts with lots of pics of the black swallowtail butterflies and caterpillars, that I like to watch in my yard. I plant dill and parsley for them every year, and I get lots of caterpillars. However, I had never been able to find one making it’s chrysalis. Until today!! I have had some trouble with birds finding them, and when they do, they just wipe out the whole lot of them. So, when I found this last batch on my parsley, I put some chicken wire over them to keep the birds out. I also hoped that they might use it to attach themselves to, when they were ready to make their chrysalis. Nope, they’ve been crawling off somewhere else. Yesterday, Greg noticed a smaller one hanging on the underside of the wire. It’s a smaller one, so I thought maybe it was just hanging there to molt it’s skin. I checked on it this morning, and it was still there, and I thought I could see a strand of silk looking stuff. So, I took some pics, just in case. These were taken before we left for Sunday School. Oh, if you click on the pictures, they will pop up in their own window, and then you can click them again, and see them really close up.
I checked on it after church, and it still didn’t look much different. I went out just a few minutes ago, right before 4:00 pm, and wow! Look at it now! How cool is that? (and no, it doesn’t take much to amuse me…lol) But really, aren’t God’s creations just amazing?
I’m so excited that I finally found one! This is the area around them, so no wonder they are hard to find. My tomato plants are next them, and a small tree is also there, with leaves that they can just blend right into.
I hope I get to see it emerge, 0r at least soon after, while it is drying it’s wings. If I do, I will post pics of that, also.
I just kept sewing yesterday!
By the time yesterday was done, I had worked a bit on FIVE different quilts. Well six, if you count the prep work on a customer top I’m fixing to start quilting. But I made a little bit of progress on five of my own WIP’s. Yay!
I made great headway on my Boston Commons. I have one more row like these, then adding white fabric around and between, a pieced border, and then I am going to add an additional plain border all around so I have some more space to quilt feathers in. The original pattern, which is by Darlene Zimmerman, ends with a narrow border of the the squares and white triangles.
While I was sewing Gracie’s Star together, and while I was piecing on the above quilt, I worked on my leaders/enders quilt, Oklahoma Backroads, and I had my embroidery machine running, cranking out some blocks for a red & white Christmas quilt.
And then, when I went to bed, I took my 9P & stripe quilt with me, and worked on knotting and burying some of the thread tails I left on it. I should have done it while I was going along on it…now it feel like I will never get them all done. 😦 I’m glad I decided to go back to a backtack before I finished. And I still have to bind it!
I did get my backing and binding picked out for Gracie’s Star. Now I just have to decide on which quilting pattern I want to use. I think it’s a bit dark & busy to spend a lot of time on custom, but a pretty allover will finish it off nicely.
The first part of this year I just kept starting new projects. Maybe this last part will be about finishing! I would like to finish these projects I have started with my stash fabrics!
Sewing, sewing sewing!
It may go into remission occasionally, but that Quilting Fever always comes back! Gracie’s Star is now a flimsy! I have to pick out my backing fabric and an allover quilting pattern for it. I’m going to use Quilter’s Dream deluxe cotton batting. It will be cozy!
And I quilted this cute pumpkin table topper for my friend, Betty. If you are reading, I hope you like it, Betty Lou! I will bring it to you Tuesday, unless you want to swing by and get it sooner.
Trying to decide which project I want to work on next, while I’m on such a good roll!
Ramblings From Randi, The Wild Rose Quilter 