Noticing Things

I've mentioned before that when I'm quilting a quilt I see every stinking millimeter of the top. I inspect for tears, holes, threads, and other anomalies. Like the one below.

Blood? Food? Drink?

I'll be continuing on with Janices quilt later today but this morning is skating day and we have to get groceries while we are in Midland. 

Since I had a guild meeting last night and we didn't get home until nearly 9:00 nothing else was done in the studio other then cutting out more strips for the other project I'm working on. 

New Hours

I went into my web site yesterday to modify hours of availability with my 'retirement'. Same with Google. However, one of the two (I can't remember which one) would only let me either be closed on Friday or stay with the same hours (10-4). I wanted to reduce Friday to 10-12 since we seem to get pulled away on Friday afternoons for one reason or another. 

I opted to mark it closed and if somebody needs to come on Friday I'll make arrangements to be here. 

Meanwhile, here's some of the quilting going into Janice's quilt.

A corner

The border corner

After working I took a few minutes to cut up a bunch of strips. More on this later. 

Strips in green, white/off white, and red

I got the top together on the horse quilt and have to get a bunch of borders in next.

After getting that top where I wanted to be last night, I moved over to DW. I removed and trimmed Jacobs quilt and made the binding after that. It's not attached but ready for me to do when next available. Not tonight.

Tonight I have a QQQ meeting up in Oscoda and we have to leave here around 4:30 to get up there in time for the meeting. 

Change the Web Site

If I put a blurb in here I'll be more inclined to remember to do something later. Like changing the hours on Google and on the web site. I'll be closed on Wednesdays, remember? 

This is what I'll be working on for the next few days. 

I laid in bed last night thinking about how I'm going to quilt this, but thought it was pieced differently than what I was 'quilting' in my head. Back to the drawing board.

Meanwhile, nothing quilting or knitting yesterday. We were in Mt. Pleasant most of the afternoon and once we got home our neighbors three doors down were out to the property and we went to visit until nearly sunset. 

Retreat Dates

I'll be out of the studio all next week. Monday through Thursday (October 12-15) I'll be retreating at The Springs. Friday through Sunday (October 16-18) we should be in Ohio. That depends on this big girl. 

Not feeling the greatest

Hazel has some bad teeth and I don't know if they will just clean them or remove them. If they remove them, we won't be doing any traveling because it's not fair to the dog sitter to have to deal with her convalescence. 

I finished Lynettes quilt and hung it on DW temporarily while I was doing admin stuff for the project and look how the sun shows the detail I inserted in this.

Sometimes the back looks as nice as the front

I wanted to get on DW last night to start working on the first (second now) QAL but I knew if I didn't get this one below bound I was breaking my own "rules". I know if I don't get the binding done I'll regret it later. 

For Zechariah

This quilt is going to my youngest grandson along with a matching pillow, which I started last night instead of long arming. Today though I need to get caught up on the Temperature quilt. I am way behind on that. We also have lunch plans with mom and so I may be just cutting pieces instead of actually sewing them together. I'll take it to retreat to work on if I have to.

Have you priced poly fill lately? Holy cow, it's averaging $7/lb versus $3/lb less than five years ago. And I have six pillows to make all needing about 1.5lbs each. Yikes. Good thing I started making holiday gifts early this year so I can spread that expense out a few months. 

Out of the Box

As we get older we fall into a comfortable routine. When the routine is disrupted it's like working outside of the box or coloring outside of the lines. Remember in our younger years routine changes didn't seem as big a deal?

Today is back to the norm, but I quite like getting outside of the box. I like change. I like to mix things up. While getting back to the norm is like a favorite pair of shoes; comfortable but not quite as supportive or clean anymore, let's get those shoes really dirty! More in a bit.

Here is some of the quilting going into Lynettes quilt. 

Frosty?

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

Honk

The previous night I did get all the blocks done on the QAL and only had to do the border. Here are the last four blocks. 

Block 12

Block 11

Block 10

block nine

And the last big block in the Quilt Room is finished meaning it's time to get the whole thing put together.

Last block is done

I have a few hours left to go in Lynette's quilt this morning and then my day will be done. I may start in on the fifth quilt from Diane, but since it's supposed to be nice today (another pic-perf autumn day) it may be difficult to stay in the studio this afternoon. 

Yesterday was another 'norm' day, but I'm doing my skating exercises to regain the balance I've lost and adjust to my new 'older' body (which is not 16 anymore). I'm planning on sticking with my skating (re)endeavor and that's getting the shoes very dirty!

Where Was I Yesterday?

I did do quilting things both Tuesday and Wednesday, but yesterday morning I was off and running with Jim. We were doing this...

Trying to get the old boots off. The bolts/nuts were rusted on. 

My old skates received a minor overhaul. New boots, cleaned bearings, and new inserts. Here they are ready for me to pick up on Sunday...

The skates reconditioned

Here's the thing about my skating habit. I used to go whenever I could. Didn't matter the weather, temperatures (most rinks are not air conditioned), inside or outside, I loved to skate and would get on them as much as possible. I started training for speed/distance competitions and then I found out I was pregnant.

The doctor said I was not allowed on my skates. Life, moving, college, boys, moving, new careers, moving, and now age have gotten in the way along my lifes path. 

Nearly 40 years later I'm treading into a very familiar, yet oddly new experience. When ya start losing your balance (as we do as we age), skating becomes a new experience all over again. And, my skates were not done yesterday in time for me to enjoy getting on the floor. I grabbed a pair of rentals and at least played for a little while. Well, played is not correct. Trying not to fall is more like it.

But it'll come. 

Back to the quilting end of things. Tuesday was a busy day. Here is what I've been working on the past two days...

Another Tilda

And since I've been long winded this morning I'll just tell you all the blocks in the 9-Patch QAL are done. I just need to get the border in. The last block in the Quilt Room is being constructed and I've got a little less than half done on Lynette's Tilda quilt above. 

It May Be...

I had a call into a skating rink in Midland about my old skates and getting them retrofitted for new boots. The plates, wheels, and bearings are all in beautiful shape. The trucks may be dry rotted and the boots are way too small (I've had these since pre-pregnancy). They were my competition skates and after having children, going back to university, moving, starting new careers, etc., skating was put on the back burner.

But when Jim and I met I told him then I'd be a horseback riding, water skiing, roller skating grandmammy. Well, the horse thing isn't going to happen. I don't think our neighbors would appreciate horses on the property. But the other two, yep, that's doable.

Wednesday morning is the "geezer" skate at the rink in Midland. I need more exercise. I LOVE to skate, and when we go down to Ohio in a few weeks, skating is on the menu with the grandkids. Can't use rentals. No good southerner would ever use instant grits, just like no good skater ever uses rentals.

So, if this pans out, my studio will be closed on Wednesdays. Skating is from 10:30 to noon and we wouldn't get back home until around 1:00. 

Meanwhile, since we had to run to Midland for the skate appointment, we also dropped off the borrowed receiver from our pontoon seller, mailed out some birthday cards, and then got back home after 5:00. 

I did long arm in the morning, but barely got one pass done as I'm into a lot of the lower witch detail. 

I did get this put together after we returned.

Q.U.I.L.T. Banner

Today we have the Lansing grandkids on their way up with their parents. The adults will watch the MSU football game against Wisconsin and I'll be playing with the kids (since I'm not really an adult). 😇

The 'B' family usually stays until the kids' bedtime so very doubtful if I'll get much done in the studio today. I do have to switch out all my back to school decorations with Halloween stuff so I'll get to work on that until they arrive. Which is about an hour or so from now. 

Schedule/Hours Revision

Since I'm 'retiring' in less than two weeks I'm thinking about changing my available hours for customer drops offs/pick ups. What do you think? Which day(s) should I eliminate or maybe hours to cut back?

I don't have to decide yet. Here's some background fill going into Lynette's quilt.

A nice swirl and some pebbles here and there

Two hearts and the 'Q' and 'U'

Once we got home from groceries it was still raining pretty hard and there's nothing to watch on TV on Thursday nights (not that I 'watch' TV), but Jim was going to be busy playing his games so I stayed out and constructed the first couple of blocks for the Quilt Room. 

We're headed to a sale over in Harrison this morning. All fabric $5 a pound. You can get about three yards of fabric in a pound and the math works. Can't pass this up and we'll go over and see what we can find. 

I'll be working this afternoon once we return from town. Oh, and all that rain we got over the past 24 or more hours; the lake is filling up nicely. We are still about a foot or a little more before reaching the summer lake levels but it's starting to look like a lake instead of a lazy river! 😊

The Doug (Dug, Dugg?)

Normal work day yesterday except I knocked off a little early. I took this pic before we left.

A view from our front (back) deck

I wanted to show the Fowler's where the new pontoon was going to 'live' over the summer. Speaking of pontoons, it's now in our yard. Which is why I had to knock off early. Jim wanted to avoid post-work traffic going through Midland with a pontoon boat. 

Home at last

I was pondering all week what to name the pontoon. It's a Bennington. Caleb's FFA advisors last name was Pennington. His first name was Doug. I keep calling the pontoon Doug so I believe that is going to be the name we settle on for the new toy.

Once we got home and settled Doug in the yard (for now) and let the girls out for a bit, I hustled in the studio and was able to get the next set of sashings/borders quilted in and the four blocks above done on the QAL.

Then I started cutting. 

Just a few pieces in the next block

It had been dark for quite some time by the time I left out of the studio. Making up for the couple of hours we were gone maybe?

A very rainy day today (hurray) which makes quilting perfect!

High Expectations

Wanna see the cutest baby ever?

Our Germany granddaughter

She loved the pumpkin patch yesterday.

I'm quilting along yesterday and I noticed I was throwing a lot of little threads on the floor. More than usual. I was picking them off the top I was working on and decided to do a clean sweep of about an 18" square area.

This is what I got.

Seriously?

Maybe I have higher expectations than other quilters? I know while I'm pressing my seams I pick seam threads out during the whole construction process because they'll just come to haunt me later on the frame if I don't. 

Do others not care? I'm a rare long armer that will actually clean your top up for you while I'm quilting. Simply because I don't just plug in a motif and push play on the computer and walk away and do something else. I see every millimeter of the top and take care of issues (threads, tears, missed seams) while I'm working.

If I wasn't a long armer and had to send quilts out to be quilted, I'd make damn sure I got rid of as many seam threads as I could. I expect myself to take pride in my work and not make others work harder due to the lack of caring/laziness. 

Soap box done. In the last hour of my work day mom stopped by and stayed for a few hours to visit. She also needed to pick up one of the quilts dropped off last week for her new bed on its way.

After she left I jumped right in to working on the Quilt Room. It was time to put the next big section together.

We finally have a rainy day today; we sure needed it. It's easier to stay rooted to the machine working when the weather adds to the ambiance; love rainy days. It's not going to be a long day though. We are hopefully going to be picking up the new pontoon later this afternoon. So. Fricken. Excited! 

Getting a Late Start

When I woke up at 7:30 this morning my intention was to just lay there and watch nature outside the window. I woke back up around 8:40. Oops. Must have been tired.

Dianes quilt is nearly done but I'm shifting over to this piece to get it done for the holiday.

Lynette's Quilted Witch by Lori Holt

Pumpkins!

I'm free motion quilting pumpkins of all shapes and sizes into the border. 

I pieced the next block in the Quilt Room

Scrap bins and bolts of fabric

Block #4

Block #3

Block #2

Block #1

Not sure why these loaded in reverse but I started the QAL with Natalia Bonner of Piece n' Quilt in Utah last night. I was having so much fun I did four blocks. I had all three long arms busy yesterday!

More of the same today while enjoying the picture perfect weather the past week (mid-70's with sunshine).

Bedroom Make Over

I did a little knitting yesterday afternoon while relaxing and snuggling with the dogs.

Have you ever prepped a room for painting? I've started (as you know) by getting things out (like the dresser), but yesterday morning was spent washing walls, trim, ceiling fans, and doors. While I'm not painting the ceiling fan or door, it's nice to start with a clean slate. And, frankly, they needed it.

Here's the bedroom with the 'before' pic.

I'll repost the before pic after we get the room finished, but it's going to be a few months before that happens. I have to get paint first and with that I'll need my mom. She knows color and coordinates. I'll leave everything up to her.

Diane's quilt on Bernie will be finished today and then I'll be moving over to Marty to start Lynettes Quilted Witch. No pics of that yet. 

It's Too Early

Even my computer is misbehaving this morning because it's too darn early. 

A fun new border treatment

Following the lines for quilting

I"m having fun playing with the piece I'm working yesterday and today. Diane gives me free rein and so I get to experiment with new motifs. Once work was done I continued with what I started last night. 

I got all the white (background) cut last night topping over 600 pieces. 

Time for some fun. This is the fat quarter bundle going into the next project. The sun last night was shining through (well, trying to shine through my very dirty window) onto the pressing table. At the angle the autumn/spring sun beams fall every wrinkle in the fabric is visible. 

I started using the Acorn on the fabrics to pretreat but found it wasn't doing a whole lot. I mean, it was easing the very light creases, but those deep creases were not coming out. 

Science experiment time (while I had the sun in my favor), I got all my pretreats out to see which one worked the best on fat quarters that have been folded and squished into that cellophane for who knows how long? 

Let me tell ya, this is one of those examples where the most expensive isn't always the best. That $1.49 can of starch outdid the other two by almost double. I know starch gets a bad wrap (attracts bugs, sticky, etc.) but I"m not planning on going on a picnic with the quilt I'm building and quite honestly, after the first wash, the stuff comes out of the quilt so it's not going to be there forever. AND, we don't have bugs in our house since we treat for them every other month. 

I'm kind of disappointed in my findings actually. I was hoping the Best Press would have been the winner since you can get it in so many scents and it's not as gummy on the dispenser as the Acorn. It was the last place winner. Unfortunately. 

Okay, why am I up so early? I have a very busy day. Right now I"m heading to my annual physical. Once home, I'm heading to Au Gres for a fabric sale a fellow guild member is having; $2/yard . We have to get groceries tonight, Jim has food pantry, and we have an appointment in Midland to look at a pontoon at 5:30. I'll get some quilting done in between all of that. I hope. 

Do You Pretreat?

Sue's quilt is quilted on Marty but yet to come off the frame. Once that's done this morning I'll be turning to Bernie and working on this.

Diane's fourth quilt in the project pile for her

Once work was done yesterday the moving/cleaning started. I was able to get the dresser into the studio with all my under-a-yard cuts in it. It's going to hang out with all the customer quilts waiting in queue.

Once I was done with that for the day (more to come in the following week(s)) I was contemplating starting a new project and then after looking through my bucket list stash finally decided on something. Oh the choices! 

The Quilt Room is still going strong, but I like to have more than one project going at a time and I have nothing else in the works at the moment. Not until I can get to a retreat and get the Flower Power and Cowboy Boots on the wall to get them together correctly.

I do not normally pretreat my fabrics. I used to. I used to prewash and starch all the fabrics I used in a quilt. And then I started using precuts and it's pretty hard to prewash jelly roll strips or 5/10" squares. 

I LOVE Acorn!

And when I started using precuts I stopped the whole prewash/pretreat thing altogether. 

I recently watched a YouTube video about why I should at least pretreat fabrics before delving into a project. Well, I'm still not going to pretreat precuts but I will yardage and a FQ bundle. This next project has me using both and so it's getting the royal treatment. 

I hope it makes a difference because I need to piece pretty tight with Granny Squares by Lori Holt; which is the project I'm marathon cutting for.

I know a lot of quilters who have cutting their fabric at the top of the dislike list. It's actually one of my favorite things to do. I may feel differently after cutting over 700 white pieces and nearly 800 colored fabrics but that's what I started doing last night. Cutting for the next project. 

I also need to make a small design thing so I can lay out my blocks before piecing them together. I'll be working on this at retreat(s) because it's more like assembly line sewing and won't have to really think while making the blocks while gabbing with folks. I've learned my lesson about doing an intense project at retreat. Not a good decision. 

A Few Household Changes

Mom wants to get rid of her bedroom set. Not sure why because it's gorgeous. We are inheriting said bedroom set to include a large dresser, night stand, and a sleigh bed frame and mattress. The situation we have with that is moving the very heavy set. And, I need to rearrange/paint the room.

How is this quilting relate? The other lighter cherry dresser we have in the guest bedroom has all my under a yard fabrics in it. It will need to be moved out to the studio to make room for the other set. Jims 'dresser' (it's very small) will be moved upstairs as will the two mattresses from his downstairs bedroom.

Moms new bed should be here in a few weeks so I have very little time to get all of this done. I think maybe we'll move the fabric dresser tonight?

Anyway, back to the studio stuff. I have this going into Sues quilt on Marty. She wanted very light custom quilting in here so I'm doing a piano key in the border and a continuous curve in every other block in the body. I'm nearly half-way complete. 

Piano key border with cc's in every other block

I cut out and pieced the next block in the Quilt Room. 

Books!

I jumped on DW after I got that finished and am on the last row of Book Nook. Jim is concerned about him moving upstairs in that the girls use that bed to look out the window for incoming visitors. They mash down any dirt they have on their paws and although I have a protective 'cover' on the top of the bed, it's not quite big enough to cover the whole thing.

I guess I need to make another cover and I think Christmas is a good time to do that. We can have all the family long arm something for memories. The current cover is just that. When I first got DW we loaded some fabric onto the machine and let all the grownups play. I'll keep that quilt forever even though it's not finished or correct. But, it's memories. Once we get to this age, that's about all that really matters anymore.

A Day of Small

Diane's quilt is done (those small ones usually go pretty quick) and I'll be working on a Trip Around the World on Monday. Meanwhile, after I was able to get Diane's quilt off and trimmed (and all that goes with it), I loaded this onto Bernie to work today. 

I didn't actually baste it in but it's ready to work when we get back from town. Since Bernie is free and DW is not, and since I'll have this done before Monday and having to load another Diane quilt I thought I'd get this done toot sweet. Prior to loading the State of Michigan, I did this little project for my tools I use on DW...

A travel case for teaching

With all DW's things inside

Without anything in it

It was still early so I began piecing the next block in the Quilt Room.

We are headed to visit my mom this morning since she just got back from her up north trip. The game tonight is at 7:00 so I'll be in the studio quite late tonight. I suppose I'm going back to my second shift days at the hospital. 😊