Familiar Sound

While eating my breakfast I thought the neighbors were doing something. I heard the sound and it sounded vaguely familiar. Then I realized what it was. They are [once again] working on the dam! In under a year we should be getting our lake back!!!

Here's what I'll be working on today on Bernie...

A little baby quilt for Patty

This is going to get a quick E2E in here. I have customers coming in a little bit so it'll be easy to pause and resume when they get here and then after they leave.

I had a brain fart moment yesterday when I talked about Jims passion and dah, what was I thinking? The guy loves to can and freeze things. He likes to make food to share and for us to have all through the non-growing months. It's been seven months since he's been able to do it but now the season starts...

Canning season begins

While he was doing that I finished Scrap Happy (or Colorful X's and O's) on DW and started frame ironing the next back. I'm going to load Marty today too while working on the quilt above on Bernie. A full day all around. 

Thank you also to Jim for helping to cut batting for the next couple of quilts because it's so nearly impossible with my dumb cast to tackle it. Eight more days with this stupid thing!

Not Much to Share

We did a little bit of everything this weekend. The only sewing I did was on two 100 blocks. Yep, that's it. 

The rest of the weekend was spent moving dirt, steam cleaning the furniture, washing all the downstairs quilts, mowing, trimming, visiting my mom, and taking Sunday afternoon to just relax and rejuvenate. Jim and I go 100%  during the week, and let's face it, we're not 21 anymore. We need a half day to let our bodies recoup because we know, until this addition is done, we have a lot of work ahead during the week. 

Here's some of the quilting going into Sandy's Flea Market if that helps?

I love the texture wool batting provides

Hazel and Lucy were being silly on the couch yesterday. I got a few good pics of them playing but this is my favorite... 

Smile!

Mostly more Flea Market work today and then when Jim gets home, more dirt work. Yeah, when you only haul it a buggy load at a time (in our ATV), it takes a while to diminish the huge piles down. And we need to prepare the girls' new pen shortly to get ready for winter so the south pile needs to get out of here. 

Zero Piecing, Zero Quilting

Not one thread was put into fabric this weekend. Instead, screws, nails, wood, sheet metal, and a lot of caulk was used to prepare for fabricology in the future. 

Here's a few pics of this weekends construction progress...

Getting the last of the roof boards on. Ben and Caleb being themselves.

We had a weird cut in the section Ben is nearest and it took a while to get everything fit in. Ben and I had gotten most of the rest of the roof boards on before Caleb and Lia arrived that morning.

Starting after lunch to get the metal on.

Friday pretty much ended here. 

So now the west side (save for that little flappy piece) is done. The dew started falling early and we still had to clean up for the day and a decision to save the east side for Saturday was made. 

Then Alisha got a text from her mother and they announced Ben and family would be leaving late morning on Saturday. Meaning, we only had Ben for a few hours for that east side. 

I was done being on the roof. My body was telling me I'm not 20 (or even 40) anymore. And I hadn't been sleeping well all weekend so I wasn't on my A game. Lia volunteered to get up there and she and Caleb finished the east side and even got the ridge cap set in. They also helped move the windows from the workshop in the garage into the new studio structure to get ready to be placed in. 

We have AWESOME kids!

Once we bid them farewell (they have a life too and needed to take off mid-afternoon) Jim and I continued on with the wrapping. Here's where we left off on Saturday night...

East side

 West side

At some point, Caleb asked what was on my birthday list for this year. "You're covered Caleb and Ben!" Their manual labor and know-how is birthday wish granted!

Jim can handle most all the other little details needed to be done without me except maybe closing in the gable end. I'll need to help raising up the wood I suspect.

So, back to a regular long arm week and I'll be starting with getting Nancy's quilt done hopefully. I'm not loading anything else onto DW for a day or so or I'll be tempted to put Nancy's Witches on hold.  

The one thing I am bummed about is my inability to get to AQS Grand Rapids. Once again. But honestly, I don't have a pressing need for any quilting supplies at the moment. It's a long trip. Gas isn't cheap. And I was needed here to deal with construction stuff for MY new studio. It's only fitting I didn't go. But, still bummed. 

Beautiful Weekend Expected

And thank goodness for that! We have two of the boys coming up tonight and tomorrow to help with the sheet metal and any other things we can get into during the time frame we have them.

Here's some of what's going into Debs quilt...

I love what I'm putting into the actual heart border

Continuous curves, feathers, and meandering hearts

While I was taking a coffee break around 3:00 yesterday, I heard a beep, beep truck coming down our driveway. This arrived!

Ready to put the roof on now

It's the dark green metal we put onto the barn. We have to re-roof the house and the garage next year and we want to put on the same dark green metal roofing. This puts us one step ahead.

We worked until nearly dark last night getting the rest of the stringers put on, but they're there. I'll be on the roof tonight and Ben will join me when he arrives later this evening. IF he gets here before dark. 

All the stringers are attached and we're ready for a work weekend

Jim has some "fixing" to do from the ground while the boys and I are airborne; the overhang on the first 1/3 of the SW corner, some overhang on the sill plate, and faceplate (I think that's what it's called) installation under the rafters. 

We have a guy coming tonight as well to give us an insulation estimate. Jim wants to have it spray foamed, but we'll have to see where we are at with cost. And tomorrow night the electrician is coming to do the same. We won't need to get it wired anytime soon, but we're having some flicker/dimming issues in the house even with Jim just running his skill saw so he's going to look into that issue as well. 

Heights

Everybody in the neighborhood is afraid of heights. Except me. I respect them, but I'm not afraid of being up high. Having made that declaration, guess who's on the roof getting roof boards attached? 

Getting the trusses up on Saturday afternoon

It only took about two hours to get those trusses in. Thank goodness we had people who were helping that actually knew what they were doing. 

This is Saturday night after a few stringers were attached...

Getting the stringers attached

Jim miscalculated the amount of lumber needed to attach all the stringers. And since I don't hammer well, decided we needed to purchase some more screws (1,750 of them) to get the roof boards attached. We went shopping Sunday morning and here I am working well into the early afternoon attaching what we could with what lumber we had...

Hi!

This will be my job in the evenings this week. We are supposed to get rain all day today (it's actually starting here) and part of tomorrow. So I suppose being on a wet roof isn't going to happen tonight. 

Meanwhile, I've never been so happy to get back on the big machines after a weekend of exterior work. Not only did we have to work construction, but the yard needed minding and that was yesterday afternoons project since we were out of lumber. Yay long arming! 

Construction Day

I won't be working in the studio until later after we've worked on the addition. We have sand to put on top of the drainage trunk, the beginning of the back filling of the foundation, and while I'm shoveling dirt, Jim will be adding the gasket and sill plate boards today. We may do more depending on what we get done this morning. 

Meanwhile, this is what's going into Sherry's quilt on DW...

Channels, straight lines, and pebbles

This one is turning out really great. I've changed up some of my thinking and am approaching this one a bit differently than I have some of those in the past. 

I'll work on this (maybe) later today depending on the weather (hot/rainy) and how much I'm needed outside on the construction. No kids up here to help this weekend so it's all on Jim and me. 

Taking Longer

 My mother has always said the following about construction: Plan on twice as long and three time as much money as what you expected. Jim thought renting the digger for eight hours would be sufficient. He's home today (again) working on more digging...because it didn't get finished yesterday. Here's where we are at this morning.  

About 3/4 of the way done

And the tree was unable to be saved...

I'm very sad about this!

But hopefully this should be my only sad moment in all of this.  

Customer(s) coming today. One to pick up and one to drop off. Not sure what time they'll be here. 

The kids are up from East Lansing this weekend, so I'm not sure just how much quilting work I'll be getting done outside of the customer visits. Probably not a whole lot until Sunday, if even then. 

Didn't Forget

I didn't forget to blog yesterday. We actually started in very early working on prepping for our big project. Jim has been researching (and continues to do so) to resource the best products at the best prices for the project at hand, but yesterday was the first day of the physical side of things. 

The girls needed to be moved. Their pen needed to be disassembled and relocated somewhat out of construction paths, but they needed to be close enough to see us. They are people dogs after all. And, like all construction, what sounds like a simple enough task turns into a much more detailed situation. Here's the new, and very temporary pen, with the space opened up for the construction. 

Looking away from the lake towards the clothesline

Once we were done for the day (we started pretty early in the morning), cleaned up, and ate a late lunch, I was ready to sew something. Here's the next block in Farm Girl Vintage II...

Mr. Scarecrow

I'm so excited about this new sewing space I'm going to have I can hardly contain myself. Jim understands how passionate I am about my quilting business and my love of long arming that he's willing to do this huge undertaking for me. And yes, we will be doing it all ourselves. Just like we did the barn. The only contractors expected on this are electrical and plumbing. Maybe the HVAC but hopefully the rest we can handle.