Am I Doing Okay?

Here's the hand embroidery I got done while visiting with family and during visiting and the auction. I probably could have finished even the big one had the days not gotten so darn hot and humid. We are unpacking the trailer right now and I may or may not end up in the studio later today??? 

I'm still new at this and I'll look back on these in years to come thinking I could have done much better. But like my long arming it'll take time to perfect. 

When I'm Bored

Going to the reunion creates a lot of "dead" space in my day. Well, it didn't use to because we were in charge of everything, but like tonight is our personal camp site set up which doesn't only take us a few hours. The rest of the night we visit with other family members that have arrived.

When I'm between those "dead" spaces in my day I graze. Whatever I can get my hands on goes in my mouth. I feel nauseated by bed time from all the foods I've eaten, and I vow the next day not to do the same thing, but do I? Nope.

The other problem I have is sitting for long periods of time. I have to be moving. When we visit with folks, it's just sitting there. Talking. And sitting. And talking. And sitting some more. I needed something to take with me to keep me busy while we are visiting.

I have some hand embroidery work to do on the Quilt Room pattern and I thought I'd get a jump on it. I did not have the DMC floss colors needed and instead of trying to paw through my crap, I just purchased some quick items to make the weekend a bit more interesting.

Ready for the weekend

I have been watching a few embroidery tutorials and I have found several areas where I've been doing this hand work hobby incorrectly. Hopefully I'll have better success this weekend. 

See you on Tuesday! 

I'm A Woman...

...I can change my mind! I did do some packing last night in the trailer despite my having said I wasn't going to. We have rain coming tomorrow (what a great way to start out a four-day camping trip) and it's supposed to be icky muggy today. 

I am at the half-way point on Virginia's Pickle Dish quilt. Jim can't believe how much better it looks than the first go with the other long armer. 

I did a Love Letter block and two leaf blocks prior to getting into the trailer stuff as it was a bit warm yesterday and the trailer had gotten hot with my having shut it up the previous night.

After packing for the night (I don't have enough clothes/food to pack it entirely yet) I was itching to do something small. It was after 7:00 already and I didn't want to fire up DW as I knew I would be out there until late if I did.

I picked up this pattern at Seven Sisters a few weeks ago and looked through it earlier. The way it was packaged would have let me to forgo starting anything right now. Pages were folded in half in plastic bags for each "month" this original BOM was released. 

I'm an organizer and so I took them all out of their packages, organized them into months/blocks, three hole punched them and then put them into a binder. 

I have an empty crate under Marty I'll put the blocks as I finish them prior to putting sections together. There is a bit of hand embroidery in this pattern and I'm going to attempt it as it should be. 

Jim and I are having our date day today and while we are in Midland getting groceries (for us and the dog sitter) I'll pop into Hobby Lobby to get the floss and hoop I need to do such a thing. Maybe this will keep me busy at the reunion instead of constantly wanting to each junk food. 

Yesterday Was A Mixture

Dealing with customers, loading quilts, frame ironing backs, cleaning machines and studios, and small projects made yesterday and nice mixture of quilting fun. About the only thing I did not do was actually quilt a quilt. I did baste in this one to be ready first thing tomorrow morning... 

Joans quilt ready for Monday

I wanted to make another cute pincushion for some new pins sent to me and I had started this late Friday night. Here's the finished project...

Selvedge Pin Cushion

That didn't take long and tried another small project I saw on IG. That's in the trash and we're just not going to talk about that wasted two hours of my life. Moving along. I have had a few projects given to me in pieces because the "giver" didn't want to deal with it any more. Here's the first one I finally finished...

Pretty table runner

Once I puzzled how to get this together, I looked through the pile and pulled out this...

Much smaller than you think

This is a Crabapple Hill project that is going to finish much small than I thought it would. But my friend/customer Diane did all the hand embroidery for me and I'm going to work the blocks today. Diane is the kind friend who is doing my Witches panels for me as well because she knows I can't/won't do hand embroidery. I love Diane!

Six Inches of snow later

They said we would get 1-3". I think they were a little off in their estimation.

So what's with the little icons on the left side of my screen the past two days? I imported the crying Sparty in a few days ago and those stupid things showed up after the import. I may end up having to rebuild my blog. I did go into html view and pulled out anything it may be, but we'll see if it shows up again today. 

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

I love the brick road

Wood flooring

Spooky tree and grass

I'm just past the half-way point on this one. Barbs quilt is getting a little more classical quilting put into it since this one is titled "Old World Santas". I'm matching thread almost perfectly so it's hard to see the quilting in it. 

Since we have all this snow, my customers today have opted for a different day. I'll enjoy the post-storm sunshine and pretty white picture out my windows while working in my snuggly, warm house. 

Errands Before Snow

Snow is (finally) expected this afternoon so I need to quickly head over to Pieces to replenish their brochure supply. 

Let's talk about cutting rulers. I started out as an Omni Grid/Grip user in the earlier days of my quilting journey. Then I started slowly switching to Creative Grids rulers. Some of them are getting pretty dinged up and scratched (I'm very clumsy). I bought a Quilters Select ruler last week at Pieces to assist with my long arm registration lines on tops. 

Have you ever tried Quilters Select rulers? The reason I steered clear of them before is because I thought they looked kinda dingy and the Creative Grids rulers looked more clean. OMG! You have to try one. I'm in love. They grip much better than CG's, you can see the cutting lines easier (which seems counterintuitive given their smoky look) and the markings make more sense to me. I'm hooked. I may have to look at a few more rulers when I'm over at the shop this morning.

Here's what's on DW today...

Jean's Crabapple Hill Witches of Salem

This is the piece I started about a million years ago and here Jean has it all finished. And it's gorgeous! So excited to be able to finish this one for her. I'm kinda jealous actually. Maybe I'll give her back my unfinished pieces and keep this one for myself. 😜

Here's what's on Bernie today...

Barb's Old World Santas

This is Barbs fourth (and last) for me to do. 

I've got both of these basted in and bordered. Mom came by just as I was finishing Jeans borders and she stayed for a visit for a while. By the time she left I was done with long arming for the day. I put this block together instead...

Three skeins of yarn. Red heart of course

I didn't have the energy to cut for another block so I'll maybe get to do that tonight. And off I go...

Here's what's on Bernie this weekend... 

All hand embroidered

I have four of these that are similar to do over the next month. These will take a lot of time and patience to complete; all that embroidery and the backfill behind it means slow free motion stitching and ruler work. 

Here's what's on DW for the next few days...

Terry's Dots and Snowballs

No long arming today (yet). We headed off to West Branch this morning to do a little grocery shopping. I'm going to sketch this Dots and Snowballs out on my iPad to see of I can come up with something cool. I have an idea but want to give it a "trial" quilting first.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble, gobble. But for us, Thanksgiving is going to be Saturday due to family obligations and schedules. 

Here is a little detail of what I'm putting into the beautifully stitched top I'm currently working...

Cathie's hand embroidered top

I had my hair cut this morning and now I'm in the studio. It's just going to be another work day for me (mostly) in here. I have to move all the pending quilt tops and completed quilts into the studio to keep them away from the grandkids...which will be here tomorrow.

I also need to do some spare bedroom re-arranging. The nicer children's books rescued from my teacher totes are where little Eli can get to them and I'd like them to stay nice. They will need to get put up from the bottom shelf and away from his exploring fingers. And mouth.

I need to get all other knick knacks up off the floor as well since he's kind of in that "grab everything" stage. 

And then there is our Christmas decorations we need to get into the house. The grandkids love to help decorate and we'll do that Saturday after our big dinner. And they said something about going out and cutting our tree at the tree farm as too but will have to wait and see what kind of daylight is left afterwards.