Hand quilting on the frame....

The kittens have found the frame... and have proceeded to 'play' with the batting.  I guess I need to get back to working on this as it lives in my bedroom and the kittens and cat have access to that room. I'll be reading the instructions on how to fold this up so they hopefully don't cause much more damage I need to repair as I roll it forward.

Starting on the second row of 90 inch blocks in purple, aqua and orange. I think I will try and do 30-60 minutes a night on this and see if I can make some progress. You know, I have noticed that if you don't work on something... it doesn't tend to progress!
This is the damage I will be hand stitching together as I get to that hole and one other that I have found in the nice batting. Darn kitty cats.

My other fun - the car smelled like gas on Monday so I brought it in to get checked out. Seems there is a pin prick in my gas line that needed to get replaced! The part came in late yesterday and the mechanic was having issues getting it installed so I left it overnight again. Makes for a fun morning - with me having to bring everyone to school and work across town (35 minutes) then back home in time to work myself. Afternoon walk again today I guess. The joys of life!

Slow Sunday....

Well it has been a slow start to my day and a much needed resting day so far for me. A good nights sleep after a nice bath while reading a book (am I the only one who does that?). I continued reading when I woke up this morning for a couple of hours and it was a lovely start to the day with an Ollie cat curled up next to me purring.

I suppose I need to get dressed soon as I need to return the vehicle to Grandma's house and someone needs to walk Buddy as she will be at the hospital most of today with Papa Andy M. At least I will get a nice walk in today!

I think I'll be puttering outside this afternoon and then will settle in with some hand quilting of the cross hatch for the orange dresden plate. Sorry if you are sick of seeing these... but there are 5 more to go after this one - pink, brown, yellow, dark blue and maroon!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts and the other slow Sunday Stitchers.

Saturday....

Not much sewing this week but I did wind the bobbin (that ran out last week) and sewed a few squares onto the strips for the alternate block of my scrappy Irish chains.

Today was a travel day - I had 5 girls in the car from girl scouts and we went to Tampa for Disney on Ice. This was beauty and the beast but the girls love the Frozen one after this.  The girls were singing along to all the songs - it was so fun to watch the big smiles and memories they made today.

The girls had a blast and we managed to make it there and back safely despite two drivers that wanted to be right where my car was. Good reflexes and someone watching over me had us safe despite making sure my heart was beating.

This was my company while working on Wednesday - curled up on my desk at home is Peanut.

Thursday after bowling I was able to select the fabrics for the graduation quilt. Thank you Dot for the pattern!

I see a nice relaxing day picking up the sewing area and sewing tomorrow. We will have the kids... but hopefully they will entertain themselves a bit. I need to spend some quality time with Aidan since I had a girl day today.

Linking up late to the RSC Challenge as there is a little green in here. Thank goodness I have one more week of green - I have some bow ties to make.

Hand work to help your brain?

 I found a couple of links today that indicate keeping your hands busy actually makes you happier! I have always called my hand work or sewing projects my 'stress relief'.  I really think I need to be sent to my sewing room more often than I go in there!

Good thing I usually have some sort of hand work project ready to go out the door with me - quilting, hand piecing, knitting or crochet.

You can read about the study here.

So - go pick up something to keep your hands busy and see the stress leave and relaxation begin!

My car line progress yesterday. That dark brown one really is orange and does not show that shade in person,

Half way on the Dresdens.....

I am officially half way through hand quilting the Dresden plate blocks! The green was completed yesterday in a rainy day car line.

the back.

I prepped the next one - orange since I was in the mood for a brighter color! Rainy day pickup today so I will be hand quilting the blades while I wait on the kids in some predicted bad weather storms.

During all this weather yesterday... my 85 year old father in law (MIL's current hubby not my husbands Dad) decided to  get the ladder out and check the gutters out back around noon despite her telling him they looked fine. The ladder slipped and then he fell onto the ladder. 3 broken ribs and a punctured lung later he is doing ok. They did a local procedure


(he is on a blood thinner for his heart) and fixed the lung and inflated it. He was moved to a room in critical care last night but was out of recovery ICU. If you could offer up some prayers for him I would appreciate it.

Weekend at Camp Indian Echo in Hudson Florida.

It was quite a weekend! The girls did great and had a wonderful time. I'm a little biased but I think I have the best girls in my troop and am blessed that their parents allow me to be in their lives. 

We stopped at Publix (local grocery chain) and had each girl order her sub for dinner. Some had never done that (girls aged 7-9)! I thanked the young lady making their subs for being so patient and she was just so pleasant. Love that. Then we headed to check in at camp and had some food at the pavilion area near our sleeping quarters. There were 10 of us so we did 5 in each tee pee. 2 adults and 3 girls each. Lets just say that opening at the bottom was a wee bit chilly as it got down to 39 degrees on Friday night and 55 on Saturday. Next time I will bring quilts so everyone is warm... but there was NO room in the vehicle with 4 girls and 2 adults and our gear.

Tee pee!

View of pond from tee pee

 This was gorgeous in the morning with it all fogged in and the sun starting to hit it. 

View of tee pee from the pavilion and fire pit area.

Lots of my pictures are of the girls and I don't share those on public media but... here is one of my daughter Emily learning to shoot a bow and arrow with our instructor! 

She even hit the target twice. A first for the three brownies (grade 2+3). The Daisy's (grade K+1) have to wait since our instructor was only trained for brownie and up age levels. We had a time slot of 1.5 hours each for STEM activities, archery and outdoor games, lunch, cupcake decorating and free time to play around our area, then team building where we tied them together with handkerchiefs and the 6 of them had to do a scavenger hunt around the camp to find things and get photo's of them with the object. The were very happy to go back to the buddy system after being tied together. =). 

Then swaps, dinner and of course we need to end with a campfire, songs and smores. The girls were wound up and were playing around between the tee pees for a couple of hours before we settled them down a little after 10. It was up early to pack, load the car - good thing I love puzzles!, and clean our area for inspection by the ranger  at 7:30 who gave the girls a thumbs up on doing their kapers to clean up. Closing ceremony and I remembered to get my form signed for travel before we headed out. The girls are going to Disney on Ice next weekend in Tampa and the travel papers are for build a bear in Gainesville next month (outside of our immediate travel area but closer to us than Tampa!) so the girls can make girl scout smores bears. This was their choices to spend their money from cookie sales on - they will also get re registered for next year and I am looking into a skating party, lots of badges, end of year party and if $ left we'll plan to go ride horses in the fall. 

We splurged and stopped at McDonalds for breakfast this morning and one last time to chat and have the girls together before the two vehicles headed home to return them to their parents. Our car had a side trip - as there looked like a slow down 10 miles from out exit.... so we took the alternate route that just happened to take us by the Wildwood Girl Scout camp we normally go to which has a little store. I was able to pick up the 13 Yoga fun badges I needed (we did a yoga lesson the Monday before  break) and Emily saw an archery patch so we got 3 of them for the girls that got to shoot this weekend. I also got book 2+3 of a mouse mystery book I sent around this year with our penny the pig so they have something to read to her next year!.

After a shower (boy did that feel good!), unloading of the car and a 2 hour nap I felt human again. A quick trip to my co-leaders to grab a few things of mine I popped into her vehicle (you know, things never go back into the container they started in!), and a clean of the borrowed vehicle from Papa Andy (Big thanks to my FIL) I was done for the day. Greg picked up Chinese for dinner and everyone is now showered and in bed. An exhausting weekend but so worth it to see these girls grow more confident, learn some new skills and make some awesome memories together.

RSC Saturday.....Slow Stitching Sunday.

I'm putting this one out early as I will be roughing it in the woods with 5 girls from my troop this weekend. Three adults including me so it is fairly matched and we have a great set of girls going =). It will be a small encampment this time - 44 girls and 25 adults but we should have a blast. It will be their first shot at archery and we are so excited! (pun intended!)

I did manage to finish sewing the other two green squared away blocks this week - well close enough I ran out of bobbin thread on that last seam of the middle green one.  A photo of all 9 so far this year. This seems to be the only thing I am keeping up with!

A lot of hand quilting was done on the sage green dresden plate block. I seem to be in a hand quilting finish up mode on this project! I just have to finish making the X in each of the squares around the other three edges and I will call this sixth block completed sometime on Sunday! Half way done - Woo Hoo! Peanut is posing on his cat tree for me with the block.

Linking up (sometime Sunday) with the RSC Challenge. and Slow Sunday Stitching.

Hands2Help......

I was checking out Joyfuls blog this morning and saw her post on Hands2Help. A chance to finish a quilt and donate it to a worthy cause (see the sign up post here), I'm in! The deadline is June 1st to have the quilt finished and mailed off to the selected charity or to donate locally in your area. I'm going to finish off my churn dash top by finally getting it quilted and donate that one to one of the charities listed. I might try and get the remaining churn dash blocks into a quilt top and quilted as well. We will see.
If you are interested, there is a signup on the above post and there is a giveaway if you sign up before Saturday March 17th.

Slow Sunday...

I had a slow Saturday evening and relaxed with some stitching on my sage green dresden plate. I got the blades all quilted and will work on the cross hatching in the white today.

The front of the sage green dresden.

The back.

This is number 6 out of 12 dresdens I plan to get quilted this year. The others can be found here.

Linking up with Kathy and the other turtle stitchers.


The kids are on spring break and Emily has been wanting to make fluffy slime all week long. Dad took her out to buy the needed supplies Saturday afternoon (glue and contact solution and shaving cream) and she got busy making some. When her brother got home from his party he had to make some too. Kept them both busy for a few hours....and they actually cleaned up the total disaster they made in the kitchen and their clothes. We will see if it comes out or not - shirts are soaking in oxyclean in a bucket out back.

RSC Saturday in Green....

I was able to make one green block this week! I was stitching this up while trying to keep kitten paws away from the sewing machine needle. Peanut really wanted to help.

Our last cookie booth was last night at Mojo's Grill in Ocala. This was all that was left at 8PM. Woo Hoo. Another cookie season is over.

Aidan was happy I didn't have a booth this morning so I could take him to a birthday party. Thanks to his Dad who took him present shopping last night. After chatting with the parents (met them today) I left him and headed home for the afternoon. A first for him but at 10 it was time and he was busy playing. I'll have to go pick him up soon. I'm guessing he will be tired tonight after hanging out with Jakari and Tyler and Tyler all afternoon for Jakari's 10th birthday party.

This will be my hand work project tonight. I finished off the black one earlier this week. I made these a few years ago with the RSC Challenge and then appliquéd them the next year and added the blocks around another year. 5 are hand quilted of the 12 blocks this year. Think I can get this one done by the end of the month?

I'm thinking it will either be family game night or movie night. We will see what the kids want to do. Maybe I'll even get back into the sewing area and finish up the 2 purple blocks from last month!

Linking up with the RSC Challenge.

Black Dresden.... Done!

Really Deb, done already? Yup... and my finger didn't even get all sore like the last time (thanks for the possible arthritis in my left middle finger top knuckle Mom - so happy you passed that onto me.... NOT!)

Pictured are the ones completed - purple, red, light blue, dark green and black.

Now I can get working on the last Sage green one to fit in with the RSC Challenge this month of March. If I get this one completed this month - I'll be half way done!

The backing is pressed but I need to pull my 'extra' batting to sandwich it. Probably later tonight or tomorrow. Need to get some food into Emily before gymnastics, home for her then a quick run to the church to help set up some tables for a GS sponsored event tomorrow, then off to my GS leader meeting at 7. Never a dull moment around my house for me. Think I'll pull the knitting needles and some yarn to take with me to gymnastics. Another dish cloth? Nice and easy non thinking project while I watch Emily.

Monday Dresden progress.

It was a day of rest Sunday... well, mostly. We did help at a cookie booth for a couple of hours and helped out another troop get rid of some cookies. We have 3 for our troop scheduled this weekend and Emily is working 2 of them.

Mostly... I picked up a little and did some hand work. The dresden plates got hand quilted and outlined. I need to draw the cross hatching in the white area so that part can start in the car line.

This might be why I had to stop stitching... someone wanted to take a nap.

Sunday slow recovery day....

After a fun filled week of company, visiting and a quick trip to the beach to see the rocket launch.... today will be a recovery day.

I enjoyed the first hour of peace and quiet as everyone else was sleeping. Unfortunately I just unloaded the car yesterday and then sat and relaxed in my chair. Time to finish unpacking, doing some laundry and picking up the house a bit. Emily does have a 2 hour cookie booth scheduled to help someone out..... so I guess I'd better get moving.

I will get back to this later today - I think I will do different colors in all the petals on this black dresden plate. So far a blue and red have been added.

Linking up with the other Slow Sunday Stitches over at Kathy's quilts.

Beach day....

Family is down from Vermont and we decided to head to the beach for a bit. It turns out there was a rocket launch scheduled for March 1 at 5:02 PM... and it went off on time! We were able to watch it go from the beach a little way's down from Cape Canaveral. It was Amazing. Aidan heard the boom and was so excited to see it. I think we might have to try for Jetty Park or on site sometime in the future. Poor Greg, had to stay home and work and care for the critters. I hear it was raining in Ocala at the time of the launch.

We took Sally and Charlie down to the beach at night to show them what crabbing was like! Charlie liked chasing them and seeing them scurry along the beach. He even caught a few in the bucket. Ok - my sister Terri was having fun watching the little guys too!  I love that my kids are getting some time spent with their cousins - even if they are older and teenagers they are doing well with my kids. 

A couple of us (Terri, Aidan and me) got up early today and walked down to the beach to watch the sunrise. We had a snafu with the original hotel room with the AC unit having broken down or I would have been watching this from the balcony. Oh well, I got a few steps walking down to the actual beach.

A full unplanned day to relax and spend time with family. Mom and Dad were down on the beach to see the rocket launch and Dad ventured down for a little walk this morning. Kids are playing on the beach making sand castles and boogie boarding and collecting shells. I should probably pop on my bathing suit and go supervise so Sally can enjoy jumping the waves with Emily.