A little sewing.

 It was an early morning with a 6AM drop of Aidan to school. I forgot a photo on drop off in the dark, so he kindly sent me a selfie at their lunchtime stop at FSU. His buddy Peyton is on the lower right in blue.

After heading in to the doctors for a blood draw and then a long doggie walk with Bear, I tackled some sewing. I found a slightly different pattern to make the bowl cozies. This one uses only one layer of the special batting. I might have messed up the first one... so the seams on the brown are wrong side out. Oh well, I noticed when I turned it inside out.... so it got finished and I used it for my lunch warming up a bowl of pasta from last night. I made three more correctly. 2 will go into the raffle basket and one will go to Shannon who is a girl scout organizing all the raffle baskets. These have a cute hook on them. I think I like that addition. I used 10 inch squares for these.

I had searched through cut offs of backing fabrics and figured these two would be big enough together for a backing. 

I placed a quilt top on the floor and Bear knows his duty and promptly sat pretty on it. After a treat, he laid down for a photo.

This is my hand pieced trip around the world with 2 inch squares. It is time for this one to get done.... and I am going to machine quilt it! I just want it done and off the list. I have the roll of batting out  since I could not find enough long pieces to make a franken batting. I had cleared out all the parts and pieces making the QAYG hexagons. This one is about ready to get laid out and pinned for quilting. I don't have to pick up Emily until 7:30 tonight, so plenty of time to pin and maybe get started on the machine quilting? We are going with leftovers since it is just Greg and I. If Emily wants something we can stop on the way home for her dinner. =) More sewing time!

I also threw the cat and mouse into the wash and dryer today. It is nice and crinkly now. All the blue markings came out fine. Time to cut a batting and pin a quilt.

The final steps - onto the binding!

Do you know what this means?

Trimming of the quilt for binding! When I cut off the backing, I was thinking I would have enough to make a binding. It was not the case, so I looked over and saw some light teal on the shelf... just like that inner border! There was enough and after some calculations - I cut 7 strips of it to make a binding. I measured the quilt, and it is 59x69. I have them sewn together, just need to press them in half, then attach to the front of the quilt for hand stitching down on the back. That involves clearing off the ironing board. 

I had big plans to layer and pin a quilt for machine quilting today and clean the house. Alas, I slept the morning away and finally feel slightly better. I'm going to take it easy instead of doing that.

This was my lunchtime stitching yesterday, to finish off that set of 4 blacks. I believe I have a light blue one for today. I prepped some more backing and battings, I just need to select and cut the hexagon colors for the front. 

These need to get stitched into sets of two's and then fours. 

Progress

 Time to move the hoop again! I do enjoy stitching these butterfly's more than the wedge of cheese.

The end is in sight! Just the whole top and the bit on the top left to go. I think the binding will be the teal backing - about the same shade as the inner border. I don't have more of that outer teal border. The other option is a white, which might happen. We will see.

I got my one hexagon done at lunch today. I used a pink for the quilting part.

I popped out to Publix to get some meats to make meatloaf. I guess I forgot to grab the package of burgers from Sam's last time that I normally use for it. The butcher checked for the meatloaf mix as he remembered they had just ground a little pork that morning and came out with a fresh package for me! I remembered cheese.... over $5 for a shredded package! Nope! I remember Aidan grabbed a log of mozzarella from Aldi last week, I'll use that instead on half. Emily dislikes cheese on her side. On the way home - I saw the latest 2 story house they were taking down along our road. Still no word from the county but our lawyer sent a letter indicating it is in the initial survey stages???? I guess they missed the window and had to rebid the contract..... so who know's if they need to start it all over again or not. Still in the wait and see stage.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I'm happy to say I have made progress on hand quilting the cat and mouse and am now stitching the Butterfly's for the cats to chase in the final border!

Somehow the butterfly template got it's wing clipped! Oops. I've been free handing that wing as I draw around it with chalk. The first edge was completed while it was on the frame, so I had 3 sides to go. I made good progress on one side while watching a hockey game Saturday night.

Earlier this week, I decided to stitch one of these a day to try and get them moving along. They are quilt as you go hexagons and will be used to make the existing quilt bigger. I'll add the little outline quilting to these tomorrow while watching the F1 race with Aidan... and will stitch up a few more of them. I've got another set of 4 in black prints and one of light blue ready to go.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Weekend update

 I have been making progress on the second border of the cat and mice quilt. The triangles of cheese are tempting the mice and I'm nearly done 2 sides. It was nice quilting last night to a Lightning hockey game. I splurged this year and got Fubu which states it carries the local hockey games on Bally sports. I'm trying it out for a weekly trial to see. There are games Tuesday and Thursday so we will see.

I was able to get 7 of the potato chip blocks sewn up today before the bobbin ran out. I took that as a sign to be done for the day. This is the amount of parts left, so more will need to get cut out and prepped for more blocks - especially the lights. 

The 8th block was in progress. I select 2 colored ones for the middle, then 6 for the lights. Two sets of 2 colors and two sets of 3 colors to finish off the block. I try to get a little of each color in each block. This one has dark blue and orange in the middle. The sets of 2 - purple and green; red and yellow. The sets of 3 - teal, red, green and medium blue, brown and pink. I have 10 blocks to go before the quilt will hopefully be happy with a 7x6 setting of the 12 inch blocks. (72x84). I fear it might be unhappy with that size as well and want to be bigger. Stubborn quilt.

Linking up with the RSC on Saturday and Slow Sunday Stitching.

Greg and I headed over to see his Dad in rehab today. I guess Greg did not call Tuesday like I thought, and Tom was unaware of why we did not stop in Thursday. He knew kids were out of school (from the staff) but did not put that together with the Hurricane and why we didn't go over until today. His house was fine, and the power was back on. We put the storm shutters up and verified the AC was functioning and reset his clocks from the power loss. We will find out on Wednesday about his release date, but he appears to be strong enough to be going home very soon. There were lots of limbs and branches piled up on the side of the road for pick up and lots of gas stations without gas. I was very happy to have a full tank of gas in my car and the truck. One gas jug went to the lawn mower and if the stations near us are without gas, the other one will go in the kids car to get to school on Monday. 

Lets hope that is the end of storms for us this year.ca

My MIL got her power back on last night and did a happy dance. The clean up crew was also able to finish up her yard in a few hours late afternoon, so she is one very happy lady. I'll bet she is tossing the fridge and freezer but all in all is in good shape.

Slow Sunday

 Well, day 3 of migraine. The meds did not help this time, but the Advil did for the win! 

I had hubby take Emily to her Gold Planning Session so I could sleep. The Advil kicked in and I was able to pick her up. She was kind enough to plan my meals for the week so I didn't have to on the way home. I hear she is making fried rice tonight for dinner.

I stopped at the UPS Store to get a form notarized for Aidan's out of state trip next month. Juniors in the AICE program can do a trip on The Civil Rights Movement. They go to Montgomery, Birmingham and Atlanta with lots of stops at key spots in the Civil Rights Movement with hands on learning. They have their 4 for their room at the hotels picked out and coordinated. It is a 5 day trip next month.

We just got a call from the Marion County schools. They are closing school Wednesday and Thursday this week, with all after school activities cancelled on Tuesday due to the incoming storm Milton. Depending on damage will determine if they have school on Friday or not. They are opening shelters in 3 of the schools to allow a place for people to go in mobile homes or who live in non secure areas with projected hurricane winds. We live in a poured concrete house, so pretty secure with no trees close to the house. We are all set still from the last storm, just need to take down the cover over the carport on Tuesday and remove my fall wreath from the front door. 

I moved onto the borders for the hand quilting and have 1.5 sides to do in white before I move onto the triangle of cheese (for the mice) and the butterfly's (for the cats) in the outer two borders. Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Let me hold this down for you Mom. Now take my photo!

Since Emily needs to have a Journey completed before she can submit her Gold Award Project for approval, I also printed off the Think Like a Programmer meeting plans and notes in case we lose power/internet. I'll work with her on it when I am done work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday is my day off. I might hand off to her Dad, who just finished his BS in Computer Science last month. She is good in math and science so this one should come easy to her. I am a computer programmer so it should be an easy one for me to guide her through. I hear her Gold will be concerning Bees and why they are important. It should be a fun one for her to research and educate people about. She is expanding on her report she did on this going into High School last year. I'm sure you will be hearing more of this as she dig in to it after marching band season ends.

On to the borders! Finally.

 I finished the last mouse and spacer last night. It is time to move onto the borders. This one started on the frame, so the bottom borders are done. I made a plastic template of the butterfly and 'triangle of cheese' and then just used chalk to mark them and did a line to connect them freehand. The white is just outlining the edges. 

I decided to switch gears and did 4 of these prepped hexagons in grey. These are making the hexagon QAYG bigger.

The girl complains my spot is messy. So I'll try and tackle that today and bring back my little container to have on the floor by my chair to hold things. I also need to prep more hexagons. I have 8 ready to be folded and clipped. I use paper clips! I think I can move the blue hand quilting thread back to the sewing room as I will be using the cream for the borders.

It has been a lazy morning for me after walking the dog and checking on the chickens. A nice hour to just play on the internet checking things out. Time to shower and get dressed so we can go visit my FIL. Then I hope to do a bunch of prepping in the sewing room. Something about parts for 17 potato chip blocks and a purple Arkansas Traveller block.

 

Progress

 I've been making progress on hand quilting the cat and mouse quilt. I just need to outline this mouse in white, do two of the spacers in blue and one last mouse to go! The three borders will be a nice change of pace. 

Greg is at his Dad's house for day 3 of the tree removal. They should finish today. Half of the 100 year old oak tree split and fell last Thursday night with Helene. Most of the fallen tree was in his neighbors yard but managed to damage nothing. It left the other half like this with tons of branches hanging over 2 fences into 2 of his neighbors lots in the back. It should be all taken care of later today. They did 5 truck loads of debris yesterday and will have quite a few more to do today. It was a very big tree with lots of branches. This was how they left it yesterday.

Aidan was to have his first Academic club meet today after school. Alas, it is cancelled since the person in charge of the questions for this area, lives in the Big Bend and has not been heard from since last Thursday. I do hope she is ok. On a positive note, Aidan was chosen as one of the 4 lead Varsity team players for the meet. Not bad for his first year. That photographic memory and his interest in lots of things really helped him out.

Both kids will be home at 'normal' time today. The dog will be so happy. He is pouting a bit with just me in the house yesterday and today. 

Thursday

 It feels like not much has gotten done this week! Emily was sick last week and missed a couple of days of school. She slept a lot but is on the mend this week. She was kind and shared her germs with me and I slept a bunch Sunday and rested on Monday rather than logging into work. I did get hand quilting done, so more mice have been stitched. Two sides are done. I have 7 mice and 1.5 spools to stitch before I get to the 3 borders. The white border is 2 straight lines, the light teal is a triangle of cheese with a stitched line and the outer blue is butterfly's with a loopy line. I have 3 sides to do for the borders.

The family still insists they need dinner every, single night! Monday, I needed to go get Emily for 6PMish, so I did meatloaf and mashed garlic potato's with peas. Tuesday, I gave the kids options of a baked chicken and rice or chicken enchilada. They asked for lemon chicken and capers (Emily takes hers before I add the capers) with rice and roasted broccoli and cauliflower. Emily wanted lasagna - only meat with the noodles and a sprinkle of mozzarella cheese on top. Nope - leftovers to clear out the fridge was Wednesday. I will make 2 different pans of lasagna tonight. One for Emily and one for the rest of us.... with cheese! She is a late pick up today, so this is a long time in the oven one, perfect for me to pick her up.  I had a craving for Zuppa Toscana soup (copycat olive garden recipe with hot italian sausage, potato, kale) so I made a big batch of it Sunday. I've had it for lunches all week. Yummy. 

This was the look from Bear today. He either wanted me to play or stitch up his lamb and the duck. We played with his cookie doll and I'll stitch up the other animals later tonight.

I spent a bit of time picking out color combo's for the Arkansas Traveller blocks this morning before we went over to visit my FIL. He is doing well.  I have 3 sets of teals and 3 sets of blues to cut out. I just need to prep the white parts for all these and then run them through the Accuquilt cutter. 

I also pulled out blacks and some blue and prepped some more Hexagon QAYG to stitch. 

I am so happy that there is a new season out of Murders in the Building on Hulu. I am very impatient on waiting each week for the new episode to be released. I also searched around and watched the first 2 episodes of Royal Pains, an old show from the early 2000's I never had seen. I've been listening to audiobooks and am enjoying a series by Ellery Adams - Book Retreat Mysteries. All but the last one are free with my Audible subscription. I'm on book 6 in the 9 book series - Murder in the Storybook Cottage. I have a book on loan from libby - that is due in 13 days, so I really need to listen to that one soon. The Mystery Guest by Nita Prose. She wrote The Maid, which I loved. 

I'd better defrost the burger meat and start the lasagna if I want dinner ready to go in the oven at a reasonable time. 

Let's hope I get some time to stitch up those AT blocks so I have something to show for the RSC.

Slow Sunday? Why yes, it will be!

 I am a little sleep deprived today... but not as much as the girl!  Friday night she had a home Football game (marching band) and it ran late so she was a 10:50 PM pick up. We got home at 11:15. At least the roads are clear at that time of the night and no traffic. She got home and threw her band shorts and shirt into the wash.... since she had to be at school for 9AM for an optional HOT day with the band in Tampa. They went to see the University of South Florida play in the Raymond James Stadium and got to play with their band and perform on the field with them for 2 songs at half time! She had a great time. They opted to stay for the whole game, so the busses arrived back to the school at 1:20AM. She had to grab something out of her locker, but they were dismissed from the busses, so we were out of there by 1:35. I don't expect to see her until much later this afternoon. She is exhausted and so happy to have Monday off. 48 kids from the band and 10 adults attended the game from our school.

I've actually done some hand work this week! I started some more QAYG hexagons to make my quilt just a wee bit bigger. I put it on my bed and it is a little small. Thank goodness it will be easy to add to it as I want to make it bigger. I did groups of 4 colors when I made it, so I'll keep with that pattern. I started with orange and then have yellow and pink prepped as well. I'll cut some more out today and get them ready to stitch in little bits of time this week. 

I made progress on the cat and mouse quilt. I have the bottom row done and will move to the side. I had just outlined the mice, but it needed something, so I used the blue to outline the block and the spacer blocks. 

Since Beetlejuice is coming out with the new movie this week, I watched the original movie from 1988 with Aidan on Friday night. He had never seen it. At the end, when the girls are outside the school - one of them is my roommate from college! 

Since the F1 race is done, I guess it is time to get dressed and get moving on this slow Sunday. Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Slow Sunday

 Yesterday I drew the pattern for Melissa's Hearts pattern for January onto some fabric. The free pattern is found here. Today will be the day to give it a start. Threads are picked but I am debating tracing over it a little darker? We will see how well I can see the lines when I start stitching it tonight. I did this one with pencil but the March one with my green marking pen. I will plan to use some crayons on it to shade things in after I am done stitching it. It will be a new technique for me.

Friday after running errands, I popped a headache which had me 'resting' in bed with this guy for the afternoon. I did watch a few YouTube videos from Kathy and others with counted cross stitch. Peanut was ok with it, as long as it did not disturb his nap on me.

Saturday was much better (well, Friday night actually and I did the girl pick up from the football game at 10:45 - they ran late and got trounced but the band had fun!)

Saturday, was horses after a couple of weeks off while the trainer went to visit her kids in Boston. Emily was happy to be back in the barn and on a horse, despite Doc acting like a brat. She got a workout with him but by the end he was behaving again.

Emily and Kyra after turning out their horses to the pasture. Yes, both are soaked after hosing down the horses. Seems the hose was spraying so Kyra got soaked. They fixed it a bit before Emily hosed down Doc, but then she handed the hose to Kyra and she got her! It was very hot and humid out, so I don't think either girl minded!

While away, the boys did a run to get rid of another truck load of brush, then got some fire starter and Aidan took care of the heap in the back yard. Much better now! He also mowed the lawn and finally edged the driveway.... in the rain. Silly boy. It does look a lot better though. He is off to Grandma's today.

I think this is the first stitching I have done on this quilt since before I left for Vermont! It is time to get this one moving and done! I have other things I want to hand quilt. I got a few mice and this spool block stitched while watching F1 this morning. The 'boys' were on the couch. Greg and Aidan on each side in their recliners, with a dog spread out between them on a pile of quilts with his belly exposed for belly rubs. No spoiled animals in this house =)

Sometime this week, I'll open this package of chop sticks and get out the glue gun and make some wands for the Harry Potter event. We do different designs with hot glue, and then hand them back for someone else to spray them with various colors. Everyone at the event gets a wand and we are all out!

I think today will be a cleaning day and change over to fall. I need a mood boost and my fall things always make me smile. 

Linking up with Kathy and the other slow Sunday Stitchers.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I took a day to relax yesterday and other than making gumbo for dinner last night, I sat and hand quilted! I'm happy to say the 'inside' of the cat quilt is done. Time to move onto the first border of the mice. I still need to spritz out all the blue marking lines in the sashings. When I laid the quilt out to make sure I had all of them done, someone came over to inspect it. Bear laid down for a photo. A well trained dog! (Just holding this down for you mom!)

The dog has been walked. The chickens got some seed scattered in their run. The F1 race is about to start and the boy is up and ready for the race. 

Today I need to pin and quilt a 60x60 baby quilt. I'm hoping to have some binding for hand work this evening.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

A little progress

 This is where I stopped stitching last night. I was listening to an Audiobook and my phone and ear buds ran out of battery. I guess it was time to head to bed!

If I keep plugging away at this daily, I am hopeful I can finish off the sashing and cornerstones by next weekend. Then I can fix a few of the applique mice and get those blocks quilted. 

Baby boy has arrived for my niece, so I really need to get that quilt pinned and quilted and bound and shipped to Colorado. We will see if I can get that done before I fly up to Vermont next Wednesday.

RSC teal

 I have yet to go into the sewing room since I got home. The yard got mowed last night and Aidan and I were working on weeding the overgrown front yard the last few evenings once the heat of the day got down a bit. You can now use the walkway to reach the front door. We got over 10 inches of rain while we were gone at the house. The back yard bushes are still crazy, but the house is a bit presentable from the road now!

I went looking for my quilting thread last night to add some stitches to the teal cat and mouse quilt. Oops, left the neutral and blue up in the yarn bag at camp. Good thing I got 2 spools of that blue and grabbed the other one from the sewing room. I added a few stitches to the sashing and marked a few more to stitch.

Turns out, when you lay the quilt on the floor, the dog comes running and sniffs the quilt (it has been away for 3 weeks) and sits pretty for a photo. My phone was not handy, but to get him off, he needed a treat.

I inspected your quilt, Mom. It is safe to work on. 

I have a list of things to do in the sewing room today after I bring Emily to horses. 

My niece was due Tuesday with a baby boy. I have yet to start that quilt.... but I do have fabrics for the top and drew out this pattern. I might mix up the colors instead of having them in a row. We will see. The goal this weekend is to get it to a top stage.

The fabrics. I have a yellow in the stash to use as well.

Since I did not get much time with Mom and really none with Dad as he was in the hospital the whole time (he is home and back to normal now!), I am flying up to Vermont later this month for a week. It seems there is a direct flight again to Burlington VT from Orlando. My little carryon fits the personal item size... so I'm doing the basic cheap flight. 

Once the baby quilt is done, I'll work on catching up with the RSC. I've got Chicken blocks and Arkansas Traveller blocks to make!

Linking up with the RSC.