Flowers

I didn't get much work done today (shhh, don't tell bossman) but I worked more on getting the office situated.  I was pleasantly surprised and delighted when flowers were delivered.  A friend sent me congrats flowers after I had texted a picture of the blank table.  Wonder if I text another pictures showing dead flowers I'd get fresh ones again?  Might be worth a try.  LOL.

I also have figured out that I need to do a wall hanging and posted a picture of what I plan to do above the flowers.  That way it stares at me until I get it done.  It's the Kumbayah Wall quilt from the August 2009 issue of Quilter's World..  I might modify it somewhat though.  There is a nine patch friendship star in the middle and I'm thinking instead of sewing on the triangles to the corners of the quilt to just applique the nine patch onto a solid piece of fabric.  Less seams on the back ground to sew thru when appliqueing the shapes onto it.

Plenty of time to figure out what to do on it., but here's a picture of my flowers and then I'm out of the office.  It's 6 p.m. and time for me to leave since I've been here since 7 a.m.

PS:  The table cloth is some fabric that Lyndon (Bossman) brought back for me from Africa.  :)

Sewing Room and New Office

Whew!  Vacation time went fast.  It ended with my niece in law Jessica coming over and we spent 6 hours going through the sewing room.  It's not totally done yet but at least I can find the sewing machines as well as the floor.  Progress!

The yellow bars are the Flynn Quilting System

The crates are full of fabric and that's only one part of the room

I also managed to make it to a free motion quilting class (3 hours for one Saturday) which was interesting.  The day before I went I had problems with my sewing machine so I bought a new one.  I can only afford to pay $200 for it so i found a brother for that price.  So here I was going to class with a sewing machine still with all it's advertising stickers on it.  Good thing i had the manual with me!

The class wasn't too bad.  I need lots of practice but did learn a couple of things and the machine does quite a few stitches and a block alphabet.

The white square with all the squiggles was my practice piece from class.  It's hard to see.

White squiggles on white board is hard to see but was my free motion practice piece

Then yesterday I was told I could get the office space across the hall from my current location.  That gave me an office that's about 2 times as large as the one I had been in for over 10 years.  Here is what it looks like...sort of.  Still working on it but I thought I'd better take a picture before it gets cluttered again.  You can't see the boxes that still need to be unpacked because I hid them under the desks.  :)  Oh...did I mention that I swapped out the desk chair for another one that we already have?  Now my chair has the massage feature so after moving in all day I sat in it and turned it on.  A gal might come to work with that waiting for her.  :)

I decided that the space by my diploma needed something so am making this little mini.  The fabric came from a basket of scraps that my friend Harmony gave me when I went down to see her on vacation.

Here is Harmony in her quilting space in her new home.

And then we are in June.  June means I can finally show you one of the test blocks I did.  This is for Wenche's Christmas Baltimore BOM.

Well that is it for now.  I'll write more later and/or post some more pictures.  Have a great weekend!

pictures

Ok.  Have the pix now.  First up is pictures of mom taken this Mother's Day.

She was happy that I remembered to bring bobby pins for her stuffed dog.  :)  Little things make her happy.

Then on Monday I went to visit my friend Harmony in Mendota, IL.  She has recently moved to a different house and it is out in the country.  Actually all of Mendota is out in the country!  :)  She has a room upstairs which is her sewing room.  She had the most comfortable chair in there which I was sitting in.  Then with the two windows open and the slight breeze coming through...I almost fell asleep.  LOL.

I was going to go to the cemeteries on Wednesday (Today) but then my niece in law (Jessica) called up and we went to the cemeteries Tuesday.  That means today is my stay at home and relax day.

Jessica getting ready to take pictures.

Uncle Russ

One side of Tony (which would be over grandma, grandpa)

Tony, over dad

Sherri (on other side of Tony)

I'm on vacation!!!!!

Now the trick is....to get something accomplished while on vacation.  So far I have worked on a test pattern for the magazine which should be completed this week in plenty of time, had a delightful day trip to visit a quilting friend, and gone to the grave sites.  Overall a busy but productive week.  Tomorrow I have to visit some other people and hopefully get back to some craft things and Thursday my niece in law Jessica is coming over to help me rearrange the sewing room.

Hopefully soon you'll be able to see some pictures of what I did.  I'm having internet problems so won't try to load up pictures here tonight. I might run into the office before my 9:30 a.m. meeting and try to do some there. 

Everybody have a great night and better day.  Catch ya on my next pause in the vacation.

Stonehenge fabric

I don't have much time since I'm in the office but wanted to post up a pix of some Stonehenge fabric that I bought from Thousands of Bolts.  :)  I love this fabric line.

Monday - Where did the weekend go.

This was one of my busy weekends and little got done for crafting.  I still managed to finish up the mini wall hanging for the bucket list on cyber quilters 4-c.  It was the cathedral windows drawing.  This is a bad picture and if I remember to bring it into work I might replace it.  I really love the red border on it.  It looks and reminds me of the farm buildings I grew up around.  Seemed to work well with the blue denim fabric.  Next Monday I should have more to show since it is my quilting weekend (every other weekend).

That's it for now.  Have to get back to work before bossman comes back tomorrow and I also need to write my progress on losing weight on my other blog page.

It's Friday!

Can't believe another week has gone by and I still am far behind.  Which, when you translate that sentence, means this will be a short post.

Wednesday was Professional Administrative Day (the old Secretary's Day) and I got flowers from Lyndon (Bossman).  Much to my surprise I also received flowers from another friend on the same day.  I'm not arguing.

I will be taking some from each and putting them in a smaller vase to take to mom on Sunday.  At least that is my plan.  Let's hope that I remember.

Off to a meeting.  Will post more when I can.

design wall monday? Already?

I actually have something on my design wall at work.  Wow...Perhaps I should have warned you before I posted that.  That's ok.  I'll wait for you to recover from the shock of that announcement.

It's not much but since it's at work it doesn't have to be much.  It's all about getting things started again and back into a grove.

That being said here is the finished mug rug that I did.  You know I don't like it and just wanted to finish it because I sewed the binding on the machine.  LOL.

As some of you may know, the yahoo group that I belong to has what we call a bucket list.  I don't do big projects for this since limited space etc.  This months bucket list drawing was to learn to do Cathedral Windows.  I did one block for it (that's enough thank you very much) and here it is.  I will be turning it into a mini wall hanging but not sure how I will finish it yet.

It is pretty plain right now.  I have a little under 200 of these denim squares (approx 8") so thought to use five of them here.  The middle is the reverse side of the denim.  I was going to embroidery in the larger blocks but can't think of what I want to do or what to applique there.  I might just end up doing red border and back on it and leave it.  I might also use red thread and to hash marks for the quilting.  This will probably be a wall hanging.  The blue is actually a prettier shade then it shows up in the picture.

Any suggestions?

Where to start...

Of course that title could mean where to start

1.  cleaning the house
2.  organizing the fabric
3.  cooking something
4.  list what I am working on
5.  work on something


It actually does mean all of those things so I guess I'd better make this a small post.  I did get to work on a couple of things today.  Hopefully tomorrow I will manage to finish up a little mug rug.  I bought a battery control little fan which seems to be working pretty good, and I finished my April teapot.

There.  That wasn't so bad.  I'll take pictures and post tomorrow.

Oh yeah...i also started to clean a corner of my work area  That counts as cleaning house doesn't it?  As for cooking something.  I'm defrosting home made brats from our local grocery store.  Guess that will be on tomorrows list.

Everybody have a good evening.

New Shtuff in Mail

I haven't posted in a bit so forgive me.  Life has been hectic and not enough hours in the day.  First of all let me tell you the story of my Brother embroidery machine.  Some of you may remember that I bought this little machine second hand and have some troubles on and off.  It's not one of those big machines and the only size hoop I can use is the four inch one but it is a starter one and I like it..  So the last time it jammed (oh did I do a number on that) my nephew unjammed it and then cleaned it for me before giving it back to me.  I know it worked then because we did a small piece or two while at his house.  He has 3 girls and 2 boys and they were fascinated with watching the machine do the embroidery.  :)  The girls are into Cricket scrapbooking so they were especially interested.  Since it is a Disney authorized one it had Minnie an Mickey also which just added to its charm.

So what's the problem?  I'm getting the insects in the bobbins again so it's jamming.  Insects is what I call all that bunched up thread underneath that keeps your fabric in place etc.  My top thread kept breaking so it could have been a thread problem.  Anyway,, I gave up on trying to do the design I had picked out and then decided to change both bobbin and top threads to see if it was that.  I also decided that (sit down Kat before you read this) I needed to practice FMQ and took some material and just did some on that.  I think that if nothing else, this machine might be able to be used for FMQ.  I didn't do too well when it was "me" moving the fabric around but when I put it on auto (disconnected the foot pedal) it did much better.  That was probably because the speed was more constant?  It's a theory anyway.  When I take my FMQ class next month it might be with this machine.

By now you might want to know what I got in the mail.  I received more patterns!  Yeah I know...Just what we all need, right?  These are Dinah Jefferies patterns (Garden City Gateworks) and will be used in a Baltimore style wall hanging one day..  I really liked the patterns and will try to pick up more when I can.

Here is what i got this time:

The patterns are for the center pieces and not the borders/frames that they are shown with.  If I wanted to I could do those frames also since I have them in another pattern...somewhere.  LOL.

It's going on 11 pm and another work day tomorrow so I'm signing off for the night.  Everybody have a great day/night.

HUGS to all.

New look to blogger and my day so far

Not sure I like the new changes to blogger but I am sure I will get used to them. Last night I sat down at the computer and started to put some of my fabric on boards.  These are foam boards that I got at Dollar Tree for $1 each so that I can cut to whatever size I need.  I know most people would like the same size for everything but I kind just like that they are wound up on the boards and don't care if they are different sizes.  I'm different sizes also (LOL) and it gives me character.  That means that my fabric has character also right?


Here is what I did last night while catching up with some of my shows on Hulu.  They aren't going to stay in this tub but it was the drawer that I pulled out to work on.  It was stuffed full of fabric now the fabric is a bit more organized.  Eventually I will sort it and put the tiniest pieces in a draw by themselves while the other pieces will be organized....some way.  :)

I have plenty more to do so just a little bit at a time.  Perhaps tonight I will do some more after I search for some patterns.

I took a walk the last half of lunch period and snapped some pictures by the lagoon.  I love that little area of water by work.  Being landlocked in the middle of corn country means not a lot of water around unless I travel a bit.  This I can walk to.  Besides it's fun keeping track of the ducks and geese who are NOT afraid of cars or anything.  They know we all stop for them when they cross the road.

Ready to go on my walk with me?  Here are the pictures that I took on the path that I walked.

Hoped you enjoy my walk with me.  Stay tuned for more updates as the days go by since I am taking a walking challenge starting next week.  The challenge isn't hard...just walk 30 minutes a day.  That is hard for me because I have so much stuff that I do inside that it is hard to get outside for me.  Perhaps one day I might take an indoor walk for 30 minutes and snap pictures of that also.