Back home again

I'm back home... as of yesterday. But I was waaaaaaaaaaaay too tired to even think about posting. In fact I fell asleep on my bed, fully dressed. My husband eventually woke me up so I could take my contacts out. I had one heck of a time trying to undo my bra strap - I was just too tired. I was ready to cry and my arms were about to fall off and I finally called my husband to help me. Even he had trouble getting it to unsnap. I started to wonder what the plane ride did to my clothes... then he got it off. Phew. I'll keep him after all. ;)

I just finished uploading 161 pictures! I'm interested in staying sane, so I'll be doing certain amounts/groups when I post, and certainly not all at once! But definately some goodies and quilt-related stuff. :)

Below is another picture of Mrs. P and the quilt I finished for her. I tried so hard to upload this picture in my previous post, but blogger just stomped their foot and told me no way. While the photo is a little more blurry, it's more true, color-wise. And I got to crop it. I couldn't find the crop option on my parent's laptop and it was driving me mad. :P


So... I'm slowly trying to catch up. I've whittled my email from about 800 to 529. A lot of deleting. I did a lot of errands today too. The electric bill was due TODAY (and I'll bet the bill came on the day we left too...) so I went to the post office, electric company, dropped off a bag of clothes to the thrift store, library, bank, walmart, the store and paid rent! Are you tired yet? ;)

When I came home, my husband wasn't there, but some potatoes were cooking. Turns out he felt like grilling up some steaks, especially since he got some new BBQ'ing tips from my dad on our vacation. They turned out really great! And he also had great timing. Not more than 15 minutes after he finished grilling the meat, the clouds started pouring out heavy rain for a while. But check out my husband! ;)

Definately a keeper - he took pictures of me when I was dyeing fabric with my mom and I was a wreck! I even accidently dyed my bra. :P Let's just say I now have a permanent "dyeing" outfit. :D

Leah

Giving the quilt

We surprised Mrs. P with the quilt tonight at dinner. She didn't even know that I was in town. :)

We met her and her husband at Chef Chu's, a chinese resturant. I gave her the quilt first thing, she's thrilled with it. :)

We spent over 2 hours just talking (that's my mom's head on the left of the picture) and visiting. When we got our fortune cookies, mine read something like "You have a gift of seeing beauty in ordinary things". Mrs. P's read "Some unexpected visitor will bring you good blessings". We all had a good laugh, because I'm the unexpected visitor and I brought her a quilt. :)

Helen in the UK: No, my arms weren't too sore from the quilting - I used low loft batting. But my bum and legs were REALLY sore from crawling all over the floor to pin the quilt. :D

Anne K: I had to laugh at your comment about how sqaure the blocks look... because Mrs. P is the one who cut out all the strips the old fashioned way: scissors. :P So they're probably not as straight and true as rotary cutters can be. It wasn't a problem though, I just sewed them like if they were any other block. The strips were cut at 2.5", so if I needed to, I could stretch and "make it fit" as needed. If I try to sew a log cabin with logs smaller than 2", then yeah... mine will be wonky too. :) Oh, and I ironed after each strip.

My parents got a laptop and it found my camera to be agreeable with its hardware... but in the photo program, I just couldn't find the crop button! At least I was able to resize it to less than 33% of the original. But this makes me want a laptop... just cuz. ;)

Turns out that my brother isn't going to have a Court of Honor yet, cuz his Eagle Scout project didn't work out... he has about a month to get his new one finished (Once you turn 18, no Eagle).

I've been having a blast and have been chatting with my mom and sister til my throat is sore. I still can't believe how alike my baby sister and I are, even though I haven't communicated with her since October. When she picked us up at the airport, we were both wearing similar outfits. A light shirt with an image and words and dark blue pants. She just got contacts, and we both had our hair pulled back. Twins, with 4 years between us. ;) Oh, and it turns out that we both bought ourselves new bathing suits recently and we both got new purses - she was walking into Safeway a week ago and her strap broke. I was walking into WalMart Thursday and MY strap broke on my purse. Just too funny. :)

Today I spent the afternoon with my mom. We went to WalMart for certain dyeing supplies - like measuring cup, buckets and I picked up some flower stencils. Then we went to JoAnn's to get muslin for dyeing, and phooey! They only had about 1 yard of white 44" left. I ended up buying a bolt of 90" wide and we'll just have to cut down to what size we want. But I'm glad my mom is so excited about dyeing fabric. She also wants to make a miniture quilt while I'm here too. :)

Time to catch up on email!

Leah

Yipee!!

Yesterday was my second wedding anniversary. Whoo!! This is my favorite wedding picture of the two of us. I know we're just laughing at the weird positions the photographer was making us do... but we just look all glowy and happy. :)

He gave me a humorous anniversary card that I'm going to keep forever. :) We went out to lunch at Applebee's and he complimented on my new capri's - that sure made my day! (And after lunch, I bought myself another pair. :D)

The other news is that I've been working on Mrs. P's quilt. I believe I'll be seeing her this Saturday, so I want the quilt to be done before then. She started it over 15 years ago! Time for it to be finished. :)

She originally was doing the quilt-as-you-go block method. I have an idea how that works, but I just couldn't figure out how to add the borders. Then when I was inspecting the blocks, I noticed that the backing fabric was looking pretty chewed up where the thread was. I took a wild guess that it was sewn with 100% polyester thread. It bothered me - the quilt hasn't even been used and it is already developing holes. :(

So I went ahead and undid all the blocks she had sewn (9 of them) and redid all the blocks (20). I felt so much better knowing that her quilt could have a longer life now. I also bought new cotton backing for the quilt.

Here I'm trying to pin the quilt - I could only do half at a time! I pinned it every 7 inches. Crossed my fingers and hoped for no puckers!


I started quilting it about 4:30 this afternoon and with lots of breaks, I was about halfway done at 8:30. Then I started to really tackle it and got the other half of the quilt done at 9:30. Things that make you go hmmmm! ;)

It's about twin sized, maybe a little short in length, but definately wide enough. I still can't believe I got it quilted in one day!

And here's the back - would you believe I found the same fabric the darkest/last logs are in the quilt top? I was dropping my jaw, this quilt is over 15 years in the making, what are the odds of me finding matching fabric?! And the more funny part, the selvage said "Copyright 1990". Ohhhh. :P

But whew... I started this on Monday, July 3rd and I'll likely be done on Friday. That's gotta be the fastest quilt I've done! And the good news is that it's looking pucker-free. :)

Busy days ahead - tomorrow I need to get the binding on and start hand sewing that down. I need to buy some ant bait so we don't come back home to an ant-filled apartment. I need to make some copies of paperwork for my dad. I want to buy a new bathing suit. :) Oops, lets not forget packing. Mustn't forget the quilts or the dyeing stuff... think a list would help me? ;)

Friday we leave for Phoenix and will land in California around 10pm. I'll be tired! Saturday is my brother's Court of Honor, where he gets awarded his Eagle Scout ranking.

So who knows when I'll be posting again. I'm definately bringing my camera with me, so at least there should be fun photos later. :)

Leah

Two Headed Sheep

Yay! I finished the customer's quilt on Sunday afternoon. She doesn't need it til August, but it's nice to get it out of the way before my trip.

This is the front of the quilt, 36" square. I quilted wavy lines in the cream fabric.


This is the back of the quilt. I didn't have enough yardage to make a seam-less backing, so I took all my leftover HSTs and basically made it a double-sided quilt.


While I was handsewing down the binding I came across what would happen when cloning goes wrong...

Those poor sheep make me laugh - what are the odds of me sewing something like that, unknowingly? :)

I made an order for books from an online site - should give me plenty to read when I'm visiting my parents! I also placed an order at Dharma for handdyeing powders and chemicals. I'll have to buy the muslin when I'm there. I'm not sure when I'll have time to dye, but I really wanna show my mom and sister how to. :)

Leah