It's not Tuesday?

My brain is all fuddled up. I kept thinking today was Tuesday. So I sat down in front of the TV at 7pm to watch House... and Prison Break comes on! I started whining to my husband... and then he pointed out my error. :P

Another reason why I feel like it's Tuesday is because I'm thinking that Judy posted the instructions to November's "Quilt for an Hour" a day early, not TWO days early. So I'm guilty of an early start again. :)

I decided to start with the center of the blocks. I'm not sure if I put an hour into it or not, I worked on it 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. Short attention span today, I guess. But I have all the strips and I'm sewing them together to make the center part. I sped up the production on 2 blocks so I'd have something to show (off). ;)

And yes, I'm cheating again, using up my (seemingly) endless supply of Leaders and Enders - or LeANDers... I can't remember who came up with that term, but I remember she named her quilt Abigail Leander, because it was made from Leaders and Enders. (Edit to add: I found her!)

Hopefully I'll have my head on straight tomorrow and not try to go to my quilt guild meeting a day early, or wonder why the Halloween candy isn't 50% off yet. :P

Leah

Christmas Blues

I'm finally putting my other Christmas blocks to use. This time I'm sashing it and using blue cornerstones. Hence the name "Christmas Blues". :)

I'll probably even quilt it with blue thread. I still have some leftover bobbins filled from quilting my aunt's quilt

Do you ever have days where you don't turn on your machine in a while? I haven't turned mine on in over a good week. I still do quilty stuff - like ironing, cutting, washing fabric and dreaming. ;) But haven't touched my machine. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it. I have plenty of nice thread and needles on hand. I cleaned it out recently. It's not the machine. It's me.

Oh well, I'm going to HAVE to turn it on soon, cuz Wednesday is my guild meeting and I have my blotto block due. On the bright side, it's also the annual "Garage Sale" - quilters can bring their pieces of fabric and other quilty stuff and sell it. Whoever owned it gets to keep the profit. I don't think I'll try to sell anything, but probably will be buying! :P Hey, my birthday is coming up in two weeks, perfect excuse. ;)

Leah

Quickie

Quickie... post! ;)

I spent most of this weekend ironing open these HSTs. They are 2" unfinished.

I'm thinking about making Bonnie's Ocean Waves... yeah, not a fast and easy project there! :P She said she used over 2,000 HSTs... I'm 25% there, 526 half-square triangles. I keep count by pinning them into groups of 10. They are all "leftovers" from double sewing 2.5" squares onto my Star Struck and Snowball blocks. The good news is that I need to make a lot more Star Struck blocks, so I'm sure I'll accumulate more. :)

Must... get... my... brain... into... Christmas!! I found out the other day that I'll be going to San Diego for Christmas and we'll be celebrating my grandfather's 75th birthday, his retirement and Christmas. It'll be pretty special for him, since he'll have all three sons, their wives and kids and my husband. :P Yeah, I'm the only "grandkid" that's married. But gotta start getting some creative ideas for gifts! I'd love to give everybody a quilt, but I'm not superwoman. ;)

Leah

9-patch Snowball

At the beginning of this year I was in a 9-patch swap. The requirements were batiks or hand dyed fabrics, using Kona Black. I think I sent in 35 blocks.

There was also another swap going on at the same time, snowball blocks with hand dyed or batik centers. I wanted it to be the other way around, black in the middle and the corners to be batiks/hand dyed. So I bowed out of that swap.

Last week I started to work on my own snowball blocks, using the fabric my mom and I had dyed. I adore the combinations my mom came up with! I just can't get past the secondary colors, I guess tertiary colors are just beyond my grasp. But Mom is more than happy to play around... and I'm more than happy to use it up in a quilt! ;)

I'm 4 snowball blocks short. Phooey. And I might have to redo a few of the 9-patches, cuz a few look like they're 6.25 instead of 6.5" and I don't think I can stretch them out enough to make it work. Too bad we all can't have the perfect quarter-inch every time we sew... life would be so much easier! :P

Leah

Finished Love Quilt

Yay! I'm officially done with the love quilt I was quilting.

It's all safely off in the mail... hope to hear about her reaction soon!

A lone orphan block accidently got misplaced and didn't make it to the top. So I stitched it to the back.


And of course, no quilt is completed without a label. :)

I like using the sunflower block for my labels... I should make more. I guess after my sunflower themed wedding, I'm claiming that flower as mine. ;)

I also pieced the last green block I needed for my husband's quilt. I hope he has no clue at all! :D But poor guy... he hurt his back, on the side. Not sure what he did, but he's been limping around yesterday. Then he comes home today and his foot his hurting him - it looked a little swollen. So he's been limping and gimping around today. At least he doesn't turn into a big baby and expects to be waited on by hand and foot... erg, foot and back. ;)

Leah

Cold weather ahead!

It is 49 degrees right now... and I have my window wide open! I looooooooooooooooove being cold. But all this coldness reminded me that I need to work on my husband's quilt and get it done in time for Christmas.

I got all the blocks put together - well, I'm one green block short. And have 3 extra blue ones... but that'd sure explain why I have a bunch of green HSTs leftover! :P The quilt should measure 60x84 inches when it's quilted.

I also need to hurry up and get it done so that way he won't be so cold at night. We don't turn on the heater, ever. If we want to warm up, we can take a shower; cook and hang around in the kitchen; and best of all, ironing fabric is a great way for me to warm up! :)

I figured it's time that I update my sidebar picture - no more bathing suits or fishing for me! ;)

I'm happily bundled up in a green sweater that my parents gave me for my birthday last year - it was hard to find weather cold enough to wear it here last year. Looks like this year is gonna be colder! :D Maybe we'll even get snow again... I can hope! ;)

Leah

Chaos of Christmas

And we have the top! Definately screams "Christmas!" :)

There's a total of seven 16-patches in the quilt. Yeah, the top got a little cropped. :P And I have enough blocks to make another top! But I think I'll sash it to gives the eyes a break. :)

My other good news is that we got the electricity bill today and it was $67! I'm really happy cuz before we were paying $125 or so a month. What did we do differently? We turned off the A/C. That's it, that's all. :P Who knew that it could be so darn expensive!

Leah

Strips and Squares

More progress has been made on the Christmas quilt! I have all the strips sewn together...


...and cross cut into more strips and squares.

It's definately gonna be one BUSY looking quilt! :P Maybe I'll call it "The Chaos of Christmas". ;)

My mom wrote me the other day and said that my cousin got her quilt for her daughter and that she loves it. I'm glad. She also had the baby on Wednesday the 4th, a 8 pound 2oz gal! :D

Leah

Getting my brain into gear

I've been having trouble getting my brain back into gear. Fall break week has thrown me off with my husband home all day - but I'm not complaining! :D

I also spent 2 days tearing apart my room, looking for this quilt. I wanted to give it to my mom with her birthday package. I looked in all the spots I could think of... and it wasn't there. I kept tearing my room apart - it got so bad that my husband commented on it! So I decided to do the opposite - clean up my room, then I'll find it, right? More than an hour later and lots of fabric folded... I still couldn't find the quilt. Well! It's easy to lose something that's less than 17" sqaure. ;)

I ended up giving up. Then I had a great idea for my Christmas fabrics, so I started to dig through my stash for all my Christmas fabric. And well, what do you know! I found the quilt. :P So it should be on the way to my mom... maybe she'll get it tomorrow. :)

As for the Christmas fabric, I cut them into a bunch of 2.5" strips.

Then I paired a greenish piece with a non-greenish piece.

And now I have a bunch of pair strips! But I ain't gonna tell you what I'm doing yet. Check back another day. ;)

Today is day 10 of planting my sugar peas - they're coming along nicely!

I regularly "torture" my husband to check them out every few days. I definately check on them every day! :D No weeds yet, but I have had to remove dead pine needles. It's sure easy to baby something so small and contained. :)

Leah

Slow Poke

Well, this time I'm not gonna be the horse crossing the finish line long before everybody else... I'm having a pretty slow start with Judy's Hour a Day project. All I've accomplished today was to handwash these batik FQs that I'll be using. Ain't they purdy? ;)


In other news I got a little potted garden going on my deck. It's just sugar peas right now.

The directions said to plant them in September or Jan-Mar... oops, planted them on Oct 1st. :P But I'm willing to baby them. I'll be thrilled if some green even manages to sprout! If not, I can always try again next year.

This is gonna be such a busy week... I'm already wanting to crash into bed thinking about it.

Tuesday: Sew-In, they're gonna do a block exchange (which I declined to be a part of) and the hostess just had surgery on her arm, so they're asking everybody that's coming over to help out, food-wise. Gonna bake spicy apple bars. Maybe I'll get more progress on the Leaf Season quilt - especially since House or Standoff won't be showing tomorrow night.

Wednesday: Guild meeting - they're gonna reveal the 2006 Quilt Challenge (again, not a part of it) and we get to vote who's the best. The other news is that they dropped the Biggest Loser from 2 hours to 1 hour... so let's claim that "extra" hour for Leaf Season!

Thursday: check the tires on the car, find all the vacuum parts to return to Costco and drive to Tucson for my husband's concert. I won't even think about trying to do Leaf Season.

Friday: last day of school before fall break begins. I think Battlestar Galatica starts too. Might get an hour of sewing in, if I'm not wiped out from the concert.

Saturday: is the local Art-in-the-Park festival and I always like to check it out for Christmas ideas.

Today was hetic enough - I spent over 2.5 hours grading articles for my husband. At least he helped out by cooking most of dinner. :)

And I'm really glad that he gets next week off... all the school shootings in the past week make me a little nervous. I imagine he's at a much higher risk that an elementary teacher is. It would be hard to imagine such happening at the local high school here, but if it could happen in an Amish school... it can happen anywhere. :(

But maybe I'll have little green shoots poking in the pots by the end of the week. I can hope! ;)

Leah