I finally sewed!!!

Yes, it's true.  I finally sat down at my sewing machine last night for the first time in two months.  After I spent an hour finding where I'd put everything else that I needed to actually sew lol.  Then I had to find a project that my tax season strapped brain could handle, and one that was ready to sew.  I finally remembered that I had Chocolate Covered Cherries all cut out and waiting patiently in my project box.  Perfect! 

This is an ideal project for fairly mindless power sewing.  With only two fabrics, and a simple block, Bento Box, it is pretty easy to keep the pieces straight, although I did have to unsew one unit last night.  Other than that, it has gone very smoothly.  Between an hour of sewing last night and a few more hours today, I've got all of the block segments sewn with about a third pressed and ready to sew into blocks. 

Here is my pile of organized block components just waiting to be sewn together.

I matched all of the pieces up for each step and then chain sewed them all before moving on to the next piece.  Here's the pile of units from one of those sessions.  This made the whole process go really fast.  Match, sew, press, repeat.



And finally, here are the block units that I have done and laid out.  Four units combine to make one block and my quilt will be 4 blocks by 5 blocks, plus borders.

And a closeup of the fabrics in one block.  Dots, batiks, and brights.  What's not to love for me in this quilt!







A Little Crocheting

I actually took the time this week so sit down and watch Criminal Minds on Wednesday night.  I generally can't stand to sit there doing nothing while watching tv, so I pulled out the crocheted rug I've been working on for quite awhile.  It needs one more block.  Between the hour on Wednesday night and the hour between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Thursday night when I couldn't sleep, I got the block nearly finished.  It's the one in the lower left that has all the untrimmed yarn ends still showing.

Here are all six blocks laid out.  I may move them around to balance the colors, but plan to alternate the direction of each block as shown in the picture.  I don't plan on backing the rug as I think I'm going to use it in a carpeted area, but I'm thinking I will have to at least block it.  I've never made a crocheted rug before, so if anyone has any suggestions, please share them!  This one is made using recycled afghan yarn, so a rug was really the only option as the yarn is not in good enough shape for much else.  I am also considering donating it to the animal shelter, but I think it would still need some blocking so it didn't curl in the corners.



Hey, I THOUGHT About Quilting...It's a Start!

Yes, it's true!  I actually thought about quilting last week.  Didn't do any, but I thought about it LOL.  Mainly when these gorgeous fabrics arrived from Jackie.  She had a great sale on batiks and I couldn't resist.  I had seen a lot of these in a local store awhile back, but at $10.59/yd, I just couldn't justify getting them.  But at $7.25 a yard, including lightening fast shipping, I had to get some.  Love, love, love them!  Now to get them washed and into the stash so they can be used.  Whenever that is *sigh*.

Echo also enjoyed the quilt on my table yesterday.

And Sassy was up there too, until I came by, and then she had to roll on the floor and talk to me.  No idea what she was saying, but she seemed pretty happy lol.

And speaking of happy, in response to the comments on my last post, yes, I am very happy right now.  A bit stressed and overwhelmed at times, but very happy :-).





Much to Say and No Time to Say It!

It has been a zoo around here!  The divorce was final on January 3rd and the hearing went off without a hitch.  And then the flurry of paperwork began to make changes to accounts, beneficiaries, etc.  The Texas house closed escrow this past week, which involved a trip to the bank to get documents notarized and then a trip to Fed Ex to send the documents back. 

Tax season officially began on January 5th when the tax returns started rolling in so work has been super busy too.

The animals are all still living with me and they have been a bit stressed with all of the changes and have not been on their best behavior, which is an understatement in some cases.  Now that the Texas house has closed escrow, once T has the funds from the closing, he can start house shopping in Ohio and hopefully be back to get the dogs and his cat by the end of tax season.  Hopefully I can make it until then!  They are keeping me hopping and driving me a bit batty as well lol.

I also got my bedroom/quilting studio furnished.  The bed and tables are exactly what I wanted and match better than I could have ever hoped.  Dawn's daughter had a table virtually identical to my sewing table that left with T and she also had a bookcase that fit perfectly with the rest of the room.  That left the lamps.  Oh, the lamps.  The process of finding and actually purchasing the lamps ended up becoming such a comedy of errors that I had almost given up when things finally fell into place.  I did take pictures today of the furnished room, but don't have time to load them all right now.  I will hopefully have time to do that this week and will tell you the story of the lamps at the same time.

I would like to say that there has been some quilting going on around here, but that is not the case.  Nada, zip, nothing.  Not one stitch or cut or anything remotely resembling quilting, other than putting quilts on the new tables and bed in the bedroom.  I have been so busy that I haven't even had time to think about quilting let alone actually do it.

So that's what has been happening around here for the past two weeks.  In a nutshell, it has been organized chaos lol.

2011 Goals

Happy New Year!

As each year comes to a close, I start to think of my goals for the coming year.  Mostly I put together needlework goals, but usually come up with some financial and household goals as well.  So for the past couple of days I've been trying to think of my goals for the coming year and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.  And that conclusion is that I really only have one goal for 2011...to enjoy and make the most of each day. 

I am starting the year happier than I have been for many years and truly excited about what the future holds.  To that end, I want to be open to anything that comes my way.  I am a Type A Planner by nature, so just going with the flow and seeing what happens is way outside the norm for me.  But oddly enough, it feels totally comfortable and like the right thing to do right now.  So that's what I'm going to do.

On a quilty note, I want to continue to make progress on my UFO list, so to that end, yesterday I pulled out all of the quilt tops awaiting quilting and cut and washed batting for all of them.  Some still need the batting to be pieced, but at least they are all one step closer to becoming finished quilts.

And of course I had help during this process.  Well, I'm not sure how helpful they were, but you had to know that Sassy and Echo were right there with me while I was trying to get things done.

Yesterday morning we had this backyard visitor:



And this morning, we had this one:





Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

At the end of each year, I like to revisit and summarize the projects I've completed for the year and to work on my goals for the next year.  While I didn't come close to achieving all of my 2010 goals, I did reduce my UFOs from 75 to 58.  I also completed all quilts that I started except for one, so I'm pleased with how the year turned out, particularly since I had some major life changes occurring at the same time.

Keeping track of my finishes on my blog was motivating and also made it easy to do my yearend summary. 

In 2010, I completed the following:

• 1 bag - my first!
• 6 medium to large quilts
• 18 small quilts
• 6 pet quilts
• 3 cross stitch projects
• 12 cat mats
• 37 dishcloths

Next up is to work on my goals for 2011.  I'll do that over the next week or so, as well as my annual fabric inventory.

All Ready for the Furniture!

Well, almost.  I still need to paint the baseboards and do a few touch ups, but that won't take long at all.  For the most part, my bedroom/quilting studio is ready for my new furniture, which I ordered on Monday and which will be delivered on January 5th.  All I have left to pick out are lamps and possibly something to display some quilts, but the essentials are ordered - bed, mattress, and bedside tables.

So here is the tour of the finished room.  For purple lovers like me, it's perfect and I love it.

Entrance to the room showing the two colors of paint pretty well:



Future design wall and quilt display area:



Sewing table space with view of the backyard:



Wall where the bed and tables will go:



Entrance to the master bath - how convenient to be so accessible to the quilting area!

And back to the entrance:



And if you think the felines haven't been up to their usual activities, you would be mistaken.  Things may look innocent in this first picture, but looks can be deceiving.

About 30 seconds later, this is what the top of the end table looked like, which by the way, is not normally sitting in the hallway.  It was moved for the carpet cleaning and had not yet been put back.  Actually, it's not even an end table.  Those left with T, along with the matching coffee table, so until I can replace those items, I am using the nightstands that previously lived in the bedroom.  It's kind of like going back to college living with a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture, but I hope to remedy that soon.

So anyway, back to the next picture in the story.  Any guesses what they are looking at?  See anything missing in the picture?

Oh look, now we can play with the plant on the floor too!  Yeah, I don't think so.  And just so you know, the poinsettias are fake, so no animals were harmed in the taking of these pictures lol.  Real poinsettias are toxic to cats, so I never have them.  Actually, I don't even know if real pink poinsettias exist.  These were on sale at Joann's after Thanksgiving, so I picked them up.