Long Time, No Blog

It seems like forever since I've done a blog post.  I think this is the longest I've gone without posting.  It's been a busy few weeks and I haven't done much on the quilting front other then to finish ironing the mountain of washed fabric and getting it put away.  It's official now...I am definitely over capacity.  My once neat storage system in the closet is now messy looking because there is too much fabric in there and I had to resort to putting a lot of it on the floor in front of the wire storage units.

Before I fell off the blogging grid, I mentioned having some major personal issues going on right now.  I hadn't intended to discuss them on my blog, and I still won't in detail, but I decided that since this is a journal for me first and foremost, it probably warrants at least a mention.  It will also explain any blogging absences that may occur over the next few months.  In a nutshell, my husband and I are getting divorced after 17 years of marriage.  It is my idea, so it obviously isn't a surprise for me, but there are a lot of things to be discussed and worked out, as well as paperwork to be prepared and filed, all while keeping up with my job.  T arrived back in town yesterday afternoon, so today we started on documenting some things that need to be valued for the asset division, as well as organizing important paperwork that will need to be divided or copied (i.e. tax returns, etc.).  We are trying to do everything without lawyers, so while T was back with his family, I prepared preliminary drafts of the various divorce documents for discussion and negotiation.  The final preparation of the initial filing will happen as soon as we have all of the asset and property division issues nailed down.  Once the paperwork is in motion, we can start working on getting him moved to wherever he decides to go - the house in Texas or back to Ohio where his family is.  Either way, it will be a long distance move that will also take time to coordinate and execute.  With luck, we will be able to finalize the divorce very early in 2011 so life can return to normal, or a new normal as the case may be!

Since I haven't been getting any actual quilting done lately, I thought I'd just do a "pets on parade" feature for the rest of this post.

First up we have Maya.  As I mentioned in a post about her back in July, she has a stick obsession.  Whenever there is a pile of yard trimming waiting for disposal, she always roots around to find the perfect stick.  This time she hit the mother lode and found a nice thick tree limb.  She laid with it until Koda came and took it away from her LOL.

Tyrone has been sleeping at the end of the couch recently.  I'm not sure if he decided to get up the other day and then changed his mind, but here's how I found him.



Sassy demonstrating one of her unusual sleeping positions, which is not unusual for her at all!

And what is up with cats' obsession with laying on fabric?  Over half the bed was available to them, but no, Tyrone and Echo had to lay ON the fabric that I had pressed and folded to be put away.  And yes, Tyrone is on a stack of fabric.  If you look closely you can see a bit of it under his chin.  And Echo managed to spread his DNA on to multiple stacks of fabric.  Thank goodness for lint rollers.



I've mentioned in the past that Echo isn't the brightest bulb in the pack.  Here's where I found him the other night.  I was hand washing my swimming suit in the sink and Echo was laying on the vanity with his tail half submerged in the water.  He seemed to be completely oblivious to that fact.  It was so wet that I had to wring it out!

And finally, I almost added another pet to the menagerie this week, but instead opted to release him.  This baby lizard lived in my bathroom for about 24 hours before I decided that he stood a better chance outside than in my bathroom with the cats around.  I was THIS close to going and buying an aquarium, but figured that I didn't need any extra creatures to feed and care for right now.  He sure was cute though!



Christmas Gift #2 is Done!

I finished the second flannel baby quilt I wrote about here just in time to send it home with T so I didn't have to ship it later.  This one will be a Christmas gift for our nephew's daughter born last November.

Here is the front of the finished quilt - so soft and sweet looking - perfect for a little girl I think.

A closeup:

And the back:

And the front and back together.  I thought they coordinated very nicely and everything was from my stash, including the quilting thread!

I was also washing some fabric this week and look who had to "help" with that process.  Yes, that would be Sassy in the dryer once again :-).  And yes, I already failed at my "don't buy anything until the end of the year" pledge and I purchased some more Kaffe Fasset fabrics.  But they were so worth it, and basically free since I used some of the money from my recent Ebay sales to buy them.  So if they were free, that doesn't really count, does it?  LOL

Just What The Doctor Ordered

After dropping T at the airport on Saturday morning, I have spent the last three days in blissful solitude.  The headaches and sinus problems I've been having lately have all but disappeared.  Just goes to show how damaging stress can be.  I took the entire weekend off from work too, for which I will probably pay the price this week, but it will have been worth it.  I continued with my power sewing and also got some sorting done in the garage, paid the bills, got the house cleaned and did a load of laundry.  Oh, and I spent quite a few hours yakking on the phone with family and friends, which was great.

So back to the power sewing.  I'm sure you are anxious to see how the project I spoke about on Friday has progressed.  With the help of my QC team, I was able to accomplish quite a bit.

Echo supervised the fabric selection:

And Sassy helped with the pressing:

When all was said and done, I ended up with this quilt top I laid out yesterday.  After all that sewing, I wasn't in the mood to sew it together, but the rows are labeled and ready to assemble.  I will worry about the border selection once the quilt center is put together.  I'm sure I will have something in my stash that will work.  I also went way overboard sewing the light strip sets, so I've got a good start on a second quilt that will use these blocks. 

A closer look at the blocks.  Totally scrappy, which you know I love.

Echo tested the blocks out too and gave his approval.

After I finished laying out the blocks yesterday, I did a load of laundry.  As I came back to get more clothes to hang up, look what I found in the dryer:

When I came back the second time, Tyrone had apparently decided that Sassy must be on to something with the dryer, so now he was in it checking it out.  Goofy cats.

 

Power Sewing

I have some major stuff going on in my personal life right now that I don't intend to blog about, but suffice it to say that it's wearing on me mentally and I found myself unable to put two thoughts together for work today.  So what's a quilter to do when that happens?  Mindless power sewing, that's what!

I pulled out my 1 1/2 and 2 inch strip containers and came up with a basic plan.  I started with the light 2 inch strips and the dark 1 1/2 inch strips.  You can see that the containers are pretty full, so some of these strips needed to be used up.

One of my goals for 2010 was to make a quilt from my 1 1/2", 2", and 2 1/2" strip bins.  Of course I originally intended to make one quilt from each bin, but seeing as it's September already, I'm willing to fudge a bit and get a two for one by combining the different sizes into one quilt.

I sewed strip sets together today starting with a 2 inch light strip, adding a 1 1/2 inch dark strip, another 2 inch light, another 1 1/2 inch dark and finally another 2 inch light strip.  I plan to do the same process alternating 2 inch dark strips with 1 1/2 inch light strips, but didn't get that far today.  The strip sets finish at 7 inches wide, or they should anyway.  Not all of mine did, but they were close enough.

I cut 7 x 7 squares and then cut the rest of the strip set into whatever size I could get out of it.  The 7 x 7 squares will be used for the basic quilt I originally thought of and the leftover units will be set aside for now.  I think I have an idea for those too, but for now I'll focus on using the large units. 

Here's what I have to show for the afternoon:

I've got 14 of the large units made, but will need a lot more.  No worries though as I'm sure I will need many more mindless sewing days over the next number of months and now I've got a project to work on during that time.  I got quite a lot of smaller units too, so those will be a nice start to the other quilt I have in mind.

And of course I have to include the requisite cat picture.  Today Tyrone is the featured feline.  He usually doesn't get too much publicity as Sassy is usually hogging the spotlight LOL.  But as you can see, she still managed to get her time in as she is in the background of the picture.  Tyrone and Sassy were both supervising my sewing today and Tyrone was multi tasking by also doing the preliminary quality control work on some quilts waiting for basting.  I thought it was cute how he propped his leg up on the bed while he was sleeping.