Progress

One down

Two to go!



I have so much to do this week before this string of Saturday craft shows starts this weekend!

I did find time yesterday to bake a cake! My favorite - white cake with white icing. We always called it "wedding cake" but nowadays the cakes at weddings are usually pound cake or red velvet.
I shamelessly enjoyed a nice piece of it while watching "Biggest Loser" last night!

>^..^<~

Jenn

Anxiety

As much as I love sewing and quilting, I'm truly dreading this project. I made this quillow and posted it for sale on my website.

Within a week, I received an order for it and had to do a doubletake....there was a "3" beside it. Naturally, I had to email the customer to make sure this wasn't an error.

Nope....she wanted 3.

Well, I wasn't sure I had enough of all those fabrics to make 2 more and suggested that if I didn't, would she be interested in the other two being of different fabrics and such.

No, she didn't mind.

So, I was off to raid my closet and see what I had left. Most of the fabrics were there but a couple would have to be substituted with a different print, but same color. I emailed this information back to her along with some other color combinations that would match her living room. I was surprised when she wrote back that she wanted 3 new ones all in the same color scheme of one of the combinations I put together.

So, I basically just created more work for myself! Unfortunately, I know I'm going to be sick of this pattern before this is over, and these are hand quilted on top of that! Sheesh! Don't get me wrong, I am truly thankful for the order, I just hope I can hold out! It also means less sewing of "fun" things...things that I want to make.

We're also preparing for a lineup of 3 craft shows back-to-back starting this coming Saturday so I've got that to get ready for, too. Needless to say, I probably shouldn't be blogging right now!

I did want to post my progress on amanda jean's quilt along. I'm only doing 56 blocks as I want this to be a throw quilt for my computer room/guest room.

I also got my I Spy blocks cut and mailed off to Karen at Sew Many Ways.

Next, I'll try to squeeze in my blocks for the red and aqua D9PS after my fabric order arrives. I picked up some fabrics at quilt shops but had to order a couple that had both red and aqua in them as most I found only had one or the other.

The hubby just came in for a quick kiss and stated that he's headed off to the "dungeon" (he's been doing some drafting in the basement for a house we're getting ready to build for his cousin).

I guess I'm headed to my "dungeon", too, only I have windows!!

Most importantly, I ran across this Bible verse in my devotions this morning and I couldn't help but be amazed and reminded that God knows what we need all the time and this is what I needed to be reminded of:

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."


~Philippians 4:6-7 NASB

>^..^<~

Jenn

Baby Dance

Happy Friday, everyone!

Have a great weekend!

>^..^<~

Jenn

Community Dogs

We don't currently have any pets of our own, but we have community dogs. We've always had community dogs.We live out in the country where the dogs pretty much run free. Our first doggy friend was Sissy.

Sissy lived about 2 doors down (1/2 mile, maybe) and would come visit almost daily. She was such a loveable dog and super sweet, to boot! When we met Sissy, we did have pets

a golden retriever named "Scotty" and a cat named "Maggie".

Needless to day, Maggie and Sissy didn't get along and Sissy got her nose scratched up quite a bit back in those days. On the other hand, Sissy and Scotty got along famously. So famously that they had babies together.

This is the only picture I have of Scotty and Sissy and two of their "babies". You can see Scotty on the left...he's not interested in family gatherings. Combining a short and squatty dog like Sissy (sorry, I can never remember what breed she was) and a golden retriever like Scotty makes for some interesting babies. Penny (the black dog) had super short legs and couldn't even climb stairs, but she had a normal shaped body. Boomer (the white dog), on the other hand seemed perfect.

We decided to adopt one of the babies and Boomer became our newest addition to the pet family.

He was so cute,

so loveable,

so sweet and generous,

and he got spoiled a bit - for a country dog, that is. No, he didn't get to sleep indoors, but we did tease him a little with it!

Unfortunately, Boomer just disappeared one day. My husband thinks he was stolen because he was such a beautiful and friendly dog.
Sissy continued to visit.

Then Scotty died. Maggie died the following year.

Sissy still came to visit us, and you could tell she was lonely.

One day, she came accompanied by this little fella. His name was Buddy.

He was so pretty, with the biggest brown eyes you've ever seen and one lazy ear, but he had ENORMOUS amounts of energy! Sissy was getting old and arthritic and Buddy would jump all over her and bite her until she finally growled and snapped at him. It didn't slow him down for long and soon he'd be back at it again, playing like the puppy he was.

Then, Sissy died (yes - we've been thru a lot of doggie funerals) and it was Buddy's turn to be lonely. His owner tried keeping him penned up and for a few months we didn't see Buddy much at all. He was kind of a spastic dog and I could understand this because he could easily run out into the road and get hit. His owner must've gotten tired of seeing his sad face behind the fence and soon Buddy was back visiting the community again. Buddy was such a lover....he thrives on attention and literally throws himself at you for some affection. When you sit in the swing on the back porch, Buddy leaps up into the swing and plants himself, wiggling furiously, on your lap and buries his nose in you, just begging for some love.

One day Buddy came to visit with another dog. This one was much smaller than he and real scruffy looking.

She was a little skittish at first but after awhile she warmed up to us a eventually and let us pet her. We found out soon that her name was Dixie. Now we get daily visits from Buddy and Dixie. Dixie is a real gentle and sweet little girl and is totally dedicated to Buddy. Buddy, on the other hand, is what we call a "love pig". You can't help but reach for Dixie and say sweet things to her while you pet her because she is so cute, but when Buddy sees this happening he rushes in, noses her out of the way and demands he needs the love more than her.

The nicest thing about community dogs is that you don't have to feed them and worry about what to do with them when you want to go on vacation! Our neighbor just whistles or hollers or something (we can't hear it but they can) and the dogs go running home every night.

I'm still a cat person, though.

>^..^<~

Jenn

Silliness on Skype and Other Stuff

We just discovered Skype a few months ago about the same time our middle child moved into her own apartment about an hour away. We had fun one day, chatting thru Skype over the distance and using our webcams. She has a particularly nice laptop with lots of features associated with the camera and when she activated them, we had a blast taking snapshots of her “hamming it up”.

To quote Seinfeld…”it wasn’t a pick, it was a rub!”

Someone must have dropped her on her head when she was a baby

This one cracks me up the most….love that pointy noggin and big ogre teeth

She’s definitely “twisted”

What fun!

I finished this quillow yesterday.

I saw a picture of the design in a magazine and had my husband make the pattern template for me but I can't seem to find the name for this type of block - anybody know?

Here is a picture of the finished rag quilt and pillow set that I've already mailed off to my customer.

Since the hubby did the majority of the clipping on this project I caught him doing his own admiration of the finished product, touching it and exclaiming…

"Ooh, this is neat "

"She’s going to like this"

(and my personal favorite:)
"I’m a good snipper!"




This is what awaits me today....another patchwork quillow to assemble. I've always wanted to do a Bento Box and found a tutorial on Sonnet of the Moon. I decided to go with classic yellow and blue combination.

>^..^<~

Jenn

Chores First

I try so hard to do what this little drawing suggests, but I still hate housework.
I truly hate it!
I keep a neat and tidy house, but I do admit it gets dusty and needs vacuuming and such more often than I am willing to do it.
But, today, I have done my chores and now I get to sew!

>^..^<~
Jenn

Rag Quilt Duty

Yesterday morning as I was posting, my husband came up to me and asked what I was doing….I really dreaded to tell him because I knew he would tease me and I also know how skeptical he is of things on the internet – he doesn’t believe ANYTHING and even thinks Pioneer Woman isn't a real person!
Nevertheless, I don’t want to hide anything from him so I swallowed and said….”blogging”.
“Blogging?….You’re blogging?”
“Yes, dear – and I even have 4 followers!”
“Followers? You mean like this?”
Immediately he struck a pose like someone worshipping Pharoah….arms raised, bending at the waist over and over again. I chuckle every time I picture him doing that.
“Well, what do you blog about? I hope you don’t blog about sex!”
“No, honey, I don’t blog about sex…no one I know blogs about sex!”
(unless you count yesterday’s post – oops!)
After I told him what I DO blog about and how I just wanted to reach out and share my life in the hopes it would perhaps make someone else smile or touch them in a special way as I have been touched by others’ blogs, I got his blessing in the form of:
“Well, that’s good!”
So, I guess I can now post my blogs without dreading his discovery….I’m sure I’ll still get some ribbing out of it, though....but, that's OK - I've since put him to work...how? you ask...read on!

I started on a customer order yesterday for a purple and pink rag quilt. I prefer to consider the ones I make more like "blankets" because I don't insert any batting in the center of each square and stich an "X" thru the middle, making it a puffier quilt....guess I'm too lazy in that respect. This one's heavy enough as it is since it's made with 3 layers of mostly 100% cotton flannel. I even left two rows of squares off to keep the weight down.

It took me about 2 hours to cut all the squares lay them out and then put them together in a 8 x 8 block pattern. I added a small pillow, too.

The final sewing step is to stitch around the outer edge of the entire quilt to secure the fraying there.

I like to use a decorative stitch and I just happened to have a purple and pink variegated thread to do it with - Perfect!

Then comes all the snipping. The first rag quilt I made I did all the snipping with my regular cutting scissors and boy, was I sorry I did! I then did some research on pricing and quality and decided to purchase the Fiskars' brand snippers and I absolutely LOVE them!

So, I snipped the pillow as a demonstration and then handed the quilt over to you-know-who with a sweet smile and syruppy little "Sweetie, do you think you could snip this for me tonight?"

One hour and 45 minutes later it was done! I've washed it and it's in the dryer now being fluffed so I'll have final pictures posted later on.

All that flannel cutting left my mat "crusted" with bits of fluff - embedded in the little cuts and all.

That's why I purchased this:

Lovely! Works like a charm! Although I know I will have to replace this mat soon as it has some very deep permanent cuts in all the common places - 2½", 5", 18", etc...
I believe I got it at a yard sale several years ago.

I've entered my first swap! It's an "I SPY" quilt square swap with Karen of Sew Many Ways. I was thinking it might be fun to make a rag quilt/blanket out of my squares. I think she still needs a couple more participants so, if you're interested, stop by her blog and sign up.

Have a great weekend!


>^..^<~
Jenn

Survivor!!

I’m dressed and ready for my date tonight with Jeff Probst!

My husband will be there, too, as he is somewhat of a fan, so I guess it’ll be a threesome

(c’mon now – out of the gutter!)

There was a time when I wanted very badly to be on that show - I actually still do. I even went so far as to obtain an application and had it all completely filled out. But, I drew the line at standing in line for 7 hours....sigh....I must not have wanted it that badly.

Once I wore this shirt when we were in the grocery store and the checkout lady looks at me and gasps: "Were YOU on Survivor?"

My husband looks at me, then looks at the lady and states: "Why yes - second season, third voted off"

I didn't even watch the second season!!!!

>^..^<~

Jenn

Banana Bread

Last night I was in the mood for some fresh, hot banana bread. Most people call it "banana nut bread" but at our house it's just "banana bread"....why? Because my husband is allergic to walnuts so I have to leave them out and I don't like pecans in it so I just end up making plain old banana bread. Anyway, after dinner I decided a loaf of the stuff was in order and whipped one up. While it was cooking, I settled down in front of the idiot box with my latest handquilting project.

I usually watch "Biggest Loser" but hadn't decided if I was going to be a faithful follower this season. Nothing else was on so I ended up watching it after all. I'm working on a quilt I call "Stepping Stones" and I'm absolutely sick to death of looking at it!

I think when you machine quilt a project it gets done pretty quickly and you can sit back and admire the quilt and the colors, ooh and ahh over the fabrics and such, but when you spend days and hours hand quilting you kinda get tired of looking at those fabrics - at least I do. I think that's why all the furniture in my house is brown or some neutral color - although brown IS my favorite color, I think I would tire of anything else. I'm the kind of person that has to re-arrange at least one room every 3 months or so, just to get some variety in my surroundings.

So, needless to say, I'm sick of looking at this quilt, but I am almost done and will soon be putting the binding on and listing it in my Etsy shop - it's already on my website as a "pre-sell".

I needed something special for these large spaces of open fabric and came up with an octagonal design but somehow needed to get that design onto the quilt. My husband is such a talented problem-solver and has created for me a wonderful template to quilt this particular quilt.

I simply place the template over the block and trace in the slots with my disappearing ink pen

and VOILA! An easy to quilt design results!

I love the way it looks when the quilting is done.

...just like a stepping stone!

My hand quilted quilts are usually somewhat puffy because I use a high loft polyester batting. I think it's much easier to quilt through and I like the lofty look it gives.

So, at 9:00 PM and halfway thru Biggest Loser, I was wondering if my banana bread was done because it sure was smelling delicious throughout the house!

DING!

Hey - that's time oven timer.....nope, not done yet....another 15 minutes maybe (I hate how banana bread does that - it seems to take longer than the recipe calls for and I don't want to overbrown it - just a nice toasty brown on the outside and cooked thru)

...more quilting...more fat people barfing on treadmills....

DING!

hmmm....maybe it's done now - it's getting late and I sure am hungry....nope, still not done....let's try 10 more minutes

....quilting....barfing....crying.....

DING!

Ahhhh....happiness in a loaf pan! YUM!

>^..^<~

Jenn