A Change of Pace...and Scenery!

I journeyed up to the jobsite yesterday afternoon and they had just finished pulling out the girders.

The lumber that used to be holding up the house was neatly stacked up on the truck next to the hydraulic jacks.

and the house foundation now has holes on both ends.

But, the porches are complete (at least the block part is) and all that lacks is to fill in those holes.

So, I went on my merry little way to Wal-mart and when I returned, this is what I saw...

VOILA~! A complete foundation!  We celebrated right away by eating fried chicken, purchased fresh from the local gas station, on the tailgate of the truck - you can't beat that, now can ya!

Now we can do this (I'm not allowed to say it on my blog as I have a somewhat paranoid husband)  :)

We had lunch with our son today and it was definitely wonderful to catch up with him since he's been in Florida with Campus Outreach for two months.

Sorry it's a bad pic - I was trying to be sneaky and took it with my camera.

Anywhoooooo....we're now happily settled in and this is what it looks like from my vantage point right now

I should have some better scenery tomorrow!  :0)

That bright spot in my closet is something I just HAD TO make when all my Jennifer Paganelli fabrics arrived yesterday.

I engineered my own hippy strip skirt to wear on vacation - oops!!

Bear is holding a piece of trash - at least that's what it was until I realized I could use it.

You see, it was my practice piece for the flower quilting I was doing yesterday and it really looked yukky so I had tossed it in the garbage in my sewing room, but then I realized I needed a pouch for my laptop components (mouse, jump drive, etc...) so I ran to get it, threw a zipper on and it was actually perfect!  (just don't look at the back)

Ooooh!  I smell popcorn, so I gotta go!!

 

Back to the grind...

I had a lovely week, last week, as I got to stay home and piddle in my sewing room for several days.

But this past Monday, it was time to head to the next project.

So, I donned my new construction kicks - got these for a whopping $4.50 at our local Goodwill.  They're all leather and hardly worn but definitely broken in - thank you!

We've been working on the 'moved' house this week as it's been since March, I believe, that it was first delivered to it's new home and the house movers still need to lower the house so they can have their truck and girders back!  Normally, it doesn't take this long for this to happen, but since business is slow for house-movers and we were busy building a house, they were extremely lenient in waiting for us to construct a foundation and for that we are extremely thankful!!

Anyway, the masons have been working to build up the foundation and the porches for the past few days.

They have to leave these big gaps in the blockwork so they house movers can get their girders out, which the masons will then fill in with block.

Today they are doing just that - the hubby just left to go up to the jobsite and I'll head up there in a bit to take some final pictures of the finished project.

Supposedly they will insert big hydraulic jacks under the house, and lift it up a bit, and remove the lumber little by little until the house sets down on the prepared foundation.

That pipe in the top center is an old dryer vent

There are 14 piers underneath the house which will help to support it. and create a crawlspace under the house.

You know how us quilters talk incessantly about using our fabric scraps and making beautiful projects out of them?...well, I can't figure out why homebuilders don't do the same with their 'scrap' wood!!  :)

I'll be back with more pictures of the house, but I'll leave you with a few treasures we found while digging.

  

Breaking away...

...from quilting drudgery, that is.

Typically, when I do any machine quilting it's just the standard free motion meandering or stippling.

I find it easy and safe.

When I finished my most recent baby quilt top, I wanted to try something different - to break out of the machine quilting box I kept myself in.
I saw a tutorial somewhere online for free motion quilting in a simple flower design and it looked somewhat easy.

So, after a little practice, I just jumped right in and my first attempts turned out pretty good, but I kinda got sloppy as I went along and found it hard to see where to go to next to create the next flower.

So, I pulled the quilt off and got out the coin jar and placed pennies where I thought looked like good spacing for the flower centers.

And then I just drew a rough circle around those pennies with my erasable pen.

Back to the machine I go!!

Irresistible...

Fresh Cut...

What's a girl to do???

Saturday Sewing

Thanks for all the nice comments on my curtain job for the girls.  We installed them last night and everyone seemed to think they looked great.

We had a delicious meal of salad and pizza, engineered by our youngest daughter - you can't beat that on a Friday night - especially when you don't have to cook it yourself!  Aldi sells a very tasty pizza and for the price of $3.69 you can't beat that, either!!!  :)

Then we settled in to watch Matt Damon in "Green Zone" and the girls were excited to close their curtains for the 'dark theatre' experience!  I have to admit it was a rather dull movie (for me) and I slept thru much of it.

Yesterday I started on a new quillow project.  I have two charm packs of Sultry and, as usual, wanted something simple to make.  Sultry has lots of pink, green and brown in it and I wanted basically one of those colors for the coordinate....I settled on pink.  Pink is not a favorite of mine - actually brown is truly my favorite color - but this quillow is not for me...it will go into the shop.

I started with one printed charm and another of the pink to make half square triangles (HST).  I like to cheat when I make HSTs simply because I am lazy.  I don't like to draw my line down the middle so I thought I'd do it the quick way and put a fold down the center.  Naturally all you have to do is fold the square in half diagonally and you have your line, BUT you must be very careful not to stretch or pull at all so you don't distort the fabric.

Once I have this done, I set my presser foot so the 1/4" measurement is on the left hand side instead of the right.  I sew with the left side of my presser foot next to the fold, chaining each set of squares until I have them all sewn on one side.

Then, I carefully flip the chain around and do it again, so the fold is still on my left.

Anywhoooo, I've got a stack of 160 of these squares and now I have the task of deciding which arrangement I want to go with.

The hubby likes the mixed up pinwheels look, but, frankly, I'm sick of pinwheels and sometimes the placement of those squares gets just a bit too confusing for me - I can imagine it's even more confusing when the pinwheel is all sorts of colors.

He calls this one the envelope layout

I guess it does look like envelopes if you flipped it over!

Here's a mixed-diamond look

and then you have the standard triangle-in-the-corner look

I'm sure there are so many other arrangements - what did I miss? Any suggestions?  What do you think - I'd love to have lots of input on this one.

Well, it's time for our Saturday morning breakfast date so I best get out of my pajamas and into my Saturday clothes!

Have a great day, y'all!!

Sew and Tell Friday

It's been a fun week for me here in Bonetown.  Now that we're in between construction projects, my DH has allowed me a week to stay home and do whatever I please.  Surprisingly, I chose to spend a large part of the week re-arranging and re-organizing...I imagine that's because I probably feel guilty for not having to do any hard labor at the jobsite, while he's up in town digging a footing and laying a foundation for this house that we moved and plan to renovate and sell.

I also did a little home decor work this week.  I was able to finish the drapes for our daughters after royally messing up with the grommet installation - luckily, I was able to salvage the project without too much noticeable damage.

I was able to test-hang them at our back doorway where the cabinets provide a perfect ledge with just the right height.  We are planning to deliver and install them tonight and the girls are going to make us pizza!!  We're taking one of our Netflix movies up with us and we'll have a regular Friday pizza party tonight...looking forward to it!!  :)

I also was inspired to recover my ironing board, thanks to Larri at Seams Inspired.  These are not necessarily my favorite colors, but I wanted to match my existing valances which I made recently and I thought a little room-brightening was in order.

I also thought the stripes would be a handy tool for visually squaring things up and such.
It ended up being so easy to do that I grabbed my "Go" board and sleeve board and did them too!

Here's a stripey picture for ya!

The last thing I semi-accomplished would have to be another quillow, of course!  I'm fresh out of hand quilting and I forgot that I had halfway assembled this Quillow out of Paula Prass's "Flights of Fancy", so I finished it up and now it is ready for quilting.  The first picture is the quilt portion of the Quillow and then you fold it up and insert it into a hidden pocket on the back of the quilt and you get a tidy pillow as seen in the next picture!

I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone is sharing for Sew-n-Tell Friday at amylouwho's!