Friday, January 29, 2010

there oughta be a song....



Put your right foot in,
Put your right foot out,
Put your right foot in
and swish the brush all around....

You do the Hokey Pokey and you get a clean floor

That's what it's all about....



Nancy

welcome....




Great Nephew Joseph arrived this morning at 3am. Mom and baby are fine...


Nancy

Thursday, January 28, 2010

busy...busy...busy.....



Look how busy I have been... I got all these blocks done since last night. It might not seem like a lot to you, but I am just relearning how to paper-piece and I have spent a bit of time un-picking...sometimes more than once...on one seam... I'm just saying.

And in case you need proof, here are my socks....after I cleaned them off. What a mess this paper piecing makes. I really need a sewing room without carpet. Or maybe I need a new toilet bowl brush. What? You don't understand the connection? Well, see I read somewhere that you can use a new toilet brush and just brush it across the top of your carpet and it will pick up all the loose threads. I am going to try it tonight. We have to go get tires on the truck and will go out to eat and then I am getting a new toilet brush. I'll tell you how it works.




No baby news yet. I feel so sorry for my niece. She has been in the hospital since yesterday morning and finally her contractions seem to be picking up. I think she is looking at a long night, along with my sister.

Yesterday I realized I didn't have a gift for the baby when I go visit, so I hopped over to handmade by jill and used her tutorial to make a couple of burp rags. I only had enough Monkey flannel to use on one side, so I didn't do the fringe bit, but I like the way they turned out.
She has loads of tutorials on her side bar. Go check it out...



I guess I can show these. I'm pretty sure my niece has better things to do than check out my blog...

Nancy

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

retail therapy....

Really, it wasn't therapy, cause I don't need therapy...I just needed some more Civil War fabrics so Miss Nancy and I took off for our local quilt shop that has a whole wall of CW fabrics...

I just said .... Load me up with a stack....



and maybe another little stack...


and shoot, lets add these cuties to the bag...



I hope to get some more blocks done today...

Nancy

ps...think good thoughts today...my niece is being induced with her first child. Which will make my OLDER sister a GRANDMA!!! LOL I can't wait to call her Grandma Carolyn...

Tuesday, January 26, 2010




welcome mr sunshine ...

could you please stay awhile?

Nancy

Ingenui TEA




A new tea pot. This one was reviewed on Cooks Illustrated. You add boiling water and loose tea and after it has steeped, you set it over your cup and press down. It comes complete with a strainer and you just rinse it out. I need to work on adjusting the strength... Even though I use Splenda and creamer that first cup was a bit much for me...

It snowed yesterday so I made some soup....



I am out shopping for those CW prints today. Will show you tomorrow....

Nancy

Monday, January 25, 2010

design wall monday 1-25-10



More blocks from the book "The Civil War Love Letter Quilt". I will wait to make more until after Tuesday when Miss Nancy and I head back to Raspberry Patch to load up fill in our stash. I need some yellows, lights and maybe greens and purples. I am not very well versed in the Civil War Reproduction fabrics, so not quite sure what is out there.

The block names are (from left, first row) Enthusiasm, A Secession Ball, Healthful Region, March in the Mountains and (from left, second row) Sorrows of War, Liberal with Furlough and Severe Fighting.

I haven't started reading the letters that accompany the blocks. I am told that the letters and the blocks have no significance together, but that the author just picked blocks to go with the letters...

Hubby is working furiously on his piece of furniture. No photo, but the back is on and the shelves are in. He will start working on the drawers next.

Want to see more Design Wall Monday? Head over to Judy's and check out the list...and read about her chickens....

Happy 4th Birthday to my little Ava.... She is getting to be such a big girl....



Nancy

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Are you freakin kidding me?.....

Yesterday Charlie sent me an email that my PRIZE!!!! was on it's way. Imagine my surprise when I came home from my errands to see this on the front steps...



Ok the box wasn't empty when I found it, but I was too excited to grab the camera and take a photo...

This isn't a big box. It measures approximately 9x5 maybe? WOW, I can't imagine how Charlie packed all this goodness into one box. It was stuffed.... with this...



Shall we take a closer look?
A pillow kit complete with pattern, fabric and buttons..



A brand new PINK Olfa rotary cutter. I really needed a new one. Now I can keep my old yellow one for my paper piecing blocks and this one will stay nice and sharp for fabric cutting....



A great new pattern by QUBEE QUILTS... Am I right that this is Charlie's pattern? Is that right Charlie? UPDATE-It IS Charlie's pattern. One of his first published. How cool is that?



A great coaster from Primitives of the Midwest. This will be nice to add to my sewing room for my ice water...



And FABRIC!!! FIVE beautiful fabrics that I will gaze on until the right pattern presents itself...



Thanks so much Charlie...It was an overwhelming prize and I love everything. Pretty soon Charlie is going to have another giveaway... Add him to your google-reader, or bookmark him or whatever you have to do ....cause his prizes are the bomb...

Nancy

Monday, January 18, 2010

design wall monday 1-18-10

First up is the fourth and final piece of the bedroom set that DH is making. This will be his wardrobe. It will have drawers behind that left side door and then shelves on the right side (which also gets a door).



This is my newest project. Miss Nancy and I have joined 48 others in a 10 month long class. We will make 121 paper pieced blocks from this book.


I am starting out with these Civil War Reproduction fabrics. Some I had and some I bought at the first class.


And my first two blocks....



And now we have these... I love them..and so far the white dog has stayed off. We will see how long that lasts...


I am off to guild today... Hope there is lots of show and tell. That reminds me, I have a charity quilt to take.

Nancy

Saturday, January 16, 2010



New Bathroom - $5000

New Kitchen - $7000

New Roof - $15,000

Having to finance a new foundation - priceless (which is too much for us!)

We are back to Realtor.com and searching for our last house.

Wish us luck....

Nancy

Thursday, January 14, 2010

hm.....



new furniture coming....

they better hurry....

I'm too old to sit like this for long....

Nancy

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Out on a limb....again

Joanne left a comment on yesterdays post. Joanne and I are old pals from Pat Sloans old "almost" defunk yahoo group. I can't reply to her cause she didn't leave an email address and she comes up as no-reply, but she reminded me about our last move.
She surprised me by remembering that I had designed a wall hanging in that terrible stressful time.

Four years ago we put our (last) house up on the market. We had three different couples very interested in the house and the first two dropped out for one reason or another... ( I remember one ladies reason was because we didn't have garage door openers, whatever!) We finally got down to the last couple and there was a lot of going back and forth....

ANYWAY.... while going through all that I designed, sewed and quilted a little wall hanging that kind of expressed how I felt...



Out On A Limb... I love this little hanging and it hung proudly in the family room of this house. Last week I was told by the Real Estate Agent that I needed to remove all of the wall quilts except for the large one hanging in the living room. I hated removing this one...and just might hang it back up... Maybe it will bring us good luck? Maybe it will remind me that we only need ONE buyer for this house?

Then of course it can't help me with everything... We seem to be a family of accidents....

Yesterday as the Rock Star was coming home from school the local school bus ran him off the road into the ditch and he got a boo-boo on his car...





UPDATE-School Bus Barn Boss says that the Rock Star was on the wrong side of the road and will not be taking any responsibility... so it's 17 yo story against retired Fire Chief bus driver story. Gee, I wonder who will win...

Nancy

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Wow, a whole week has gone by since I posted. We have been really busy here. We are getting our house ready to put on the market... I have cleaned drawers, closets, floors and we have packed a lot up to put into a storage shed ....



I am not sure how this is going to work. We are leaving a 2200 sq ft house with a full basement and going to an 1800 sq ft house with NO basement. If we must clean this one out to show it, are we gonna have room for all this stuff? NO!!
I know there will be some head strong arguments in the months to come. I am a pitcher, hubby is a keeper. It's gonna come to blows. LOL I was told that I didn't have to pack away the sewing room and stage it as a bedroom, so that's good. I did go in and declutter and gave away 3 bags of fabric and packed a large tote with more fabric. I only kept out a bit of this and that... I still need to sew!!

And to prove it, I took a little break today and made this....



I used THIS tutorial. It was posted Friday and I almost couldn't stand to wait until today to try it... I don't have a cute pink iron, but my $3 garage sale find worked just as well. Isn't it cute... The bag, not the iron...well, the iron is cute, but the bag is mine...LOL and it's dang cute... I used the Velcro closing cause I didn't have one of the spring closures....

Now I need to figure out how to make one just a slight bit bigger. This one is tiny and I think if it was a bit bigger it would make a great make-up bag...

Nancy

Monday, January 4, 2010

Some shopping and some winnings....

Took off this morning to have my first appointment with a nutritionist. YIKES... no one told me she would WEIGH me??!!!???? What's up with that??!!! We talked about carb counting and how many carbs I can have and how many carbs I can't have and what veggies I can eat unlimited amounts of and what are deemed "starchy" veggies (corn, peas and winter squash)... I am glad I got a lot of paperwork, cause once I was weighed and it was written down I couldn't concentrate on anything she said. It sounded like Charlie Brown's Mom Whah, whah whah......

Now to get the neighbor lady to start walking with me... she said she wanted to, but I think I will wait until it is a tab bit warmer...it's like 2 degrees here!! Much too cold to do anything outside...

After getting slammed by the dietitian the meeting, I took off to Hobby Lobby. I needed backing for two of the quilts on my UFO list. I hope to get number 4 pin basted tomorrow.

Home again to figure out why the blasted ink cartridge won't go into the printer. It took two of us a half hour before we realized we needed to turn the dang thing off and back on so a little flap would go away and we could take out the old one and insert the new one. I was ready to insert the new one into someones butt over the phone for awhile there...

Oh yea....the winnings part of the post...

I WON a years subscription to Patchwork Posse. This is going to be fun..
Becky explains it much better than I do...

It is a customizable sewing group!! Each month there will something wonderful happening there. There will be projects, interviews with designers, and patterns that are made specifically for the group and are not available to the public!!! Everything there is done at your own pace, at your own time and in your own home! Do you want to see what kinds of things we will be doing?

Check out the monthly schedule below- and a few extras listed that Patchwork Posse will also have available to members:

* Block of the Month
* Mystery Quilt Pattern
* UFO challenge
* Give aways and Drawings
* More than 14 exclusive patterns
* All projects are available to us 4 months before released to the public.
* Forum for us to build friendships and share.
* Flickr group for show, tell and share.

I hope it's ok that I just "lifted" that from her blog.. I couldn't have said it any better myself...

Oh, I also won something else, but I will have to show you tomorrow. It's dark here and I can't take a photo and what's a post without a photo?


Deer Abbie....ha ha get it....DEER Abbie...you know...oh well, forget it..

Nancy

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Hey....

Pat left a note that Nancy is doing a challenge... I am in....

I listed my UFO's and yesterday morning Nancy's daughter drew number 4.... so I guess I will be starting the new year working on getting that quilted...

Here is the before...




Watch this space for the after..

Yippee.... I love that I don't have to choose what to work on...


Nancy

Saturday, January 2, 2010

New Years Resolutions....

Today I decided to clean the sewing room. I did a pretty good job, but I know for a fact it won't stay that way.

While I was cleaning and pitching, I found a few 9 UFO's...

I listed them on the side bar over there and thought I would list them out-loud today... would love to have these all finished by June....but who am I kidding.



1. Orange Challenge Quilt
This is a quilt I started as a challenge put out by Pat Sloan. The top is ready to be quilted.

2. Christmas Redwork
This one isn't even started yet, unless you count printing out the pattern from Gail Pan's blog.

3. Maisy
This one isn't started either. I bought the panel when Anne and Miss Nancy and I went shopping and had to have it. My second oldest grandson and I used to watch Maisy all the time when I watched him full time.

4.Christmas Table Topper
This is one of Rachels tutorials that was on the Moda Bake Shop.

5. Monkey Charity Quilt
Last year Cindy Lammons came to our quilt guild as a speaker. When she was leaving she handed me a stack of fabrics and asked if we could use them as a charity quilt. What she thought was a grandson turned out to be a granddaughter and she had decided to go with some fabrics that were a little more girly... I brought them home with me and NEED to get this done...

6. Pink Quilt
I have a pattern, charms and yardage to make a pink baby quilt. I bought it when we thought my niece was having a girl baby. She is having a boy baby.

7. Civil War Quilt
I have 20 FQ's of Civil War reproduction fabric and a Terry Atkinson pattern

8. Sweetie D Pie
I have the center block almost done and all the charms ready. I also have some yardage.

9. Chicken Quilt
Needs one inner border and then the outer border and then quilted.\

There is also a group of us that started a yahoo group to do a Christmas gift/project a month. We list our pattern/fabric on the first (dang, that's today and I haven't done it) and then we show our finished project on the last day of the month. Then hopefully when Christmas comes around we have 11 handmade items to give as gifts. Cool huh?

So there it is in black and white. My New Years Resolutions if you must.

Let's check in June and see what I got done...LOL

Nancy