Productive Weekend

The weekend is coming to a close and I have gotten quite a bit done! The tablerunner at the left is one of 4 that I made (a fifth was already done) to give as Christmas gifts. These are from the remnants of my UFO that I abandoned. Now they just need to be quilted. The second picture is of my first two blocks in the "Women of the Bible" quilt that I'm making along with the Bible study on Yahoo. I paper pieced both of these blocks...I'd forgotten how accurate paper piecing is, I hadn't done it in years! The Bible study goes for 54 weeks, I believe and we will be doing a block a week. My goal is to stay caught up with the study. These two were fun to make.

The only thing left on my list for now is to put borders on the other part of my old UFO to use as a table topper, then I will be spending lots of time at the longarm. I don't want to start a new project until I've quilted a number of my old tops. Since the tops are done, I don't count them as UFO's...they are works in progress, just waiting to be quilted. Is that cheating? I'm hoping they won't be waiting too much longer. I'm not planning on doing any piecing except for keeping up with the Bible quilt blocks until I've quilted and bound a few of these quilts. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :o)

Pin Cushions

I found the pincushions that you all have to be very interesting! I have a pincushion that I made of wool...somewhere. When I was a little girl, my mother did a lot of sewing. She always had a metal Sucrets tin, filled with her pins.

When I grew up, I had pins in the little plastic boxes that they came in. I searched high and low for a tin of Sucrets (because, of course, that's where pins were supposed to be!), but couldn't find one. Then we moved to Long Island, NY in 1990. I went into Rockbottom (a chain of large pharmacies that were popular then, like Drug Emporium) and there it was...my tin. I didn't even want the Sucrets, I just bought it for the tin! So, that is where my pins have lived, quite happily, ever since.

I want to thank you for all of the kind words and prayers that you have sent me. They are all appreciated, especially the prayers. The health situation for my daughter will be resolved in 4-6 weeks and then we'll know what she's facing. I know it my heart it's not serious, but we have to wait to find out.

You're the best!

A long week...

that has had NO time for sewing. I did work on a customer quilt, but that doesn't count, after all, that's work!

We've had a lot of issues to deal with this week, doctor's appointments to go to, serious concerns after those appointments...just too much in one week!

So, my sewing room is partially together and totally messy. I hope to get into the room over the weekend, I can use the therapy! DH is going to the Eagles game, so maybe I'll sneak in there on Sunday afternoon. :o)

Knowing that it had been a long week, and I really needed a little cheering up, there was a knock at the door this afternoon and these beautiful yellow roses from my husband arrived in the hands of a kind older man. Then he said, "Wait, I have a few more in the truck!" Not only were there roses for me, but baskets of flowers for each of our girls. (Yes, it was rough all around here!)

So now we've all stopped to take time to smell the roses...

On another note, my bloglines seems to have stopped working. All of the blog names have little red exclamation points after them and no new posting are showing up. I tried resubscribing to some of the blogs, but got the same thing. Is there a way to fix this, or am I doomed to going through the ring and reading the blogs that way? Being totally lost in blogland, I haven't an idea of how to fix it. Heck, I haven't even figured out how to add lists to my sidebar! Thanks for any help you can offer...

UFO Salvage

In my last post I mentioned that I had one true UFO. Here it is! I started this "Wedding Rings" quilt by Seams and Dreams, several years ago. I loved the one set of rings, but really didn't like the results when 4 of these rings of rings were set together. I set it aside...I'm sure you know how that goes!

I pulled it out the other day and decided to add a plain row of neutral squares to give it a border. Then I will add a border of Christmas Fabric and use it as a table topper. I looked at all the extra squares and half square triangles that I had made, and decided to make friendship star table runners for several women my husband works with. I went online and found this fabric for borders for the table topper and runners and it arrived yesterday. Hopefully soon I will have all of these done for Christmas!

My sewing time has been cut down...we started school on Wednesday. My assignment this year is as an assistant in a morning Kindergarten class. It's much different than the 5th and 7th grade classes I was in last year! I'm really enjoying the little ones, and I'm very grateful to come home to my older children! :o)

New home for my stash

Yesterday my DH and I took a ride to IKEA to look at shelves for my sewing room. We picked out a nice wooden bookcase that we thought would work perfectly. This morning, we were putting it together and the wood split on the side. If it were the side against the wall, it would have been fine, but it was the exposed side. We drove back to IKEA (about 45 minutes) and were able to return it and purchase a new one with no problem. So, we got this one together and now I have my whole stash in one place...not that it took very long to get it there!

I also have boxes of strips cut (although not that many) and I have a stack of fabric to cut into strips. I do have some muslin on bolts and some pieces of muslin in a drawer in my desk. I just wanted the pretty stuff on the shelves! :o) So, now I have to figure out what to do with it.

A lot of it is small pieces that were leftover from fat quarters I've used, so as I have time I'll go through and cut that down. Other than quilt tops that need quilting, I only have one project that is a true UFO and has been abandoned. I've used the border fabric from that for 2 different quilts, but I think I'll just make that quilt smaller and give it as a gift. It's a nice quilt, just not one I'm interested in finishing! I also have 2 sets of blocks...one is nine patches and the others were little paper pieced sewing things that I did in a swap a hundred years ago and never could decide what to do with them. I do have an idea now, so may work on them.

I did think about sorting my stash and admire those of you who do it. I pulled a stack off the shelf, separated the blues, the browns and greens and then came to a fabric that was leaves, but pretty evenly distributed between brown and green. I couldn't make a decision as to which pile it should go in, so I gave up. And that was just the first piece of multi-colored fabric! I guess I'll just keep it mixed up...it's fun that way! :o)

A Day at the Zoo

My youngest daughter Grace and I headed back into Philadelphia on Wednesday to go to the Zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo is the oldest in the country...and for years some of the displays looked like they were from when it was originally built! They have done a marvelous job over the last 20 years or so, updating the facilities. About 10 years ago their Primate building burned down and a number of the animals were killed. That has been rebuilt and is a beautiful display. The newest addition is their "Big Cat Falls" which they've built around the original Cat Exhibit House and is just wonderful

When you enter the zoo there is this elephant sculpture along with beautiful gardens. I love wandering around and seeing the gardens there. This antelope just seemed to be posing for us and I had to take his picture! The last photo is of Grace standing by the wild boar statue. We have a number of pictures like this, taken as the kids have grown.



My husband has arrived home safely from Seattle, thank goodness! It's been strange to have him gone for 3 weeks...I'm used to week long trips, but 3 weeks is a long time!

Haven't done much more sewing this week. I did work on my cathedral windows the other night and have been working on the backing for my One Hour a Day quilt. I've taken 12.5" squares of the floral fabrics I've used in the quilt and I'm sewing them together for the backing. No rhyme or reason to it. Why 12.5" blocks? Because that's the size ruler I have!

The rain from Ernesto has started here. It's supposed to get worse as the night progresses, but be gone by mid-morning. A good night to stay in and sew. Tomorrow we will take my husband's bike down to our son at college (the advantage of him being only an hour away!) so he can ride it around campus, then we're heading to IKEA in Philly to get a wooden bookshelf for my sewing room. I need a place for my stash...it was getting faded on the shelves near the window. This will be on the opposite side of the room and out of direct sunlight. Everyone enjoy the Labor Day weekend!