"Easy Street"...

Quote for the Day:

Easy street, Easy street

Where you sleep till noon

Yeah, yeah, yeah

She'd repeat, Easy street

Better get there soon.

Easy street, Easy street

Where the rich folks play

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Move them feet

Move them ever-lovin' feet

To easy street, Easy street.

~ "Easy Street" lyrics, from the musical Annie

DONE!  DONE!  DONE!!!  

The Bonnie Hunter 2012 mystery quilt that I started in November 2012 is FINITO!!   Bonnie named the pattern "Easy Street", but I affectionately refer to it as "Scrap Vomit"...because it looks too busy to me.  

For those who don't know what a "mystery quilt" is, quilt designers give out cutting and sewing instructions for a quilt, step by step.  However, YOU don't know what the final design is until the end when they give you the instructions on how to sew the pieces together at the end.  

Before starting this quilt, I had just finished a Christmas quilt in red, green and cream.  I wanted this quilt to be an autumn quilt, so I picked colors of the fall leaves.  

Unfortunately, while I was hoping for this quilt to be mainly brown, yellow/gold and red, it turned out to have a lot more green than I wanted.  It looked like another Christmas quilt to me.  Because of that, I wasn't terribly pleased with the way it turned out.  

I think that adding the yellow and brown borders did help to tone down the "Christmasy" part a little and did help make it look a little more "fallish".

My daughter-in-law saw the quilt top in my sewing room and raved over it, so I told her she could have it for their guest bedroom when I (finally) got it finished.  They are coming in this weekend for Thanksgiving, so I decided that I would finish it before they arrived so that they could take it home with them!   I finished quilting it last week and finished sewing down the binding 2 days ago!  Just in the nick of time!!  

I put it on the bed in our guestroom...the one they will be using while here. Then when they leave they can take it with them.   Kinda like a "door prize"!  LOL   

Loretta

Catching-Up...

Quote for the Day:

“Being busy is better than being bored. Bored left a long time ago. 

Busy is always around for me."

~ Tabitha Robin

Guess what is FINALLY under my needle!!!

"Easy Street"!!!  This was Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt from 2012! 

I've had the top done for a while, but didn't have border fabric for it.  But when we were in Maine this past March, we went to Marden's and I found the perfect border and backing fabric for it!

I got the quilt top, batting, and backing pin-basted about 2 weeks ago but have been busy with work, so didn't get started quilting on it until today.

I'm using a variegated thread by Coats & Clark called "Fall Leaves"... gold, red, and green.

This past weekend, I attended a 2-day chiropractic conference in New Jersey with Dr. Leonette and Troy, one of the chiropractic assistants from work.  We attended lots of informative lectures and got to see...and try out...some of the newest products to help us help our patients.

(Dr. Barwell lecturing)

 (Troy, a lovely young man that I have the pleasure to work with)

Here I am trying out the Heart Rate Variability test.  This tests just how well your nervous system is working and how well your body is able to recover from stress.  Let's just say...I failed!  :(   My body has worked too long on "high alert" from being a critical care RN for 31 years.  I need to work on learning techniques to deal with stress...meditation, exercise, etc,..and give my autonomic nervous system a break!

Andy went with me to New Jersey and we stayed an extra night so that we could visit my sister, Mary Ellen, who lives in Manhattan.  She came to where we were staying and we spent the evening with her and went to dinner.  We thoroughly enjoyed our visit with her since we hadn't seen each other in almost 3 years!

Loretta

Easy Street is Ready for Sidewalks...

Quote for the Day:
“The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.”
~John Madden

My Easy Street top, aka "Scrap Vomit", is ready for sidewalks borders.  

I auditioned fabrics for the two borders, and think I have a solution.  I definitely know the small, inner border will be one of the yellows that is in the quilt.  I don't have enough red or brown to do the wider, outer border, so I'm going to do brown on two of the sides and red on two of the sides.  

I know...that's very "unconventional", but I've been "unconventional" with my borders before in other ways...making two sides wider than the other two sides to make the quilt longer than wider, etc., and so far NO quilt police have EVER come and arrested me or confiscated my quilts.  My motto is, "it's my quilt and I'll do whatever I dang well please with it." Those things are called "artistic license".  Yeah...that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!  :)

Since this quilt is square, I may even make the red borders wider than the brown to make it longer, too.  There, Quilt Police...totally mismatched borders!  Put that in your collective pipes and smoke it!  :)

Here's another view of the quilt...

And if you squint, it looks like this...

Yeah...sorry for that last picture.  Camera operator error there.  A photographer, I'm not.  (As was pointed out by my ever-lovely niece, Kristin, whereupon seeing pictures in one of my posts, commented "As of the 3rd picture I knew that Erin was the photographer.")  

BTW, do you think Bonnie Hunter, the designer of this pattern, will be too upset if I DO name this quilt "Scrap Vomit"???   This title is not a reflection on her design, but rather on my color choices, I think, though part of the "scrap vomit" feel could have been lessened by using 3.5" neutral squares instead of piecing 2 -2" neutral strips together to make a 3.5" block.  And by not setting the blocks on point, so they would look like diamonds instead of squares...like this...

Loretta

Easy Street Update...

Quote for the Day:

"Creative clutter is better than idle neatness."

~author unknown

On Saturday, I started laying out the "Easy Street" mystery quilt blocks.  I thought I had counted and recounted and then counted the blocks again.  However, when I had the blocks all laid out, I seemed to have a problem...

Just in case you couldn't spot the empty hole made by the missing quilt block, I marked it for you!  LOL  It seems I only made 8 of block "B" instead of the 9 that the pattern called for.  :(  

So I dug through the fabric that I had used...this is why I don't put the fabric away until the quilt is COMPLETELY done...you never know when you may need a piece of those exact fabrics.  Luckily, I had enough of the fabrics left over to make that ninth block!  :)

After making that last block, I put Season 2 of Downton Abbey in the DVD player and started joining the blocks together to into a top.  Between Saturday and Sunday afternoon's of sewing, I was able to get about 1/2 of the blocks sewn together into diagonal strips...and 4 episodes of Downton Abbey watched!

I'll be honest with you...I'm not "feeling" this quilt.  It looks "okay" in the pictures, but in person I think it just looks like a bunch of scraps with no discernible pattern.  Scrap vomit.  Yeah...I think that's what I'll name this quilt!  LOL

I wish the gold, red and brown were more prominent and the green less prominent.  I wanted this to be an Autumn quilt, but is just looks like another Christmas quilt to me.  Since this was a mystery, you don't know what colors are going to go where, so you don't know which color is going to be the most prominent, or what the quilt will look like till the mystery is over.

Oh well.  It'll be okay.  But I seriously think this is the last mystery quilt I will ever participate in.  From now on, I'll wait till the reveal and then decide if I want to do the quilt or not.  

Loretta  

So Sorry...

Quote for the Day:

"I like to make the mundane fabulous whenever I can."
~Rufus Wainwright

I realize that I've been very quiet on this blog lately.  It's been eight...oops, nine...NO...TEN LONG DAYS since my last post.  (I feel like I'm at Confession, "Forgive me, Father, it's been ten days since my last confession..." and I'm not even Catholic!  LOL  [No offense intended to my Catholic readers/friends.] )

Anyway...back to what's going on around here...

A couple of weeks ago, my work shift changed from 3PM-11PM, 3 days per week, to 11AM-11PM, 2 day per week...(plus whatever other shifts I pick up to help out with the short-staffing at work.)  I have worked 8 hour shifts for the past 20 years, so my body and mind have been gradually making the change to 12 hour shifts.  I can truthfully say that last Tuesday was the FIRST day that I felt "normal" with the earlier rising and longer shift.  

The GOOD part to the longer shift/fewer days per week is that, "in theory", I get more days off!  WooHoo!  (Until I go and mess it up by agreeing to pick up extra hours on my "days off".)  But...I'm a sucker.  'Nuff said. 

Here it is, the 17th of January, and I have two three goals to try to fulfill by the end of January...

First, I'd like to get the commissioned Dresden plate quilt finished hand-quilted for my friend/client, Diana.  I am currently working on the lower half of the LAST ROW, as you can see in this picture.

I've had this one in the frame since August or September, and am ready to be done with it and move on to the next quilt!  (I get that way after I have a quilt in the frame for a while...ready to move onto the next...)

Second, I'd like to get the blocks finished for the "Easy Street" quilt.  Other people who were doing the mystery have their quilt finished and QUILTED already...and slow-poke me is still pluggin' away on the blocks.  

 

To get these two goals accomplished, my plan is to complete ONE block/day (on my days off as NO quilting gets done on my work days anymore) of the "Easy Street" quilt, and then spend all other quilting time on the Dresden Plate quilt until it is finished.  

It's hard when you have a piecing project and a quilting project going at the same time because time spent on one is time taken away from the other.  Mary Kay Ash used to say, "you can't chase two rabbits at once and expect to catch either one."  I think that works with quilting/crafting projects, too.  :)    But, since it is soooo like a quilter to have multiple projects going at once, when it gets down to the finish line,  I just have to set goals for myself.

And, last but not least, my third goal is to get the binding changed out on a quilt for a client.  I met this lady through our local quilt shop owner who referred me to her.  The lady has some vintage quilts from the '30's/'40's that a family member had made.  However, the bindings were not put on properly and need "repaired", aka "removed and new binding applied".   I have the first of three of these quilts here, along with the fabric for the new binding.  I had told her I thought I'd have it done by the end of January.  Let's see if I can make it...

Now, let it be known that when I take on an order from someone I tell them UP FRONT that it will get done when it gets done, but I try to give them an estimate of when that will be.  NOT ONE of my customers has ever put pressure on me to get the quilts done faster, but I know that I have so many more quilts that I want to get done but can't till I get my current ones done.  So the pressure to get things done in a timely manner is ALL ME...not my wonderful customers!  

So...for today...supper is in the crockpot...making it easier to spend time quilting...

...Applesauce Chicken and stove-top dressing!!

One more thing before I go...today I received a DVD in the mail that I had ordered...

...Season 1 of "Call the Midwife"...I've not seen any of these episodes, yet, but I've heard such good things about the PBS series!   

I'm going to go put together one "Easy Street" block and then get settled in with my new DVD while working on the Dresden Plate quilt...(this way I'll be ready for Season 2 when it begins in March!!) 

Loretta

 
 

 

Easy Street Update...

Quote for the Day:

"Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless."

  ~Bill Watterson

This weekend, I spent some time on "Easy Street".  Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt, that is!  :)

I'm moving much more slowly on it than other participants are.  Many already have the tops completed!  Whew!  I'm finding the blocks going together slowly, though I did find a way to chain piece portions of them, getting the construction time for one "A" block down to about 25 minutes.  

There are 4 different "units" required to finish this quilt:  4 corner units (done), 12 setting triangles (done), 16 "A" blocks (3 completed...number 4 is on the sewing machine as I write this), and 9 "B" blocks (0 completed).

Here are my 3 completed blocks, one corner unit and one setting triangle, so you get the gist of the quilt:

Several people on the Quiltville forum have commented about my "black" fabric, but that isn't black...it's a dark, chocolate brown color.  Here's a close-up...

Hopefully, you can see the color a little better in the close-up.  It's a very pretty, rich-looking brown!   I don't have very many browns in my stash, so I had to purchase this one for this quilt...the only "new" fabric purchased for this quilt.  All of the rest of the fabric came from my stash!


On Sunday, Andy & I went to see "Guilt Trip" with Barbra Steisand and Seth Rogan.  What a HILARIOUS movie!   I was literally laughing out loud in places!  But there were some poignant places in it, too.  All in all, a good movie!  I think this movie was written for the both of them, since they both played their parts so well!  :)

Loretta

Updates...

Quote for the Day:

"Every man is a fool for at least five minutes every day; 

wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit."
---Elbert Hubbard 

I have been working on steps 7 & 8 of the "Easy Street" mystery.  Both clues came out within a couple days of each other, so I don't remember which parts belong to which clues, but I'll show you what I've go accomplished so far, anyway.

These are the 4 corner blocks that will be the corners of the quilt:

Because the blocks in this quilt are "on-point", you need half-blocks to finish out the rows.  Here are the half-blocks I have made so far:

I have five made so far...I need a total of 12.  I don't know if it's just me, or what...but these seem to be going together VERY slowly for me.  :(   I lay out the pieces for 3 half-blocks at a time and then sew them together row by row.   Since I have about 5 fabrics of each color, I'm trying to keep from having too many of the same fabrics in the same area.

Does anybody have any ideas how to speed up the process?   I'm open to suggestions as to how you are putting yours together and keeping it scrappy.

And this isn't even a DENT in the making of the actual quilt blocks!  I'm beginning to feel very overwhelmed and am losing interest.  UGH!  :(

Onto another subject...

Yesterday, I did some couponing at Walgreen's and this is what I got...

I got $39.67 worth of product for $8.23 out-of-pocket, but got $13.00 back in Register Rewards, making this a $4.77 moneymaker!

I know, I know...why am I buying prenatal vitamins and infants Advil when I'm not pregnant and don't have a baby???   Because I know someone who IS pregnant.  

Yep...that's right, Folks...we're gonna be grandparents again!  Our daughter-in-law, Trinity, is pregnant!  :)  She is due this July so these items will be passed along to her!  :)   (I think I'll save that REDLINE energy shot and give it to my son AFTER the baby is born!  LOL  He'll be needing it!  As much as the new mother will NEED it, she won't be able to have it because of the caffeine!) 

And here's one last thing...

I've told you in previous posts how much Ginger loves playing with her bed.  The other night she was spinning around in circles with it in her mouth.  She stopped when I tried to get a video of it, but I did get one of her shaking it back and forth.  (BTW, the orange/red thing you see in the video is NOT blood...it is the price sticker on the bed's tag.)    

Loretta

Happy New Years' Eve...

Happy New Years' Eve to all my friends, family, and blog readers!   :)

I have a couple of things to share today...
First on the list, Easy Street Mystery clue #5 came out on Friday and I was able to work on it over the weekend and got all 128 "double bricks" made up and got the triangles cut.

 

 

This is now what the box looks like that is holding all of the completed steps so far...

Another clue came out this morning, but since I have to work 12 hours today, am on-call for 12 hours tomorrow, and then work 8 hours on Wednesday, I won't get to the clue until Thursday, unless I end up not needing to go in to work tomorrow.

A couple of weeks ago, a blogger that I follow wrote about saving wrapping paper that he takes off of presents and reuses it.  What followed was a conversation about what his readers saved.  I don't save wrapping paper, but I do save the tissue paper that comes with gifts and, of course, gift bags.

It is so well known in our family that I save the tissue paper, that now at parties and holiday time, the kids just pass the tissue paper over to me as they are unwrapping the presents...I don't even have to pick it out of the piles anymore!  LOL

In the past, I just smoothed out the tissue paper and folded it back up.  However, as I was going into my sewing room to put some tissue paper and a gift bag away yesterday, I walked right by the ironing board and a thought struck me...."hey, I wonder if you can iron the wrinkles out of tissue paper?"

Well, by golly, you CAN!!!  :)  

Before:

Smooth it out on the ironing board:

A quick swipe with the iron:

Folded and ready for storage...4 fresh, like-new pieces of tissue paper!!!

I think it took about a total of 3-5 seconds to iron each sheet!!!  How easy is that???  

Now, I realize that if you don't keep your iron and ironing board up all the time, this probably isn't feasible.  But since, as a quilter, I keep mine up 90% of the time, this works just fine for me!  And it certainly is faster and cheaper than getting in the car and driving over to the store to buy tissue paper!  :)

Ginger has taken to carrying her bed around and putting it in whatever room I'm in at the moment.  Last night, she carried it into the quilting room so she could be by me while I quilted.
 

The funny thing is is that she lifted the bed OVER the bracing bar that you see running between the two ends of the quilting frame!   Not an easy feat for a 13 lb. dog when the bed is as big as you are!  LOL  Even after I left the room to go to bed, she stayed right there and slept all night long!  :)

Loretta

Easy Street Mystery, Clue 5...

Quote for the Day:

"I only quilt on days that end in 'y'."

Clue #5 of Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" mystery quilt came out on Friday, so this weekend I've been working on finishing up clue #4, and starting and completing the new clue.  

Here is Clue #5 all finished...

Sixty-five blocks in total for this clue.

I also finished the quilting on "Christmas Mountain Morning" and am about 3/4's of the way through with the binding...which I plan on finishing on Monday.  I am determined have it on our bed for Christmas Eve!!!  

Once it is completed I will photograph it post about it, so check back later today for that big reveal!  :)

I want to share a little trick that I learned and use when sewing the binding onto the quilt...to "corral" the binding during sewing, I wrap the entire strip around a couple of fingers into a "roll".  Then I slip it off my fingers and put it on the extra spool pin on my sewing machine.  As I sew it on, I just unroll a little at a time.  This keeps the binding off of the floor and out from under the wheels of my sewing chair!  :)

I sew the binding onto the front of the quilt by machine and then fold it around to the back and sew it down by hand....which is the part I'm working on now.  I only had one more side to go before I got too tired and had to go to bed.

While doing the hand sewing, I watched my favorite movie on TV..."The Sound of Music"!  I have seen that movie so many times, but I still get anxious during certain parts of it every time I watch it.  

The "Sound of Music" is a very special movie to me as it was the very first movie I ever saw!!  I think I was about 8 years old when all of the "girls" in the family, (including my mom, if I remember correctly) went to see it at the theater.  I was PETRIFIED during that movie!   You see, we didn't have a TV in our house when I was growing up, so I didn't know how to assimilate that what was up on the screen wasn't "real", I guess.  All I know is that I remember having to scrunch down behind the seat in front of me to "hide" during the "scarey" parts.  

In fact, till I was about 13, I got scared at just about every movie that I ever saw (all 2-3 of them, LOL)...which were mostly westerns.  The gunfights and the bad guys scared me.  Quite a change from what kids are exposed to these days, huh?

As I close this post, I'd like to leave you with what I think is probably the best Christmas song ever written... 




Loretta

Geese Droppings...

Quote for the Day:
"I suppose we all have our recollections of our earlier holidays, 
all bristling with horror."
---Flann O'Brien 

I've been working on getting the "Christmas Mountain Morning" quilt quilted this week.  I have it pretty close to being done and ready for the binding.  However, my back has been hurting since yesterday, so I've really had to limit my time doing any one activity.

I've also been working on getting "Easy Street" clue #4 finished up so I can be ready for clue #5 when it comes out tomorrow!   I've got all of my latest bunch of flying geese sliver-trimmed which created a pile of what the other mystery quilters have named "geese droppings"...

 ...that pile of trimmings there on the right.  :)

I've also got the 145 3.5" squares cut out in prep for clue #5.   Here they are with my trimmed-up flying geese...

I still have to sew these flying geese units to the previous set of flying geese before this step is technically "done", but I can't get to my sewing machine right now because it is the one that I am using to quilt the Christmas quilt.  So...I'm trying to get the Christmas quilt finished up tonight so that tomorrow I can sew the geese units together and get going on the new clue.

Today is the first day that I have played Christmas music here at home.  I don't like listening to it too far in advance too much because then by the time Christmas rolls around I'm "burned out" on it.  So today I took my Dell mini computer up to my sewing room and listened to Christmas music online while I sewed.

And here's another one of my favorite, funny Christmas commercials for ya to enjoy... this is the extended version which is even funnier than the short one they play on TV...

Who thinks of up these things???  I love creative minds!   


Loretta    

Easy Street Clue 4....

Quote for the Day:

"Sew many quilts, so little time."

On Friday, clue #4 came out for Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" mystery that I'm working on.  I cut and sewed 64 flying geese on Sunday, but I only got 21 of them trimmed up so far.

The red in this photo looks brown...but it really is red!  :)  The stack in front are the ones that still need sliver-trimmed to be exactly 2.5" X 3".  The ones in back are done.


I'm on a "staycation" this week, so hopefully I'll gets lots of quilting done!   And hopefully, I'll have some blog posts to show my progress!  Stay tuned...

Loretta

Updates From the Quilting Front...

Quote for the Day:

"Any day spent quilting is a good day!"

~author unknown

I've been spending a lot more time quilting ever since I attended the quilting retreat the first weekend of November.  I've been finding "snippets" of time here and there to get in a few minutes of sewing...like the last little time after I'm ready for work, but it's not time to leave yet, etc.  I've got a lot to show for the extra time spent quilting, too, so let's get started, shall we?

I was off of work today and since my car was in the shop getting a remote start installed, I spent the day in my sewing room working, and finishing, Clue 3 of Bonnie Hunter's "Easy Street" mystery!  Sixty-four shaded 4-patches!  I even ended up with an extra one...a "spare"!  LOL  I don't know how I count everything multiple times and I still end up with "extra".  

Here's the pieces that I've made so far doing the first 3 clues...

Between working on the steps of this mystery quilt, I've been working on finishing up the blocks to my "Smith Mountain Morning" quilt.  I have decided that I will name mine "Christmas Mountain Morning"!  

The blocks are all completed and arranged on my design wall.   Now they just need to be joined together to make the quilt top so I can add the borders and then machine quilt it!

I'm hoping I can have it made into a completed quilt by Christmas!  :)

Ginger gets very bored when I'm in the sewing room and not playing with her.  She's usually laying under my rolling chair and leaning into one of my legs (usually the leg I operate the foot pedal with, no less).   However, today she was so bored she went into our bedroom and drug her bed out into the landing and took a nap.  

At one point today when she and I were in my sewing room she got ahold of a quilt block and chewed on it without me knowing it.  After it dried out I ironed it to see if it was still useable.  It wasn't.  

Gives new meaning to the term "dog-eared"!  LOL  This poor block is completely shredded around the perimeter.  

Poor quilt block...it never stood a chance against Ginger!  :(

Loretta

"Easy Street"... Clue 2!

Quote for the Day:

"I've spent most of my life making quilts.  The rest I've just wasted."

~author unknown

On Friday, Bonnie Hunter released the second clue, or "step", to her "Easy Street" mystery quilt.  I had to work on Friday, but worked diligently Saturday and Sunday to get the step completed.

I'm trying hard to get each step completed as she releases them to try to keep this quilt from becoming another "UFO".   (UFO is the term quilters use for unfinished projects.)

This step entailed making 128 flying geese that measure 2" X 3.5".  I ended up with a "spare"...for a grand total of 129.  :)

Please disregard the dirty ironing board cover.  Someday I'm going to get around to recovering it.  Someday... 


Speaking of "someday"...one of the fabrics I used to make these was this one that I found in my stash...

Do you see the date on that???  1994.   I made my first quilt around that time, but I've been a "fabric collector" since I was 16 when I learned to sew.  (And that was WAAAYYYY before 1994!!!)    ;)   

I figured it was time for to use up this fabric.  It has "aged" long enough!!   If you look closely at the flying geese blocks, you can see this fabric in some of them...top left, third from left top row, second from left bottom row, and bottom right.  :)



Loretta

Easy Street Mystery Quilt...

Quote for the Day:

"Seven days without quilting makes one weak"

~author unknown

On Friday, Bonnie Hunter revealed the first step/clue for her new mystery quilt "Easy Street".  Since we had family in last week for Thanksgiving, I wasn't able to jump in and get started till Sunday afternoon after everyone had left.

As soon as we got the house back in order, though, I headed straight for my sewing room and stayed there till bedtime!  A whole week had gone by since I was able to sew or quilt and I think I was starting to go into withdrawals!  LOL

This is what I got accomplished so far...

 ...60 of the 192 four-patches that are required!   (Actually, there are more strips and four-patches sewn together and in the sewing machine right now, but these are all that have been separated and pressed so far.)  These are shown in stacks of 10...that's how I keep track!  I will continue to make these this week so that, hopefully, I will have all 192 done by the time the next clue comes out on Friday of this week!  :)

I'm linking this post up to Bonnie's site, so I'm keeping this post short and sweet and will do another post about the family's visit sometime soon.

Loretta