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

Someday Finally Arrived...

Quote for the Day:

“You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. 

You have to be in the right mood.
What mood is that?
Last-minute panic.”
― Bill Watterson

I finally decided to take care of a project that has been staring me in the face for a while now...my less-than-stellar-looking ironing big-board cover.

For you non-quilters out there, a "big board" is a large piece of board that fits over your regular ironing board so that you have a bigger space for pressing quilt tops, backings, and fabric yardage.

You can buy one...The Original Big Board...or you can make one, if you are cheap like me!  :)   (Well...*technically* my dear husband, Andy, made it for me from some instructions I found on the internet years ago.  I don't remember exactly when he made it for me...probably 6-7 years ago, but this is the third time I've covered it...the original cover and now the second re-covering.)

It is basically a 1/2" sheet of plyboard that measures 24" X 60" covered with 2 layers of 100% cotton batting and then a layer of cheap 100% cotton fabric.  He then measured how wide and how long my ironing board is and put a "frame" underneath of the big board.  This "frame" holds the big board in place on top of my ironing board.  I can remove it when I need to iron a shirt or when I need to take the ironing board down to make room for guests.    

Here's two pictures of the underside of the board...

Originally, the board on the right in the top picture and at the bottom of the bottom picture was upright like the other three when he made it for my original ironing board that was from the 1980's.  However, that ironing board was a little wobbly, so when I found a much sturdier vintage ironing board, probably from the 1950's or '60's, at a thrift store, I snatched it up.  The "new" vintage ironing board was a couple inches wider than the original ironing board, so he had to widen the middle area.  Because of the way he had made it originally, this was the only way he could redo without me having to completely remove the original cover, etc.  Whatever...it works to keep the board on the ironing board, so that's all that counts!  :)

This is what the cover was beginning to look like.  The yellow rings/spots were from an iron I had that leaked water all the time.  :(  YUCK!

I recovered it with some cheap, $1.00/yard Walmart fabric that I have that is too flimsy to use in a quilt, and this is what it looks like now...

It took me all of about 20 minutes with a staple gun to get it finished!  :)  Now I can mark that nagging little task off of my list!  

Loretta

Merry Christmas...

Merry Christmas 
from our house to yours.

May your hearts be blessed with the love of family and friends at this time of year when we celebrate 
the birth of Jesus.

When I was growing up, one of my older sisters (Sharon) sang with a community choir and every year they performed "Handel's Messiah".  We would go, as a family, to see the performance.  After I grew up and moved away, I still tried to find a performance of it somewhere.  It's been a few years since I've had the opportunity to see it performed live, but Christmas doesn't seem complete now without, at the very least, a great rendition of the "Hallelujah Chorus"!  Enjoy!!

Loretta

It's FINISHED!!!

Quote for the Day:

"To quilt is human, to finish divine."

You cannot even imagine how excited I am to be able to share this finish with you!!!  

Presenting..."Christmas Mountain Morning"!!!

It is finished and ON OUR BED just in time for Christmas!  Do you realize how happy this makes me???  First of all, I don't make very many quilts for me/us.  Most of my quilts are gifts for other people.  Secondly, I started this quilt the first weekend of November.  To have it become a COMPLETED quilt (all 1568 pieces of it...not counting borders) by Christmas is ASTOUNDING for me.  It usually takes that  long for me to just make the top!  And since I usually hand quilt my quilts...add another 4-9 months onto that time before it is done!  

However, since I machine quilted this one, it shortened that 4-9 months of quilting down to about 1 week!  Even though the machine quilting makes this quilt a little more "stiff" to the touch, the benefit of having it done sooner is a good trade off.  (I haven't washed it, yet, so it will soften up a little after that, too, but I'm going to wait till after New Years to take it off my bed and wash it.)

In this picture, you can see that it isn't as wide and doesn't hang down quite as much as I usually like for our queen-sized bed, but I'm okay with that...

You can see where the Christmas quilt ends and the bargello quilt hangs down below it.  This is also a good shot of the borders and scrappy binding!  :)   (We don't use blankets in our house anymore...we just layer quilts depending on how cold it is/isn't.)

Here's a close-up of the all-over meandering quilting and of the variegated rayon thread I used.  Since it is rayon, it really reflects the flash from the camera and looks "shimmery".

Machine quilting is definitely NOT my forte, but I'm happy with the way it turned out!  I can truthfully say that each time that I do machine quilting, I get a little better and a little more comfortable with it.  It doesn't have to be PERFECT... DONE is good enough!  :)

And here you can see the pieced backing and a little more of the scrappy binding that I used.  I got to use up some of the Christmas fabric in my stash...especially some of the "what was I thinking" fabric!!

Another GREAT Christmas song for you enjoyment and contemplation...






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    

Winter Staycation Update...

Quote for the Day:

“Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color

 to slide down on the rainbow.”

~Douglas Pagel

I have a list of things I want to get done while off of work this week.  So far I am WAAAYYYY behind!  

One of the things I want to get finished is my "Christmas Mountain Morning" quilt.  I pin-basted it Sunday, and Monday evening I started machine quilting it.  I spent more time on it today and now have it about 2/3's of the way finished.  

Look at this GORGEOUS thread I found to quilt it with!  It's actually embroidery thread and is rayon, but I'm using it anyway.  (The quilting police had better not try to stop at my house!)

It is a thinner thread than what most people use to machine quilt with, but since I'm not a very good machine quilter, I don't like my stitches to show up too much anyway!  :)

I can't wait to get it done and plan to put it on our bed immediately upon finishing the quilting and getting the binding on!  :)

Since it hurts my back to sit too long, I'm taking breaks from the sewing machine every so often and working on trimming up the flying geese for Clue 4 of the "Easy Street" mystery quilt.


Does anyone else find this commercial as funny as I do?



Okay...so much for this break...gonna go get back to quilting now....thanks for stopping by!  

Loretta