Stay at home retreat

Mom's Quilt
My UFO

Today, Mom and I particpated in a stay at home retreat on my Stashbuster list.

I finished piecing a top - a UFO. I'd wanted to make some windmill blocks and this was intended to be a quick donation quilt. It sat around for a couple years so it certainly wasn't quick. It's plain looking but it WILL look cuter when it's quilted! I hope.

Mom was working on a quilt for my niece. It's based on a McCall's pattern but I couldn't find the magazine so I drafted it in EQ5. We'd picked out the fabric when I was here last week and I cut it out for her then too. It's looking better than my UFO.

Home for a day

I flew home from Mom's last night and am driving back with Chesty tomorrow. My brother is going to be out of town all next week and with Mom not feeling well lately I wanted her to have someone around if she needed something.

I've been running around today getting the car serviced and Chesty groomed so we (Chesty and I) can head out in the morning. Keith was in California this week while I was in Virginia and he won't get back before I leave. It will be another week before I see him.

I'm packing a couple projects to work on while I'm there. Fabric for one of my super simple strippies and a UFO that just needs assembly. I'm really not crazy about this UFO but I've done too much work on it not to finish and donate it.

The Wedding Quilt

I'm visiting my Mom in Virginia and we've been working on Chris' wedding quilt between going to her doctor's appointments. We finished the top tonight but I'm not going to post a picture because Chris reads my blog!

Here's a picture of Mom pinning the blocks for me to sew.

Stashbuster's update

I finally finished the binding on UFO #10 tonight - the 2nd Braid quilt I'd intended to finish last weekend when I left my binding kit at home.

The picture shows both Braid quilts - one will be donated to the Ronald McDonald House through my guild and the other one will go to Project Linus.

In addition to the UFO challenge on the stashbuster list I'm also tracking my stash yardage used for the 100 Yard Dash from Stash. I'm only up to 42 yards of stash at this point but that's mainly because the quilt has to be finished to count the yardage. I have a few tops that are waiting for quilting that will count as soon as I get them quilted and bound.

Bloglines

I debated whether or not to subscribe to Bloglines but after reading a couple posts about it I decided to go ahead and set it up.

It took two days but I added ALL the members of Stash Quilts. Rather than just subscribing to part of the group, the time I save not going to sites that don't have updated posts can be spent reading the newer blogs.

So while 36 blogs seems like a lot I think I'll actually spend less time catching up with everyone.


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On a side note - Just for fun I did try out that What Flower are you? site that Norma posted but I came up as a Shrinking Violet!! Well - OK it just said Violet (I added the shrinking part) but here's the blurb:

"You have a shy personality. You tend to hesitate before trying new things or meeting new people. But once people get to know you, you open up and show the world what you are really all about."

Just because I'm anti social and love to read doesn't mean I'm a shrinking Violet! Anyway, try it yourself - it was kind of fun.

Progress on the Honeybee

Today's a better day and I'm making good progress on Mom's Honeybee. I had comments asking how I was going to quilt it so I thought I'd post a couple pictures.

In the large squares I'm doing a modified designs with lines pattern. Most of the fabrics are too busy to mark anything so I just chalk the registration lines and then quilt the feathers freehand.

The second picture is one of the leaves I decided on after ripping out the sashing quilting yesterday. They look much better.

Just my luck

I'm finally going to be home a few days and my plan was to start to quilting Mom's Honeybee top. By the time I made all the phone calls, emails, and faxing that I needed to it was already afternoon - but that's OK because Keith has a dinner tonight so I still had lots of time to quilt.

Things started off pretty good and considering I hadn't done any free motion quilting in a few weeks I was pretty happy with the top two borders. Unfortunately I didn't like the quilting in the sashing and although I rarely rip quilting out - I decided I had to rip and try something else. So most of my quilting afternoon was spent ripping out rather than making progress on this quilt.

I did quilt a couple more hours after dinner but now I'm going to call it a night. I'm reading a pretty good book that believe it or not is set in Minneapolis. It's Tami Hoag's new mystery Prior Bad Acts. I've a bunch of her books but for the life of me can't remember where the other ones take place. I always like reading a book that is set in a city I know. It just adds something to be able to actually picture the setting that's being described.

What I'm reading

I was traveling again last week so I got a lot of reading done. I found Mercy Falls by William Kent Krueger in the *local* section of the book store. It's a mystery that takes place in Minnesota - I enjoyed reading it and I'll have to look for more of his books.

I also took The Devil Wears Prada with me and the latest Stephanie Plum novel from Janet Evanovich. Both good summer reads - light, entertaining, and quick.


Mercy Falls
William Kent Krueger


The Devil Wears Prada
Lauren Weisberger


Twelve Sharp
Janet Evanovich

Forgetful

After going through all the trouble to collect a binding *kit* - scissors, clips, thread, needles, thimble - and tossing it in a small case to bring with me this weekend, I walked off and left it sitting on the bar at the house.

Mom's quilt

I finished quilting a top for my Aunt last week and today I'm loading this top of my Mom's. The block is called Honeybee and she used a beautiful set of fat quarters. After quilting this top, I still have one each of my Aunt's and my Mom's waiting to be quilted.

My Quilting Studio

Moving will at last force me to completely and ruthlessly purge my quilting supplies and material. None of the housing we're looking at will have the kind of space dedicated to quilting that I have now so before leaving on this trip I started going through my books and magazines.

I'll donate a ton of my quilting books to the library and I've already started to rip out pictures of quilts I like from my magazines. They'll be placed in a binder and the rest of the magazines will be tossed. Going through the magazines has made me realize how many magazines I get that have absolutely no quilts that appeal to me in them. I'm going to let all my subscriptions end and in the future just buy issues that appeal to me.

I haven't decided for sure how I'm going to decrease my stash but some fabric will be donated, some cut into strips for future scrap quilts, and possibly some cut into fat quarters.

I'm finding that I prefer making scrap quilts and I like working with fat quarters. When I participated in our guild cut-in for our charity quilts we cut a lot of donated yardage into fat quarters and that seemed to work well for the patterns for scrappy quilts that were distributed.

I did get some quilting done between all the visits to and from family. I quilted both blue braid quilts that will be donated and a queen size top my Aunt sent me to quilt for her.

Minneapolis

We arrived in Minneapolis on Friday afternoon and spent a couple days looking at townhomes and condo's. Just as I thought, a condo isn't going to work for us but Keith wanted to look at them so we did.

We found a townhouse community by the river within walking distance of downtown that I really love. They're more expensive than I wanted to spend but not more expensive than I can afford so they're my first choice of places to live.

Keith hasn't definitely decided to move yet but even if we don't relocate to Minneapolis with his company we decided we're selling our house and we have it on the market.

Now Keith just needs to make a decision and the house needs to sell and we can move ahead in one direction or the other.

What I'm reading

Having recently read two of Jodi Picoult books, Vanishing Acts and The Tenth Circle, I bought a 3rd book of hers the other day.

I finished reading Keeping Faith tonight and liked this one even more than the two previous books. I will definitely read her other books. Click on the title to read a review of the book.

Family

The Johnson's
The Johnson women (I'm on the far right)

A whole week without blogging that's unusual for me.

The house is listed for sale and my fingers are crossed that we'll be able to sell it by November. Sooner would be nice.

Keith's brother and sister and their families have been visiting and just went home today. We spent a couple days here at the house and then went up to Big Canoe for a couple days. They all left today and while we had a wonderful time, I've spent most of today getting both places straightened up and started washing all the sheets and towels used by our 7 guests. It will take a couple days to finish the laundry and get all the beds made back up.

In the next couple days I also hope to get a binding on the second braid quilt I finished quilting last week and to load my Aunt's quilt on the longarm.

Monday

We're back from Virginia and we had a great time. I really miss spending time as a family so it was good to have both boys (and Becky) with us.

Today I spent some more time getting ready to get the house listed and preparing for the next set of company coming on Wednesday. I've washed a pile of sheets and towels in the last few weeks and stripped and made up beds repeatedly. This next week should be the last company for a while.

I did get a binding sewn on my blue braid quilt otherwise known as UFO #9. I'll take and post a picture in the next day or so. It's a small donation quilt but it's nice to have another one finished.

Speaking of one of the blue quilts, Adam saw the string quilt top when he was home for graduation and promptly claimed it for himself. That's one less quilt to donate but the boys each get about one quilt a year so it's nice to have Adam's next one already pieced. Chris' next one will be a queen sized wedding quilt which will hopefully be done by the wedding.

I did squeeze in an hour hike today - the weather cut it a little short and I was soaked by the time I finished but I'm continuing to lose weight. I had my Weight Watchers weigh in today and was down another 1.6 lbs for a total loss of 28.4 lbs since mid-January.

What I'm reading

I had an email from Jackie who reads my blog and commented that she missed my posts on the books I'm reading. I haven't posted about my reading material in a while but haven't slowed down. The last 3 books I've read are:




DIGGING TO AMERICA by Anne Tyler
I enjoyed this novel written about 2 families who adopted foreign babies.











DARK TORT by Diane Mott Davidson
The latest in a series of mystery's featuring a crime solving chef. I always enjoy these books by Davidson.










VANISHING ACTS by Jodi Picoult
Very good also - about relationships within a family and between the main character and two friends from childhood.

Graduation Day

Adam graduated yesterday. It feels good to have both boys out of school and working.

Today we all go to Virginia to visit my family and for Becky (Chris' fiance) to meet them before the wedding in October.

This is a big year for us - a graduation, a wedding, and a major move. Somewhere I have to find more time for quilting.

Super Simple Strips

I love seeing different versions of a particular quilt pattern. I was reading Vicky's blog and saw she had posted her version of this quilt and decided I'd post mine too. This quilt was given to my sister-in-law last year.

Bits and pieces

Chris and Becky were visiting this weekend and we met her Mom and sister for the first time. We went to a tasting at the wedding facility on Saturday and the wedding plans are moving along.

Chris and Becky took me to lunch for my birthday on Friday and then Keith took us all to dinner.

Keith found out on last week that his company is closing their offices here in Marietta and moving them to Minneapolis - will we move with them? Keith hasn't decided yet but will make a decision soon.

I have gotten some quilting squeezed in between other things going on. I loaded and quilted the small braid quilt which is now waiting for binding and then loaded the 2nd braid quilt and have the quilting started.

Adam graduates next week

Adam had not intended to attend the graduation breakfast and ceremonies for his culinary program but changed his mind at the last minute. This morning we attended the breakfast and next week we'll attend the graduation ceremony.