Gonna be a busy weekend!

I started yesterday with the garden......we bought the seedlings on Wednesday, and I wanted to wait to make sure the ground was warm enough!  Those of you in the New England area know that we have not had any sun since.....well......last September!  And this whole Spring has been nothing but rain and cold......anyone who planted anything two weeks ago has probably had everything rot!  We usually wait until Memorial Day weekend anyway.....just to be safe!  And here it is already.....sheesh.....I can't believe it's the end of May!  But it's gorgeous out.....sunny and beautiful!  Yay!

Here's a pic of the garden from the second floor bedroom.  John put the fencing up (those dang critters just love tender little seedlings!, and the electric wire will go around shortly!)....so I put in 12 tomatoes, 6 zucchini, 6 pickling cukes, 6 jalepeno and 6 green pepper.  I screened two wheelbarrows of compost for the little guys, so they should have a really good start!  I'll be setting seed with the green beans and corn tomorrow AFTER I get one of those screen hats.....because I have at least 20 blackfly bites on my head!  And they are all welting up, and hurt!  Sheesh!  I'm like a magnet for bugs that bite!  And it wouldn't be so bad, except they seem to go for my eyes!  So I have a big old welt right next to my left eye, and I'm looking a bit like Quasimodo!  Fun times!

Hubby has gone to the Jersey Shore for a huge kite festival.  For those of you in that area, it's going on Fri-Sat-Sun at Wildwood.  It's really fun, but I bowed out this year, cuz I'm taking a lot of time off for my other trips, and as it is, I have almost all of June off, so he went alone.  So I'm taking advantage of being home alone, and quilting my brains out!

I finished making all 480 flying geese for Jeanne's quilt.  And got them sewn in strips of 4, too!  Sweet!  It's now on the wall, and I started to sew strips together.....got the top left corner row done, then realized I had something else I needed to do first!  Eek!

My friend Betty at the town office is having a birthday on June 2!  Yikes!  And I've been talking about making her a wall hanging for over a month now!  Have I started it!?!  No!  So I got busy on it last night!  It's the same technique I blogged about on my October 30, 2010 post, an idea from Jenny Bowker at Postcards from Cairo.

 

I got brave this time and used the contrasting thread for part of the design!  I'm loving it!  I borrowed a piece of the pinecone fabric from my friend Brenda, who made Betty a quilt last year using some of this.....so the wall hanging will match perfectly!  Yay!  I'll finish the quilting up within the weekend, and have it ready for Thursday delivery!

And am I worried Betty might see this ahead of time.....No!  Cuz NONE of my friends here ever read my blog!  What's up with that!?!  They always ask what I've been working on, and the first thing I say is, "Have you read my blog?".....and they always say no!  Sheesh!  I have pics of my projects and everything!  Oh well.....maybe one day, right!?!

I can't believe I have to work this weekend.....I have so much quilting and gardening to do!  lol

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

regan

I'm not THAT busy!

I can't believe I haven't posted on my blog since April!  What the heck have I been doing???  Not much in the way of quilting.....and I guess that's when I really feel like posting.

I finally got back into the sewing room.....and did the quilting on a table runner that my friend Donna made.  I did an all over running vine, stitched in the ditch on the outside border of piecing, then did a tiny stipple for the background.  I will give it back to her for binding on Wednesday night at our quilt group.  I hope she likes what I did on it.....she had no input to what she wanted....she said 'anything'!

It took me just under 3 hours to quilt it.  That seems long, considering it's just a table runner.....but that stitch in the ditch is what slowed me right down to nothing!  It takes ALL my concentration to do that.....the very second I blink, look away, or think of anything else but the line.....I waiver off!  Of course, that makes me crazy, and I have to pick it out!  I did that twice!  So yeah, I guess 3 hours sounds ok!  lol

Now that I've finished Donna's runner, I can concentrate on my next quilty project.  When we found out the daughter of our good friend's from kiting was getting married in November, my hubby immediately thought.....oh.....maybe you could make a quilt?  Ok.....sure!  November is a long way off.....so there is no pressure, right?  Well.....then I made the huge mistake of asking hubby, what do you think for a design?.....and as I'm clicking through all the pics I have of quilts on the computer.....he starts saying "that one, or that one, or that one."  Well, of course the ones he was picking out were pics of quilts I would never ever want to make.....I just had pics of them for color options, or good border usage, or whatever.  But never to make that quilt!  Sheesh!

So, I narrowed it down to one......it was going to be crazy complicated......but I would started drafting it up.  Well, I spent the better part of 2 days drafting it, and realized there is just no way I want to do it!  No way!  So I got back on the computer, and started looking at pics again, this time WITHOUT hubby watching.  I finally chose a pattern I liked, and it would work with the fabrics I had planned, and I got busy cutting away!  Yay!

Jeanne (the bride) showed me her dress (she works at David's Bridal, so we stopped in there one day, and she put on her dress.....gorgeous!).  Of course, I was trying really sneaky to find out her wedding colors, or favorite color.....so I could plan the quilt.  She showed me her bridesmaids dresses....they are a beautiful wine color, but she had wanted purple, cuz that's her FAV color, but hubby-to-be talked her out of that (smart man!).  So there it was.....colors for the quilt......I pulled all the fabrics I had in the wine/maroon range and the purple/lavender range, and all the white on white's that I had.....and this is the quilt I'm doing.

It will be about queen sized.  The flying geese blocks are a finished size of 3x1.5.  I'm really loving the two color ranges together.....who knew!?!  (It just occurred to me that this pic looks like everything is sewn.....it's not.  Just the individual flying geese blocks are.....nothing else!  I would never cut off the tops of geese like that!  I'm just sayin!)

And I had a scratch off coupon from Joann's for 60% off  (woohoo), so I got one of these!

And let me tell you, it's the best dang thing I've bought for quilting in a very long time!  And this project was the perfect one for it!  I had so many 3.5 x 2 inch rectangles to cut for the flying geese.....like over 400!  And this ruler made it so easy!  I zipped right through the 6.5 and 3.5 inch squares, too!  I love it!

I cut out all of the flying geese rectangles and big squares in just a couple of hours!  Yay!  I'm not one for many gadgets or fancy extras, but this ruler ROCKS!  I'm so glad I got it (and for 60% off, too!)

Ok, enough yacking about it.....I'm off to start sewing more flying geese!

Have a wonderful day!

regan