Happy Sunday January 2020 ~ Ringing in a New Week!

January is an odd month… comes on quick but last a looong time as you adjust your vision to include new things or jump start lost habits.  As for us… we buy a fresh bulb flower in January…

This past week was a real roller coaster but we made it through and my honey even surprised me and bought a miniature daffodil plant to enjoy for now and plant later… AND he bought the Raggedy Ann an Andy partner that looks like he is from the same era she is from … mid 1960’s !!!

I really needed these boosts this week… now to give sweet Ann a new outfit and some new striped socks too… those will be a project you see coming up in the future… Andy is a smart dresser so Ann needs to step up her game a bit and get a rejuvenation session … Jannessa will help me she promises!!! ❤

Last Sunday I enjoyed slow stitching alternating with block making for the Beads table runner I planned to make…

 Here is a close up of 1 block… made with strip sets is how Donna Jordan shows it made… I didn’t use her sizes but made mine smaller blocks to make a more desirable sized finish for my needs…

 And for the table in our kitchen… a couple of smaller placemats were pieced.

 By working through the week when not slow stitching… I got all but 1 seam and the final border completed…

Friday I had it all together & handed this flimsy runner with batting and backing to Jannessa.  She is going to fmq it for us to enjoy ❤

 I will use that deep burgundy for the binding… our kitchen is mainly the barn red and creamy tan colors… but we have a quilt in there (my spiral log cabin quilt) that this will look perfect close to.

Friday when Jannessa came over to pick up the table runner we took time to let her pup Max visit with Molly… we also made coordinating bracelets pooling our resources of glass and nicer plastic beads!!!

My honey had found the 2 silver hearts (one in each of our bracelets) in the fish vendor cart when  we got it home.  Jannessa loved them as much as I did so we made them a stand out on our bracelets 😀

I am definitely blessed with good friends… my blog prize winner from December was Penny or as other readers may know her as Little Penpen.  She loved the winnings and then proceeded to make me this sweet thank you gift….

 I received it on Saturday and promptly called and thanked her and caught up with her too ❤  It is a pattern by Kathy Schmidt and is a Hare and Needle… so stinking cute y'all!!!

I then signed it for her with initials and year… and sewed circles to the back for hanging…

 Look how beautiful it looks in my room !!!!

 Thank you Penny for making my day with your sweet hand stitches just for me!!!!!

Molly got a groom and a photo shoot earlier in the week while we ran to Asheville for doctor appointments at the VA for my honey….

She looks so great scissor trimmed and nails ground short.  She is so good for the groomer too we are told!!!

Most every day I wake early and spend the early morning hours hand quilting… this is my zen and my fave place to be… I enjoy machine projects intermittently and it gives my hands something different to do as well.. but I never get bored hand quilting!!!  Appalachian Delight is no different!!!

 Pictures I took this week as a spritzed away the blue markings once quilted and let it dry… giving this great texture to the outer border of this quilt…

 Here is where I will be today… getting the corner done…

 Here is a look back at where I have been….

 And a close up of THIS MORNING….

 And my set up that lets me tiptoe around in the mornings without waking anyone as I stitch with my headphones on…

 this week I finished this book on audio books from the local library.

 I thought since the service is free I could listen and quit if I didn’t like it… so I did and you know what… Michelle Obama is a wonderful speaker and had lots of great info to share in this basically nonpartisan look at what it was like to live life in her shoes.  And what an interesting life she has lived thus far y’all! 

I have kept up with my calendar this week… I am planning to switch to bullet journaling in February when I can get myself a dot paged book that is small enough to not take up much room to keep handy.  Or maybe I should keep printing these sheets and put them in a notebook… 

Any calendar fanatics out there have a preference????

At Jannessa’s request I joined a 9 patch a day club on facebook.. it is quite an international group and has me pondering 9 patch variations like this one for a possible future quilt …

 Hoping to find the pattern for this one but look at that quilt closely.. the light and medium blues give you an awesomely intricate background pattern in the quilt… friendship stars… churn dashes… all kinds of patterns within patterns and basically it is 9 patches with some hst’s and solid squares too to make it come out so mind bendingly cool!!!

I did one of those silly things on facebook yesterday… it is like reading a horoscope or something 😀  This hits quite close to home for me though!!!!

This has been a chatty post .. hope you have enjoyed it … so much hand work here I am linking it to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching… my fave blog to visit on Sundays >> right HERE <<

I will chat more next Sunday… for now I sing cheers for a cap on a very busy week and a hope that the coming week that looks busy will be relatively quiet in reality.

Next Sunday I should be into the next phase of quilting … the blocks !!! Come back then!!!!

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Full on Fall In North Carolina and LOTS of Progress to Share too !!

Do you do this where you live??  If you do did you remember??

I enjoyed an extra 1.5 hours of sleep this morning.. did you??? lol

I want to open this post with our drive yesterday… we went from Robbinsville, NC to Franklin, NC using the scenic (and scary to drive on) route so I could share some photos… I drove and my honey took LOTS of photos… so sit back and enjoy this show first and then I will share some quilty progress too!

 Our views as we left Robbinsville, North Carolina…

 And here we are going to the Wayah Road not from from our home going beside the Nantahala River… it is where LOTS of people will fish for rainbow trout and white water raft and kayak as well!

 This begins the end of our photo taking as the road got more windy and narrow.. but this is the Nantahala Lake!  It is made a lake by a man made dam that provides power as well to this area 🙂

 I hope you enjoyed the show like we did!
After all the beauty we saw yesterday I felt this was a cool meme too…

Mother Nature is full of surprises and she does have the best box of crayons for sure!!!

And Speaking of Crayons… I have some watercolor pencils I pulled out to use for the 1st time this past week!!!

 I finally figured out how I wanted to finish my borders on this Appalachian Delight quilt…

 Here is my piecing plan so I know what size units to make….

 In that photo 1 square = 2″  So this quilt top will finish a bit over 100″ square … PERFECT!!!!

Here is an example of the fabrics you will see used…

The burgandy red is the sashing…
The HST border is being produced as I make each block
The next border will have larger hst’s that have the solid olive green on one side and neutral strings on the opposite side….
The burgandy red and cream herringbone fabric will go around that and be the final binding and
A wide (7″) border of the goldenrod yellow will have an uber cool stencil design on it in blackberry thread big stitch style.

Can you tell I am excited about this quilt???  It will be hand quilted … so this progress… while being pieced on my vintage 301 Gloria… will be a slow stitched finish!!!

Last week I shared progress to the left of needle nanny you see at the top of the photo below…

 So I spent some time with this over the last week and got finished with what was marked in pink and marked MORE from my crazy looking stencil…

 Above in my “Path to a finish” picture I am showing how I have found is best to quilt this stencil and not get lost or have to break thread and start somewhere else… I am loving this design… and the pink I am using WILL come out in the end! lol  For those that are wondering… it is chalk plain chalk.

Here is a photo of my space and set up… I LOVE IT!!!

 The table to the right of my chair has casters added to it so it rolls so nice and smooth and is where I park my drink and all my quilting supplies and accessories.  The chair I sit in has arms and rollers on it as well.  The lamp is able to move easily… the other 2 lamps behind the frame I only use occasionally… but look how bright the light is with the ambient light and the lamp to the left of my chair using a daylight fluorescent bulb is usually good enough 🙂

Linking my hand quilting progress to Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sunday gang of funloving slow stitchers HERE!  Between fixing a few things and helping my honey with a few household things… I will be making progress on this triangle pattern on my quilt!

I found this cool mini ironing board on facebook Marketplace this week and Friday we arranged to buy it for $8!!!  What a steal this vintage wood and metal hinged dual sided board is.  Probably for the 1950’s or 60’s too!!!

 So above is some heavier weight quilting cotton I had used as a backing on the whole cloth quilt I still have in progress… so I fashioned 2 covers and replaced the old hard batting there with 2 layers of new cotton/wool batting to use when I make bags or wallets.

 Yesterday we went to Franklin on our drive through the mountains and I picked up some needed elastic to redo the smaller board to make it fit better… excited to get that project in the books.

Friday I received these 2 pillow fronts hand quilted by my bestie Connie!!!!  Yay!!!

 I picked out some backing fabrics from my stash that would coordinate with the quilt we are using now and the quilt I am making… this fabric fit the bill…

 Here is the one my honey will use now with the pillow form in it….

 Here is the other pillow with the backing on it… and to the right you can see how I used those coordinating fabrics together to make an envelope backing 🙂

Here is the oatmeal fabric one on our bed this morning… I believe Connie bought both of the tops at “The Stencil Company”

 I soaked them in the sink in plain cold water for a few hours then washed them in cold water with some clothes for a good scrubbing in laundry detergent and cold water wash and rinse…. then dried them lightly in the dryer before fashioning them into pillows…

I washed them a second time once they were made into pillows in cool water with a cold water rinse and laundry detergent and some towels then needed washing this time… so they got a second wash and dried hard in the dryer this time and no marks remain that I can see 🙂  LOVE THEM!!!!

I am planning to make myself a wristlet wallet soon… so I have pulled fabric for that ….

 I found a great youtube tutorial for the wallet of my choice I can add the wristlet with donated hardward from my current wristlet wallet… and I bought a new phone case that now allows me to push all the buttons much easier than the leather one that was way past it’s usefulness did…  this photo is from eBay where I found this sweet swanky case for under $5 including free shipping and it came FAST too 😀

 My favorite stretchy bracelet with beads on it broke the other night… so I have been looking for elastic string to string it… I thought I had some but haven’t located it just yet! lol
So I found this one for $1.50 in Robbinsville yesterday at a Thrift Shop we enjoy going to every now and then. Right is a close up of it on my wrist… it is a very light pink.. 🙂

Well… it has come to an end now… time to cloase but as you can see I take my own advice and am truly finally Living a Life I love!!  Are you???