A Slow Stitching Challenge Met and Other cool stuff!

Welcome Y’all from wherever you are reading this … to where I am in south western North Carolina I hope you are all doing well!  And I wish each of you a Happy September 2018!!!

I have made some fun slow stitching progress this week and am sharing a challenge from my favorite Sunday Slow Stitching blog linky over at Kathy’s Quilts HERE!  Kathy has a super fun challenge today so go read all about… then come back here to read how I am meeting her challenge in this post!

So here is a close up view of what I see every day when hand quilting at my frame…

 And here is the long view of all I can see from my frame view!  I LOVE THIS VIEW!!!

 Here is outside my windows….

 Here is the pond that was hard to see from the inside shots… it has crappie, bass and trout in it.  We feed them and invite friends to fish them… but we don’t! lol

 Here is a close up of the grist mill and water wheel….

Now back to slow stitching progress….

I got the view on the left done early in the week… then the view on the right done later in the week….

Now I am here… end of the row and 82% or more complete with this behemoth quilt for our bed!!!

 I love mixing big stitch and regular quilt stitches together on this project… I think that is “my style” now too 🙂  I have a nice selection of both kinds of threads now and add to it as I am able with each project I work on!

Then I went into the sewing room and look who was right next to me making herself at home!!!

Little Molly likes my fabric scraps and plays in them whenever I leave the door open to the sewing room or am in there!
Here was a photo op I enjoyed doing with her last weekend…

Now she is 12 weeks old!!!  Still working on potty training but she eats well and enjoys playing and staying under foot for sure!!!

This week we also said a short but sweet goodbye to a fellow veteran and US hero John McCain.  This was our tribute as posted on facebook…

Our flag and the post office just above us in this photo will return to full staff status on Monday after he has been buried at the Naval Cemetery.  I am glad he didn’t suffer long from the time he decided to quit treatment of his brain cancer.

This is STILL my view on my 401 where I am machine quilting a quilt for a friend… I wish I could force myself to work on it more!

 And I saw this meme this week… it is VERY appropriate so I thought I would share here with you all…

 Our post office lady is moving to another post office on Tuesday next week so I quickly made her a snap bag… a bit bigger than my last one but I thought she might use it for snacks or make up or something for her new job 🙂

 She cried when I gifted it to her and loved it very much… she said she loved the angel fabric and purple was her fave color too ❤  I love happy endings!!!

But my favorite thing… other than the hand quilting progress I made this week was this cool wallet I made for my daughter from THIS youtube tutorial and using these fabrics … some from stash and some from Walmarts fat quarter selection…

 Here is a bobbin race losing shot… I had half a bobbin of black 50 wt aurifil already wound so I figured that would be enough…

 Well I was 2″ or less short of my finish line !!!  So I unthreaded… wound another bobbin and finished it up properly… I usually win bobbin race games… but not always I guess! lol
Here you can see Glorious Gloria my trustly 301 from 1956.  She is a strong and hard working machine and my favorite snips… as well as my trusty corner poking tool… you can see the Precision Turning Tool better below… it works as wonderful gadget in my sewing space when making bags and such!

 Above is outside of the wallet with a change zipper pocket made for my daughter and below is the inside credit card slots and sewn in velcro closure of the wallet… plus a money slip that is plenty long enough 🙂

 Here it is all folded up on the velcro side:

 Closer up view but if you look above you see I have the same view from my sewing room of the outdoors as I have from my quilting frame 😀  I LOVE THIS VIEW!!!!

 And the back side of the wallet when folded up….

 And a fun compilation photo I made for facebook groups to see…

School started for lots of kids this past week too… including my nieces and nephew!!!

 Also 2 of my nieces won blue ribbons that competed in the Wilson County fair … the largest fair I believe in Tennessee!!!!  I am a VERY proud aunt too ❤

So take time to participate in Kathy’s slow stitching photo op… whatever kind of slow stitching you enjoy doing… and share what is going on in your world… I would love to read your post!  Have a blessed weekend, a safe Labor Day holiday if you are in the US, and a safe Labour Day holiday if in Canada… and make time to slow it down and enjoy the views!

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Thanks to Hurricane Matthew… it has been almost 3 weeks now since I quilted!!!

Sorry I have been absent for so long… will try to make this catch up as short and enjoyable as possible!!! lol

I quilted a bit daily until October 4.  That is when we realized Matthew was a big storm… soon upgraded to a Hurricane and would hit on or close to where we lived…

Here was our home on October 5th… we lived without windows in this house a day before we left to evacuate… Evacuation was NOT mandatory for our home location but was favored by the local weather authorities so my honey and I decided we would leave…

Above is a shot of the boarding of the windows… and below is a shot as we said goodbye to our home on October 6… headed to Mongomery, Alabama some 7 plus hours away from us!!! (It was the closest hotel we could find to evacuate to by the time we decided evacuation was our plan !!!

We did put our inside furniture mainly up on blocks… and brought in all our outside furniture including my office that was homed on the Florida Room (I bring my computer in each night)!  This is a sad time for us as we are unsure what we will come home to!

We arrived on October 6 very late to our hotel and had a great but small accomodations.. the hotel was called “Microtel”… I didn’t imagine a hotel room could be so small!  But it kept me and Rick and Daisy all free of wind and rain and hurricane conditions for 2 nights 🙂  The staff there was very friendly and accomodating… we did bring some food and drinks with us.. but no refrigerator is available in any of their rooms… they did have plenty of long lasting ice in their ice machines though!

We waffled back and forth whether to return Saturday or Sunday… finally we both felt good about making the 8 hour trek home (going a more direct route than we had to go to evacuate) on Saturday… just a day after Matthew had left… we didn’t have our neighbors info and couldn’t even find out from the power company here if we had power… but forward we went!

Daisy whined a lot on the way to the hotel… she couldn’t seem to understand the car was moving… we did bring her big cushion for a nest on our travels… and the shot to the right is on our trip back home….

We were so happy to cross from Alabama to Florida coming home too!

On our way there my smart GPS that sees accidents and traffic ahead of the path it wants us to go rerouted us so we went from Florida to Georgia then to Alabama!!!
lol

When we finally arrived home Saturday afternoon… Rick wanted to make a quick check alone… so I loaded my arms and prepared for the worst… but the front of the house looked just as we left it!!!

Rick gave our home 2 thumbs up!!!!  If you look behind him there were sand bags at the front door.. he cut all the plywood custom fit to make coverings for all the windows too!!!

And we had POWER!!!! YIPPEE!!!!

The next day I took these 2 shots…  this is the main of the debris from our back yard… our sweet right next door neighbors had cleaned the front of our yard to welcome us home 🙂

We had had the trees trimmed by a professional comany and in doing so left this stump you can see on the left side of the pic above…

Rick then carved into it with one of his routers after I sketched it only the tree stump… “Matthew Oct. 2016″… this way this tree will have engraved in it why it was saved… we saw soooo much debris as we got closer to the coast on our drive home….

We did lose gates to our fences… well they need some major repairs anyway… and the fence that separated us from us and our left hand neighbors came down completely and it was their fence as they have a pool with a screen enclosure.. they say they have no $$ to replace the fence… so that will happen after next years budget starts… that means once the house taxes are paid!!! lol  Rick can do the work but the fencing costs about $1200… so that will take a couple months to save for!!!

Above is Rick doing a check of our roof and giving it a good general sweep of leaves and limbs that can get caught in the shingles… overall we fared VERY WELL!  Our neighbor directly across the street has their main home in Orlando.. so they missed the hurricane but their home didn’t … a tree took out a good part of roofing!  It took the tree trimmers only part of a day to trim all the trees but still we wait to see repairs happening… Rick estimates $30,000 to $50,000 damage to their home from this storm… so we are sooo blessed to have no home damage!

All this has left us very greatful to have a concrete block home with lots of rafters my honey had previously not understood… now we both have a better understanding of why we had this home still and now we don’t plan to sell next year but to continue upgrading this home in general instead… it is only increasing in value.. to us and to Zillow! lol

Below is a temporary fence we put up from our Florida room to the back fencing that is intact… to keep Daisy contained and not have to watch her sooo closely….

 You can see the window plywood here stacked against our out building to dry.  Rick also labeled it for quick access in the future with more screws and a bit too!  The missing fence would have been behind that!  The temporary fence is hard to see but it is in front of all that with the 3 stones at the bottom of this shot…

Our Florida room is now just a gathering spot… I love it even more now though that it isn’t so cluttered!!!!

And the living room is emptied back to it’s new normal level and deep cleaned from bringing the outside in during evacuation preparations…

And our sweet kitchen is in order too…

Currently I am working on cleaning out a major mess we call our master bedroom closet!  It is a large closet for sure.. and has been a catch all for past hobbies and memories I didn’t want to deal with….

Thus the reason I really haven’t blogged lately… we have been focused on loving this home of ours 🙂

We moved the computer into what was my daughter’s room.. we now call the office!

But those bright green walls were driving me batty so until it gets painted (soon I hope!)  I have moved the desk to a different location… into the master bedroom!!!! lol

When we did evacuate I took tons of my sewing projects… I didn’t want them ruined if the house was… and this new book I had just received in the mail!

 I am so excited to get done with cleaning and sorting to read it… here is the intro portion I did read!!!!

I am definitely excited to use this book on future quilts 🙂  It seems to address beginners to advanced hand quilters too!!!!

Here is a shot from Sunday of my sweet granddaughter Kaydence…

And here is a shot I found on facebook that is current of my nieces and nephew!

Hope you all take time to enjoy the life God has given you!

Thanks for reading and hanging with me through this drought of writing… more to say in future posts and hopefully some quilting will start SOON!!!!

Christmas 2015 Review….

On Christmas Eve we celebrated Christmas with 3 of my 4 kids.  It was a total BLAST and a SUCCESS!!!

Then the next 2 days we just laid around! lol >>> Even Daisy Mae got worn out from all the Christmas Eve excitement!

My nephew and nieces got their Christmas presents and sent this cute shot of them getting it! 🙂

They sent me a Starbuck’s card and my daughter an iTunes card… but she doesn’t use iTunes and I don’t use Starbuck’s much these days… so we traded… we each got a $25 gift card now to enjoy and USE!!!!

Here is a candid shot of my oldest son DL.. with Kayla and CJ 🙂

It is such a precious shot to me I wanted to share it… fun family times with a toddler giving kisses is sooo sweet!

DL made me a dimensional canvas with my 2016 theme featured on it…

And I LOVE It!!!!  He is very creative and rarely does he use those skills these days … so I was happy to know the creative spirit hasn’t left him! 🙂

This is what I sent him to inspire something completely different

 but featuring teal and orange my fave colours 🙂

Then Kayla presented me with a wrapped booklet of some sort… what could it be???

A personalized (made just for me!!!!) calendar she made using pics of all of CJ’s life… and those in his life too!

On July she even featured me for my birthday !!!!  I will be 50 this year folks 🙂

Grammy K is me!!!  I love this page the most…

And this cool calendar has found a place for now in my sewing room… maybe I will mount both items in there… hmmmm  Probably yes.. but must consort with my honey over this decorating plan and just how to lay it out on the wall to look most visually appealing 🙂

Here are a couple shots of my youngest 2 kids… while they were celebrating with family on Christmas Day 🙂

Mike is 21… he is quite the jokester in the family and hammed it up on this second photo! 🙂

He and Brandi have a great relationship though and for that I am very happy !!!

He lives not far from us and stays busy with work.. and just being an independent young man!

Now many things I “got” for Christmas were timed with when they were needed… like the wonderful computer I upgraded to in August of this year… my honey bought this for me from his featherweight sales profits…

Dell has EXCELLENT customer service and support… I have been most pleased with this purchase as well… but my honey didn’t stop there! lol

He also got me a cool wireless Bose speaker to go with the new computer!!!!

It is little as you can tell by the paperback book posed with it… that is my current FAVE READ!!!  I love learning more about Australian culture too… this book shares a bit of that and a great adventure too!

It was wonderful to have most of my kids with me for Christmas Eve .. and to have Christmas Day as a nice quiet relaxing day to appreciate the birth of our Savior.  Maybe this will be our new “tradition”???

I didn’t get to see James or Kaydence… they remained in Tennessee and James’ work is very taxing so a trip either way just wasn’t working out!  But Kaydence did get her quilt and her parents LOVE IT!!!!  I will post more about that soon 😉

I have lots of fun projects coming up … ending this year with some UFO finishes and starting some fun new projects as well!  Hope you will take time to sign up and follow along with me… 

As always your comments to my posts are definitely desired!!! 🙂

I do hope however long you get to enjoy Season you make sure to also….

New Blog Header & Wholecloth PROGRESS too :)

Time for something less busy on the top of my blog.. hope those that follow me take time to look at my blog outside a reader format 🙂  I enjoy all the blog headers I see by viewing my fave blogs actual blog!  How about you?

Do you read me from a reader format or in full screen enjoyment?

We have been busy around the house this week and today I felt thrilled to share one of my fave pics as the new blog header.. this whole cloth is a long term project for me as I may not finish it til close to Christmas…  You can see the backing for this quilt in the pic above…

And here is our bed currently…

A close up of the pillow in the center I had to replace as the original pillow got worn out… so a new pillow cover it was if you recall from last November’s adventures 😉

And here is a pic of the whole cloth on the bed…

Our bedroom currently is very bland but will probably be the last room we redo … pondering wall color as I stitch with so many colors of thread on this whole cloth…

 

Above is a great shot to show my progress on the quilting… not as much as it has felt like for sure!  But will be so beautiful when all done… thanks to YLI and Aurifil threads…

This bowl sits by a great new pic I got of my brother and his family just on Easter!!  They say they are LOVING their quilt still too!  I am sooo happy!

Did you know today April 10, is National Sibling Day??  It is an unofficial holiday but I think I will send my bro a text.  He is my only sibling!

And a shot I posted in my fave facebook hand quilting group was the header yesterday…  they change in this group fairly frequently but I was stoked to see a nice shot as the header and realize I made those stitches!!! lol

I will be sharing some about the vintage machine in my header in my next post… as this is all the time I have for now.. the whole cloth is calling me!!! lol

Linking this slow stitching progress on Slow Stitching Sunday to Kathy’s Quilts HERE!

Have a blessed day and until next time please…

Happy St. Patty’s Day :)

I do have a little irish in my blood but have never been one to like beer… much less green beer! lol  So we thrifted some today… and came home to find this in the mail…

and while we had been out I had bought the jar with glittery sea shells.. the other shells are from another area of our home… my dd picked them to join the beautiful vase full of shells 🙂

Also while we were out today I stopped by my local big box office supply store and got a book spiral bound … it only cost $6.00 for the service!  SCORE!!!

Last week my brother and his family came to visit… we celebrated my mom’s birthday at a local restaurant 🙂  While we were waiting we snapped this pic of my dd with her cousins 🙂

The next day my dd showed them our local park and they got a little excited and formed this cool pyramid!

We had a great visit and a fun time was OBVIOUSLY had by all!

What fun things do you have in your week’s plan?  Today I am hand quilting on a green block on my current project … you can see the project in my blog header if you are reading this in your reader 🙂

Have a blessed week!