A Finish and a Beginning… and lots in the Middle too!

I finished and washed the throw quilt last week… and it became a wall hanging!!!

My honey loved it soo much he wants Stars Among Us hanging on the quilt hanger in the kitchen 🙂  So here it is!!!  The colored chalk was completely gone after my traditional first TWO washings… when I took it out after the first there was a bit of pink chalk still in it… but I had used pink pounce AND pink cartridge chalk on marking the center… so back in the washer it for 1 more wash and all looked great… dried it and look how wonderful the texture turned out… we are soo pleased ❤

One day is all I could handle having empty nest syndrome…..

This is my Spiral Log Cabin quilt flimsy that has been fixed (the outer border was waving too much!) and is now became one with the frame and a flimsy no more on the Tuesday!!!

The rest of that day was spent at doctor appointments for my honey’s upcoming surgery for his hip replacement.  It is our first joint replacement in this house so we are starting the prep work in earnest now!  Keep reading you will see 🙂

Then Wednesday errands for prep and more doctor appointments for both of us locally… then it was Thursday!!!  Happy Valentine’s to me from my honey…

This expensive chocolate is our tradition for him to get me… I got him a bit of chocolate this year too and he loved the new tradition of getting some himself 😀

Here is hoping you had a great Valentine’s Day… if you celebrate where you live!

We also put this cool little Singer sewing machine up for sale on Valentine’s.. it sold out quick too!!

It is special because most of the metal parts are black.. this is called a “blackside” finish on those parts made around the 40’s in wartime to preserve the best metal for war time needs.  This machine was actually produced according to our information… in the mid 1950’s… but with parts in the 1940’s primarily on it … and sketchy records kept during this time on these machines anyway… it makes it more valuable… but it is on it’s way to a great home where it will be loved and appreciated ❤

Finally Friday rolled around and we were rested and I took a few photos and made some progress on this project…

 After assembling the tools I would use I did some stitching… this was the initial look… I knew it needed more depth though…

 So I phoned my bestie Connie and she had some perle 8 in a light brown… PERFECT  for this quilt… she said she would pitch it in the mail for me… well Saturday I got it to my surprise!!!

 And I made headway with it earlier…

 I have the bottom border mainly marked now… you can see the blue lines of what will be a natural YLI thread stitching…

 And I took a photo to include the new ball of perle in this beautiful color ..

 And here is a photo I shot this morning 🙂

I don’t have any plans for stencils on this quilt… but the center is yet to be decided… do you have ideas that strike you when you look at this photo for quilting the center inside the black border???

Linking the quilting in this post to:

Kathy’s Quilts… Slow Stitching Sunday HERE

& Wendy’s Quilts and More … Peacock Party HERE

Along with the 2 spools of thread was a surprise….

 Connie made us this most BEAUTIFUL doily to go on our wood shelf… you can see this wall in our kitchen below houses lots of vintage stuff and a while back I had asked her if she could crochet us something for this long shelf…

 I think it turned out perfect too ❤ 

I mentioned last week that a friend asked me to make something for her sewing room on her farm.  The girl in the photo below on the far left is Holli… she is standing with her hubby who is a Chief in the Navy…

 Holli is such a joyful friend… that is rare these days too!  So when she sent me a charm pack of her theme fabric I was thrilled to play with it and make her a banner bunting personalized for her…

 Here I am sewing on my Singer 319w… boy did this baby handle all that thickness like a dream!!!

I got to use this special applique foot too… and I see why people love it now… and I love it too for applique to look more professional… I think I could use this on bags too!!!

So that bunting is about 2/3 done or a bit more… and we have a “mock up ” area in our kitchen set up so I can hang it when finished and custom fit it to her windows where this will be hanging 😀  YAY!!!

Finally … what I am most excited about!!!!

Yesterday this happened!!!  My honey was out in his man cave building and came in to tell me he found a drawer that matched our kitchen.

And the day ended with the floor removed on this part of the kitchen proper… 

 And another view…

 And here is the bar top marked for removal…

The sample just to the left of the demolition line is a 12 foot by 8 foot piece of vinyl thick flooring we have had about a year… waiting for the opportunity to move the bar out and change about the kitchen… well that is happening NOW! lol

This prep for surgery is taking on lots of angles for sure… Rick understands as the day for surgery gets closer that he will be recuperating for A WHILE and unable to get down and up so much and learning new ways of doing things so he doesn’t make his new joint pop out … oh my!

Meanwhile the weather here has been mainly rainy but that took a hiatus yesterday and we did a ride about on the golf cart… things are starting to bud out a bit… I am getting excited that during Rick’s recuperation we may have the windows open at night again… I sure miss that about winter… I am not wishing away the seasons .. I love each one.. but this has been a very cold winter and we haven’t gotten the worst of it for sure!

I hope this post has brought you thoughtfulness about what you could do to shake up your own life .. or at least brought YOU some joy in reading about our escapades this week! lol  Take time to evaluate and be in love with your life my friends <3… every minute of it too.. if not make changes so you are!!!  No time like the present 🙂

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Enjoying the Christmas Season ~ 2018 is coming to a close!

I am totally enjoying this Christmas season… 

Are you slowing down and enjoying the season we are in???

We now live in an area with 4 distinct weather seasons in southwestern North Carolina and I LOVE IT!!!  We have had cold weather, heavy frosts, minor snows and now it has warmed a bit and we have had rain… overall though it has be thoroughly delightful here 🙂  To clarify this love… previous to this for 5 years we lived in Florida … warm or hot that was it… no 4 seasons just 1 or 2… but we had a glorious beach we lived not far from… so all was not sad.. and my arthritis loved the warmth… but my personality loves the season changes too ❤ lol!

And no… I am not alluding to just the weather but the season we are anticipating with Christmas coming!  A time to remember my faith and my Lord’s birth… a time to be kind and soak up kindness from others where it is found… I am finding some too … are you???

So since my last post I have been busy but not so busy I didn’t have time for kindness and helpfulness… and I have gotten so much accomplished… come on I will share with you!

Last Sunday I finished this cute little tree for my darling daughter (dd) and her boyfriend to enjoy this year…

 I found some paper in my tiny leftover paper collection and made an envelope for a gift card to Walmart … and hung it in the center of the tree 🙂

 She currently didn’t have a pillow so I sent her a pillow with a case I made from MSQC’s pillowcase tutorial 🙂

She loves to draw and create future tattoos for herself and her friends so I had a composition book I found when I was cleaning my sewing room that had graph paper in it… I took her fave fabric that I got 1 yard of and made her this cool cover … both above and below I did on Cleo and she rocked these projects!!!

 If you recall… here is the magnetic snap closing wallet I made my honey last month from cork….

 Well… he decided he really wanted it flatter than that magnetic snap allowed it to be since I didn’t buy the flat kind but chose the less expensive thicker kind (live and learn there bag people!!)… So I made him another and sent this one to my dd’s boyfriend to have 😀

 I love a happy ending… so far he loves that one… and here is the one I made for my honey ….

 Notice how I was able now to put my label in his new one!!! Yes 😀

Me and Cleo rocked the remake too… I was a bit nervous that I wouldn’t remember exactly the steps but we did it!!!!

We also decided to give his stocking (I made it in 2011 – our first year together ) a new hanging tab as this one is definitely worn…

Here you can see the new tab as it hangs off the mantle of our fireplace 🙂
I watched this stellar video on how to make stockings with a cuff HERE by Lisa Capen Quilts on Youtube… I looked on Pinterest for some pet stocking inspiration then and finally went to the sewing room with my phone on Lisa’s video and made this….

Cleo did a great job with her satin stitching around all these paw print parts 🙂

Then added my own little bit of extra fun BY HAND with jingle bells , ribbon, and some creative hand embroidery on felt in the shape of bones!!!

 While I was hand stitching all this I realized that the wonderful thermometer magnet I had gotten from Sonya in my box of goodies from down under last week would stick to my speaker over my computer screen!  YAY!!!  A bit of her is right here where I am now…

 After sharing Molly’s new stocking with my bestie who had taken our Daisy Mae as her Daisy Lou over the summer… I got her color desires to match her stocking in pink and white with this cute stocking…

 And finished it up a bit differently with a bow in festive glittery ribbon and hand embroidered name and year she adopted Daisy Lou into her family 🙂

 So back to our house finishings for the season… I needed a stocking and can’t even find a picture of my beachy Santa themed felt stocking I had about 1/4 of the way assembled and just could never find the time to finish or focus on that kind of detailed work… so back to Pinterest and Google I went looking for ideas for something not Santa but maybe snowman or reindeer related that would coordinate with the fun of Molly and Rick’s stockings yet be all my own…. and I found this big snowman…

 Soon I was back in my sewing room at the ironing board cutting and drawing and came up with a snow girl idea…

 And this morning I am slowly hand stitching and stuffing each section of this cute snow girl…

And best of all my bestie has in the mail to me some bitty baby buttons in black for her mouth and some possible better buttons for eyes… so we shall see… the head with hair attached to the head is not sewn on… waiting on Connie’s package for that! lol  But the body and arms and cute gloves are all on.  The gloves are 3d and will come off the stocking once it is a stocking properly… come back next week to see that finish!  So this is some of my slow stitching focus today!

You will find me slow stitching and enjoying this Christmas season approaching and taking all my own advice as I like to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching party HERE… come see what she is chatting about and what others are slow stitching if you need some inspiration!!!

Meanwhile… I have been working also a bit each day most days hand quilting Stars Among Us… and just rolled the quilt from this…

 To this with this as my view!!!

 Here is a close up…

 And here is an overhead of just saying goodbye to the halfway mark on this quilt!!!!

I am sew excited to be making progress… so if I am not stitching on my snow girl stocking front today… I will be stitching on this lovely little quilt 🙂  How about you??  Go on back up to that link to Kathy’s and see what all the Sunday stitching fuss is about and link up yourself too ❤

This week we got in a 1890 to 1910 piece of sewing machine history in this little bitty Foley and Williams Automatic Sewing Machine with box, screwdriver, instructions and soon also the clamp to hold it in place!!!

 This is what they used back in those times to make clothes and things with.  It chain stitches too!

The instructions were in sad wrinkled shape…

 But my honey and I found a frame that fit pretty close… and with LOTS of patience and time and help from our neighbor with advice… we turned those directions into a work of art!

My honey used those instructions to know how to thread it and adjust it to get it to sew a nice even chainstitch too… he has oiled it and we even took a vid of it sewing and shared in a tiny vintage machine group on facebook!  They are as wowed there as we are here 😀

Do you have any bits of history you enjoy collecting or just admiring in your home?  We will be putting this up for sale later in the week.  I will be sad to see it leave our home but happy it will hopefully find an appreciative home to go to !!!

The pinking shears I showed you last week finally found an owner by the way… they are on their way to a home where hopefully they will be used and enjoyed… they had so much life left in them.  My hands just couldn’t operate them properly due to arthritis and the handles being metal.  So it is a win/win!

We are completely decorated in the kitchen now too… while waiting for those instructions to relax… we did a bit of thrift shopping (a favorite pastime for us)… and found the shelf with the heart still in the box!  We brought it home and my honey put it together  and added some shelves we had been looking for places to hang all together in a pleasing arrangement…

 Nice to have a place to hang our keys now…

 We didn’t want them right next to a door going outside as that is easy for a burglar to find and take… but here they are decorative and handy for us as we often are grabbing a drink on our way out the door and this is right beside the refrigerator 🙂  Handy!

On the newer shelf is our latest find… this cool aqua blue painted vintage sewing machine and a sock darner and a cool vintage screwdriver we got in with osme other stuff…

On the peg underneath that shelf is a heart made from shirts of my best friend Debbie’s late husband.  I love having her handiwork and his presence in our home.. they are a great couple of friends for sure… she comes to us as a package deal carrying her husband with her everywhere!  I am honored she gifted me this heart and 1 more that is on our Christmas tree too 🙂

Then this tall skinny wood shelf has vintage treasures on it too…

 It is right beside the doorway heading into the laundry room and pantry storage space.  Then of course that big clock is a favorite of ours… we like big clocks for some reason… there is one over the fireplace in the living room as well! lol

So time to get back to slow stitching… but please … take time to smell the roses of the season… whether you celebrate Christmas or nothing at all this time of year… whether you weather is warm or cool… take time to slow down and appreciate what makes your corner of the world unique to you and yours.

Until next week and my next post…