Cleaning and Crafting!

Hope you are all having a Happy November so far 🙂

 I got my honey to photo my poor hands…

And I found this cool quote…

I do miss my daily hand quilting time… I have yet to get back to Brandi’s quilt Starlight… Starbright… but have plans on Monday to return to it!!!

The main reason to show you a shot of my hands… is to share how pretty my mothers ring is now… I got it cleaned at the jewelry store and they did a magnificent job!!!

Above is a close up for you 🙂  I am asking for an ultrasonic jewelry and glasses cleaner for Christmas now too!  My honey thinks Santa may accomodate my request! lol

I have been cleaning… the closet is about done… I have some albums to add to my scrapbooking sale pile yet but that is about it….

See how neat and tidy it turned out… if you missed it… here is the BEFORE shot…

See what a mess of stuff it was!!!!

Now it only has 2 things on the floor… our dirty clothes basket and some wrapping paper in a holder 🙂  Yippee!!!!

Next I moved to the bedroom itself… which just needed a good cleaning more than tidying really… and it is done!!!!

Finally I got to go into the sewing room.. wow it was a mess… it had taken lots of hits from the closet as I emptied it and found fabric.. and needed a good tidying overall and a cleaning too…

Unfortunately I was sooo excited to get to this room I forgot to get you before shots… but I could not walk through it!!!  It was a clustered mess of stuff… I haven’t seen my cutting table neat in over 4 years y’all!!!!  4 years!!!!

Now look!!!

 My cutting table is clean and tidy… with the exception of those 2 stacks of boards awaiting the pile of fabric pointing to below!!!! lol  This is today’s project btw!!!

 Here is another view of the cutting table with my awesome design wall in view too… I love it!!!

 The boards I showed you above will have wrapped 1 yard and less on them of my fabrics then be organized for my fabric chest…

I also have lots of fabric I have purchased in a lot long ago from an estate sale… a bit of it has polyester in it and will melt into plastic under my vintage piecing iron… so I have organized it in one of my scrapbook drawer organizers repurposed for this job…

I nicely took this shot for you all with a repurposed bubbler we brought into the Florida room… you can see the far end of the Florida room and my color organized fabric drawers too!  The fabric is next to the steamy iron and ironing board for pressing to check for poly mix in each piece before using it in a quilty project!!!  Yippee 🙂

Here is my thought now that I see what all I have available to me in my stash now… I wanna make some pumpkins using yellows to orangy reds in them… Bonnie Hunter inspired this project and here is a pic of her making hers on grey backgrounds into a snuggly quilt… but I want something different from mine… we shall see if that happens this year.. or next! lol

So next up is wrapping and organizing my fabrics in my stash… and fitting them into my fabric chest!!!  This will be an all day affair I think… mixed in I will take breaks and organize and clean our bathroom as I haven’t really given that room any attention yet!

I have gone through lots of old pics and stuff… sorted them to give as Christmas gifts to my kids so they can take their own private walk down our family memory lane… and I found this that I scrapbooked several years back… now I want to frame it!

Getting my Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing was a HUGE accomplishment and one I am very proud of!  My whole family was there to watch me receive my diploma from a wonderful school in Florida (I did this online from Tennessee)  Here is the frame and picture and tassel from getting my degree…

And here is a pic I snapped this morning…. with my honor cords draped over the frame hanging on the wall of our bedroom… I graduated with honors!!!  Magna Cum Laude!!! 

 And I can see this every time I leave my bedroom too!!!  I had planned to hang this in the office when it got repainted and I moved back in… but I think I will hang the scrapbooked photo there and leave the formal frame and honor cords in the bedroom where they are now 🙂

While cleaning the bedroom I came across a stocking I started about 5 years ago!!!  I finished one for Rick but never finished mine!!!  So between working in the house cleaning and organizing and running errands for this and that… I am trying to take time to work on this some too…

I doubt this will be done for this Christmas but it sure is fun to have something to stitch on out in the Florida room while I listen to 2 bubblers bubbling water and enjoy the light breeze fall brings to Florida!

My son James…

Will turn 26 in a few days… in celebration he bought a side by side 4 wheeler vehicle…

Here is a posed shot of his family as he snapped the shot of his new “toy”!!!!  Zach is behind the driver’s wheel and is 11… Heather, his fiance and Zach’s mom is holding Kaydence in the passenger seat 🙂

And here is a shot of CJ ready for Halloween!!!!

So that is quite enough info for one post I think… but I wanted to keep you up to date on why I haven’t had any quilty progress to show here or on fb… I have just been too busy with all else since Matthew the hurricane left our area!

Hope whatever you do today you take time to…

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Whooping it up on a Friday!!! ;)

I am very happy to see Friday roll around this week..

it has been a wonderful (but long) week around here! lol

First I want to wish you each a happy change of Season!  My Australian & New Zealand friends are welcoming Spring… and above the equator we are heralding in Fall… with warm weather in most of the US still!!!

So with fans going I have been stitching on Starlight… Starbright.  I want to link this progress and all my Friday Whoops below to Sarah’s Confessions of a Fabric Addict blog linky HERE >> Come see what other quilty fun is being whooped about over there!

So sometime beginning of this month I started Block 8 of this queen sized quilt for my daughter to be gifted when she graduates high school in the spring…

And because this week has been a bit stressful and I have been hopped up on steroids to get rid of some bronchitis… I have been quilting and watching Netflix on my honey’s iPad!!!!

 Above you can see where I have had to remark most all of the stippling… I am using a blue water based marker that just spritzes away when the stitching in that section is complete 🙂

And below you can see that area is now complete and I am moving on to the right of the pic working on some straight lines in the wheel part…

We shall see how quickly I can progress on this today… I finally will be decreasing my dose of steroids today but doubt my high energy level they leave as a result will wan until tomorrow or later… so I will harness this energy for ironing a bit and hand quilting A LOT!!! lol

While on the subject of hand quilting… check out these 2 beautiful quilts by my best friend Wendy!!!

Here is Anniversary Blooms… her design from drunkards path beginnings… with gorgeous fabrics too!

 …. and Lollipop Drops.. a more modern quilt and all hand quilted as well!!!  Totally her design here using a Creative Grids specialty shape ruler 🙂

She has entered these quilts in Amy’s Quilters Blog Festival this season!!!

Viewers favorites are currently being voted on… Please take a minute to follow THIS LINK to her blog post that will open in a new window and will explain how to vote either or BOTH of these quilts as your fave quilt shown… you get 3 choices!!! and there are many quilts to choose from… go take a gander if you would!  Wendy would appreciate your votes too as would I !!

My Nanny turned 98 years young yesterday too y’all!!!  I am sooo glad to still have her around !!

She lives with one of her daughters and has had a very full life already… I had chatted with her just the previous week… she was concerned that her life was going on so long when she feels useless… yet she gave me lots of great advice (as she always does!)… so I plan to call her again next week and see how her celebration went when she has relaxed some from all the parties the family has planned for her.  My grandfather died many years ago of cancer… she never remarried and has had a very full life… please pray (if you do) that she will find value in her days/weeks/months/years remaining!!!  Thanks y’all!!

Also I got a photo sent to me by my son James!

He is almost 26 now!!  He had a tooth break off and this big grin ( really a big grin for him!!! lol) is because thanks to his local dentist he has great teeth now 😀  Yippee!!!

His daughter, Kaydence is also walking and getting chatty now at almost 16 month old… hoping to make a roadtrip to see them in late spring next year… but will have to see how things work out.. she recently had to get tubes put in her ears for recurring infections… and made it though with flying colors they said 🙂  Whoop!!!

So as we all take turns Whooping it up today… let us remember…

How do you score in this area?  I know I have room to improve my internal thoughts that form how I save memories and what memories are saved!!!

My hope is that each will take a little time over this weekend to…

Life is short.. live it with gusto!!!

Happy December Ya’ll!

I can’t believe December is here!  We have a busy month in store… and this morning I started on the 4th Anita’s Arrowhead block in Kaydence’s Take 2 Blankie 🙂

Here is the first one I stitched.. there are 8 in this quilt…

I do pin baste my quilts while they are pinned to the floor… then hoop them and remove the pins as I stitch around them so no shifting occurs.

Here is that block finish…

I am simply quilting these in the ditch on the white side… I am using white thread so I want it to not show in these blocks except for the quilty texture it leaves behind… soon I will have enough to show you a shot without the hoop… but for now I am making progress…

I think I shared the center block with you in my last post.  I finished it as I watch a bit of quilt cam by Bonnie Hunter…

 Here is a shot of just the center block I hand embroidered in mom’s script…

 I really like how it turned out too!!!

And while I have been stitching away on this quilt… the recipient turned 6 Months Old!!!

Here she is for her 6 month check up 🙂  Isn’t she a cutie!!! ❤

Here she is with my son James… her father!

As I have been stitching this morning I finally finished all 7 seasons of Gilmore Girls on Netflix…

They even have a fb page.. who knew?? lol  And they are planning on filming a reunion exclusively for Netflix if I understand correctly… still reading up on that.. but hoping it comes out sometime soon… next up … probably some Christmas movies… I really am not yet in the Christmas spirit so something needs to wake that part of me up! lol

Meanwhile I have been pondering this center I finished last week of my Fall Wall Hanging… planning the inner border… and the width of the outer border…

The grey way my initial thought.. and I even cut the strips for it… but now I am just not loving it…. it is tooo similar to the pumpkin spice fabric that I used in this quilt so far I think… I needed something more bold… so I am thinking of going with a thin black inner border and a outer border in the fall leaves..

Now who knows if I will quilt this soon or not.. I have some Christmas secret sewing going on as well… so I will see… but I really would like to get this project to a flimsy state before the Christmas holiday!

More necessary shopping has happened this week in the Cyber Monday deals we found this set of pots/pans for a great sale price.. so we splurged a bit but they will soon be in our possession we hope!!!

They are Circulon Elite series … we have one skillet already that we bought over the summer.. when we saw a full set with no repeats for sale we just had to have them 🙂 lol!

We also have invested in something more practical.. a new ceiling fan as our previous one broke and the room it goes in NEEDS a ceiling fan going 24/7.. this IS Florida ya know! lol

Well.. the stitching… and my honey are calling me so have a happy December.  Would love to hear your December plans too.. or if you blog share what you have going on .. if you can! lol

Make sure you take time this month though to …

Change of pace… a little cross stitching!

Good morning all!  Well my honey is doing a side job and I am left to my own devices… you would think I would be crafting up a storm but with us trying to sell our house I just can’t make much of a mess… and my craft table is neatly filled with Christmas cards I just don’t have the motivation to finish until I can do it with my kids!  We had fun working on them together… now doing them alone is boring!  So…. I pulled out some overdue cross stitching I am working on for my bff’s grand daughter!

 

I will use my own font for the name and birth date… like I did in the wedding announcement for my son and his wife earlier this year….

 I like funky lettering and this project will be no different… while I was cross stitching I had a visitor!

My son that I made the cross stitch for???  he stopped by to say hi!!! (a 1 1/2 hour drive to say hi!)

Here he is with my daughter… I posted on fb that it was my tallest and shortest and I love them both!  He is 6’7″ and she is 4’10”.  My son wanted this shot too….  showing just how big his new truck is!  He loves to go mudding in it he says… he is a EMT student at present and works at the fire hall in 4 counties.

and while I was shooting pics my sweet Daisy decided to pose for me!  Notice her shock collar???  A necessary evil but she knows her boundaries and stays in the yard now… a very worthy investment in the safety of my best little puppy friend. 😉

Thanks for taking time out for me and I hope you will be inspired to try going a new path if you are stuck or at a stopping place…

Happy Crafting!
Kathi