Okay, so the sewing room is moved. Now it happens that my husband rearranged the den and is working on the computers. So, no hook up for my camera today. I'm lucky he put the computer back before he left for work! I did want to show some progress, I am working on the binding for the leaders and enders baby quilt, I got his camouflage pants together, I made some Valentine mug mats for people I work with, and I started on the wine quilt. I hope to have some pictures soon.

In the meantime, here is a picture of psycho cat number 2. For the record the rabbit is not afraid of him. Sunday this guy came down the stairs with my feather duster in his mouth. I told him I was not amused at his commentary on my housekeeping. He does a lot of rather psychotic things, I think it may have something to do with his name. When my oldest daughter had him she named him Ian, or Eion or something like that. We inherited him and my youngest daughter calls him Salem after the cat in Sabrina the teenage witch. I call him Zeller in honor of one of my favorite wines; Zeller Schwartz Katz, which in German is Black Cat.

Meanwhile, since we got home early due to the storm that is coming I'm going to my sewing room to work on the wine quilt some more! I love snow days!!!

Quilted! Bound! Labeled! Delivered!

YES! It's done it's done it's done!!!! WOOOOO HOOOOOO Happy Dance!

My favorite cousin put the top on her long arm the second she got and I'm sure she did not rest for one minute until she had quilted dozens of adorable little froggies all over this quilt! It looks AWESOME! Then she quick quilted a leaders and enders baby quilt for another of our cousins! I'll show that one as soon as I figure out what to use for the binding. Anyway, she is incredible! Not only the wonderful quilting and the speedy service.....

her lovely daughter made labels on their embroidery machine!! Thank you Lizzie! They are tooooo cute for words!

Then she folded them up ever so neatly and tied them with a pretty matching ribbon! Honestly, am I lucky or what? When Vanessa saw them she said two things-- "She spoils you" and "I can't wait to finish my brown and pink quilt so she can quilt it".

Yes, my sweet favorite cousin does in indeed spoil me. It's wonderful to have someone spoil you!

I quick as a wink got the binding and the cute label on last night and was able to give it to our little boys mom today. She cried. Happy tears though. She loved the idea that we prayed during every stitch of it.

Now, here is my first project in my new sewing room. We needed a runner for the piano. I hate it. Oh well, you win some you lose some I guess! ;-)

But in the picture you can see one of the antique quilts I was talking about in a previous post. This one was made by my husbands great grandmother. I tried to research the pattern and it appears to be "crosses and losses". It's in wonderful shape for as old as it must be.

This was a woman who wanted to have a bakers dozen of children! She only ended up with 12 though, poor dear! One memory grandma shared with me was of her mother sitting with a big dishpan of biscuit dough in her lap making biscuits and singing and singing. It sounds like she must have been a very happy lady.

Cold and Scrappy

This is my tub of not-even strips. I don't know what else to call them because I have 3 drawers of 2 1/2 inch strips, and a drawer of small squares. Anyway, I have been making some string blocks, and such with these. But, tonight my sweet daughter sorted these by color for me, so what you see is actually the first layer of strips, beneath that are two more layers all sorted by color or color family and one big pile of "prints".

This morning when my husband got home from work - at 7:50 am, he brought the lovely news that it was -13° with a windchill of -31°. Yes, the frozen tundra of northeast Wisconsin. Lucky for me he had already started my van so it was warm when I needed to leave for work. Of course it felt like my nose was frozen before I got to the warm van. During midday it actually warmed up to a balmy -2°, so really nothing to complain about right?

Here is where the scraps come in; on my way home from work, as the temp was beginning to hit -5° I was thinking about what nice warm & cozy (read that ugly and comfortable) items of clothing I would change into. The thought hit me that a quilted robe would be the ultimate in warm and comfortable. A wearable quilt. Then I thought, why not make it out of a bunch of my scraps? I may even throw in a few orphan blocks that are having a good deal of trouble being adopted. I can make the base out of some wimpy fabrics I inherited from my mother and use up some scraps of batting at the same time. Viola! excellent idea right?

Except for the fact that my UFO list is running rampant. I haven't even dared to list them all here, I'm not sure how much space I'm allowed!

Sooooooo many ideas, soooooooo little time.

Oh and Flori........ did you notice all the °'s? I just love doing that! For anyone who is interested, you can make the ° symbol by holding down the alt key and typing in 248. Is that cool or what? yup, I'm a dork!

Lots of sewing room time

Yes I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my sewing room(s) this past week.

Sadly none of it has been spent sewing. We are playing musical rooms at our house. My sewing room has been relocated downstairs so I will be able to sew this spring when my husband goes on night shift for 5 weeks straight. (say ugh with me)

So, since we were moving me out of my nice (pretty light colored sewing room) we moved our youngest daughter into that room. She was in a bedroom on the north side of the house with fairly dark walls. Then we moved the twin beds that the college girls sleep in upstairs to the dark bedroom. Are you with me here.

I have been keeping up with my 365 challenge quilt. I've been very good about not getting behind in my journaling. This is it so far, except that now that I've looked at it and imagined 6 more months I realize I'm going to have to pick a good bit of it apart and let it go longer or it will wrap all the way around the house. Actually with the temperatures we are having in WI, that would be a GOOD thing. brrrrrr

The good thing about moving all this sewing stuff, yet again, is that I sorted out some things I never used, and never WILL use. The other thing that happens is finding projects that need to be finished. Gosh, I have tons of my own UFO's, but when we opened up a trunk we found several from my grandmother and my husbands grandmother! In the picture is a butterfly top made by my dads mother. She had done two of these and I already finished one. I'll have to find a picture of it. I was really pleased with the first one because I used her top, and put in a wool batt that I inherited from my husbands grandmother. There is also a sweet little baby quilt there made with single grandmothers flower garden flowers and leaves. It already has the backing, but no batting and no quilting. It may have been tied at one time so it was probably supposed to be a light summer blanket. I plan to sandwich it and get it quilted and save it for future generations. Behind that is one of two crazy quilts from my husbands grandmother. The other one that we didn't hang up has fancier fabrics in it and lots of pretty embroidery. Neither is finished though, so I need to figure out how to bind them without making it look like they were finished 80+ years after they were made. I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but they were actually made by Jim's grandmothers mother. I also have on that she made that is finished, and some blocks that she started. Lots of UFO's!!

TOP DONE!!!!!!!!!

Between work and meetings I finished the top!

woo hooo and happy dance!

Today in between jobs I stopped at a quilt shop to get a few fat quarters for my journal quilt, and thought while I was there I'd look for something on the clearance shelves for this quilt. Well this green fabric practically leaped into my waiting arms. It looked to me as though there was 3 or 4 yards left on the bolt. PERFECT my inner fabric hoarder whispered. So of course I trotted right up to the cutting table and said "I'll take the whole thing". We all know what happened next right.......... 6 1/2 yards later I was not about to say, "weeeeeeeell......." But I'm glad I took it as I was able to add just a teensy bit to it to make a nice BIG backing. My favorite cousin who is going to do the quilting really appreciates a BIG backing. It seems like quilters are always giving her what they think is an enormous amount of fabric only to have her lay it out and find that they are either too short or too narrow. Size really does matter! ;-) So anyway that is the story of my backing....... Want to see? Okay, you have no choice here it is!

Ta Da! I can't wait to get it in the mail so I can get it back and get it bound and labeled and give it to the little boy.

Time for snowmen

The Christmas decorations are down, and the snowman decorations are up. The snow is just about gone with our crummy midwinter heat wave. Today it got to 46° for heavens sake! What is WITH that? I want the snow back!

This is my little biscuit quilt snowman. He was so much fun when I made him years ago that I'm not sure why I haven't made more biscuit quilts~

I want to do a snowman tablerunner, I have a neat design idea in my head but I am resisting because I really need to finish some projects instead of starting more. Story of my life!

So, here is my number one priority project. The quilt for the little boy at Vanessa's school. This is my tentative layout. I didn't realize I had done so many with the orange and yellow print! To me they just jumped out. Might be because I'm not really crazy about orange. Still, it's pretty bright and cheerful. Just what we need here in my neck of the woods with all the fog, drizzle, and gray dreary days we are getting. I'm thinking it's going to need a nice frame, maybe a Kelly green? Then I could do some 4 patch cornerstones. Now to get it together before my cat rearranges my set up!

Tree-ing

Okay, Christmas is not quite officially over. Though I do plan to get the trees down this weekend. Last night we did Tree-ing. My dear friend Flori wanted to know, "Is this a WI thing?" I'm not sure actually. Tree-ing is when you make the rounds of your friends and/or family and ooooooo and aaaaaaah over their Christmas trees. There is usually some form of eating and drinking involved also. This year we started at our house for appetizers and tree oooo-ing. The guys are especially good at this, they coordinate who is going to oooooooo and who is going to aaaaaaaah. Yeah, we know they are making fun of us girls but we can deal with it.

We have a traditional tree in the living room, and then we do a theme tree in the dining room.

This year Vanessa got to do the dining room tree and she did a Nutcracker Suite theme. I especially liked the fairy lights at the bottom, and those are Clara's shoes that she throws at the mouse king. Here is a close up of part of her tree with some beautiful antique mittens (the girls all wore them at one time) and some blown glass nutcrackers and tiaras.

The next house we had a salad course and ooooo'd and aaaaaaah'd over another traditional tree. My friend Cookie has some cute cute garlands that look like teeny gumdrops, though they don't' show up in this picture.

Then on to our friend Deanna's trees. She had 4. Yes you read that right four. One average sized one in her porch with ornaments from students, one theme tree in her dining room- the PINK tree. Everything on it including the lights was pink. Next there is a small tree in her music room with her youngest daughters bear and pony ornaments, and last a little tree in her doll room with more student ornaments. Then we had chili and played cards before heading home.

Here is a close up of some of her pink ornaments...

Here is the music room tree on her piano.........

Is this not the cutest ornament?? the potholder is fabric!

All in all a very successful "tree-ing".

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Happy New Year to all my quilting blog buddies!

Christmas came and went in such a blur and whirl of activities that I am not sure if I am coming or going. Now, it's time for the fresh start. Though to be honest I think the fresh start and New Year should come in the spring along with all the other new growth.

I'm going to show some of my projects in the hopes that I will get, at least, these particular ones done done done! I think if I listed all of them I would just get too overwhelmed and go take a nap instead of working on them.

First I have some things cut out for a quilt for a little boy at Vanessa's school who is pretty sick. His mom told me he likes frogs and fishing and boy things. Luckily I found this cute frog fabric in my stash and I was able to pull some nice bright colors to go with it. So, that is top priority sewing.

Next I have a rack FULL of tops, runners and such that need to get sandwiched and quilted. I have no excuse for not doing this now because my husband bought me a big roll of batting for part of my Christmas present. He also got me the nice new cutting mat in photo number one. It has the cutting lines! How cool is THAT? I had totally cut out quite a number of the markings on my last one and it was becoming a challenge to measure accurately. Well, it's always a challenge for me, but that was double hard.

Now we have a quilt top I have been planning for years. I found the wine fabric and thought it was so neat, then I started collecting other fabrics to go with it, but it's always been tucked back in a drawer. Then last winter my sweetie mentioned that it would be neat to have a wine wallhanging next to our wine cellar. Now before you get too excited, it's one of those refrigerator type wine cellars not one of the basement ones with casks and keys. ;-) So, Viola! I had the makings for a wine wallhanging! (and quilt, and table runner and.....well you get the picture)

So those are some of my goals. And now that I showed them, I'm off to my sewing room to get moving on the first one~