Friday, October 24, 2008

Not Getting NEARLY Enough Done!

With only one week left to the month of October, there's no way that I'll be able to complete my entire "to-do" list for this month. At the rate I'm going, I'll be lucky to get 3 of the 10 items completed.

I have two of the four borders sewn onto Quilt #7, but its taken longer than I expected to get them sewn on as the size of the quilt (without borders) is 85.5" x 114.5". I think I'll be able to get the remaining two sewn on this weekend, but that will really depend upon how much "free" time I have. I'll have a few hours tonight as Rich will be going rock climbing (my foot isn't quite up to doing that yet, although I have tried) but for the rest of the weekend, it will probably be hard to find time to sew.

For quilt #9, I actually almost have the quilt top pieced together. All the individual blocks are made (35 of them), and I have 1.5 rows sewn at this point, but I can't seem to find the time to get my butt behind the sewing machine. I haven't touched quilt #10 except to wash the fabric for it. There's no way that its getting cut and pieced by the end of the month. I've even been neglecting my needlepoint. It seems like the evenings are just really full lately and that I have no energy by the time I get home from work and the gym. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that when I go to work its still fairly dark and when I get home its dark. I guess that's what I get for living in the northeast!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Quilty Stuff

At long last, some pictures of the BIG quilt. This Quilt #7 that I'm making for our bed. It will fit a queen sized bed with overhang and enough length to cover the pillows. In the pictures below, the borders aren't attached yet, but they are laid out next to the quilt so you can picture how it will look. I think it will look awesome once the borders are on and I can take it to have it quilted.

Enjoy the eye candy!







Monday, October 20, 2008

No Pictures, but Quilting Progress

I don't have any pictures to share, but not because I haven't been doing quilting! I've just been too busy to pull out the camera and take some photos.

I've made a lot of progress on our quilt (quilt #7) and the borders are completely done. I just have to make sure they're the right length and then add them to the quilt-top. The curling ribbons turned out really well. So well that I'm tempted to make an entire quilt top of them because they turned out so well. They weren't too difficult to make, although the quarter square triangles like to distort because they are cut on the bias.

I haven't made much progress on the other quilts though, nor on my needlepoint. I've been so tired lately that its hard to get motivated to do things in the evenings. I'm not sure if its the time of year (we lose all sunlight by about 7pm) or if its because I was sick a few weeks back and my body is still recovering.
I have lots of quilts planned at this point and I just need to find the time and the energy to do them. I think I'm just tired of working on this big quilt at this point. I've been working on it since March, so I'm ready for it to be done. It will be nice to work on some "smaller" quilts for a while. I also think I'm going to make a tea cozy and practice my free-motion quilting on it. I think it will be a good start for some free-motion quilting since at least its contained to a small area and I'm not trying to fight the weight of a full quilt.




Monday, October 13, 2008

Happy Anniversary

I've been so busy (and sick) the past week, that I haven't had time to post ANYTHING on here. I did however get some quilting done, but that will be in another post.

This post is to give a shout out and say Happy Anniversary to my parents. Their anniversary was actually yesterday, but since I was busy visiting with them I didn't put anything on here. Yesterday was their 40th anniversary. That's right.... 40 years! Its pretty amazing they've been together for 40 years and survived 6 kids. :-)

Most of the immediate family got together yesterday for a brunch with them. Everyone was there except an older brother in Indiana and my older sister in Florida. The brunch was basically a "stuff-yourself-silly-until-you're-going-to-burst-and-then-eat-some-more" brunch. The food was really good though. My parents really had a good time.

As a gift, I put together a little basket of goodies (snacks, cookies, drinks, etc) to take with them on their trip. They're staying at a nice little winery in the Finger Lakes so having some goodies to snack on is a must! My Mom loved it, especially since she was actually a little worried that she didn't have time to bake some cookies to take with them for snacking. Now they have a whole basket of snacks.

I hope they have a wonderful time and enjoy being together without any kids saying "what's for dinner, Mom?" :-)

Monday, October 6, 2008

New Fabric and Quilt Progress

I've decided to make yet another quilt. Here's the fabric for "Irish Rails":



Here's the progress I also made on our border. There's actually 20 blocks stacked there, but I didn't want to unstack all of them. So here's what the curling border will look like: