Another Finish--Zion's Year of the Bible and a return of the infamous OC!!!

Zion's Year of the Bible was finished up today at 2:30, JUST in time for my Mom's arrival at 3:00. Whew.....I wasn't sure if I was going to get it completed before she arrived since I took ALL DAY YESTERDAY OFF! I was so tired and just "lifeless" with no ambition to sew. I had one small section left to quilt today, and then put the three sections together. The pieces fit together okay, with a little bit of fudging needed.
I don't know about all of you, but I think binding a quilt is that part I like the least. It can be so putzy, depending of course on which method of binding being performed. I've done everything from *cheating* by folding the backing over the front edge and stitch (and vice-versa; folding front over the back edge and stitching). I've used what I consider the *traditional* binding method; where you sew the binding to the front and then hand-stitch it to the back. I must say I like the look of that one the best, but SO TIME CONSUMING!

I needed a QUICK method today, so I tried the method my mom usually uses; she *wraps* a binding strip around the edge of the quilt and then stitches through the top, while "catching" the edge underneath at the same time. This was the first time I've tried it, so I started by preparing the binding strips, and then began pinning (using safety-pins) to the quilt's edge. OMGoodness!!! Putzy again! Yeah, well, after 3 pins in place, I said...."uh-uh!".....and just took the whole thing to my machine and ended up *wrapping* as I went along. (Those are Caitlyn's feet and hands in the pic--she was handing pins to me.)

I must say, this method worked rather slick! It was quick and didn't cause me toooo many problems. There were two spots that I needed to re-stitch once I was finished and noticed that two spots didn't "catch" the back. Oh well......




Oh yes....and the corners were posing to be a bit difficult for me! The first one took me about 5 minutes to figure out, but then the other three went off without a hitch. The corners kind of reminded me of wrapping presents, where you kinda "fold over an already-covered" part. Kinda hard to explain......


The quilting was a simple stitch-in-the-ditch around each block, and then a travelling cross in the verticle sashings. Once again, due to the size of this quilt, I quilted this in three-sections and then pieced them together once finished. I haven't measured the final quilt, but it's BIG! I used 110"x110" batting, and used just about all of it! I'm guesstimating ~95"x105" (give or take a few inches.)

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The story behind the quilt: (feel free to fast-forward) back in 2004, my Mom's church youthgroup started a Year of the Bible and completed blocks at each meeting. I didn't measure the block sizes, but I'm estimating them to be about 8". Fabric paint was used to draw out scenes from certain books of the Bible. The piecing of the blocks started back in 2005 by my Mom, but....well....like most of us, other things started taking precidence, and the quilt ended up on the back burner.

Last Thanksgiving, while I was at my mom's working on a quilt for my niece, I noticed she had it out again. I don't know how much work she had put in to it, but it caught my attention, and besides, I needed a break from quilting my nieces quilt. I laid out what she had completed, asked her to verify the order of the blocks, and continued piecing where she left off. I ALMOST completed piecing the rows together when I ran out of thread, and NEEDED to hit the road to get home---it was getting late and I have a 3 hour drive home. I left the quilt laying out on her basement floor with hopes she would put the last rows together and then she had intentions of tieing it since it was going to be so large.

Yeah, well...on Sunday (5 days ago), while putting toys away at her house after our weekend visit, I noticed it folded on her shelf, NO MORE COMPLETED than when I left it last Thanksgiving. So......I grabbed it and stashed it in my bag without her knowing. I was HOPING to complete it by today since she was coming up to pick up the girls (they will be with her for the next two weeks).

This is my way of thanking her for her help the next two weeks, and besides, it was a great "gift" and helped me get one more finish for Peg's Challenge.
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Anyhoo------
now that I have THAT done, I felt awesome and inspired to get going on another WIP that has been sitting for a few weeks. THE ORANGE CRUSH is back.......I added one final green border and then started auditioning colors for a backing. I knew I needed to piece a backing because I wasn't going to buy speical yardage for it....so, I grabbed a white, a pinkish-orange, a drab cream/brown and another lt brown/orange stripey fabric. After laying them out in the big pieces I had (roughly 1/2 - 1 whole yard), I didn't like it. BUT, 10 inch squares sewn together ran through me head......

...so.........ironing........cutting.........sewing........AND being TWO BLOCKS SHY. UGH!
However, have no fear.......back to my stash I went, and I found a small piece of orange plaid JUST enough for two blocks! Can you believe it?!?!?!?
So.....here is the back....and I can't wait to HOPEFULLY check another off my list by the end of the day tomorrow, once I "get busy" quilting my OC.
Can you see the two Orange Plaid blocks???? How funny!

Happy quilting!

Catchin' up; quilting completions, etc...

WOW! Has it realllly been a week?
Get ready for a long post :0)

I headed to Mom's last Thursday after picking the girls up from summer school. I WAS able to put the three pieces together for Cathy's Aunt Sukey AND put on the borders---yeah! So, I packed that up in order to get some hand-whip-stitching done on the strips that put the three pieces together. I didn't get too far; so it's sitting next to my glider-rocker and is my "upstairs project" when needed.

DH Paul came home early on Thursday because he was rained out, so he grabbed some lunch and then headed outside to get some much-needed "home projects" done.

I arrived at Mom's around 5:00 and didn't really do too much that evening. My sister, Jen, decided to come "home" Thursday night too, so she arrived around 7:00. She doesn't have any children of her own, so she meets me at Mom's quite often to have a chance to spoil my girls. She lives about 5 hours away from me and Mom's house is SMACK-DAB in the middle of us, so it works out nicely!


Friday ended up being a really nice, warm (HOT and HUMID) day, so Jen and I set up "grandma's" new swimming pool for the girls. (one of those quick and easy fill ones----just the right size for the girls; Caitlyn and Candace needed to wear life jackets, though!) And, of course, Grandma needed to supply the pool with plennnnnnty of "floaties." Thank goodness Grandpa has an air compressor!!! That's me placing Caitlyn into the pool. *chuckle* The water was so cold, and the pool was in the shade, so almost immediately after placing her into the pool, she was clawing at me to lift her back out!!




















And naturally, a sprinkler also needed to be set up. It was quite a fun day!!! (That's Jen running through the sprinkler with Cassie,....or is that Catilyn???) I really can't tell which one it is under that innertube.....


Friday evening, we all went to the local ice cream parlor/restaurant and had the best darned Fish Fry around! EXCELLENT fish! (Even if it's not all that healthy being fried!) And what would a trip to "Melody Gardens" be without investing in some ice cream!?!?

Afterwards, Jen and I headed to Walmart and Hancock Fabrics. OH DEAR!!! At first, I wasn't figuring on going into Hancock, but the entire front the store was plastered with 1/2 off sale banners. Ummmm........can you say EXCELLENT ADVERTISING??? *chuckle* What a sale!!!! I walked away with about 30 yards of fabric!!!!--mostly flannels. Each yard ended up being between $2.50 and $3.00. I don't have a picture of the fabric, but most of it is "baby fabrics" with intentions of making small rag quilts. In fact, here is a shot of one that I whipped out on Monday in about 4 hours using fabric that was donated to me by Mom's church. Oh! That brings me into Saturday morning.....

........but before I jump into that, I do want to say that the rag quilt was inspired by Peg at HappyInQuilting. She had an adorable pink rag quilt posted last week and she was right---these little buggars DO come together quickly when you sit and sew!!!


Okay, back to Saturday......After a 7 mile run with my sister (well, she did 4 and I went out for an extra 3), Mom took me up to church. The fire/safety inspector gave them a "not-so-good" evaluation when he checked out their storage room/electrical room. That is where the church stores all their donated materials for quilting, BUT no one has been quilting over the past THREE YEARS! So, Mom told the secretary she thought of giving it to her daughter (me), and she (secretary) didn't bat an eye. So....SIX BOXES and bags of fabric, batting, and the works!!! Not all the fabric is material I want to use; some is really stretchy polyester-like, some courderoy, and other types of fabric that I don't even know what it is. BUT---regardless, I have made a personal goal that for each box that was given to me, I would make a charity quilt to give back to the church for whatever they wanted to use it for. So, that means 6 quilts is my goal to give back to the church. This baby-boy rag quilt is the first. The story behind it; I started going through the smallest box that was given to me, and all these flannels were mixed in it. I wasn't sure if the red-stripe was going to be a fit, but it ended up just fine, I guess.

So....5 more to go (before the end of the year???)

So, Sunday rolled around; church in the morning; the "big" Sunday breakfast just like when growing up, and I planned to hit the road back home by 1:00. While cleaning up the toys (how DO they make such a mess in such a short time?!?!?), I noticed this little relic up on one of the shelves. I knew mom had started this quilt quite a while back, and after further inspection at home, I realized she probably started in back in 2005. Anyway, last Thanksgiving when I was at Mom's, I helped her put quite a few rows together just to get her motivated to finish it up. By the time I left that weekend, we had all the rows completed and allllll she had to do was finish sewing all the rows together and then handing the top over to one of her "quilting" congregation members (Oh, Mom is a "Pastor's Associate"---kind of like the right-hand-man of the pastor). Anyway, I noticed rather quickly that she hadn't done any more work on in, so I stashed it in my bag. My goal is to finish this by Friday when she and Nub (step-dad) are coming up to pick up the girls for two weeks. I have it in three parts this exact size, naturally, quilting it in parts. I have decided to use a cross graphic as the quilting in the verticle sashings (you may be able to see the stencil in the close up shot.) I have two sections completely quilted, and the third will be finished up today. I know she'll be more than surprised to see it finished. This is my way of saying Thank You to her for taking the girls for two weeks while I have classes to take (ICK!). But I'm sure she really doesn't mind having time with the grandkids.

When we got home on Sunday, Paul surprised us with 13 more little chicks. These are Cornish Hens (sp?), and are being raised (clearly) for their meat.
Gosh--Cassie looks devilish in this picture!!!!! *evil snicker*




I typically don't take a lot of "nature" pictures, but while eating breakfast with the girls this morning, I couldn't miss these clouds rolling in. Boy, the sky turned black/darkblue in a hurry! Thankfully, most of the bad weather headed just south of the house and we were only hit with a little rain.













To wrap up, Candace found her potty chair downstairs last week. Yeah---the first sign that the diapers are almost gone!!!!!! Of course, she really wasn't interested in "going" on the potty, but she sure loved ripping the toilet paper (and more toilet paper, and even more paper yet) off the roll.