Showing posts with label string blocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label string blocks. Show all posts

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Late night & Early morning sewing

Hm.  10:00 PM + Cup-of-coffee = late night sewing for Amy!

Around 10:30 PM, I told Paul I was heading downstairs.  He took a double-take and asked me what I had said.... LOL
Nothing too ambitious planned for that time of night;  just some putzing and cleaning up.  I had loads of twosies sitting next to the machine that had been pieced and stored in my 1.5" scrap box, so I pieced them into 4-patches----maybe destined for Linda's block-help I posted on a few weeks back?/....

Then I spied this!!!!   THIS has been sitting in my sewing room since before Cassie was born!  Over 11 years!  Could that be right??!?!?  Hmmm.....nope, don't think so.  I wasn't big into quilting yet before Cass.  So, maybe it was before Caitlyn's birth??  Anyway, it was gifted to me by my mother.... :}  
I suppose someday I need to make it up!

The back calls for a simple 9-patch, but....eh!  Kinda boring?  My plan (someday?) will probably be to turn it into a Disappearing 9-patch :)

Hmm..hmmm.hmmmm.....11:00 PM...what to do?????
String blocks---easy enough.  Yup...so....I strung away....

and I looked up at the clock "a little bit later" thinking it MAY be nearing 11:30-ish......
HA!  It was 12:40 AM!!!!!
So, after bidding goodnight to Andee via FB, I hit the hay.
And I'm back up at it again.....more strings; border of Jamestown Landing in the works.

Later today----"handwork" in the form of paper removal.
Happy Sunday.

Monday, April 9, 2012

36-patch and RWB Heartstrings progress

Both of these UFOs have seen more progress today. The 36-patch center is nearing completion. The borders are still being played around in my mind, so nothing sewn there yet.

The RWB strings were increased by another eight blocks. Additionally, twelve red-string blocks are being auditioned in an attempt to help the heart-center be seen.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Some UFO tasks

I have to repeat a phrase that Angela shared with an earlier post.....

It has been ages since I finished anything and I am starting to feel
that there are too many irons in the fire.

Only I would alter this a bit to say........
It has been ages since I finished anything that
I have officially deemed EVERYTHING a UFO!


Back on July 20, 2011, I started this 36-patch Quiltalong with CrazyMom. I wasn't too sure about the whole thing since I'm not a big fan of 36-patches. However, today as I was finishing up the 10 blocks I prepped so long ago in July , I started thinking about how I would put it all together. An on-point setting similar to what's pictured came to mind. I'll still have to play around with how exactly I'll do the sashing and setting triangles.


Then Cassie and Caitlyn came down to see what I was up to. Cassie didn't last very long, but Caitlyn did, and she was raring to do some sewing.

OUT came the RWB strings!!!

Can you BUH-LIEVE that the first 8 of these blocks were pieced in July, Two-Thousand-NINE!??!?! Goodness me! They are a great 'puttering' block that see the day of light every so often. I'm not at ALL certain how they'll be pieced together since I didn't establish a "center" strip to have them "go together" nicely. Anyone have any great ideas? I thought of maybe a small 1" (finished) sashing strip between each??

My weekend has one more day to it, thankfully! No plans, no definite goals....but I can bet I'll be making it downstairs yet again for some more puttering tomorrow.



Friday, July 29, 2011

Scraptastophy & BBQ Ribs

pondering the title.......Hey! I'll have to use that for a quilt name someday!!!!

I walk past these boxes everytime I head to my quilting room. I can't even tell you what all is in here, other than LOTS of garage sale purchases and donations from my mom's church a few years ago. Every now and then, I get ambitious enough to dig through the layers to see what might be useful on a current project, but most of the time, I just walk right by it without too much thought.

Today, I dug through to see what lights might be lurking in there to be cut up into more strings for Jamestown Landing. A few vintage pieces were found, pulled, trimmed and sewed.

Bonnie's post today talked about listening to books as background noise. BOY! Wish I would have done that today. Most of the time, I just put a movie in the player from my collection on my desk shelf. They are movies that I could easily be a replacement for for the lead roles because I have all the lines, lyrics, motions memorized. So......COMPLETE non-distracting background noise. Today, however, I was craving something new as my background noise, so I grabbed some new DVDs from the upstairs collection; Fallen, starring Denzel Washington, and Conspiracy Theory, starring Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson.

Oh BOY! They were distractions. There were moments of no string-block productivity because I was wrapped up with the scenes that I hadn't seen in awhile. Then, once I took lunch break, I was delayed in returning downstairs. Seeing that it's Paul's 40th birthday today, I wanted to make up some BBQ pork ribs. This realization at NOON put me into full action for the next hour, thawing out the ribs, prepping sauce mixture, prepping ribs.......lalala.

THEN, I noticed my finger nails......oh! They weren't pretty! So, I took off the badly scratched nail polish, filed them to neat edges, and then repainted them. All the while, listening to a book on CD that is due back to the library on Tuesday.

Ohhhhhh......and then......I was feeling sleepy. Oh boy. Naturally, I needed to just lay and rest for a moment on the couch. And I'm NEVER one to lay down without some sort of light quilt draped over me, so I grabbed Orange Crush and just relaxed.

For TWO HOURS!

My goodness! It's a good thing I put those ribs in the oven when I did.....the house had a lovely aroma of spiced meat.

And now.....three hours later, Paul and I have licked the bones and our fingers clean....(**chuckle**...alright ladies! DON'T go there tonight.....no TMI here......) ;0)

VERY yummy sauce!

I shared one other time how I cook my ribs; I do a combination of dry and wet (sorta.) For the first 2-3 hours, I cook the ribs in an uncovered roaster with a Bicentennial rub (from Penzy's Spices) @ 225 degrees. Then covered for an hour, still at 225 degrees. I have a lil'of-this-&-lil'of-that sauce mixture that I whip up and place on the ribs for a final 45 minutes of cooking at 300 degrees.
Sauce (rough measurements):
2 T. Chile powder
1 T. Paprika
other seasonings that give me the "must be included" feeling at the time
2 T. Vinegar
1/2 cup Sugar
2/3 cup Ketchup
2 T. Worcheshire sauce

I used to add more sugar, but Paul didn't like the too-sweet flavor it created.

Speaking of the birthday boy....he's taking HIS nap right now....also snuggled under my Orange Crush quilt. I'm very thankful I used the Thinsulate batting on that quilt! It is so light. Absolutely perfect for wrapping around yourself....perfect because of the lightness....it's one of those quilts that are cooling, yet warm. Do you have any of those types?

So, he wants to be wakened at 6:30 so we can spend some time in the garden tonight. We have delayed our departure to my parents until tomorrow AM so we can feed the animals before we head out. (My GOODNESS! Two short sentences, and the word "so" showed up 3 times! Two months off of school is starting to affect me)

While strolling the other night in search of the baby robins, I spotted some deer action in our lower garden. The deer have not really posed much of a nuisance though.

Cabbage butterflies have though! UGH! I'm not sure what we'll be able to harvest from our cabbage patch. Paul made some sour kraut two years ago, and it is DELICIOUS!!! Kinda has an "ewwww" factor once you realize how sour kraut is made, but I'm a fan of it. We are/were hoping to can another few jars this year since we are down to one jar in the pantry.

OH! AND! I have hopes and AMBITION to pull a two-a-day today {{........alright, is your mind going all naughty again??....

Definition: "Two-a-day" - term used by runners to describe two separate training runs; one usually in the morning hours and one in the afternoon/evening.

I hope to clock another 3 miles on my running shoes once the sun lowers a bit more in the sky.

Alright....time to close up shop and wake the poor dear! The garden is a-callin!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Quilter's ADHD

LOL, yeah.....so...I kinda didn't work on ANY of my goals today!

Upon waking, Candace was begging to play with the clay she got from Grandma, so I sent her off to tidy up her area of her room first. By golly! That was the FASTEST that room got picked up EVER!!!!! I needed to start the day by running to school quickly, so while the car was warming up, I got the clay supplies out and ready. The other two girls weren't far behind begging to play, so I designated the areas they needed to clean/tidy first and informed DH of the "rules."

I wasn't gone long, and by the time I arrived back....

Candace.....oh dear. Those HANDS!!! But she was having a BLAST!!!

Caitlyn waited patiently for the spinning wheel...

And Cassie made an AMAZING fish with her clay.

I threw together an early lunch so that I could start my day downstairs.

I HAD all intentions of working on the next RRCB step, but chose to first tidy up my sewing room after all those string blocks. So, my leader-ender section was reorganized.....

...and then that lead me to cutting some more units for my Blue Ridge Beauty (BRB) leader-ender project.....

..which then lead me to see the status of my BRB units....and the status of many of my other projects on the lower shelves...

...and by this time, my former babysitter, home for winter break from college, showed up to spend some time with the girls. I didn't feel right locking myself up down in my sewing room, so I spent much of the afternoon organizing and cleaning up the living room; putting away Christmas gifts and "stuff"....

By the time she left, it was dinner time; reheated Country Style Ribs from the other night and some fried potatoes.

THEN...back downstairs....

I started by unpacking the printer I inherited from my parents (they bought a new one for Christmas). After about 20 minutes, I was too frustrated to try to figure it out anymore; I need to find the driver; thought I found the right one online, and after 10 minutes of waiting for the download, my installation stalled midway TWICE, needing to reboot each time.....so.....blah! TOMORROW!

...and then.....you see that stack of strings next to the printer??? Yeah....that was my next detour. After tidying up the strings from the 60 RRCB neutral units, I observed so many reds/blues/whites, so I pulled them. Why not make some MORE string blocks????

A couple of hours later, I have 16 blocks done; de-papered and trimmed to 7".

And let me tell you!!!!!! One of the ladies at the Quiltville Chat suggeseted using bookorder forms for the 8.5" string blocks since most phone books are smaller now-a-days. They worked GREAT! I had 8 RWB blocks partially started in my string bucket (using phone book paper). After completing those, I cut up 8 more sheets (using the bookorder forms). There wasn't any difference between sewing on either type of paper, BUT......de-papering!!! SO MUCH EASIER with the bookorder forms. The paper is slightly stiffer than phonebook paper and tore off the seams much easier! The phonebook paper kept tearing when I tried to peel it from the seams.....a bit too frustrating!
Spreading this information to hopefully aide you in your next paper-piecing/foundation units!

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Chunky Churndash progress...


61 blocks done and ready for the hour-glass blocks. Hopefully the perfect fabric will jump into my lap tomorrow!

At 4:00, I took yet another small break and decided to crack open the bottle of wine I bought last night. (Hey---it was five o'clock by Angela, so I figured I was okay!!!) :0) I took a pic of the wine glass; I have a set of 6 and they are absolutely beautiful. I am not (by NO means) a lady who is hoitsie-toitsie! Give me a sweatshirt and pair of blue jeans, and I'm happy. BUT, I insist on using these glasses everytime I have some wine (which is, like, once or twice a year!) They were a wedding present from my German host family, and are hand painted. The paint protrudes off the glass; pictures don't do it justice.



DH took his time getting home from a Sunday's day of work, so I continued enjoying myself downstairs by tackling some red/white/blue string blocks. I know I have other projects sitting idle, but it was fun to put together some mindless 5.5" blocks. I don't know exactly what I have planned for these yet, but am thinking of doing some HSTs with these and white fabric.

As much as I would love to head downstairs right now for yet a few more hours of sewing fun, I actually should make sure I'm gathered for tomorrow's math workshop.
Happy Sunday