Quilting Makes the Quilt

The feel of Autumn is in the air and I have several quilts that need basting. My set-up for sandwiching/basting is in the garage on tables, so with cool weather coming, I'd better get a'goin'!

This Furrows and 4-Patch was not calling to me - it's pretty humble and homely, with too much WHITE, not anything I wanted to write home about, but today was lovely and I wanted to get SOMETHING sandwiched. I learned how to make a ribbon border on this project and am amazed at it's simplicity! We've all heard the phrase, "Quilting Makes the Quilt". As soon as I started machine quilting, the quilt became alive. I'm using a pastel pink, blue, green yellow thread, 40 wt, that helped to blend the fabrics and toned down the WHITE. Also, I keep forgetting to drop the feed dogs on my machine and it makes no difference at all! LOL

I made this one day (OK, maybe 2 or 3) when I just needed to sew something!!! This is about as easy as a quilt can get. It's about 70" x 80", and I used what I had on hand, except for the 2 blues in the ribbon border - that needed to be consistant fabrics. If you've been afraid of this border, you will be amazed at it's simplicity! Give it a try!

Jody's Quilts -- Relaxing -- New books

These two luscious items belong to my friend Jody. She comes into town for our local monthly quilt group meeting. The crooked log cabin is not yet quilted, but the Irish Chain is DONE! Jody is a ranching woman (among her other talents), and machine quilts beautifully on a frame.

This little quilt (below) was mailed today. I tried to drape it artfully on the table like a Country Living photo, but it ended up looking like a quilt, spread out on a table.
DH surprised me with this gift, a windmill, a symbol of Nebraska. I've often talked about having a 'real' decorative one for the garden, but our garden never does amount to much, so this metal WELCOME version is much better. I LOVE it! This was made by a guy who makes ranch metal gates with all the cutouts of horses, cowboys, cattle, that we see over the ranch driveways. His wife designs them on a computer.
And lastly, yes I DID overdo working and am paying for my exuberant painting efforts, and need to sit down and REST my old bod! Look what came in the mail today! The perfect excuse to sit and enjoy our beautiful afternoon, and a delicious hard lemonade! I LOVE Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran's free use of color, but I also love that it is 126 (correction - 192 pages!!!) pages full of color!

Well -- I'll be darned!

In preparation for graphic ideas so I can start on a snowball quilt (using my Fairy Fabric), I Googled "Snowball Quilt", and one of the results included "Images" only, among all the possibilities. I didn't have to click on each 'hit' and scroll around to FIND what I was looking for. Just page after page of snowball quilt images! Happy Day - exactly what I wanted!

Have Faith, and Progress

Look at all those lines! This part is painted, but you can't tell yet, from the angle. That's a wonderful, heavy duty roll-out awning over the doors. Because we have so much wind here, we can't have an umbrella, and have to roll this awning in and out. It gives us an entire additional living space in nice weather. THAT's why I insisted this deck get painted. I worked 3 hours after my OTHER WORK! yesterday, while our helper started earlier in the day. Whew, I am not tall enough to reach the top of those boards! Our helper John offered to do the fiddly parts with the brush if I did the larger roller areas. Sounded like a great plan to me!
I was getting a bit shakey, (Hey I've been a Senior Citizen for years!) and light headed at the end. This was around the corner of the house/deck, and if I kerplunked down to the ground due to fatigue or a heart attack or ???, no one would find me for a while, so I decided I'd better quit. At this point even taking a shower took too much effort. Sighhhh, one more afternoon and it will be DONE.
Due to excessive fatigue, and looking forward to finishing this painting job, and looking forward to actually sitting on the deck before winter comes, and then planning the next project, and, and and ... not a normal sleeping pattern for me but, I was awake most of the night, drinking, hot flashes, getting more water, too hot, too cold, where are the blankets, my hip hurts, DH was fidgeting, etc., so I finally got up and started sewing at 4:00 am! I am expecting to crash today or tomorrow! These blocks are going to need 'something' to help pull them together. Putting them on point will allow me to use side setting triangles in a PLAIN cream, that should calm it.

There are a couple prints that I cringe each time I see them, so have decided to "File 13" them. Out they go!

Ya need to have faith!

Today, my body needs to rest, so I'm parking myself at my sewing machine, using my already-cut 2 1/2 in. strips (weeks ago) to make Bonnie's Star Struck. This is the second quilt I've made using her pattern and technique - the first one used carefully selected light shirtings and indigo type blues. For this one, I'm going totally scrappy - whatever I have in the dark and light range. Thank goodness for precutting strips - what a time saver. Once again, a huge THANK YOU to Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville!

Recently I found a saved pattern from Marcie at PatchalotMore. that looked mighty appealing and spurred me on start the second project, this time, totally scrappy. Thanks Marcie, for the eye candy!
Strips by themselves are pretty blah, boring, don't match, etc. Hey, ya gotta have faith they'll look good! And yes, I'm saving the 'waste' triangles for 1 inch HSTs.

I swear, I just pulled 4 units with absolutely NO rhyme or reason and sewed them together -- not bad already, is it? This project is all part of my effort to 'get control' of my stash and USE it, not just HAVE it!

What I did this weekend

The gutter was full of debris, and DH did NOT want to climb on the ladder. It was so full of crud that now we had dampness in the basement. OMGosh, what next! I promised DH that when I came home from work I would climb the ladder if he held it. But the rest of the morning I was praying REALLY HARD that some miracle would occur and I wouldn't have to climb.

My prayers were answered! That morning, DH called the Retired Senior Services and they found us a helper named John, who came immediately, and scampered up that ladder and cleaned out the gutter. He asked for $20.00. I would have happily paid him MUCH MORE if he had asked! We lined him up for the next job, painting the DECK!

I have never shown anyone our deck because for the past 2 years it looks so bad, we don't even sit outside any more. The fix required 1) power wash; 2) primer, 3) paint. (It really needs to be totally replaced, but ... remember the stock market thing!) And even when 'fixed' it's nothing to write home about!

The first power washer didn't touch the old paint, so we dragged it back to the hardware store, and ordered a heavier power washer which was more successful. Here's what part of the deck looks like after the power washing - lovely, huh?? -- flakes/chunks of paint everywhere, and we can't possibly get off all the loose paint due to that ridiculous deck/rail design, and years of old paint. And look how one has to paint that awful rail!!! I can barely squeeze a paintbrush in there! More scraping - Ugh! I did my part with the scraping, but John did most of the work.

OK, Elaine, buy 3 gallons of primer, 3 gallons of paint, various rollers and pans (I'm thinking how many yards of fabric would this be), and we're set to GO! John and I painted 3 hours Saturday afternoon and managed to prime about half the project. No painting Sunday (thank goodness as I will not be able to MOVE in the morning!). Yes, that's me, now needing to sit down and paint!, under my treasured Dad's paint hat and wearing dark after-cataract-surgery sunglasses I found somewhere. The primer is so bright it really CAN hurt eyes. (Lesson - Last time we did this job, I went to hospital thinking I had paint IN my eye, but no, just too much glare from the paint.)
John was a great worker and I'm definitely appreciating his assistance. After 3 hours, I was drained and couldn't work any longer. Monday, we'll start again.