Monday, March 28, 2011

Design Wall Monday-sorta


Ok, technically it's not Monday anymore since it's after 1 a.m. but since I haven't gone to bed yet, I'm still counting it as the same day.

In my last post I had high hopes about what I would get done. Yeah....didn't happen.

I got lots of 5 in. squares cut but haven't finished a single quilt. I do, however, have one ready to quilt, which is what you see at the top and what I will be working on today/tomorrow.

One of the things that held me up getting more done was "one of those days." You ever have one of those days? Here's what happened ...

Notice anything odd about this picture? Yup, that's right. I managed to sew them so that the pink was facing the wrong direction. I succeeded in doing this not once but twice before I caught the mistake! And to make life more interesting my seam ripper disappeared. After I did that I decided it was probably better to not go near the sewing machine for a few days. I'm sure you'll agree!

Fortunately, I seem to have recovered from my temporary sewing ineptitude.

The main order of business for the week is to finish the pink pinwheels. If I get that finished, then I'll work on the pink and brown quilt. But, I've got a marshmallow roast and potluck dinner for bunches of friends on Friday so I'll have to spend some quality time with my cleaning supplies between now and then.

Check out what everyone else is working on at Judy's blog.

Monday, March 07, 2011

Design Wall Monday





Yippy! It's still Monday and I have something to show.

I finished up the batik comfort quilt on Wed. I decided to bind it myself because I was really liking how the quilt was going and wanted that sense of accomplishment that comes when a quilt is "finished" finished. I particularly enjoyed doing the hand binding part. I haven't had much time to do anything by hand lately and I was missing it.



And I really liked the binding fabric.



Now, it's time to get moving on the over-due baby quilts. Both moms that I wanted to make quilts for in Feb. delivered 2 weeks ago and the only thing I've done is cut a few squares for one of the quilts. I've been catching up on ironing the last few days and done a first pass at our tax returns so that I should have time this week to get some quilting in. During this the week I'll also go through and double check all the math on the tax returns and,hopefully, get those sent out so I don't have to think about them anymore.

The last pictures are some examples of how hard the last two years have been on the trees around here. Two years ago, we got buried in about 30 in. of snow over a two week period that caused the two of three evergreens in our backyard to loose about 6-8 feet off the top.





Snow falling off the roof of the shed permanently bent the forsythia next to it. (It's still pretty in the spring and summer though.)



The beginning of last month brought more than a foot of very heavy, wet snow which took down a large lower branch from a maple tree and several large branches from the evergreens.




All of this stress on the trees was followed a week and a half ago by incredibly high winds that uprooted our neighbor's tree. All over the area so many trees have been damaged or destroyed just since last Feb. but we're very blessed because, despite all of the damage, no one has been seriously hurt. (At least in our little corner of VA.)
(If you click on the picture, you can get a better idea of just how big the tree was.)

All I can say is that I'm so looking forward to spring!

Now go check out the other Design Walls at Judy's blog.