House Update

I know I haven't posted any new pics of the house lately. I have them, it's just that most of the changes that are happening now are mostly being done on the inside of the house, such as electricity, heating/cooling venting, recessed lighting, surround sound and insulation. 

This is what the front now looks like...styrofoam and chicken wire.

And here is one of the sides. Not much of a change to the outside of the house. Inside is where all of the action is happening right now.

Over the next 10 days they are suppose to hang the dry wall, tape, mud and texture it. Then they will stucco the outside of the house in a 2 part application, followed by hanging of all of the doors, inside and out. Then painting of the interior as well as the exterior will be done, roof nailed down, cabinets installed, flooring, blinds, appliances, landscapping, final walk through then closing.....all should be complete in 9 about weeks!

Started This Last Fall

This Is a quilt I pieced last fall using the Moda "Gobble Gobble" jelly roll. It went together pretty fast but like most projects got set aside because of lack of time to finish. I decided to finish it one year later because I have a cousin who is getting married for the first time (at the age of 47) in October. This quilt would make a perfect fall wedding gift! I wanted to try a new panto that I purchased from Patricia Ritter from Urban Elements called "Pumpkin Patch". I love this panto!

It was fun to do once you got into a groove and it ended up being the perfect panto for this quilt. Now just need to find the time to make a quilt label and bind it....hopefully that won't take another year.

Spring Cleaning, 13 Years Long Over Do

After living in one house for 13 years you tend to accumulate alot of stuff, some things that you thought you lost years ago, suddenly are found. Other things you look at and think, "what the heck was I saving that for?" I think every 2 years we should all spring clean our houses

so when we move or when we die we or our loved ones aren't burden with this long and horrible task.  

I have slowly been going through my house purging things that have been collecting dust or have no longer a use to them, in hopes that when I pack up the house for our move in 8 weeks I will have less to pack and only take with us the things we actually use and need. In doing this comes distractions for instance a few weeks ago I was going through boxes of family photos, before the great invention of digital cameras we used cameras with film that needed to be developed and I always use to get 2 copies of every pic because it never failed someone would always ask if they could have a copy of a pic that I would show them...however not all pics were wanted so I had a huge 10 gallon tub of photos that needed to be gone through...what I thought would only take an hour or 2 turned into an all day event. Yes, with every picture I picked up I relived that moment in time and had to decide to keep or thrash that photo. Eventually I made it through and the pics were reduced by 2/3rds of the original amount! I also was able to  sort them into groups by children and by family. Now they are more manageable and each of my kids will be getting a box of photos from their lives t be stored in their own closets. 

This past Friday I tackled my 16 yr old sons room, I had no intentions of doing this (at least not that day, I wanted to sew some of my own stuff) but when I went in there to get his laundry I decided if I didn't purge his room that day I may never get a chance to do it in time before the move. 6 GARBAGE BAGS of clutter later, and yet another day gone his room is now ready to be packed up.

In my quest for spring cleaning/purging this past weekend I came across 4 old folding chairs, we bought to use as kitchen chairs in our first house 21 years ago, and in need of TLC. The frames were still in good shape but the fabric had seen better days and so I took them apart to recover them.

Here is the back of the chair after it was removed-

This is the empty frame with the seat and chair back removed.

I took off the old fabrics, and made a pattern from them.

I cut out the new fabric pieces, replaced the foam on the seats and the backs of the chair, because after 21 years they were falling apart. I used a staple gun to tack down the new fabric to the chair backs and seats, then reattatched them to their frames.

 

And here it is, good as new and will probably last another 20 years!

I plan on using thesse chairs for customer seating in my new office/studio.

Hocuspocusville

The best part about my job is that I get to see so many cool quilts and patterns that I have never seen before. Lets face it there are new quilt patterns that come out all of the time and there is no way that I would be able to see all of the quilt patterns available, even if I surf the web every hour of every day for the rest of my life I still wouldn't get to see all of them.  So I decided to start a new section on my blog called "Customer Quilts Showcase". Here I will feature customer quilts that after I saw them I wanted to make one of my own. 

This week I want to show you a quilt called "Hocuspocusville" by Crab-apple Hill.  

There are 12 Blackwork type blocks, could be done as a block of the month type quilt.

The center of the quilt is just a nine patch variation on point, but I think when I do mine I will do a monkey wrench or snails trail blocks in the center perhaps in black and orange prints.

Here are the 12 blocks  up close...they remind me of the cute santa village ceramic buildings because they each have a whimsy name to each.

 

My customer added a little bit of orange thread to one of her blocks, she told me if she could do it over again she would add a little more orange to each of the blocks to help give them some pop...I agree just a little orange here and there would add some additional depth to these already whimsy blocks. The pattern also calls for jumbo black rick rack to frame out the center but I think I will do Prarie Points around the center of the quilt and then again around the outside border. 

The finished quilt measures 68"X68". As for quilting, you could do just about anything a leaf panto (which is what my customer wanted) star panto, CL Swirls or you could go the custom route and add some spiderwebs with spiders of course, swirls, or some halloween motifs. The possibilties are endless!

Back To School Totes

It's been awhile since I blogged about projects I am working on so here's one that I finished last week, well actually I did 2 of these.

Ever since I made my professional tote last spring 2 of my daughters wanted ones for themselves. My daughter Rachel (who's a big Hockey fan) wanted hers in Blackhawk colors and logo. Since I was making 1 I figured 2 wouldn't take too much longer so I made another just like this one for Rachel's best friend Ashley (who is also a huge Blackhawks fan). They use these totes instead of backpacks for school.

I still need to make my oldest daughter her tote, which will be in turquoise and lime green but I don't think I will have hers done in time for school, she starts on Monday...My to do list keeps getting longer and longer, and I swear the days are getting shorter and shorter!

1 Month Progress

It's been 1 month since they broke ground for our new house, this is what it looked like 1 month ago....

And this is what it looks like today....

It's starting to look like a house!

This week they finished up with all of the framming, they put in all but 3 windows (the 3 that weren't done because the size was incorrect so they need to fix it this week),the plumbing was done (yes that is a bath tub in front..they delivered the wrong tub, the one that is missing is the garden tub for the master bath), and they put in all of the duct work and furnaces (which happen to be in the attic!). By the end of next week the house should have the electrical in and at least the bottom half of the house wrapped in styrofoam and chicken wire and the tiles sitting on top of the roof.

We submitted our final papperwork to the mortgage company earlier this week and now we are just waiting on final approval of the loan, still holding my breath and praying that all goes fine and it gets final approval. Trying not to get too excited, just in case...but it's hard not to be excited when you see your dream house comming more to life each week.  

We are also getting ready for the kids to go back to school, 4 of them start on Wednesday and my oldest starts her 2nd year of college on the 23rd. So the next month will fly by because of school starting and business should start to pick up some more since summer is comming to an end.