Category Archives: Finishes

2017 Year of WIPs Challenge results

I think I did rather well in my challenge. Below are the finishes I had, and the last photo is my slow-growing family room Sampler Wall.


Hello to the middle of December

They say time flies when you’re having fun, and right now, except for one tiny glitch, I can say that’s true.

I have been very productive with needle and thread, both at the sewing machine and in hand.

Yesterday was one of my twice-monthly sew-togethers with my local group and I worked mainly on my Bonnie Hunter Step 3 4-patches.

Here’s my progress photos to date.
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Part 1: 221/221
Part 2: 100/100
Part 3: 10/168

Today should see the finish of my purple 4-patches.

When I’m caught up on my Parts, I am cutting/preparing for the Midnight Flight class I’m taking next month. There is a class info sheet that tells us how much to bring to class (instead of enough for a whole quilt) so I’ve been pulling fabrics and cutting. I am taking more than I need so I can hopefully swap some with other attendees. I have my constant red cut, and changed the orange to a yellow. I’m also not including any purple and using blues only. I think I may be buying a couple of 1/4 cuts before then as I’d like a little more royal to go with my navy.
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As to my stitching, I know I said in my last post that I was going to do a separate post about my Year of WIPs Challenge status, but I think instead of spending more time on this computer writing a post, I’ll just do a photo update in my dedicated tab up top. I am still loving the 10 hour rotation with the focus being on Houses of Hawk Run Hollow. I am now spending less time stitching than before, but I knew that was going to happen so chose the number of WIPs accordingly. So far I think I made great choices. The bit success right now is that I finished And They Sinned. Woohoo!

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She’s a big girl! That countertop is 5 feet long 😀 If you click on the picture, it’ll turn right side up, but it was hard to get it to focus because of the size.

The glitch I first mentioned is my HarleyQuinn had to have surgery this past Monday to remove a large hematoma from a back leg. She has 3 layers of stitches (because her skin is so thin) and the layer I can see I counted 7. While she was under the doctor went ahead and removed 7 other places and all but one of those just required 1 stitch (the other one required 2). So now we’re nursing her. Pain pills, anti inflamatory/pain pill, liquid antibiotics every 12 hours. No overactiveness, which means carrying her up and down the stairs. In other words spoiling her more than usual, which is a lot already.

This picture is of her staring at me the night before because she’s starving (she’s always starving, just ask her).
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and here she is all snuggled up between dad’s legs after we brought her home. She was drunker than Cooter Brown, and we worry she’ll flop herself off the sofa.
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Today she’s back to her sassy self, and is more work to keep her from dancing and prancing. She’ll have to have 24/7 babysitting until the stitches are removed. We do have a care-collar for her, but if we keep her with us she shouldn’t have to wear it. Fortunately Mister is out of school, and neither of us have any plans to be anywhere together that can’t be cancelled or rescheduled for a later date.

It’s a good weekend

Friday we hiked.  It.  Was.  Rough!  My knees weren’t happy after doing Zumba on Monday and Wednesday, plus it was 87% humidity after raining the previous 2 days.  Next week I’ll be heading out on my own while Mister runs the route.

After our showers we headed over toward ASU for Mister to pick up a study pack for one class and then to the art store for his supplies for this term.  I found a white charcoal pencil for marking dark fabrics and some perma-ink pens for labels.  I love finding quilt supplies at non-quilt stores.

Then we went to find the Farmers Market.  Boy, was THAT a disappointment.  It was a store.  Granted they had items in there that were local (meats, dairy, eggs, vegetables, etc.) but still it wasn’t the actual vendors themselves.  I felt cheated since the website made me feel that’s what I would find.  I didn’t buy anything.

During our Friday lunch out, where I ate too much, I decided I was just too tired to go to the movies.  I was actually afraid I might fall asleep so we came home instead.

I spent some time upstairs.  I printed and cut out several Wild & Goosey patterns and the remaining patterns needed for my guild BOM Challenge.  Then I managed to piece together another Wild & Goosey block.

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Later that evening I finished my version of Lizzie Kate’s Cross-Stitcher in Residence.  I haven’t decided how I’m going to finish it out, yet.

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I have a round robin piece that a friend asked me to add to then I’m probably going to start Sam Sarah’s Mystery Sampler.  I’m in love with the fabrics and fiber colors.

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Saturday we headed out to see Guardians of the Galaxy and do a couple more errands.  Came home to a good mail day.  Two reams of newsprint for paper piecing (I now have 3 paper piecing projects going), Dear Jane Quilt book, and my one and only Market purchase, The Scarlett House’s Hannah’s Brownstone.

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Dinner last night was a treat.  Mister cooked omelets.  Yummy, and no cooking for me.

This morning I decided to do my July Red Scrappy BOM Challenge block.  If you look too close you can see the red smeared a bit on the white.  Bummer, but I’ll live.  There’s a faint red streak on the bottom of my iron plate that needs to be cleaned when it cools off.

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The bulletin board over my laptop is looking very pretty.

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The icing on the cake of my good weekend is dinner at some friends tonight to celebrate a birthday.

 

Stitchin’ and Sewing’ Stuff

I headed out this morning and got a couple more books spiral bound. I’m trying  get a couple done every month and I still have quite a few to do.  It’s helping me decide if it’s a book I love, or one to part with.

I’m still working on getting myself organized to see that I get sewing done.  Out of sight, out of mind for me if I don’t and I forget what I want to work on. The list I’m working on now consists of projects I’ve already purchased fabric for.

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I really want to get back to my Farmer’s Wife.  I ♥ paper piecing!  I already have several blocks printed out and ready to go but fighting with the book was no fun.  Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

The other book is 1 of 3 Bonnie Hunter books I have.  I bought String Fling specifically for this pattern:

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Jamestown Landing. I won’t be able to get started on it until I get my Union Star runner finished because I have so many blues pulled for it.  Of course, after I got the book, I immediately fell in love with a few more, especially Pineapple
Crazy.

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These 3 paper pieced patterns are first up in my to-do list.

I need a name tag for Civil War Club and then remember that guild meeting I talked about on the 5th?  I went, and I joined, and I need a name tag for that, too!  I have some charms that the quilting fairy gave me during Quilt Camp that I’m going to incorporate into it some how.

I am an official member of Nimble Thimbles and the Arizona Quilters Guild.  The guild members were so very welcoming and I had a good time.  There are several things that I’d like to participate in, one of them being their Scrappy Block of the Month Challenge.  They pick a color each month for 9 months and I make whatever block (needs to be the same block) that I choose out of those colors.  At the end of the year, at the Christmas Party, they want you to have a finished flimsy.  I need to catch up, so I’m going to attempt to make one every 2 weeks, working backwards, starting with this month’s color…Blue!  LOL I’ve chosen Fox and Geese from Quilter’s Cache as my block.  I’ll need to make a purple, pink, green, yellow, orange, and gray, to catch up.

I’m also going to start piecing some Wild & Goosey blocks (another Bonnie Hunter design found in May/June 2013 Quiltmaker) from my scraps.  I haven’t decided what to do with this one yet as far as how often, but I’d love to do a block a month for now until I see how many scraps I’m going to have to use without cutting into yardage/FQs.

And last but not least, I have a stitching finish!  I can’t remember the last time this has happened and this little design was just the thing I needed to get my stitching mojo back.   I’ll be taking it to my framer at the beginning of September.

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Mister starts back to school next Thursday, and I’m looking forward to us being back into a routine.  I never feel like I get anything done when I’m not on a schedule of sorts.

Surprise!

Happy fall, y’all!  I cannot begin to say how many times I have sat down to write, then got distracted by something else.  That something else has usually been stash that needed to be sorted, catalogued, or put away; and, sometimes, stitched on 😀

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my last day as an employed person.  This past year has seen so many changes in my life and they must have all been pretty good because as I sit here writing this I cannot think of any horrible thing that has occured.

I have traveled more this past year than in many years combined, both near and far.  I am looking forward to where the 2nd year of my “retirement” takes me.  I have also stitched and quilted more than I ever have and am having a blast (when I’m not feeling guilty about it).

The next phase of my crafting is about to begin with my framing some of my own smaller finished needlework.  I have been gathering the equipment needed, and even have some frame moulding.  It’s now just a matter of getting over my “what if I mess it up” jitters and make that first cut.

What have I been doing since my last post?  This!

Carriage House Samplings’ “Americana.”

CHS Americana 5/25 - 6/9/12

Little House Needleworks “America”

LHN "America" 6/9 - 6/17/12

Sheepish Designs “Betsy”

Sheepish Designs "Betsy" 6/17 - 6/25/12

Blackbird Designs “America”

Blackbird Designs "America" 6/25 - 7/8/12

I had intended on stitching patriotic designs all the way through until September 11, but changed my mind and decided to go back to my other WIPs.  Soooooo,  I also finished Mary Wigham

Mary Wigham finished September 1, 2012

Mary is at Attic Needlework being framed.  I don’t remember off the top of my head when I started her and I didn’t stitch on her exclusively, but I did track when I worked on her.  It took me 51 days to stitch her.  I converted the recommended DMC to Gentle Arts Sampler Threads.  There are a lot of memories attached to her 😀  The Olympics, test driving new cars, attending a stitching weekend with Attic Needlework (wait until you see what I’m working on from that!), Mister starting college, a trip back to California to see Son and visit Melissa and see Darla.

I took a reading break after Mary Wigham them picked Dimples Designs’ “Haiku” back up on September 17th.  I originally started it January 2004 during a Guilt Free stitching sprint, put him away for a long time, picked him back up the beginning of this year, and put him away again.  I am very near to finishing it but have to make myself stitch on it since there are other things I want to be working on.

As you can tell I sort of gave up on WIPacolypse (and Theme-a-licious).  Not the stitching, just the checking in.  I am one of those people who can’t keep up with moon phases — hard to believe I’m a moon child — and believe tracking should be done from the 1st day of the month to the last day of the month.  I am continuing to stitch on my WIPacoplypse pieces though since they’re pieces I love and want hanging on my walls.  I know 2012 is not quite over but I’m keeping in mind already what I want to accomplish in 2013, and I’ll probably maintain some sort of WIPacolypse type list and intersperse it with smalls since I have so many and I want to work on my finishing skills.

The only other thing I really want to have finished is the stitching on Fairy Moon.  If all I have left to do is bead by the end of the year I’ll be a happy stitcher.  She will be going to a framer and I’d just as soon not have her sitting around after I finish her because how I want her framed will probably cost me a fair bit and I don’t want to spend that money until after January since right now I’m spending my money on furnishing the house a bit more.  I’m installing a new chande over the dining table and at the top of the stairs, buying new furniture for the family room, and rearranging some of the other furniture.  I’m also getting ready to paint the downstairs powder room and I want to get my piano refurbished if possible.

So.  There you have it!  I’ve made a couple of changes on my stitching page but all in all I’m a happy person!

One thing leads to another

My lazy weekend from the last post turned into two weeks of a lot to do. My house is a disaster. I’ve been pulling things out of cabinets, closets, and drawers, and tossing, recycling, and giving away. Of course that should lead to putting things back, but it hasn’t.

I’ve been spending 1 week in each room of my house making myself love it or get rid of it. My bedroom and craftroom/office are the worst!

In my office, I have a path from the door to my desk and there are things piled all over the desk, boxes all over the place that contain things to pack, things to kit (and take with me short term), things to sell, and thing to give away.

It’s a wonder my dresser isn’t groaning from all the things stacked on top. I’m trying to go through all the drawers and get rid of clothes I haven’t worn in awhile and won’t need in the hotter climates of Arizona. It gets easier each day since I’m tired of looking at the clutter and have started tossing more in the give away bag (which sits on the floor between the dresser and the closet that I have to trip over every time I do laundry! 😆

I’m constantly having to clean off my dining table as it’s turned into a staging area for stuff M and I need to talk about, and the list we’ve started keeping of things that need to happen before, or shortly after, we move.

Plants are coming down, pots are being emptied, and some are being thrown away or given away.

We still have a storage facility that M has been weeding out over the past many months – my piano is in there, too – but we really need to get all of it cleaned out over the next 3 weeks.

Cooking the smothered steak mentioned in the last post, led to craving needing wanting fried chicken.  Would you like my recipe?  Buttermilk is involved 🙂 and I’ll share how I make mashed potatoes, too 🙂  I’m having leftovers for lunch today.

Hiring the realtor in our last post has led to us now having 17 houses to look at, and an appointment with our bank this afternoon to sign our pre-approval.

Looking at those 17 homes (online), and talking about maybe having to live in a furnished apartment short-time if we can’t find a home on our trip, led to my dreaming all night long about living in a 1 bedroom apartment with the puppies and crating them while I left for laundry or grocery duty.  It was like watching a TV show!  The puppies probably wouldn’t like it much. 

My work getting really busy has led to my possibly working every Saturday (except this coming Saturday) until my last week.  I worked this past Saturday and, other than being an idiot and forgetting to mail everything I did, it was wonderful to walk in this morning and know exactly everything I needed to get done today.  Of course, that was before I saw the note, from #1 attorney, stating I needed to create a bazillion subpoenaes and go to Kinkos to get posters done for exhibits, and oh, yeah, make sure all of our depo transcripts are summarized.  See….Saturdays.

Working this past Saturday, led to my not getting to go to my monthly stitchin, but M “nagged” me into stitching that evening and that led to a happy dance, which led to a new start.

Finished Red, White & Blue by Cricket Collection.  Stitched with recommended silks, but substituted silver instead of gold, on Lambswool.  I will be taking it, and another small design, in for framing this week.

Started A Wife’s Prayer by Erica Michaels.  Using recommended fibers and 40ct Maritime White by Lakeside Linens.

The photos above were from my phone. Still camera shopping, passively, but shopping.

So, there should be more stitching tonight, and leftover chicken, and probably some laundry since I don’t want anything on my mind this coming Friday – Sunday except thinking about what a good time I’m having with Melissa and Darla while we are stitching at the beach!

As of today, I am 46 days away from MY retirement.  That counter over there >>>>>>> is for M’s retirement.

’til next time!

P.S.  Am I the only one who’s ready for football stitching???

TUSAL and framing TaDa!

I am running as fast as I can to catch up! I hope it’s not too late to share my TUSAL for April 3. It totally rocks, and you’ll see why in just a second.

It’s so full because I finished queenie and now she’s back from the framers!

Here’s a closeup of the frame. It has the same deep blue/green colors in it as the mat.

I have absolutely no confidence in myself when it comes to choosing frames so I always drag M along with me because he is so good at it!

I’ve been stitching on my ornaments and Houses of Hawk Run Hollow.

I haven’t posted about my weightloss journey because I haven’t had anything to share. About 6 weeks ago I stalled out. Last Thursday I finally saw the scale start downward again (-1.8#s) and if my home scale is anything to go by this week’s loss will be good, too!

Ta Da!

Started September 6, 2009.  Finished March 21, 2011.  Happy Spring!

A weekend well spent

Thank you all so much for your comments on the bourse. It was surprisinly easy to make and I’ll definitely being making more of them and it has given me the confidence to try other things.

Needless to say my visit with Melissa was as wonderful as it always is. Probably better since we finally got to have our Christmas and then I got to share her birthday with her. She arrived around 11 and after exchanging gifts we went to lunch at a local Greek café. I love their food and if Kahuna and I move away from here, we’re going to miss this place. Their soups are to die for and I’m always tempted to lick the bowl! LOL I ended up getting soup to go for Melissa and I to have for supper that evening.

After we got home she helped me work on the photo program that’s attached to my webpage. I have a lot of uploading to do still, but it will be located (for now) at trixsterri.com/photos

Believe it or not, we stitched! I even have a happy dance from it. I finished stitching Atelier de brodeuse, which I neglected to take a photo of last night. I’ll remedy that and provide the promised hula girl lamp photo 😉 hopefully later today. I plan on finishing it into a wall hanging using some of the tons of fabric I already have.

While we were gone Kahuna was out on a 3 ½ hour bike ride. My behind hurts just thinking about it. He wasn’t home for very long (and he was resting during that) before he left again to attend the monthly networking meeting at our tri-club. I opted to stay home and visit with Melissa and I’m so glad we did because we were together for practically the whole day.  We were still talking away when he got home from his meeting and had been in bed asleep for quite some time by the time Melissa left.  We had so much catching up to do!

Sunday morning while Kahuna was out surfing I got some organization done. I cleaned out the refrigerator and made a grocery list to restock it with healthy food. I don’t know how it happens, but that refrigerator was crammed full of stuff and it was hard to tell what was in there, and a lot of it was stuff we shouldn’t be eating. I still need to tackle the pantry.  Sometime during all this Kahuna also went on a 9 mile run.  After I got groceries put away I worked in my office some. I took photos of what I need to work on so I can decide what to do each time I get in there. I feel so overwhelmed by the clutter that sometimes it’s hard for me to tell that I’ve made any progress. I know taking photos of my stitching shows me progress, so I figure doing the same in my office will help.

I never did get around to stitching any yesterday. Later in the afternoon Kahuna decided he was too tired to clean our cars and God bless him he paid to have them both detailed out in town. My little bumble-Z is so pretty when she’s clean. After that we went and had a coffee and just sat and talked, which we haven’t done this weekend with us both sort of going in opposite directions. I made sure we had a sit-down meal for supper and I felt when the day ended that we were somewhat back into a normal routine.

So here it is Monday again. The weekend went by too quickly and the alarm sounded too early. Today, I return to the gym. I thought to do it last week as soon as the doctor told me I could, but since I wasn’t expecting the doctor to “release” me, I had planned so much to do during my early time home from work. My gym bag is currently sitting at my feet under my desk and I have a phone call in to my trainer to discuss a few things with her. Even though I’m not going to be able to retain her services right now, she wanted me to call her when I was able to return so she could give me some things to do that wouldn’t put too much stress on my foot.

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