It's been a week!

I did have some time to quilt a bit on the small wall hanging. I quilted in the ditch around the patches and will do some filler quilting and something on the borders.















This has certainly been an eventful week. Our 10 year old great grandson had a ruptured appendix and was admitted to the hospital on Sunday. He was a very sick kid and everyone was worried and frusrated.  He is home now with a drain in his abdomen and a PICC line to administer IV antibiotics for the next 10 days. He is staying here at our daughters house (where we live) as their house in torn up and dusty in the middle of remodelling. He is feeling much better and while he is pretty much stationary, because of the drain apparatus, he is playing games and watching TV.

Our grandson in Missouri is getting married today (in Missouri) and our son and DIL were here last weekend with their dog. They live in Pittsburgh and had errands to run here and then left for Missouri  on Tuesday. Jack and I did not plan going to the wedding because of the distance and health reasons. The rest of the Ohio family was all going to go but those plans were changed  when Ben was hospitalized.
So  from our family only John's parents and his brother and his wife will be at the wedding.

We have Buttons (the dog) here with us; fortunately she gets along well with our dog and cat. That is an adventure in itself. Now we have to keep the cat and our son's dog away from Ben because of the drain and PICC line. Kitty is attracted to anything that dangles and the dog jumps and people at times. Tux, our good old black lab with his perfect manners, is the only one allowed in the room with Ben. We are kept busy shutting one door or another to keep the animals away from Ben or keep Lucy from escaping. Lucy is not allowed to go outside but lays in wait for a chance to slip out any time we let the dogs out. We have to make sure Lucy has access to the basement and her litter box.


Late in the week, I did have some  layer up 3 quilt sections to be quilted then joined.
 This is one section; it is 2 blocks wide by 7 blocks long.

This is a 4 block section showing the overall pattern. This quilt  has been sitting around in 3 sections for a few years. It is a different from the one I have been working on recently.

You can see the difference in the two. the one below is an 8 block section.  This one will be layered up and quilted in 2 sections.

I layered the 3 section quilt first because I had an issue with the batting. Lucy had knocked the batting on the floor and had torn through the bag in several sections and tore out pieces of batting leaving several holes. This was a slightly larger batt because of 2 joining seams instead of one and I wanted to make use it would be usable. All the damage was at one end and I was able to cut away the part with the holes.
I have to keep Lucy away from any exposed batting and we have to keep her away from Ben and we have to keep her away from any doors being opened to the outside. I also have to feed her up in the sink counter in the bathroom so Buttons (son's dog) won't eat her food. After her own family left her this week Buttons had stopped eating her own food until I mixed in some cat food. So..... I also have to make sure Lucy doesn't eat Buttons' food. Tux our Lab gives us no problems but would really like to be petted 24/7, walked around the whole yard and the woods out back at least once a day, and given his ration of treats at the usual time in the evening. All three animals line up for treats about 7:30. They all settle down for the night in our bedroom and they have worked out for themselves who sleeps where. No one sleeps on our bed but Lucy uses it for a jumping off place to the top of Jacks dresser.

Yes, it has been quite a week!

Lucy taking a rest .

Changing Over for Fall

When I woke up at 5 AM this morning I knew I would not to back to sleep. I got up but I didn't want to make a lot of noise and wake anyone else. I decided to change out the little quilts on my boards in the sewing room.

This is the shelf and the flannel covered board just above my sewing machine.

 This is the board on the adjacent wall. The pumpkins above and the top harvest quiltlet on the right were both made to fit over one of those 8 x 10 clear plastic standing sign holders.  This year I pinned them up on the boards instead.
The little colorwash is 5 x 7 and made with 35 - 3/4 inch squares. I made several of them years ago when I was playing around with the little squares. The hand was one given to me by my friend Lynn the year I asked all the ladies in the Friendship block exchange to give me a block with their hand traced on fabric. This was an extra hand that she traced and I love looking at the fabric.
The floral square was a piece of fabric that I layered up and free motion quilted around the shapes for practice and later my friend Jan showed me how to apply piping inside the binding. I had won a basket with notions in it and there was a tool for "Piping Hot Binding".
Hanging on the side is a Name tag I made with a little block I designed in EQ and then printed on Fabric. (I did not sew those tiny flying geese in the border). I put it on a ribbon to hang around my neck instead of pinning it on my clothes.



This is what the whole corner looks like. The shelves both extend another 18 inches on the left to the bookcase. Next to my sewing machine table is a 4 foot table along the adjacent wall.  Right now it holds a little waste basket of scraps that need to be sorted by color and added to my scrap stash. The other basket has stuff to put away where it belongs. Right now I have 3 various sized baskets that are similarly filled.
Baskets work well for keeping things together  while I work on something but  putting things away keeps getting put off; I seem to just buy another basket.

I have pretty much accomplished cleaning up  my sewing room and I am ready to get some quilting started.

I hope everyone has a nice Labor Day weekend.

Last 2 Blocks

I finished he final 2  blocks for the HST quilt I have been working on for over a year.

 I had planned on adding  one row of 7 blocks to both sides, to complete the pattern, and to add one row of 4 blocks on the bottom to the 4 blocks by 6 blocks section I had already sewed together. I have a slight change of plans.
Instead I will sew a row of 4 blocks to the bottom but I will sew the other 2 rows of 7 blocks each to together and sew them on one side. I am going to quilt this in two sections; my original plan would have had 3 sections making one more seam to sew. The new plan will still complete the pattern with less work.

I ordered fabric for the backing and it should arrive tomorrow. So.......... in the meantime I am going  to clean up my space which is so bad that I am not even going to show a picture of it.  Then, I am going to get my space set up to quilt. There are the 2 HST bed quilts to quilt and this 24 inch square table topper that is layered up already so I will probably quilt it first.

That's the plan for the next few days but you know what they day about the best laid plans.