Quilting In All 3 Zones of My House Today...smile

Zone 1-the bedroom, where I do my handwork...gee that doesn't sound so nice...smile, SEWING THAT IS!  Liverpool played Stokes today and I made a few more hexagon flowers for my Tillies' Mosiac.  Slow progress, but that's what handwork is all about.

Zone 2-the dining room, I'm loading up a quilt top, Kitchen Roosters, from my basket I weighed in with last year and never finished.  I was looking for some backing material in my stash when I ran across this lovely vintage table cloth.  It's quite old and has seen better days, but, maybe on the back of a retro fabric style top, it will find new life.  It's a tad small, but we quilters are good at making things work.  I'll probably cut the wider sides off and sew to the bottom and top.   

Zone 3-the upstairs bedroom/studio/husbands computer room, I'm working on the Flight of Swallows quilt.  

Production feels great.  Idle hands are the devils workshop, or something like that.  Quilters are rarely idle.  

Third part Quilting...everything is getting back to somewhat normal...whew!

Oh my goodness, my husband is so happy like the proverbial snug as a bug in a rug. Men especially like routine, at least mine does. Which is good, cause you know we marry what we need, and myself, like so many quilters are a bit all over da plaze....smile.

This is a very good thing. It makes me happy to stay busy with variety to indulge in.


While cleaning out my closet, I've found so many quilts and tops I thought I'd lost to the sock thief, I suppose. You know, the one in the dryer that makes making all matched sets from a load an impossibility. It's terrible when you know you've made something and you want to work on it and you can't find it. That's a testimony for finishing, finishing, finishing. If I say it enough times, maybe it'll stick and I will do that. When the deck dries off I'll bring my quilts outside and take pictures of the ones I have here. I don't give that many away. I find the work and time make them quite like my children and so, hard to hand over to anyone. But, my pile of quilts grows steadily and I really must give in to, if nothing else, space constraints! I have several quilt racks and a stair rail that currently hold a lot of my babies, but, now I must start to move them on. My wonderful quilt group gave me a nice gift certificate and I also had another one from a friend, so I just had to spend it and add to my growing collection of fabric. While cleaning out my fabric closet, boy was I surprised to see all the fabric!!! I hate to think I'm going to give up some of my volunteer efforts, but, it seems I've been doing way too much of that lately. It's always a good thing to give of your time to worthwhile endeavors. My public radio station gets a lot of my time, especially in the summer when I help out with Waterfront Wednesdays. Then there is the church, I lead our quilt group, Northeast Quilting Friends, every Tuesday from 10:00 to 1:00. We have a pretty special group of ladies that quilt and share their talent as well as their lives. But, I've just returned from Target, where I purchased a multitude of sizes of bins to color sort and store my fabrics in.

More fabric for my scrap quilt...

I needed to make my quilt larger, so I bought more fabric. Something is wrong, but, you know I gotta make it right. So, I'm off to matching my fabric in my intended scrap quilt. Scrap quilt should be using up scraps! But, I just have to make this one match. I will be making a version of a string quilt that our lovely member Shirley will be teaching us how to make soon. This is the pattern. Strings of scraps sewn together and then cut into this pattern, alternating with a solid or tone on tone, using this pattern also. I'm going to be going to NYC when she teaches this next week. I think I can figure it out though, it's a lot of piecing end to end of a variety of 1 to 2 inches strips-any length. We also will be making a signature block for our next exchange. I'm thinking about having the members sign hearts. This time, besides the names, we will be adding our own person tip or favorite saying to the name. We can also decorate them to our hearts content or not.


Upon reflection of my previous post, I suppose all quilts must come to these particular quilting zones as the float on down the river of a finished quilt. First the boat is launched in the upstairs bedroom and cut and sewn pieces together. Next the Quilt makes the first turn into the dining room and is machine quilted. As much as I love hand quilting, I do want to finish it in my lifetime, so I've become a machine quilter. Lastly the trip to the pier and docking at the handwork zone of quilting in my house, the basement, where I can watch movies as I put on the binding. I live a blessed life!

Quilting Zones

"You've taken over the whole house!" This is what my husband told me and so here's how I've taken over the whole house with my wonderful obsession, quilting.

This is my hand work zone, in front of the TV in the basement.

This is my machine quilting zone, in my dining room on the first floor.



This is my sewing/piecing zone upstairs, I've taken over 2 of the three bedrooms.

Next week we leave for NYC to pick up my DD Chelsea. She's been away for 2 1/2 months now and I'm sure she's grown up in so many ways Kentucky could never begin to educate her about. Life moves at such a fast pace there and keeping track of everything in the big city is a growing experience, to say the least.


Quick movie review: Miss Potter-sweet biography of Beatrix Potter, with Renee Zellwiger in the lead. Nice, if you like a period piece.

Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead. It's a lot of violence and so hard to believe the tale is based on true life in Africa. It is a good movie, in my personal opinion.

I finished the last Harry Potter book-great. No book has done more for establishing the habit of reading for children and adults than this series of books. Have the tissues handy. It probably wouldn't hurt to reread the Order of the Phoenix before you start this one. I didn't and I wish I had.

New music I'm listening to: The Avett Bros-wonderful banjo, stand up bass, and guitar along with a cello-Emotionalism is their new CD.

Will Mason is a young singer songwriter with an old voice in a young man's body. Beautiful lyrics in his new CD The Ocean Gets Rough.