No house progress this weekend as we were back in NY visiting family however we did get a date for insulation – this coming friday! Which means I’m going to have some busy evenings getting this ready (need to move things out of the way, need to get all the nails out of the wall, need to make sure wiring is out of the way and need to run one last switch).
It’s very exciting and I do hope it does not get delayed!
On the quilting front, I got mom’s quilt all quilted and gave it to her this weekend, I did not do the binding because after talking to her she said she could do that part. I have some curtains to make for my sister up next, then some shades and a valance. It’s good practice for my own house which isn’t quite ready for shades/curtains but I do plan to make them eventually!
I’ve post dated this so it posts after Mom has gotten her quilt so it’s a bit of a surprise, she knows I’m quilting it but doesn’t know I plan to have it done by the weekend I see her so I can give this to her. So pretend this is a Friday morning post.
Thursday night I finished up quilting the last 3 blocks on Mom’s quilt and then quickly quilted the inner border with just a wandering loopy design. I’m actually not sure what to quilt in the outer border, maybe a loopy design with some snowflakes mixed in if I’m feeling adventurous. Maybe the word snowflake and winter mixed in as well.
So here’s the quilt so far:
Blocks and inner border quilted!A close up of the blocks/border quilting
I’m hoping tonight (Friday night) I can finish up the border, and sew on the binding. Then during the drive Saturday I will whip stitch the binding down so it’s ready for her!
2 weeks in a row now I’ve gotten a little stitching time while over visiting Uncle Mark and Aunt Mo. Autumn in my Garden is coming along. I started this piece a while back. It’s on 40 count fabric and I knew I should use one strand of thread however there are blended colors so I tried 2 strands for a bit to see how I liked it – i hated it – it was tough to stitch (too dense) on the 40 count. So i pulled it all out (except for the word Autumn which is still 2 strands right now). I started over with 1 strand, the blended parts I use one color for one leg and the second color for the top leg of each stitch. I’m loving it now.
Autumn in my Garden progress
I think I want to get some scroll rods for this piece. I enjoy using them on Celtic Banner (which I haven’t stitched on in years!) and I didn’t like using the q-snaps on this piece. So I think Joann’s will be a trip I made in a night or 2. Holding this much fabric in hand is difficult and I think I’ll stitch faster with scroll rods.
Quite a snow day we had today, I made it in to work though so I must get back to it. Tonight I plan to finish quilting the snow flake blocks and tomorrow finish up the border!
We spent the weekend with family – sisters to be exact. Saturday after a trip to the dump (bye bye plaster!) we drove down to my sister’s house where I primed and painted one of their spare rooms with Aimee’s help. We also went fabric shopping for some curtains. They still have to paint the ceiling and trim but the chocolate color they picked for the walls looks great. The pictures don’t show the color too well but here it is all finished up Sunday morning:
It’s really between these two colors 🙂
Then Sunday we drove up to Ryan’s sister’s house to visit with her family. We spent hours playing with our nieces. They are so much fun, especially the two of them together. Finley just cracks up when Emily entertains her, it’s a blast to watch.
We got home around 8:30 to a pretty cold house so we spent the rest of the night upstairs where it’s warmer. Can’t wait for that insulation!
I’m not great at machine quilting but I’ve definitely gotten better than my first few tries! And only having to do 9 of these snow flake patterns is very doable. I’ll do some swirly/snowy type continuous pattern in the border when I’m done with the main blocks. This is a stencil that I’m tracing using a washable pencil.
Quilt for mom
It takes a bit of turning the quilt to make this single pattern, luckily the quilt is wall size, not bed size so I just start with the “hardest” side of each snow flake (with the most fabric folded) and move it around to the easier sides as I go along. I figure I can do a block a night next week and get this done by next weekend!
I’ve gotten a few nights now of working on crafts! It sure has been a while. Wednesday night over at Uncle Mark and Aunt Mo’s I worked on my cross stitch project while Aunt Mo quilted. Then last night I started quilting Mom’s quilt for her. I’m using my own machine and it’s not going too badly at all. I got 1 of the 9 blocks quilted 🙂
I’ll probably do a bit more quilting tonight but this weekend we’re headed down to my sister’s in CT to help paint a spare room they’ve been refinishing. I plan to hit Joann’s down there and get some new fabric too! I am definitely in a quilting/sewing mood!
And the snow is still coming down. We cleaned up the first 6 inches that hit this morning but it hasn’t stopped coming down yet. I’ll probably have to do another round of shoveling myself before Ryan gets home 🙂
It was a 3 nighter – and a good one, it was actually hard to choose where to start but I chose to start with the orange face. I left the pink face/flowers for last.
Puzzle finished
It’s been a long time since I did a puzzle, i rarely take the time to do them but I do enjoy them!
Nothing could beat Saturday, we got so much done. And sunday we didn’t even try. We slept later on Sunday, we played video games, we relaxed. It was great. I did run the vacuum through the house (including the shop vac/demo area) – to get any lingering dust. And I started a puzzle 🙂
Monday however was much more productive. First we got up early and went to the dump – it was closed – so we left and went over to get the truck serviced (oil change etc). Finally home we worked on the outside wiring, we put up the front exterior lights and put a wire for a porch fan.
Front light blocks are up!Wiring on inside for front lights and fan
Then I put 3 coats of shellac on ryan’s work table (throughout the day). That’s all ready to be used (although we have been using it already).
Ryan's work table for making cabinets
During the table shellacing, Ryan went across the street where the duplex was being auctioned – the bank ended up buying it for a crazy amount (they don’t want to lose anything) but I just don’t see how they’ll sell it for that much.
Finally we ended the evening watching some movies while I worked more on my puzzle – I got this one for Christmas and it’s very colorful!
After a nice long weekend (and it really did feel long for a change – which was great!), it’s back to work, although I am working from home today due to the snow – and it’s still snowing out! I think we’re past 6 inches now. I may have to figure out how to start the snowblower later and clean up the driveway before ryan gets home. Or I’ll leave it for him 🙂
We had a very productive day today, it started nice and early but at 8:30am it was only 3 degrees outside and a little too cold to tear down the porch ceiling. So we started with an indoor project first.
We made the blocks for the front exterior lights, then Ryan routed around the edges to make them look nice and I primed them.
Blocks being sandedRyan making the edges look niceBlock ready to be primedBlocks primed and ready to go up
Ryan even took down the siding that needed to come down while I got these primed so tomorrow or Monday we can install them (hopefully it’s a little warmer one of those days).
After the blocks were primed, we decided to do a dump run (cardboard has been piling up since xmas) and a home depot run. At home depot we bought some supplies to make a portable closet! An hour later we had this little contraption all finished up:
Portable temporary closet
I forgot to take a picture after we added the shelves to the bottom to store my shoes and our jeans. We got the closet emptied out completely and sealed the doors (closet and bedrooms) so we could demo our closet. We decided about a week ago that we should do our closet now so we could insulate the exterior wall it shares with the stair well. Also it moves our closet renovation up the priority list which we would both love.
So a few hours of demo later including cleanup, a truck full of wood, 6 bags full of plaster and our closet is no more:
Closet all demo'dAnother view of our closet
We plan to move the door so it’s centered and we can put bars on both sides of the closet with shelving along the back when we refinish it. We also got some cedar from my dad that we plan to use for the walls. Plus taking out the ceiling gives us a couple more feet of space in there (it was a low ceiling).
All this was done by 6pm (including cleanup). So we’ve settled in to relax for the night. Not too much left to get done this weekend, the electrical but we got the blocks already done which was the hardest part. Hopefully the dump is open on Monday because we have a couple loads to bring over!
I think we’re taking most of tomorrow off to relax (maybe some quilting??) but if it’s warmer we may do the outside electrical wiring to get it done. And we still have Monday off to enjoy!
Well this 3 day weekend to work on the house couldn’t come along soon enough! We should be able to wrap up the electrical now that the exterior lights arrived and we’ll be ready for insulation. And none too soon because we just filled our oil tank after one month of using the heat consistently and that was 344 gallons of oil over December – yikes!
We have someone coming today to give us a quote, hopefully they can do the spray foam when it’s this cold out. If we can’t get it done soon I may be convinced to put up some fiberglass insulation temporarily – anything to keep the breeze down in here 🙂
On a side note – hello winter – we got a raging snow storm this week. And of course our snowblower wouldn’t start! So all day Ryan tinkered on and off with it and I shoveled on and off a bit (front walk and bottom of the driveway). Finally we went and got a new sparkplug and that fixed the problem – we also changed the oil as it needed it. So by 5pm we were snowblowing the 2 ft of snow that had fallen – not an easy feat! But alas it was done and now our snowblower is happy again (we hope).
So 3 day weekend here we come, got some old projects to wrap up (wiring) and some new projects (demo the closet) all in prep for insulation. Hopefully we’ll get a little relaxing time too. Man my hands are cold – back to work!
