Thursday, October 6, 2011

Taking a break...unintentionally

Our desktop took a nap with the fishes and it is talking Mr. T a little longer than usual to bring it back from the depths. What with the AC going out, sealing the leak in the roof before winter arrives, general fall cleanup, and little safety projects here and there (like covering the gap the previous owners left between the basement stars and the wall they built, that is just perfect size for a T child to fall through), finishing the special project he did for the boys and working 40+ hours a week.

So with all that to do, recovering pictures and user friendly options ( I hate the finger mouse thing on the laptop), I might not make another post for a while. I have lots of things to post, but until I can easily post them with photos it is not worth my aggravation. Hopefully I will be back in short time, but I am guessing it will be a few weeks at least. Thank you for your patience. TTFN.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

King sized quilt for me...and Mr. T too.


I have been working on this quilt for what seems like years, though it has only been about 9 months.

However, I have been saving fabirc pieces for nearly a decade for the "someday" quilt. Well folks, someday has arrived. This post is actually a few months overdue, the finished quilt has been on our bed for more than a month. I am a bit behind what with thefood preservation, garden cleanup, MAT's tonsillectomy, DOT's learning to walk, tattoo coloring, and other general life things. 

Anyway. This quilt has been slow going and a whole lot of fun.
 I don't have any pictures of the piecing, mostly because it was done in our dungeon basement and the light is no good there. But here is the finished top quilt, the bottom sheet (literally a king sized sheet, for $5 is far more durable and cheaper than quilters cotton at that with and length) and the batting is two polyester twin size blankets that are no in good enough shape for the boys to use but will be just fine once quilted. The coffee mug holds my fantastic curved safety pins. Ask me how much I love curved safety pins... SO MUCH. They are much easier for this big ole fingers to work with than straight ones.

Watermelon is my constant sewing pain in the ass helper. So much so I often have to banish her from the working area. She is super cute though.

To get started I cleaned out my kitchen furniture, swept the floor and laid the bottom sheet. Then I found tape, I was looking for duct tape but only found electrical, oh well still sticky. I taped the bottom sheet down.
 Then I laid my batting ( the poly blankets)
THEN I locked the cat in the basement, and RELAID the poly batting and then laid the quilt top over that and secured it with tape.




On to the pinning! PIN ALL THE THINGS!

After it is all pinned and secure some would hand baste.  I am not some. I do not have the patience for this. So I started folding. And then someone opened the basement door and this happened. It was still flat till the tornado cat decided to ball it up for a nap.










So once again Watermelon was whisked away to her room and I folded it up, and stored it in a bin in my workroom, for 4 months. Yes, thats right. Then 2 months ago I got the itch, about the time I did the receiving blanket quilts, I decided to hand tie this quilt too. I will most likely go back and hand quilt it since I now have a quilt frame, Thanks MOM!

So, its been a while from start to...mostly finished, but it is done-ish, and I love it. So does Watermelon.