update

I'm sure all y'all are interested inwhat I accomplished yesterday....Of the list projects I:

• Got the table cleaned off!
• trimmed the 2 quilts
• tried to quilt the quilt in the frame...messed up and basted it so I can put it in my lap to do the ripping

I ended up making a dozen calls looking for a bilingual worker for the polls on Tuesday.

I had a very relaxing day, really although I ran to the quilt store to get the thread for the Halloween quilt I decided not to try to finish it since the spotty dotty is of a higher priority...that baby is coming whether or not I finish.

I stopped at Half -Price Books and got my first item for my Christmas list! :)

Then....I stopped at my fav thrift store....and Yes I bought a piece of wool....and some large buttons (they were attached to a dress).

I stayed home from the football and had all evening to myself. :) It was peaceful and wonderful.

Grandkids---Gone

So, with the grandkids gone the Grandma has lots of time to play...of course my ideas will never fit in the allotted time....

So here's some pictures of projects laying around that I'd like to finish...today:

Finish quilting the quilt in the long arm; or at least get it stabilized so I can take it off and finish a different project.

This is my stack of 'I Spy' squares; 25 different fabric most have 9 squares. I need to cut and sew the triangles to each corner. I did decide which ones get black and which get black...and how much fabric I need to buy for those corners...

My Work in Slow Progress project for October; quilt the border of this 'finished' quilt. It's the quickest project I could come up with for October. But I'll need to go to the store to get the right color thread....

Trim a customer quilt..easy but the table has to be cleaned off first.

Charity Quilt to be trimmed. The table again...

And Monday is the last day to turn in a block that hasn't been designed yet to quilt guild.

I really should finish the baby quilt that I demonstrated last month...

You noticed not a single project included the HOUSE; 'cept getting the table cleaned off so I could use it to trim a quilt.

Return to your regularly scheduled blog (HA!) for updates on these and other exciting projects tomorrow...

to work...

tutorial

I promised a tutorial on my spotty, dotty quilt project that I demonstrated at my Quilt Guild almost a month ago. I thought it would be a quick thing to post but I didn't get done before Quilt Market and Festival. It's such a simple block it should have written itself....but it didn't. Go to my other blog; thequilterupstairs.com if you're interested.

Stash Report

So sad, but my totals are not as 'bad' as Judy's. I purchased 24 fat quarters at quilt festival last week for the I spy quilts I'm making for my girls' babies. That equals 6 yards. Nothing finished; well I did mend several things but I guess I can't count them.

I purchased 8 1/8 yard cuts for the baby's quilts.

I made a Halloween costume for my grandson but ALL of the fabric came from Walmart and was never in my stash. Yesterday while cleaning out I found the perfect brown linen for it...but too late, he's stuck with a brown flannel dog costume. I was cleaning out my linen stash; all but one piece from a thrift store garment, and found pieces to make real quick shopping bags when my family leaves.

Yes, the grandchildren that have been living with us for 6 months go home this week! It will be so sad, but so exciting to have just 'daddy and mommy and brother in our own house!' as I've heard Jimmy say almost every time he gets mad at me for months. ;)

Stash report:

in: 7 yards

out: 0

year to date:

in:57.75

out:103.25

wool

My daughter-in-law is helping me make the sewing room more usable. Which means I have to get rid of the bins of wool that I have collected for 10 years....If I'm going to be able to quilt...

Sailboat Quilt

This is a fun little quilt that I just quilted for someone. I bet it's a boy that is due this month. Lucky boy to have a grandma to make this.

more...

Today I took 2 quilting classes. Both very nice then I had an hour at Quilt Market with a camera with fresh batteries! 96 pictures taken in about an hour.

This one is small but I enjoyed it because it is a genealogical quilt; called 'Bridal Village' by Karen Eckmeier. She included pictures of several generations of wedding photos from her family.

This one is fabulous! 'Animal Book' by Megumi Mizuna of Japan. The small animals are so well done and although the label said it was made out of cotton the texture made me think it was wool. Of course they keep you from getting very close to the quilt, or touching it. I wonder if I could sit in a chair in front of this one with a white glove on and study it.

Sadly tomorrow I have a class but the exhibit is closed until Wednesday evening so I won't get to wander more of the aisles and see the rest of the exhibit until my lunch hour on Thursday.

Quilt Market

This will be a bit anticlimactic... I couldn't do justice to market; but mainly because the quilts were so fabulous in the exhibit. I went Saturday mainly to see the exhibit but got caught up in the shopping... I didn't buy a thing but found it very interesting. When I finally made it to the exhibit I was very impressed with many quilts. Unfortunately the batteries died on the camera before I took very many pictures but here are a few:

This is a delightful, charming quilt made by Sieglinde Schoen Smith. She calls it 'Once Upon a Christmas Night.' The style is very much like her 'Mother Earth and her Children' that won best of show in 2006.

This quilt caught my eye from across the room. It's called 'Sampler with Yellow' and was pieced in the mid 1800's and quilted in 2003 by Kathy Colvin. This one I could actually piece; all those triangles would make me hesitate though. It looks kind of like a mosaic.

I'll post a few more in a couple of days.

freezer meals

My daughter asked for suggestions for freezer meals so here's a list:

• Homemade ravioli freezes well ;)
• Lasagna
• enchiladas
• soups
• spanakopita yes, I made this recipe and froze them for when company was coming.
• pizza, no I haven't tried this.
• cookies and muffins would be good frozen too

One friend froze her own tv dinners in divided trays; so her enchiladas would have some beans and rice and vegetables too. Since there were only 2 of them when a meal was fixed mini versions were frozen so they didn''t have the same thing every night.

flu shot

Yesterday I decided that if Andrew was to get a flu shot I'd let him pick which class to miss. He chose P.E. So I picked him up at 1:44 and went to CVS for his shot. I got home at 5:00! Now I need to get Jeffrey for his shot....not looking forward to it, maybe tomorrow.

to do

today's to do list

• quilt a customer's quilt; after putting it in the frame wrong and redoing it.
• drive 30 minutes to get to the fabric store I was at 2 days ago and get thread for customer's quilt...forget purse...
• put sleeves in friends sleeveless bridesmaid dress after putting one sleeve in wrong, twice!
• design and sew a red satin 'dickey' for same dress (it's toooo low.)
• rewash load of laundry that's been in the washer 2 days.
• fold 8 loads of laundry
• go grocery shopping; forget milk and bananas
• cook chicken rice soup for dinner...not done yet but surely I'll mess that up too.
• entertain 3 year old while doing all of the above...really he is such a good kid that he entertains himself with whatever is available in the room as long as he can talk to you and ask 100 questions about everything.
• maybe, just maybe, I'll get the kitchen floor swept!
• for fun I'll sew 1 quilt block for each girls' baby quilt.

Design wall

I finally have something on my Design Wall on Monday morning!

This is what I'm working on:

Ignore the quilt behind... This may be 2 quilts.... one with the colored circles and another with the black and white circles... With 2 grandkids due in the next 7 months I need to get busy.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

Reed was here this weekend and we enjoyed having him around. What with listening to conference 10 hours we didn't do anything exciting...I didn't even fix the meals I normally do when family visits. My appetizers that I normally put out for conference were purchased at the store. I did make a batch of cookies each day; pumpkin chocolate chip for Saturday and chocolate chip oatmeal on Sunday; Tyler wanted them BIG, so they are too big to eat a whole cookie; I used the ice-cream scoop to measure the amount.

Jeffrey was at a band competition ALL DAY! 9:30-9:30. Luckily they fed them. The band came in 6th; so they did a good job.

Just an update...I'm sure you're wondering what's going on with the red quilt.... 100% done with the repair of the finished and started blocks. Now I have 32 MORE blocks to make but with quilt market/festival coming this week and next I'll have no time to work on them. I also have some

• quilting to do
• machine quilting class to prepare
• house to clean
• science fair project to help with
• young child to play with...discipline, nap with...etc.
• meals to plan and prepare; for when I'm too busy next week.

Did you notice the machine quilting class to prepare for? That's tonight and yes, it meant that I HAD to start a new quilt. So I worked on 'the baby's quilt' Don't know yet if it's for Liz's or Melissa's yet.

Roger's had a major allergy attack so definitely no tomatoes in anything I cook until a frost, no lettuce, cucumbers, sunflower seeds, or cantaloupe either. (He's allergic to ragweed but these other things are close enough chemically to make it worse.)

Here's the pumpkin cookie recipe...it's really cake made thin and cut into bars.

PUMPKIN-CHOCOLATE CHIP BARS

Made first in 1990-very good.

Better Homes and Garden Cookies for Christmas ©1985

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

4 beaten eggs

1 16-ounce can pumpkin

1 ½ cups sugar

¼ cup cooking oil

1 6-ounce package (1cup) semisweet chocolate pieces

3 tablespoons sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Stir together flour, baking powder, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, baking soda, and salt. In a medium mixing bowl combine eggs, pumpkin, 1 ½ cups sugar, and oil. Add flour mixture and mix just till moistened. Stir in chocolate pieces.

Spread in an ungreased 15x 10 x 1-inch baking pan. Stir together 3 tablespoons sugar and ½ teaspoon cinnamon sprinkle evenly over batter. Bake in a 350º oven for 25 to 30 minutes or till done. Cool. Cut into bars. Makes 36. I always cut them into diamond shapes 'cause the picture in the cookbook has them cut that way.

Everyone loves these. This time I had a smidgen of chocolate frosting in the fridge that I warmed up and drizzled on top.

OPAM

I FINISHED AUGUST'S project! I learned a lot doing this quilt.

• How to stabilize a quilt so it can go in and out the frame easily.
• How to digitize a drawing using my new program; Pro-Q designer.
• How to do add a spiral to my feather.
• How to do the 'formal feathers' instead of the informal feather's I've been doing.
• My 'line dancing' got better.
• I did some 'design with lines' in a couple of blocks.
• I learned that I could use Isacord thread; I'd tried it before unsuccessfully (I had the machine threaded wrong.)
• I recognized the sound the machine makes when it needs oil.
• I repaired the in-coder so my machine would work....oh yeah, Jeffrey, Roger and Mike at ABM helped.
• I tried a different binding; it's sewn in the ditch by machine in front; with the back prepared with school glue to hold it so it will be attached when sewing from the front. The fabric was a bit wimpy; I will try it again with either heavily starched fabric and/or lengthwise grain cut binding.
• I learned to rip more efficiently. ;)

I like the quilting on this block the best.

I finished at 11:25 p.m. on the last day of the month!

edit; This was started the year before Melissa go married, 2001?