September 2010

I feel like I was barely home for the last two days.  On Thursday I drove into North Little Rock to meet my daughter for lunch and shopping.  We went to a Greek place, my son-in-law wanted to come to lunch too so he joined us for short while then he went his way and my daughter and I spent the day wandering from shop to shop.  Mel is the “queen” of bargan shopping.  She loves going through the “Good Will” type of stores and can find bargains like you wouldn’t believe.  She has a jacket that she bought last week at a store called Savers (a used clothing store) that still had the tags on it – it was brand new and someone donated it – the tag said it was $320.00 from Saks Fifth Avenue and she got it for under $10. a really nice black short jacket.   We didn’t find any deals like that on Thursday – I thought I found a good one for a short while a really good pair of jeans that I know sells at $80 and they only wanted $5 and didn’t look like they had even been worn but they were too big and I am not good at altering jeans   I did find a new pair of Capri’s on sale at Belks for $4.98 marked down from the original $40 – I grabbed those after I tried them on and they fit!

On Friday I went to the all day quilting group a combination of three different quilting/sewing groups were there.  But it rained and rained and I think a combination of weather and sickness kept some people home so we topped off at 10 people.  Because of that we did all of our sewing in the small room and used the big room next door to lay out all of the quilts to see what people had.

I don’t have names of who made what but here are some of the quilts:

#1

#2

#3, I love this wild looking print of the black, red and white. this one just needs the binding on it now.

#4 another of the same type of design – a lot of times the Friday morning group all work on the same pattern and change little bits here and there to suit them.

#5, this is a mystery quilt that some of the ladies have been working on – I believe there were two more being made at the tables while we were sewing but I didn’t get photos.

#6 – the work area as you can see from the sewing machines.  We ordered pizza and went into the large room next to us to eat.  If we had a larger group we would have set up in that room instead or over flowed into it.  My stuff is in the lower right hand corner.  I brought my little featherweight machine with me and worked on the final 20 blocks for the Bow Tie Medallion.  Glad to report that I am finished with those blocks – now I just need to square them up a little.  Featherweights are quite popular it seems (I wonder why ) one on both sides of me although one was still in it’s box, I wish I would have remembered to take a photo – she had a pretty lime green painted one.

All of the blocks stuffed in my box – I sure hope I have counted right and they are all here!!  I do not want to cut more but I’m glad to say I still have a little bit of fabric leftover.

All in all it was a good day but I can’t sit and sew all day, my back was killing me by 2 and I was getting stiff, I excused myself and went and got my grocery shopping done as the rain had stopped and got them home and plenty of time to stretch out a bit before we went out to supper.

Today it is working around the house and yard with Mike and I do not know if I will even touch any sewing until this evening!

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and happy birthday to those of you who share the same day or very near to it!

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I have been really busy this past week working on the bow tie blocks.  I am now done with the large bow tie blocks and need to get the 20 blocks cut that I had miscounted and had run short of and then sew them together.

Here is how I work on these blocks – I do not necessarily like assembly line work but sometimes it is a lot faster to do it that way then work on one block at a time.  I keep all of my colors in order so that each step goes quicker.

First I attach all of the little “knots” for the bow tie:

The long string of work – this will end up making 36 blocks:

Trim the access off and square up if necessary:

Get the assembly line going again.  It makes it much, much easier if you keep your colors stacked up exactly how you need them to assemble the final blocks.

Get busy sewing:

After you get done with this part, press to the color side and using one pin I’m ready for the final steps.

Press the final blocks open and you are done!!

Well  other than the miscounted 20 blocks that I am missing I am done – so that means I am not done! darn it   I will bring that fabric and cutting equipment with me on Friday.  Two sewing groups are combining on Friday for an all day sew in at the church where the Friday morning quilters sew – I use to go to that group on a really regular basis, then I got side tracked and have not gone to it in over a year or so – maybe even two at the rate time seems to fly.  The other group meeting is the group that meets the first Thursday night of the month which I go to most every month. I believe that it is possible that some of the guild members might show up too – how many I do not know – I will bring my camera as there are certain to be some nice eye candy to share.

Tomorrow will be a day off of sewing as my daughter that lives in North Little Rock gave me a call and wanted to have a “girl day” – she is off work tomorrow so I am meeting her at her house and we will go to lunch ( a treat for my birthday a day early) and do some shopping.  Better to do it now because as it gets closer to the holidays I do not see much of her as she is one of the assistant managers at J.C.Penney and they work them hard as the holidays get closer!

I will get the design wall out next week and start figuring out color placement and design layout.

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