Yesterday's quilting project

This was yesterday's quilting effort:



A cute little Dick and Jane quilt, about 51 in. square, made by a friend.

I quilted it with the "Bubbles" pantograph....a happy pattern for a happy little quilt.

Day not going quite as planned

Actually, things not going as planned started last night. I decided it was time to ditch the Eudora e-mail client since it's been discontinued and hasn't been updated in at least four years. So I did a Google search for new clients and started trying them out. One of them decided to re-send all the old e-mails that were still in my "sent" file. So, if anyone's had a strange message from me, it's not because of a virus and you're not crazy, it's just an e-mail program gone berserk. I finally settled on Thunderbird, it's improved some since the last time I tried it and I'm determined to get used to it. I tried IncrediMail. I guess it's cute but all that cuteness got annoying real fast.....like in half an hour. There was one called Nirvana and I thought it would be really cool to have an e-mail program called Nirvana, but it's not available for download yet. Bummer.

This morning I got a bunch of red, blue, white/cream fabrics out to start working on some patriotic string signature blocks when I realized my cat was having a problem that turned out to be bladder infection so I had to take her to the vet...the closest is about 25 mi. away. She had to get into a pet carrier, ride in a car to a strange place.......and strangers touched her. My God, you should have heard the protests. After listening to the protests all the way there I expected her to try to take someone's arm off trying to get her out of the carrier, but no, once she's there she's perfectly composed, doesn't try to escape or anything. Never protested being squeezed and prodded by the vet. Didn't even seem to notice the shot. Always amazes me.

Now back to the blocks and then it'll be time to make supper.

Progress

The next step of the QOV quilt done. Now it's on to pressing and slicing/dicing.



Finished 22 out of 24 last night & whipped out the last two this morning. For some reason when I was cutting fabric I was thinking 30 blocks instead of 24 so I have pieces for another 17 blocks cut. The start of another quilt???

I find if I keep posting here it keeps me motivated to get the next step done. Prepare to be bored.

Now I have to go quilt a customer quilt. I've been pushing buttons this morning and need to earn some money to pay for it all. Be prepared to see a mountain of fabric soon.(And I had just emptied out ONE space on my shelves.)Maybe I should be making the effort to find a few more customers. LOLOL

Busy Sunday

It was clear out and the sun was shining this morning, so I knew it would be a good day. Certainly a major improvement over the clouds and cold northwest wind of yesterday.

I delivered the two QAYG quilts to the benefit for the family who had the house fire two weeks ago and ate a late breakfast there. Then home to do a few chores(there's always the dishwasher to unload & load again, and there's always cat hair to vacuum up) and fix my DH some fish for lunch. He could have gone with me to the benefit but he'd rather tinker with his lawn mowers.

After lunch I decided I had some sort of bug on my laptop so started running tools to clean that off. Every one of those fake anti-virus bugs is different, this one changed the DNS server setting. While that was happening I worked on cutting out my next quilt:



I'll let you guess what this will be. I've already found the next quilt I want to try after this one....a strip quilt variation that looks like fun. I also have the main fabrics piled up for Bonnie Hunter's Orange Crush......so many projects, so little time.

Oh, yeah. I also got a quilt loaded on the Premier. It's been awhile. I had to partially re-thread the machine and had to get out the manual. LOLOL

2nd QAYG finished

Friday I finished the 2nd QAYG quilt from blocks we brought home from the sew-in last week.




The sashing looks kind of pink in the photo, but it's kind of a cream/tan tone-on-tone. Last night I printed out some Heartstrings labels and tonight I stuck them on with Heat 'n Bond. Cheating I know, but Ole Arthur is making my fingers hurt to much for hand sewing. It'll have to do.

Tomorrow I'll take them to the fundraiser for the family whose home burned and that project will be done.

What next? Maybe put together the Bricks & Stepping Stones I started will over a year ago? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Heartstrings QAYG finished

Jennie and I each brought a set of QAYG blocks home from the sew-in last Saturday to finish for the family who lost their home to fire. I buckled down and got this one finished today.



This is the first one of these QAYG quilts I have put together and it took some concentration. Sewing with wrong sides together goes contrary to everything I've been taught in 40 some years of sewing.

Going somewhere and sewing with friends is lots of fun but it's so much easier to work at home with the sewing machine setting down in its cabinet so there's a flat surface to the left. Everything "pulls" when the machine sets up on a table.

Weenie Roast Anyone???

Today's main event in my neighborhood was the Fire Dept. burning down an old house just across the backyards from mine.



A dear, older friend lived there for years. It had sat empty for a few years after she had to go to a nursing home and with just a dirt cellar under it the floors had rotted and the last renters trashed it. I suppose it's best that it's gone but it will take a while to get used to the empty spot across the yards.

Great Quilting Day

National Quilting Day started out dark and early at 5am to leave for Fremont by 6am for the Heartstrings Nebraska sew-in at Keene Memorial Library. For the first day of Spring it felt pretty un-Spring-like with the cold wind. Still, we had a good turn-out with quilters from SD, MN, KS/MO and even Hawaii as well as Nebraskans.

We had a fun and productive day working on QAYG blocks and setting tops together, Jay served an excellent lunch, and a few of us made a trip to the quilt shop. We drooled over the quilting machines on display, admired all the wonderful fabrics and demonstrated considerable restraint in purchasing. :-)

Being a librarian, I had to take a little self-guided tour of the library and visited with one of the staff a little bit. I intended to get back up to the genealogy section to look through a couple of the Germans to America books, but that didn't happen. Maybe next time.

Here are a few pictures of our hard-working group. Mary has some on her blog so I'll try not to post repeats. Others will probably show up on other blogs as well.









Darn, I see I didn't get a picture of our host, but I know he's in a couple of the pictures on Mary's blog.

I enjoyed meeting a great bunch of quilters and working on a worthwhile project. I don't get up at 5am for just anything!!!!

Sewed...........sad ocassion

The good news............I sewed Saturday after work. The bad news..............it was blocks for a quilt for a family who had a house fire that afternoon. They are all safe......they were at the State basketball tournament in Lincoln. My brother-in-law the Fire Chief thinks the house is most likely beyond repair. Later in the evening they were moving some things out, but who knows what was salvageable.... the fire probably smoldered for quit a while and the house was completely filled with oily black smoke by the time the firemen got in and I could see flames in the dining room through the bay window about that time. Sad, sad day.

Winter Wonderland.......again

This is what my world looked like when I came home from work around 3pm:

And here's some snow with action:

It's still snowing, but much lighter now. It was really pretty for awhile. Don't you find it amazing that I can still fine snow pretty after all we've had this winter?

Pink!!!!!!

I have no idea why this picture turned out so pink. Must have had something to do with the lighting and the pale pink cutting mat interacting with the flash. Yeah, that must be it. At least, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

That little computer on the right is what I spent most of my day working on today. Isn't it cute? It wouldn't boot up any more so it's mama brought it to me. The whole operation would have gone pretty well if the driver disk would have worked in my external DVD drive. You know how you used to get that driver disk with all computers and never used it because everything was included on the Windows disk? Well, on these little guys you need it. Otherwise no sound, no wi-fi, no ethernet, no graphics adjustments...in other words, lots of things don't work without those drivers. Sooooooo....after a certain amount of stubborn-ness and frustration I used my laptop to search the Internet for the drivers, downloaded them, burned them to a disk that would work in the DVD drive and got them installed. Whew. Then added anti-virus, anti-spyware, Adobe Reader, Flash, Shockwave and Windows updates. Finally done!!

These little things are cute but not all that practical for everyday use. They don't have CD-ROM or DVD drives and this one only has a 8GB hard-drive. Typing on it is tricky....everything is kind of scrunched together, the shift keys are small and some keys are in different places.  My old laptop looks huge and cumbersome beside the little cutie but I think I'll stick with it. Much more practical for the things I do.

I got to play with a little netbook and tomorrow it can go back to it's mama....we'll both be happy.