Wednesday, May 15, 2019

And yet another change of plans

All my plans for cleaning the sewing room have changed.  I had planned on cleaning the sewing room and organizing scraps and fabric.  And then when my daughter is done teaching pre-school and before her kids are out of school, she was going to paint my basement.  (She loves to paint - I hate to paint!).
But now, she's having a total knee replacement on June 5 and will be out of commission for 6-8 weeks.
So, this is what one part of the basement looks like:
So, now my tentative plans (and definitely not writing them in stone!) is to do a little bit of painting and put everything back together in that section and move to another wall!  In between, I'm having another big tree taken down and having 3 flowering crab trees planted in that area, and my mowing people are going to rip out the shrubs around the house and rebuild the areas for planting flowers and new shrubs - which probably would have been done by now but we've had such a cold, wet (including snow) spring that nothing is happening.  I also have two wooden outside rockers that need sanded down and painted and a garden bench that also needs painting.  If I can get the rockers sanded, I can enlist my youngest grandson (9) to paint them - apparently he's like his mother and loves to paint!
Oh, and in between, I have homeless quilts to quilt, 4 applique quilts to quilt, and two club projects to make and quilt.
Until the next change in plans....blessings!
 

Monday, May 06, 2019

Getting something accomplished

I spent the afternoon in the sewing room.  I managed to quilt one baby quilt and load another to quilt tomorrow.  Then I started working on those lavender shoo fly blocks.  I put them together, even got borders on and a binding made:

 I used up the shoo fly blocks, used up the dark purple fabric and most of the bubble fabric.  Sewing room is still a disaster area, but I'm feeling good about using up orphan blocks and fabrics!  That is the goal this year!
Until next time....blessings.

Saturday, May 04, 2019

Sewing Room

Well, today was the day I started the major cleanup of the sewing room! Actually, just a few hours this afternoon, since I went to Mikey's soccer game (he scored the first goal!) and then they took me to lunch!

This is what my big table looked like before I started cleaning.  
This is what the goal is!  The big bin on the right holds orphan blocks and I have added to it today and also have made some decisions on emptying it.  Thankfully, we make quilts for the homeless -- 60"x80" quilts, so the goal is to use up the orphans and the scraps and make quilts. I had bins of scraps on the table and now I will be cleaning out those bins.  I did empty one small bin today.
This is my cutting table and this is not acceptable!  I have to clean this table off so I have a place to cut all the scraps.  I was pressing scraps and started sorting them, but didn't come close to finishing that!
This is the pool table and it is also not acceptable!  I need to do some major sorting.
The printers tray on the corner held a lot of applique thread and one day about a month ago it fell off the wall!  I found it on the floor with thread everywhere.  It will go back up on the wall after the wall is painted and it will be screwed in more securely for sure!
A couple of months ago I picked up a free pkg at the quilt shop - it had the fabric and some triangle paper in it, so I made up the half square triangles and 3 of the shoo fly blocks and the rest sat there til today.  Today I finished making the rest of the blocks for a total of 10 shoo fly blocks.  There, of course is no extra fabric and since I'm working hard to use up stuff, I designed a quick kids quilt with some print fabric squares alternating with these.  Problem is, I need at least 2 more shoo fly blocks, so I'll use some different fabric and put them in the center, just like it was planned!  haha
Anyway, I also put the borders on a quilt on my design wall, and I have a few quilts now to quilt, so the rest of the work will be done while I quilt homeless quilts.  Ultimate goal this year will be to use up all the scraps I have laying around and then to start using donated fabric and a lot of my own stash -- it has aged long enough!
Until next time.....blessings.


 
 

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Making Plans

Thomas Rhett has a line in a song that goes something like, "You can hear God laughing while you're making plans".  So true!
 I think the plan is to never have a true spring or summer -- just an extension of winter all year!  Weather has been so weird all over the country.  And it affected my plans.  
I never did finish decluttering the storage area.  I've cleaned the sewing room a couple of times, but it's a total disaster right now!
This is what has been accomplished:
This playset was here attached to the deck, when I moved in.  Since my grandsons are older now, Mikey is 8, almost 9, and they don't come over here that often, it was a waste of wood and space.
So, Steph put an ad in her neighborhood paper and a guy and his 10 yr old, with the help of my son-in-law, took it apart and hauled it away.  The guy and his kid are going to make a tree house with it!
 And now I have an empty corner of my deck.  The whole deck needs to be replaced, but not any time soon.  I did spend a day shoveling sand: from the deck to in front of the shed.
My sil, Aaron will come by some weekend and get rid of the three sheets of plywood that the whole sandbox was on.  And I spent another day outside burning sticks:
I get a lot of brush and sticks that fall all around the back yard.  I don't use the fire pit for bonfires anyway -- might as well put it to good use.
So, that is what I was doing the two really nice days we had -- apparently that was spring, because then we had snow, twice! And this week it has done nothing but rain.
All my big plans to get the basement cleaned and decluttered have fallen by the wayside, but I have to find the energy to finish the job -- first because I can't even sew until I clean up the mess I have down there! And second, because I want to paint the rooms down there!
Until next time.....blessings.