Just so you know!

It is 2 months to Christmas!!!
I'm at work and it is going well I just took a few minutes to check my favorite blogs!
Back to work now.

Sunday Quilting Upate

I'm doing this early today because there will be no quilting today. As a matter of fact there hasn't been too much done this week. I have been working long hours from 10 AM to 8 PM at a hospital that is an hour and a half away from my home. My job is to train and to be at the elbow support for physicians learning how to use an EMR, or electronic medical record. I have to leave in a little while to go to work on the West side of town. I don't usually work on Sunday but this is go-live time (it is the first few weeks of using the new record, so we are providing 24/7 support.



The little bit of quilting I was able to accomplish this week was last Sunday, a little on Monday and a little yesterday. I did some detail quilting on these Dear Jane blocks on my DJ Boo Swap Halloween Quilt. It won't be done in time for Halloween this year, but I have made real progress on it.



The blocks in all four corners are quilted, This one corner was done partcially on the frame and my table top machine. My frame machine doesn't like Sulky thread but I do and my table top machine works well with it.


I wish the quilting showed better in the pictures. One of my photography friends is going to give me some pointers. One of these days.



I also did some in the ditch quilting in different areas. The last part to tackle will be my spider webs I have planned for the open spaces.

The week before I forgot to mention I finished both of Kierra's window quilts. I'm not posting pictures because they are so boring and don't look very different from when I finished quilting them, now they just have binding on them. It is kind of funny how many mistakes I made on the plain red one with dark gray binding. First I cut the back too small, then I sewed the binding on the back and rolled it over to the front to hand sew it, I left it that way since the rolled over part is a little bigger and will show more. Lucky for me my points all turned out good. Give me a complicated quilt any day.

Well off to work I go.

Cool pictures of space

If you like beautiful pictures of space and some uplifting thoughts check this link out. This one is called The Carina Nebula: Star Birth in the Extreme.
In the article you can click on the pictures and see the larger version. These must be mind blowing amazing when enlarged to feet. The largest picture was blown up to 4feet by 7 feet.
Enjoy!

http://www.ldsmag.com/churchupdate/091023heavens.html

Arranging Furniture for a Room in EQ6

I'm on an email list for EQ6, the quilting software. One of the list members posted a question on how would you plan furniture for a room. I did this quick little quilt drawing and wrote these really quick instructions to give her an idea of how to this. I wanted a place to show her the picture, so here it is.
1. New Quilt
2. Use a custom quilt setting
3. Size it the same size as your room. For example my Hobby room is 30 x 10 ft, so I would my EQ6 room 30" x 10".
4. I would measure the space my furniture takes up. Example for quilting frame is 10 ft x 4 feet so it would equal 10" x 4" I would make that a block and color it.
5. I would make blocks to represent each piece of furniture and move them around in my room until I had the placement I want. You can also copy & paste blocks and re-size them to make your furniture.
6. Realize this is a bird's eye view of your room.

If I wasn't so tired I might make the directions a little clearer, but I need to go bed now to get ready for another busy day at work tomorrow.

Yes this is pretty much how my furniture is placed in our hobby room. There are pictures of the hobby room at my webshots link on the side bar if you want to see the real thing.

I hope this helps and stimulates some imagination. Have fun!

Wedding Invitation

Kierra sent us her wedding invitation today. She was going to send them in the mail but she didn't like how they looked printed. So she sent them electronically. This is the front.

Here is what is written on it, encase you can't read the scary print.

You are invited to the Union of Souls between:

William D. Salsbery

and

Kierra Bowden

Vampire Wedding Attire required

October 31st, 2009
11:00 PM


Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel
Main Chapel
1205 Las Vegas Boulevard South
Las Vegas, NV 89104

Here is the back, to bad the picture is a little out of focus and the red coloring makes it hard to seem them, the important people. She is really prettier then this photo shows.



If you are unable to attend, you can watch the wedding live online at exactly 11pm on Sat Oct 31!
You will need Real Player to view the Wedding

Go to: vivalasvegasweddings.com
click on: Themed Weddings on the Left side
click on: Live web cam on the top of the page
Click on: Main chapel

It will download the live wedding cam.

I'm hoping to get a copy of the video to show my friends at work.

My friend who is making my dress is making good progress on it, so I'll be all decked out for the special occasion. My husband even found me a wig to wear, with long black hair with red streaks. It's like Kierra's hair cut only longer. My husband things it will be really funny for me to wear it. I hope Kierra will like it, but I never know with her. My husband also has his vampire outfit ready. We are just going to have pale faces and I'm not doing the black around the eyes either.

Is this the wedding I want for our daughter? No it isn't but I'm glad she will be married and she seems happy. I'm just trying to show my love and support.

A Day Trip

I came home from work on Friday totally stressed. I suggested we take a day trip for a change of scenery to refresh me. So we got in the car and drove. We drove from Mesa over to Wickenburg on to Jerome a mining ghost town, which was packed. On to Pine, Payson and back into the Valley of the Sun.
I took pictures while we went about, some times Richard would even stop and let me out to take pictures, most where done from a speeding car. Of the 40 plus pictures I took here are my 11 favorites.
As we were going to past Lake Pleasant I said it looks dusty, my DH laughed his head off and said, "Of course it is dusty, we live in a desert". What I was trying to say is I missed the clean crisp colors of Florida the lush green and other colors. At least the sky was clear blue.
While he drove we listened to music and sang and talked, we told each other some more stories of our lives. We both live very much in the present so we don't really talk about our lives before we were a couple. I had lived a lot of life before I meet him when I was 43. I also knitted two baby hats on a circle loom for humanitarian services, I like to do that when we drive, I don't get so restless and I feel I have accomplished something.

Quilting Update

Here are some of my blocks from part 8 of the Washington Medallion quilt I'm working on. There are really 12 pinwheels, so this is only a part of the whole group.




Well this DJ Boo Swap Quilt has many first in it. The first free form quilt, no traditional settings. The first one I basted on my frame and I also did some quilting on it while it was on the frame. The first one I floated both the batting and the top, it worked well. For you non quilters it basically means I let the top and backing hang except for the top edges. I do need to do some squaring up but I'll wait until it is completely quilted. My sides aren't straight and neither is the bottom, but I'll worry about that later. That is part of the reason why I added extra fabric on the sides. Hey it's my first quilt with out measurements, just guess work. I don't do perfect!


This is a close up of the diagonal strip, I quilted very tight in the purple triangles and it really makes those 4.5" blocks pop! Too bad you can't see it well in this picture. I wish I knew how to take better close up of my quilts.



These are the center blocks, I just quilted the green in them while it was on the frame and basted the rest of that area. These show up good but the other blocks I took close ups didn't turn out at all.



This morning when we had the back door open to enjoy the early morning cool air this is what we saw. The goat belongs to Klint & Krystal who came back home to live with us. They brought some extra pets. The cat is mine. The were together for a few minutes until the goat hit her head on the security door.

A Cool Blog I Found

OK I have been spending a little more time then usual in blogsville today but I have found some interesting blogs. Like this one. 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs
Since I have a frame I usually quilt at my frame but some times on little pieces I sit at my table top machine. I'm always wishing I had a new idea for a design. Let's face it meandering, stippling and loop de loops can get old. Well I just found the answer to my wish. Maybe with a little (really a lot of) practice I can convert some of these designs over to do on my frame.
Have fun!!

Go Check out Kim's Giveaway

Kim at Bitty, Bits and Pieces
one of my favorite blogs also does tutorials for Moda Bake Shop. She does excellent tutorials. Her instructions are clear and precise and has lots of pictures. I have made one of her projects before, the Charmed Bag. Anyway Kim is having a giveaway of her newest project, so go check it out. Be sure to see the instructs for all the project pieces at the Moda Bake Shop. The post just before the giveaway has a wonderful Pumpkin Spice recipe, I printed that off also. It sounds so Yummy!!
I can see this project in fabric for every season, Christmas, Americana, florals for spring. Too many ideas and not enough time!!

OK let's see...

...how long it takes for Richard to notice his fall curtains are up over his desk. He is out tonight and I finished the fall valences and curtains and hung them at the window by his desk. I'm going to wait and see how long it takes him to notice.
Here they are from the kitchen.

Also here is a close up of the green valence in the living room. I really like this fabric.

Every once in a while...

...a husband can surprise you. He just noticed my new curtains in the Hobby room. He wanted to know when and how I put them up. I mean I did walk right by him with the fabric in my hands, but he was watching TV and he does get lost in TV. I even got the step ladder out to reach over my desk and even them out. I mean he was in the family room, just 10 feet away.
Any way the best part is he said they look nice. It's nice when they appreciate the feminine touch we add to make a house a home. Then he looks to his window on his end of the room and noticed he doesn't have his new ones yet. That is for tomorrow night.

Quilting Update

Do you ever get an idea and decide it has to be started now? Well that is what happened to me Saturday afternoon. I just had to make some fall valences for my windows. So I ran out to the local fabric store that is close to home and made a purchase. I made the Living room valence first, and it doesn't match the others only because I really liked this fabric, plus I like it better with my blue sofa.

Here is the one for the kitchen, this one is from the other fabric. A nice rust, brown, and cream. I like it, not my usual color choices. I like those cool colors but these are fall colors which is the look I wanted. You can see my Hobby room window through the kitchen window. Those are my year round valences and curtains that use to fit the bay window in the dinning room. We tore those windows out when we added on the Hobby Room. Lucky for me the curtains fill the new windows.

This is one of the windows in the Hobby Room with the new valence and curtains. I like them. Now if the weather would just cool off more. It has been unseasonably cool for here, low 80's by late afternoon. Very nice.

This all started back in the December of 2006. We had a flood in our house and our floors were all torn up. Dry wall had to be replaced and it was a mess. The floors didn't get finished until the week before Christmas. So I made these valences and some curtains for the bay window in the dining room. They turned out great and they sure helped make the house festive for Christmas since we couldn't have a tree. Well I wasn't going to do all that work for 1 week, if you really want to know the truth.

Guess what is finally on the frame? Yes my DJ Halloween Swap quilt. I'm doing some basting on the frame because I want to do some quilting in a ditch and some spider webs. I'm also doing some quilting on some of the DJ blocks. I'm happy with it so far.

Have a great day!!

Halloween Quilts

Well the quilts are all hung for Halloween. Except the new one which is now on the frame. Here they are for you to enjoy. There is one more at work that I have to take a picture of, it is off two ghosts coming out of a house.

Blogging Fun

I'm playing with my blog and decorating it for Halloween. Now to decorate my house! I'll have to take pictures of all my Halloween quits. I don't have as many of them as I do Christmas quilts but I have more then enough.