New Room!!!

My new room is complete!! I haven't had time to post to the blog because I have been moving things and putting stuff away. I think I finally have things set up the way I want it. It is still a bit messy but I'll get things put away by the end of the week. The floor turned out beautiful but now it makes the kitchen floor look bad so we will have to do something about that. The table turned out a little larger than we had thought it would so not as much room left as we were imagining in our heads but it is a great table and I can't wait to get one of the big quilts on it. Today David moved my felt design wall. This is the wall you see in my other pictures where the quilts are hanging. I just had felt tacked up on the walls and some plastic hooks to hang the quilts on. Now I have a nice framed felt wall and it looks great! I just have to figure where to put the hooks, I might get some of the clear ones. I haven't really worked on anything. I have a baby quilt going for Dave's friend but other than that I haven't done anything in about a week. I need to get the backings done for the Take 5 and the Yellow and Black so I can finally finish them up. Here are some pictures of the room:

Here is the big table. This is two dressers back to back and 3 IKEA table tops which Dave put together and then 4 IKEA legs. At far end is another IKEA table that is holding my sewing machine. On top are 4 cutting mats which gives me about 2 yards on the sides to measure. Also on top is the baby quilt I am working on.

This is my couch, lounging area, it is very comfortable. I take my 10 minute naps here...

This is the fireplace and TV, it is directly across from the couch. I am still figuring out the bench and cubes. Not sure if I like where they are. The table was originally going to go in this area but then we swapped everything when the table turned out so big.

This is the cube storage and a place for me to put my knick knacks. I have my mom's shoes and little vases displayed here.

Back to the table. It now has an IKEA lamp hanging over it and boy does it put out some light! Dave hooked up a remote to it so I just have to push a button to turn it on...very nice.

Just another view of the table. I am thinking about decorating the drawers with some decorative paper. Haven't made up my mind though.

this is close up detail of the molding Dave put around my felt design wall. I think it looks awesome!

Another picture of the design wall.

Another view of table and design wall. This is what it looks like from my couch That's about all the news from here. Jack and I went to the community college on Monday and sined him up for his first classes. They start 27 Aug. He has to get up and get to an 8 am class Mon-Wed-Fri, that should be interesting :) Talk to you later!

Braided Rug

I have been working on a braided rug this past week. I've gone as far as I can with the strips that I had from my scrap bag. I'll have to find a similar color pallet and cut some more or I may just get a plain beige and alternate with some color.

I secured my braid to the basket handle and then wrapped it around the handle as it grew in length. This kept tension on the braid. I am not sure how many strips I used or how long they were I didn't think to measure them before hand but final braid was about 4 yards long. So, to start you take 3 strips secure to something with a safety pin and start braiding.

To join the new strip in, you cut a slit in the end of the strip on the braid and the new strip. You put both strips slits together (material right side to wrong side) take the opposite end of the new strip (end without slit) and put through both slits and pull it through, pull tight. This will join the strips securely and you can continue with your braid.

After getting all the strips braided, you start shaping the rug how you want it. I decided to make this one oval. So, begin your center, I started with about 4 inches and then just start going around that center piece, round and round until you get to the end of your braid.

This is what my oval looks like right now. I am going to get some more material to cut into strips to finish it up. I'll probably do another 8 yards to make a fairly large rug. I will show how to sew it when I have finished with the next braid addition.

Here is a few pictures of the room. It is all done now. Going to start moving my stuff in tomorrow and hopefully be all moved in by Sunday. I am so excited! Dave did a really awesome job! I'll post more pictures once we get everything set up.

Craft Room

I decided not to add another border to the Yellow and Black quilt. I like it just the way it is. I need to do the backing for it but I am going to wait until I have my big craft table in my new craft room, it will make it much easier to square things up with the new table. I finished the Blue Take 5 quilt. I had it pretty much done I just needed to do the borders. I started on the boarders last night and stayed up until about 2 am to get it done. So, now I just need to do the backing for that one as well. I am still up in the air about whether to quilt them myself or send them to the long arm quilter. I think I will see once I get into my new room. Here is a picture of the finished Take 5 top:

David started working on the new craft room. He tore out all of the carpet and is stripping out all of the molding and patching the walls right now so we can paint tomorrow. We went to Home Depot today and got the wood flooring so he can put it in this week. We just came back from IKEA where we got two table tops to make the big cutting table. I also got some new curtains and a light to hang over the cutting table. I have been up here in the old room trying to organize things prior to moving down there. Hopefully, I can move by next weekend. Here are a few pictures of the room now.

This is the room looking towards the outer wall. The carpet has been ripped out. Looks like they might of had tile or linoleum squares on the floor at one time.

This is looking towards the front door. Puppy is helping Dave out by following him around! We have two of these dressers so we are going to put them back to back and put a top on it to make the new cutting table. I got a hanging light to put over the cutting table.

This is the pallet of flooring we got at Home Depot. 19 boxes in all. Two of them had damage so we got 10% off of them. Hopefully we got enough to do the whole floor. Each box does 13.1 sq ft. We have about 240 sq ft in that room. That's all for today, I have to get back to cleaning up this room!

One More Border

It has been a pretty good weekend. I got off early on Friday and went to a one-stop shop hop with Clarinda and Melissa. I picked up a few things there, a couple of kits and a couple of new things I hadn't seen before. Saturday Clarinda and I went to Creative Fires over in Springfield, OH. I found this great new flannel there and got a new pattern to try. It will probably be awhile before I work on this and it will probably go to the retreat with me in October. We also went to JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby while we were in Springfield. I took her out for lunch since it was her birthday and I got to ride in her brand new Ford Explorer, it was a pretty nice ride! I think it is about time for me to trade in my car for something new but Dave doesn't think so...LOL. Here are some pictures of the material I got:

These are the new fabrics that I got. The one on top is actually from last years line but I really liked it from when Melissa and Clarinda bought it last year so I took all that they had left. It will be the backing for the quilt.

This is a close up of the new floral. I really love this pattern and it goes well with the coordinating fabric.

This is the pattern I am going to use for this material. It is like a crazy quilt pattern. It is a bit involved because you aren't cutting out strips to piece together you actually cut out different shapes to put it together. Below are the pictures of the Yellow and Black quilt. I am trying to decide whether to add another border.

This is halfway through putting the borders on the sides.

This is how it looks right now. I think I will put one more boarder on it. That's it for tonight!

Making Pretzels

Melissa and I went to the Dorothy Lane Cooking School tonight and we made pretzels. It was a really easy recipe to make. The recipe was for the Bavarian type pretzels. Melissa did the kneading since I can't with my bad wrist. I think when I do these at home I will used my kitchen aid mixer with the dough hook to knead it but will have to be careful not to over knead it. We then rolled cut the dough into 12 pieces and let the dough rest for about 5 minutes then rolled each piece on the table until they were long rolls fatter in the middle and skinny on the ends. We didn't really get the ends skinny enough so most of ours turned out kind of fat without the normal pretzel holes. Didn't matter they were still delicious. The only odd thing that we had to do with them is to dip them in food grade lye and water mixture. You have to do that in order to get the browning typical of the Bavarian pretzel. They put all of our pretzels on a large rack that went into a walk in oven. The rack is attached to the top of the oven and spins around while it cooks! It was really cool. It took about 15 minutes to cook in the commercial oven. We had some cheese spreads and mustard that we could eat with them. I had a pimento cheese spread that I liked. Melissa liked the chive spread. I didn't eat the mustard dip that they made because I don't like mustard. Any way we had a great time making them and we went to the Dorothy Lane Market afterward and bought some of the items to make them on our own.

This is Melissa kneading the dough. I wasn't supposed to get her in the picture but I guess I did.

This is the picture of the whole class making the pretzels. I believe this is when we were dipping the pretzels in the lye/water mixture and salting the tops.

These are our pretzels on the baking pan.

This is all of the pretzels on the rack that goes into the oven.

This is our teacher putting the rack in the oven.

These are the pretzels in the oven and the rack is actually spinning around.

These are the baked pretzels! They smelled so good.

This is when we got to enjoy our pretzels. They served it with some beer but I didn't like it very much.

Today was my one year anniversary as a civilian worker. I am now off probation! Guess that means I can be bad LOL. I got a nice surprise yesterday when I was given this award it was from the Director of our squadron. I was recognized for all the work I have done getting the testing program under way and training all the Airmen. I also received an 8 hour time off award so that is very nice! That's it for tonight!

B & Y Design Complete

I finished the disappearing 9-patch part of the Black and Yellow quilt. Next I will add borders to get it to a twin size quilt. I have quite a few different materials that came from the same fabric line to use for the borders and the backing so I will figure that out tomorrow night and get it cut. Here are some pictures of the blocks coming together.

These are the blocks before being sewn together. This is my design wall. I know you have seen it in pictures before but couldn't remember if I ever told you about it. It is made of felt and the fabric pieces stick to it so you can lay your design out and move the blocks around easily.

Here are all the blocks sewn together. You can see that I have the rows marked with ironing directions as you saw in my last quilt assembly.

These are the materials that I have to make up the borders and the backing.

On Sunday, David and I went out looking for wood flooring and paint for the new craft room. This is the paint and flooring that we decided on. I've already purchased the paint. David is going to get the flooring some time this week. Have to get Jack all moved out first. He will start moving tomorrow. That's it for now, I will post once I get the borders going.

Disappearing 9-Patch in Yellow and Black

I finally finished Doris' quilt. I am going to pack it up and mail it out so she gets it by her birthday. I found doing the binding by hand tedious and I don't think it is as strong as doing it with the machine so I hope it will hold up. I don't imagine she will be washing it much so I think it will be okay. Here are a couple of pictures of the completed binding.

We bought a new washer and dryer on the 4th. We got a pretty good deal from Home Depot. Dave found the washer for $50 cheaper at Sears so we went back to Home Depot yesterday and they gave us the difference. We are giving Jack our old washer and dryer, his apartment has hook-ups so that will save them some money on laundry. I have been wanting a new set for a little while. The dryer has a steam setting so I wanted that for my work clothes to get wrinkles out. Here is a picture of the set we are getting. They will be delivered on the 14th.

Here are the two baskets I bought from the Amish lady. One is for magazines and the other is called a hot cake carrier but I probably won't use it for that.

I am back to working on the Yellow and Black Disappearing 9-Patch. I have 20 9-patch blocks sewn together. The next step is to cut them in half vertically and horizontally. Then rotate the block so two small blocks meet in the middle corners and two small blocks are on two of the outer edges. Once you sew all the 20 blocks together you will have a definite pattern with the small blocks. Here are some pictures of the steps. I am going to try to get all of the blocks sewn tonight and hopefully put all 20 together tomorrow. I'll then put a couple of borders around the edges and this top will be done.

That's all the news for the day. Tomorrow we are going to look at some wood flooring to put down in the new craft room. I am excited to get the bigger room to work on the larger quilts. I am putting some things on hold until I get the bigger table set up downstairs. I'll post a picture of the 9-Patch top tomorrow.

Our Trip to Mansfield/Ashland OH

We had a great trip to Mansfield and Ashland Ohio. We went Sunday to old Victorian era "cottages". Brownella Cottage and Oak Hill Cottage. They were both unique in their architecture and also in the fact that both transferred to the historical societies with their contents intact. Brownella Cottage was the home of a bishop who married into a rich family. His mother-in-law built the cottage for them. He was later thrown out of the church because he read about and believed that communism was how society should live. After he and his wife died the house sat with all the furnishings for 40 years until the historic society took it over. There are claims that the cottage is haunted by the bishop. While on the tour we left the bishops bedroom to go to another room and when we left the fan that was in his room fell over!

This is the front of Brownella Cottage. It was named for Bishop Brown and his wife Ella - Brownella.

This is the carriage house. It is now the museum and ticket area.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house so these are pictures of some pre-civil war quilts that were in the museum area.

This is an old fashion Victorian dress.

Oak Hill Cottage was the home of a doctor and his 5 daughters. The youngest daughter lived there until the 70s when she willed it to the city with all contents. It was very run down and the preservation is still going on. On Monday, we went to the Ohio Reformatory. It was really neat place to visit. It would be interesting to go on the ghost tour but they are all sold out for the year. We took a ton of pictures but only going to post a few here.

This is the outside of the Reformatory. It was completed in 1869.

Sign in prison

East Wing from bottom row of cells. The cells are back to back with a walk way in between that had electric and plumbing. The guards could turn off the cells water or electric as a form of punishment.

Spiral staircase at the end of the East Cell Block. The tour information said that this is the tallest free standing metal structure and that it is in the Guiness Book of World Records.

This is looking down the East Cell Block from about the fourth level of cells.

This is a typical East Block Cell.

These are the older cells in the West Block, these are made of masonry and steel. Not complete steel structure like the East Block and the cells were smaller.

This is the tunnel prop from Shawshank Redemption.

This is the boarding room prop from Shawshank Redemption. This is were Brooks hung himself and also were Red stayed when he was released from prison.

This is an X that appears in the hallway of four symmetrical rooms. As long as there is light coming in through the windows of all four rooms the X will appear.

We stopped at Grandpa's Cheese barn on the way out of town. I picked up some bread and butter pickles. Didn't get cheese because we didn't have a cooler to put it in and we still had to go to the Reformatory.

This was a little Amish shop outside Grandpa's. I bought a couple of baskets from there. You can see the buggy in the picture. We saw quite a few horse and buggies while we were in the area. I have finished the binding on Doris' quilt. I will post some pictures of it tomorrow.