Retreat Prep

I've been busy this weekend getting ready for retreat. Melissa is flying in Wednesday night and we head out Thursday morning. We are going to go to a couple of shops in Indiana and then go to the retreat. The show time for retreat is 1:30 so we have time to do a little shopping before hand. I am going to take a couple of projects that are gifts for some people who read the blog so you won't see the pictures until I've given the gift. I am taking several things though because you never know what you want to work on once you are there. Clarinda and I went to JoAnn's yesterday to pick up a few things for the trip. We had 25% off our entire purchase so we had to spend that yesterday. I thought of a few more things I need this morning so I am going to run out there when they open. I had an interview for a job in Sacramento this week. They contacted all of my references and from what I hear they are really interested in me. I am trying not to get too excited because anything can happen and I may not get the offer. I really hope it goes through though. I finished the wedding bed runner this week and gave it and the pillows to JoAnn. She really loved it. It was the colors of her bedroom and she had been looking for a bed runner and hadn't found one she liked, so it all turned out well! Here are the final pictures of that project. Here is a picture of Marley trying to sleep, she is so cute!

Winter? Spring? Summer?

Some months I just don't know where the time goes! The weather has just been super crazy this month. We had snow, we've had thunderstorms, windstorms, 80 degrees one day 40 degrees the next. It has been a truly odd month of weather. I hope it decides what it wants to do very soon. I am hoping it doesn't get too hot too soon, in order to save money on base they have decided they aren't going to turn the air conditioners on until June! I think they must of forgot how hot and humid it is in Ohio prior to June. Maybe I will take my furlough days the last two weeks of May! We still don't know for sure that we are going to get furloughed, it has been cut from 21 to 14 and my boss said the AF is hoping to find the money to keep everybody working. I hope so. Well, Clarinda and I have been having our weekend quilting parties every weekend since my last post. We seem to get a lot more accomplished when we do our projects at the same time. She has been coming over Friday nights but couldn't make it tonight. She usually doesn't come Sundays because she likes to spend time with her family and grandkids but she has been here a few Sundays and will return this weekend. We have retreat coming up 2-5 May so we have to start getting ready. I am sure we will work on it this weekend and next. Melissa is flying back from New Mexico to attend and I am really excited to see her again, I miss her so much! I am thinking I will take the seascape project and another project that is a gift for someone. Not sure if I will take anything else but I probably will just in case I don't want to work on the planned projects. Here are some of the latest pictures of my projects. The biggest one is the bed runner and wedding pillows. I will have it complete this weekend and give it to JoAnn on Monday. I'll be so glad to finally have it done! I am just going to leave all the photos clumped together because the formatting always seems to get messed up. I have all of the wedding pillows done, they turned out really good and she is going to love them. These are the pillowcases I made for Jaclyn for her birthday. I also got her a new sewing machine because hers was broken. A picture of yours truly! These are my new glasses and I liked my hair that day, LOL. This is the little tiger I made for Jack. Next picture is some really pretty material that I fell in love with at the fabric shop, I just had to get it, not sure what I am doing with it but I loved it. The flowers is an embroidery design that I got with my monthly subscription the picture on the left is the entire project and the picture on the right is the first block that I made. Last few pics is the bed runner laid out and then with the border added. All right, that's my update for now. I'll post my final bed runner pictures this weekend.

April Morning

I am up early today. I keep waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning, usually I can go back to sleep but today I am having some acid reflux so I got up to take medicine and am sitting up. I figured it was a good time to post on my blog. I have to get ready for work in about an hour. I think I will leave a little early this morning and stop and get some bagels to take to work. The Airmen are always looking for food, LOL. I would be too if I had to eat in the chow hall everyday. Since our Amish country trip, Clarinda and I have been getting together on the weekends to sew. She has come over Friday after work and we have stayed up sewing into the next day on a couple of occasions. We both made some of the stuffed animals for Easter. She made some for her dad, stepmom, daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren. I made a tiger (like a bengal tiger) for Jack and a blue bunny for his girlfriend Aubrey. Seems weird to say Jack has a girlfriend, this seems to be the first serious one. I also made Jack another Bengals pillowcase. We didn't really celebrate Easter, just gave Jack his and Aubrey's gifts and had steak for dinner. We are supposed to go out to dinner with Jack and her tonight, I think to Olive Garden. So, other than the Easter things, I spent some time making a door hanger for our front door. I am taking a couple ideas and putting in to this project. I have seen patterns for putting quilts on stretched painters canvas. To make this door hanger I used one of the patterns from my Anita Goodesign "Home Tweet Home." It has really cute bird houses to embroider. I picked one I like and got it going on the machine, it was fun to watch it take shape. It had a bit of applique to eat so I had to put down a piece of fabric for the birdhouse and sign and the machine sewed around the piece with a taking stitch and I would then trim the material up to the tacking stitch and then the machine would add the thicker boarder around each piece of material. Once I had the embroidery done, I put it on top of a stretched painters canvas that I had stapled a piece of material to. That is as far as I got but I am going to probably put another piece of material behind the embroidered piece to make it stand out a little more. The idea was to make a quilt from the embroidered piece and to put loops in all four corners that would attach to buttons sewn on to the canvas (I saw this in another pattern and thought it was a cute idea). However, I think I like just attaching the embroidered piece to the canvas and embellishing with the buttons (lord knows I have plenty of buttons!). I will then just change out the canvas for each season or holiday with another canvas. I thought this way I can have the canvas backgrounds to match the embroidery otherwise the background would always be the same and would need to be neutral. Here are some pictures of the embroidery machine in action and how the project looks at the moment. This is the beginning of the project. A lot of the stitching went in to the pole and the flowers. You can see the design on the screen of my machine, it tells me which step the design is on and counts down the stitches left to be stitched. It is really pretty awesome! Here you can see that I added the material for the house, roof and sign. The machine has sewn around each shape and I have cut off the excess fabric. Here the machine is making the thicker stitches around the applique pieces. Here the machine is making the chain loops that holds the birdhouse to the pole. Here is the completed design in the frame. Here is the design resting on top of the stretched canvas frame, It definitely needs an extra background. I am really happy with it and can't wait to get it hung on the door. We had quite a little hen party here last Saturday, Clarinda, Dr Ann and I had a sewing party. Dave had to work so we figured what the heck. We were supposed to sew most of the day but you know how things go when Clarinda and I get together and we just had to run to one quilt shop that lead to two shops that lead to eating dinner out that lead to going to Waynesille. We finally got home around 6, not much sooner than Dave did! LOL. But we had a good time and Dr. Ann hadn't been to any of the local quilt shops so she enjoyed it. Dr. Ann worked on a baby quilt she has been working on for some time now. She has most of the top complete now and will hopefully finish up next time we get together. I owe her a strip with the birth date embroidered on it. I already did one with the name. All right, time for me to get ready for work, of course I am ready to go back to bed now! LOL.