Retreat Tomorrow!

I've been so busy this week! I have not cut all the material I was hoping to. I've packed up my sewing machine and the main projects and threw a few smaller ones in. Not sure how I will feel when I get there so I think I have all the bases covered. I will for sure get the stain-glass rug complete for Beryl, it is going to be her Mother's Day present even though she won't get it until she comes in June. Have to see what else I feel like doing once I get there. Jack got a new car on Wednesday. It isn't a new new car, it is a 2008 Chevy Cobalt. He wanted a new car for graduation and I found this one online in Richmond, Indiana for a good price so he and Dave went over Wednesday and got it. I haven't had a chance to take a picture of it yet but I will post it here once I do. David is going to drive Jack's old car because it gets better gas mileage than the Jeep. He is going to clean up the Jeep and sell it. Mark passed out at work today. I guess he got dehydrated. They took him to ER and gave him an IV. Beryl went with him and I had to fax over insurance information. I talked to him and he sounded good. He didn't hit his head so that was a good thing. They ran all the normal tests on him and everything was normal so they are saying it was dehydration. He has the next couple days off so that's good. Well, nothing else going on. I am not sure I will be able to post from the retreat, like I said their phone/internet connection isn't that great and I don't plan on taking the big laptop with me. So, I may not post anything until Sunday - Monday. Can't wait to get away for a bit! Talk to you again soon!

Other Projects

I didn't get much accomplished yesterday. I did buy the roller case for my sewing machine and a small tool box to carry various items that I will need. Got the thread I needed and packed some of the things that are ready to go. I still need to cut some things for Mark's quilt. It is a bit harder doing that one because I am not using a pattern so I have to figure out the placement of all the blocks and how big to make the strips in between. I should have done it yesterday but after running around to all the stores I was tired so I worked on something different. I made a stain glass piece back in 2009 it was from a quilt block and called Flowers for Mother Theresa. Last year when I went to the retreat I bought a glass block and stand that has a hole in the bottom to stick Christmas lights in. They had them made up for Halloween and Christmas. I thought I might use it to make something for the holidays but never did. Then one day I saw my stain glass piece and realized I can put them together so yesterday I bought the glue to put it together, and here is the finished product.

While I was out yesterday I stopped at Goodwill and picked up some plates to make my dessert stands. I got for plates for $4.80, I am going to glue them to the candlestick and glass that I bought from the estate sales. I think the candlestick was $2 and the glass was $1. I think it will look pretty cool once I get them glued together and I actually use them to put cupcakes and appetizers on. I am going to have a purse party sometime in June so I will use them then. I am still looking for a few more sets of plates to make the others. I'll have to go to another Goodwill or Salvation Army. Anyway, here is the mock up of the two stands.

So, that's what I did yesterday as far as crafts. I haven't done anything this evening. My back was out of whack so went to chiropractor and she had to put my sacrum back in place so I have been laying on ice most of the evening. I am going to try to cut the quilt I am making for one of the Airmen tomorrow. I may not take Mark's quilt to the retreat if I can't figure out the dimensions on it. I am thinking the rug, couch quilt and take 5 quilt will keep me fairly busy for the whole weekend.

Prep Work

I started pulling out all of the stuff I need to take to the retreat. I cut the 4 panels for the rug I am going to make Beryl and found the backing I wanted to use. I just finished cutting the material for Jack's quilt, it will be the same pattern as the Couch Quilt. Tomorrow I am going to JoAnn's to pick up the thread and few extras that I will need. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to cut the Take 5 quilt and the rest of the material for Mark's Japanese quilt. I packed up the completed Couch Quilt and the flag wall hanging to take for show and tell. I am thinking I am going to take the larger quilts to a lady Melissa takes her quilts to get quilted. I just don't feel like crawling around on the floor pinning all of those layers. It is okay on the smaller quilts but when you get into the full size and above it is quite a pain. Not much else going on today. I had reflexology done this morning and it was so relaxing I came home and took a nap! I picked up a couple pies from a local pie shop, they are really good. It was an overcast, humid day, didn't get any rain though thank goodness. We had thunderstorms last night and I think we are supposed to have rain tomorrow night. David has been busy working on the kitchen, he got the new counter tops installed and all the trim molding up. He just has to finish patching the ceiling where he moved a light to another location. I need to get some new curtains put up and that room will be finished. The only other thing he has to do is put a closet in the front room that we turned into Jack's bedroom. That will make the house a 4 bedroom. All right, I am off to bed. I'll catch up on the prep for retreat tomorrow.

These are carnations I had Dave get me to remind me of mom on their anniversary. She loved carnations and she would have loved these.

This is the rug project I am doing for Beryl. This is the 4 stained glass panels with the backing which is a deep purple with some little birds on it.

This is the material all cut and ready to be sewn for Jack's quilt.

This is Jack and the fish he caught at his friends house.

Thank Goodness It's Friday!!!

It is finally Friday! It was a very busy at work this week but that is good, beats sitting around doing nothing. I have been waiting all week to get the wall hanging finished so I can move on to cutting and prepping for the retreat next weekend. Melissa seems to think I was a bit optimistic in my list of things to take to the retreat to work on. I am going to pull everything out tomorrow and make sure of what to take. I would like to go tomorrow and get a roller case to take this time, I think it will make it easier to carry everything inside. So, I am so happy with the how the wall hanging turned out! I just love it. I took it in for Melissa to see today and she liked it too. I am really proud of the binding I did on this, I think I finally have the technique down. Here are some pictures of it straight from its second washing.

That's about it for today. I will post again tomorrow with some pictures of what I am taking on the trip.

Wall Hanging Complete...Almost

The wall hanging is almost complete. I finished the binding tonight and it is currently in the wash becoming fabulous (I hope!). It has taken me a little while to finish this off, longer than I wanted it to but I have been tired the last few nights getting home from work and only worked on it a little bit so really didn't have anything to post until now. I finished the sewing and I cut the rows as I did in the chenille quilt so I won't bore you with going over those steps or how to make binding. The only difference in binding is that I only did the single fold binding and I sewed the binding to the back, flipped it over and did a decorative stitch on the front side. I am going to walk you through the steps for making the corner when sewing it on the back, something I didn't have to do on the chenille quilt because it had the curved corners and we did the double fold, one seam binding. So, with the single fold binding you place the raw edge of the binding closest to the edge of the quilt and sew it to the back with 1/4" seam allowance. You leave about 6" tail at the beginning and you start in the middle of one side. Sew the binding to the first corner and then take the quilt out of the machine. To turn the corner we take the binding and fold it to the right forming a 90 degree angle, then fold the binding back over the top of the 90 degree angle and you will have turned the corner, the raw edge of the binding should be laying on the next edge you are going to sew, sew to the next corner and do the above step again. When you get back to where you start stop sewing until you have about 6" to go. Take the quilt out of the machine. You will join the two ends with a mitre as we used when making the binding strips (I am not showing this step here). once you have the mitered joint complete put the quilt back in the machine and sew the rest of the binding onto the quilt.

Here is the quilt in the machine sewing the binding up to the corner. Take quilt out of machine.

Here is the quilt out of the machine. The binding is going straight down.

Take the binding and fold up to the 90 degree angle. The binding is now out to the right of the quilt.

Now take the binding and fold back over the 90 degree angle. The binding is now to the left and along the next edge to be sewn. Okay, now we have the binding on the back side. Now we fold it over to the front side (next 3 photos)

This photo shows the finished binding. I normally use a decorative stitch on the front this time I used a blanket stitch which I think kind of gives it a rustic/country/homespun look. Doing the binding this way is kind of a cheat way to do it. If you were making a quilt that you wanted to show or sale you would do the reverse of what I have done when sewing the binding on. You would sew the binding on to the front and fold to the back and then hand stitch the binding to the back. Since I am not showing or selling these quilts I am going to take the easy route, plus my hand stitching isn't that good so I would rather make sure the binding is going to stay on versus the back of the binding falling off because of my bad hand stitching.

This picture is showing the complete quilt before washing. Once I have it washed and dried, I will post a picture of it.

Progress

I got home a little later tonight because I had to get my hair done. I have had a gray streak running down the middle of my head for about 3 weeks now, I usually go every 6 weeks to get my color done. So, I was complaining to my hairdresser that the color isn't lasting as long as it used to and was wondering if it was because I had a darker color put on last time. She said maybe that could be it but it could be that I am just growing gray hair faster than I use to! LOL. So, I get her to put a bunch of blonde highlights in, hopefully that will take care of their growth rate. So because I got home later I didn't have as much time to spend on the flag wall hanging. I did get have of the rows sewn. The rows are a 1/2 inch apart. I sewed the line that I made with the marker and then I used that row as a guide putting my presser foot along that line as I sew. I measured from my needle to the edge of the presser foot and it is 1/2 inch. Even with this being a smaller project than the chenille baby blanket it seems to take forever to sew all of these rows.

This shows the presser foot guideline for the 1/2 inch rows.

This is showing half of the rows complete.

This is showing a view of the rows from the back side. I tried to rewrap the wreath but I still don't have enough of the ribbon. I will have to go by JoAnn's to pick some more up. I need to see what coupons I have left to use. I am headed to bed, I have told David that I need to start getting to bed earlier so 10:00 is when I am supposed to go, we sill see how long this lasts! We have had some thunderstorms rolling through tonight, hopefully they are all done for the night.

Flag Wall Hanging

Today did not go as planned. Melissa didn't come over, her daughter kept her up all night. So, I went to visit my friend in the hospital. He is doing pretty good. He isn't able to move his left arm and he is dragging his left foot. But no memory loss or slurred speech so that is good. He is supposed to move to a rehab center tomorrow. The doctor thinks he has sleep apnea and he stopped breathing in the middle of the night causing the stroke. It is really sad, reminds me too much of mom. I didn't get home until around 4 this afternoon so there was most of my day. I had a sinus headache when I woke up so been battling that all day. Then my cousin Max calls me to tell me my Aunt Ruth, my mom's sister is in the hospital because of a ruptured aorta. They have put a stint in and she is stable, she has lost some feeling in one of her legs, she is also going to a rehab center. I was kind of laying around after dinner and decided I would work on the flag wall hanging that I wanted to make. I didn't feel like cutting any of the retreat material. I've got it all layered and I started sewing the rows. This will be similar to the chenille baby blanket, same technique just using cotton material instead of flannel and also adding a layer of batting.

This is the backing. It will be face down and the layers go on top.

This is the batting. It goes between the backing and the top layers.

This is the top material. There will be four layers.

This is the four layers. When all sewn the top three layers will be cut to create the chenille/rag look. Since this is an all over pattern it isn't as important to match up the pattern. For the stain glass panels in my previous post, it will be very important to match up the pattern in all four layers in order to have the full design revealed through the layers.

Once you have all the layers, the next thing to do is pin all the layers together. This is pretty time consuming and I tend to probably over-pin my projects but I like to make sure everything stays together.

Now, you make a line from one corner to the diagonal corner using a disappearing ink marker.

Here is the line, hard to see on this darker material. I sewed a few of the lines but didn't get to far with it, I will work on it more tomorrow night. I have an idea for a project and here is the start of it. I have an ordinary florist wreath ring. I am wrapping it with this pretty ribbon. Wrapping it so the design repeats. As you can see I did not get all the way around. I will try re-wrapping to see if I can get all the way around or I will have to go to JoAnn's to get some more. I have overlapped quite a bit so I am thinking I can make it work. I hope this will turn out well...off to bed now, it is late!