I WAS almost finished ...

On Saturday I was invaded by my dad .. no call no nothing .. AGAIN .. that made 5 days running .. must have been Father's Week - not Father's Day .. ah well .. I didn't quite trust myself to sew, but I did cut the rest of my sections out .. good thing too .. as I was looking at the fabric i had left for the background .. i'm thinking to myself .. there is no way that's enough .. well you know what .. it wasn't .. i would hav been ¹/₈" short for the width on the final strip and i would have been short on the other piece one (you're reading this right) ONE - 4 ³/₈" square for the HST .. short ONE .. i'm like .. are you bloody well kidding me!?!?!?!?!? I triple checked and yup i was short .. not a big deal, I have the brown vines which I could swap with .. well I'm wishing i had done this way all through .. all my squares were the vine fabric and then my HSTs were the chocolate brown .. it really looks NICE. Rather makes the path through the blocks pop more - but i am not going to rip the rest of them apart to do that to them .. nope - not gonna happen!

Here I was thinking I was being slick .. and I WAS rather pleased with myself too .. until I saw that I had flipped my middle squares .. I had caught it everytime up until NOW - and wouldn't you figure .. it's the LAST section .. bah .. I'm glad that I have an old seam ripper, but it really isn't very good .. mine is still MIA .. I guess with all this ripping to do (3 blocks have to be totally undone - and not it's not all together .. 3 seams away from it), I would rather use my good one .. so I'll tear the living room apart to see is Shadow batted it under the couch or table or something .. I can only pray .. yeah i think I would rather do that then frog stitch all that - UGH .. twittwittwit ..

Ah well it will get done today .. Good thing too .. I'm getting tired of brown .. I think the next section will be the middle section that's a sisters star in an Ohio Star ..

Seam Ripper Update

AHA .. found my seam ripper .. I had it on the table next to the couch when I was doing the english paper piecing .. Good thing .. now my frog stitch will go that much faster now :D :D :D

Finished!!
Finally got it done .. feels GREAT to finish this part .. mind you .. i ended up flipping a 4 patch the wrong way again .. and course this was on the last block and i just said to heck with it .. I knew if I messed with it anymore, I would end up wrecking it or hating it .. so it stays .. who knows .. it might end up making the quilt??? **shrug .. never know ;)

I think that i'm going to take a wee bit of a break from this .. I've been wanting to work on my kitty quilt and baste it .. maybe i'll get that done today .. and in the back of my mind ... plot my next steps ...

Yup, it was Friday the 13th

That's not to say it was a totally horrific day .. just a challenging one .. I slept late for one, then when I got up there was a whole whack of stuff that had to be done RIGHT THEN .. I didn't even have an uninterrupted cup of coffee all day ..

Things finally settle down a bit and I go over my math to see what i need to finish cutting for this section, then the kid wants attention :S .. Just get him calmed down then my dad stops by .. no reason .. just stopped by - when i realized there was nothing life threatening, I start to go over my math again .. then my dad leaves - 3 mins later - reg is home :\ ... we walk to the store .. (which I had already been to with Kyle earlier .. )

Okay .. things settle again .. and I finally get to go over the figures again ... one strip is a smidge off after all is said and done and there's not a bloody thing I can do about it but deal with it and stretch and smidge .. which rather did turn out alright .. I can see the places - but I know they're there ....

The actual time spent wasn't long at all .. and if it wasn't 3:15am - i would likely do another section .. tomorrow's another day :D

I figure that with the size of this quilt, I'm going to do quilt as you go .. I found 2 places that have great tutorials for them .. one is at Quilters Cache (Quilt as you Go) and another one that has no hand sewing for the back .. Quilt as you go - No hand sewing. The idea of no hand sewing really appeals to me, but with the size of this, it would be just as bad and quiltling the thing whole .. So I'll do the quilter's cache method for this and save the other for double size quilts and smaller.

My seam ripper is missing in action .. i think that my 10lb four legged black furry wonder is the culprit (Shadow) - these sort of antics are her specialty

But on a good note - all my cherry tomato plants have flowers on them :D

The Research cat QUITS!

If I've not lost my mind .. I'm sure it's a short matter of time .. i wanted to confirm that all of the blocks I am using were in existence and USED in the 1800s .. I found all of them but one .. the simplex star (or ... friendship star, milkyway variation, windmill (bout 4 variations of this name). I KNOW I found it one .. on an antique quilt that someone had someWHERE .. chances are, it was at a quilt brokers or online store and it was sold ..

The blocks these ladies made were pretty elaborate and I am just stunned .. some of these were made with just needle and thread. . none of the modern conveniences we have .. least the ones that have made from the 1800s .. most utilitarian quilts I'm sure are dust .. i did run over a reference to it (this one was for the version name friendship star - but it was the same) "This is a very old pattern; definitely easy to stitch, and able to be interpreted in many different fabrics. It's appeared in quilts for hundreds of years...I know I've seen it featured in some quilts said to date from the 1700s. But it was also one of those blocks (like Album or Chimney Sweep) that people made up for 'farewell' quilts to friends or relatives moving."

I wish I could find this history of this block .. even showing in a quilt that is confirmed to have been made prior to 1900 - i might not touch this subject for a few days .. altho there are barns in Ohio (Clothesline of Quilts) that feature quilt blocks on them .. and this block was confirmed to have been from the 1800s "An 1885-1930 periodical identified this pattern as Simplex Star. In 1939 it was published as Lost Goslin." Those two references along with me knowing i've seen it will just have to be enough .. I've lost my patience with this . it's not very often that I have such issues searching for AND finding what I want ..

On anther note .. I did mention that I would put the pics of my yard :) .. well today I went out with the camera and took some pics to get away from the puter ..

The bush on the right and the 3 lily plants I rescued from my plant murdering dad .. well I rescued the lilies and after I gave him whatfor for just digging them out . when he dug out the bush (Goldmound speria) he put it in a bucket and brought it here for me to keep .. heh .. mine's thriving and flourishing .. and his is anemic .. I told him it's because yours thinks you killed it's brother LOLOLOL .. My lilies (well mum's lilies actually) are going to bloom soon .. I see flower stalks coming up .. I have 2 types of flowers in there also that I started from seed - 1 type didn't even peek it's head out ... but since it looks like a weed that is very common here, I might have actually pulled them ..

And of course my grass :) .. Orion is enjoying it ..

My dwarf asters have barely grown here too .. but out of 12 4'oclocks that I planted, 5 came up and there are 4 or 5 in the front already ..

1800s Reproduction Quilt .. Plans / Thoughts

I love reproduction fabric from the 1800s ... always have since I first saw it about 10 years ago .. I've wanted to do a quilt with just these fabrics and also with blocks that were popular at the time .. My first fabric that I purchased for this was 4 yards and that would have been sufficient for a lap quilt .. I was very new to quilting at the time and anything larger was just to overwhelming for me .. by the time I decided that I wanted to do a bed quilt, the fabric was discontinuted. So I have to make do with 4 yards. And I no longer have a double bed, but a king :O

My only requirements for this quilt .. Reproduction fabrics from the 1800s .. (that's why that one calico question is so important to me), and popular blocks of the time as well .. oh and it has to fit our bed.

Over the years I've picked up a yard here and yard there .. FQs - quite a few of them .. and then I got lucky and did a HUGE fabric trade with Judi Kern for a whole whack of fabric .. this trade enabled me to maybe have enough fabric to get moving on this quilt .. with the size of our bed, it might have been ready for our retirement ;)

In keeping with the way quilts were made in the 1800s, his quilt is going to be scrappy ... I am going to try and have each 'section' have as much of the same fabric as possible - if that doesn't happen .. at least the same colour family or as close as possible. I've already started that with the Underground Railroad Block Sections . the first one was made with 2 different FQs for the foreground colour, but the background is going to be the same for all sections. If not, I did have a backup of monochrome brown vines ..

The next section after the underground RR is the Double X blocks (16 of them) that will have the same background, but will be in various fabrics of whatever I have that fits the bill yardage wise. None of it will be the same, but it will be all purples or blues or greens or reds .. you see where I'm going here. Then the sisters block - the center one will have the same background and again, the same color family for the foreground .. I've not even decided what colours the big Ohio Star will be yet .. it's all going to depend on what looks good with the chocolate brown and the rusty reds that I have.

I'm not 100% sure on the Ohio Star, but it is a traditional block, that one is iffy on the time frame .. Might have been early 1900s .. But not positive .. But the rest are from then :) Short of buying a book, online references mostly talk about 8 blocks; basic 9 patch, chimney sweep (not even sure what that one is), churn dash, Georgetown circle, underground railroad, jacob's lader, North Star and Slave chain (no clue about this one either). I've managed to view a few antique quilts online that have these other blocks in them - and i've patterned them off the way they looked at the time. I found some actual blocks (so they say) from that time period in a webshots album .. these pictures allowed me to cut a LOT of my research down and move forward from there. Civil War blocks. Now I did read that finding stacks of blocks not put into a quilt was common .. as the ladies didn't have the pattern books that we do or even current newspapers if they were in the back country, they would quickly stitch up a block when they visit (trading patterns .. so things never change) and THAT would be their pattern ... One can easily see how this is how so many blocks would have been found in this condition .. hid away for years somewhere ..

AHA - I've found my proof at The Quilt Index - specifically this search page - Ohio Star Search - the first quilt is from 1850 - 1875 - I do have to be careful as the Ohio Star and variable star were two names given to the same block .. **wonder if I can see any calico print in these images .... **

So basically this quilt with the exception of the actual layout isn't really planned .. I've never done a quilt like this before .. usually I have it planned down to the inch .. heh .. can we say STRESS .. lol .. just kidding ..

it's definitely going to be big enough .. 94½ x 94½ before borders. An idea that has tripped across my mind is to have one smaller border - the outer blocks will be a nice 'border' for the center designs already .. and I can likely do alternating darks and lights for background or what have you .. I've not even really looked at what the borders looked like on the quilts I did find online .. I was to interested in the blocks.

But it is going to be fun to put together and plot and plan as I go along . I've never quite done this with a quilt before .. I usually have the colours picked right to the binding .. I still have some research to do and more plotting than I can even think straight about .. but it'll all come together .. it's rather fun to have no 'plan' or instructions and just go with what i have ..

One Underground Railroad Section done :)

I'm glad that I decided to work this quilt in sections .. it's my first king size for one, and for 2 it will allow me to remember the math quirks that I trip over - Specially since I had to do new math for using FQs instead of ½ yd measures .. This wasn't to bad to do once I got over the fact that I didn't have enough of the fabric I really wanted to use .. and i was lucky that I had another FQ that was complimentary to this one .. **whew**

All in all this didn't take that long to do .. longer than I expected to do the fabric shortage, but not as long as I feared. Went rather smooth and I only had to tear apart 1 row of one block ;) ..

That's enough for now, I don't want to make any serious mistakes other than sewing blocks together upside down or backwards ;)

Oh My .. that's not a ½ yard, that's an fq :\

I decided to start on the my smallest yardage for the foreground colour for the underground rr sections .. good thing, as when i went to open it up, i discovered that it wasn't a ½ yard, but an FQ - oh my .. but i was pretty lucky as I had another FQ that went well with this one .. good thing!!!!

I went over my math again and to see how much I could get out of the FQs .. I had an idea and thought that I would try to make it fit as best I could .. I wanted to have the middle sections of the blocks all the same fabric and then the outer 4 patches could be the other FQ .. It worked, BUT, I would be about 6 blocks short .. which actually worked out as I managed to get a pretty cool design element in with the other FQ. I had the second FQ be the outside 4 patches and also the end of one of the arms in my 'circle'.

I'm being VERY careful as I sew these pieces together . normally i would take all the HST pieces and just zip along with them .. but I'm doing them block by block right now .. I'm 'numb' enough at this point that I am being SUPER careful, and I really want to preserve this design element ..

I'm back to piecing this part together .. I just wanted to take a break and share this with you ..

Oh - I KNEW that wasn't a ½ yard .. just blocked it out for some reason .. but I think this is going to look just GREAT!!!!

This poor quilt ...

I've changed my mind again .. this poor quilt .. I could almost feel sorry for it .. but at this point, it's not feeling *MY* pain and frustration ... ;)

I started to look at the layout pic I did again this am when I finally got up .. and i realized that the sections with the underground railroad that I'm having such kittens over, won't even been seen when it's on the bed for crying out loud (!!) You'll see part of it .. but not all .. I'm like .. "Grace, you're a twit!!" .. so I shifted the sections over towards the big Ohio Star all around and rather liked that .. it did disrupt the sister's hearth variation I drew up, but at least it would be visible .. and of course I've not measured our bed .. every time I go to think of it .. Reg's sleeping in it .. he might not appreciate a tape measure across his nose ;)

Then I looked at it again and the flow seemed to stop abruptly, I put the split background underground RR back in the corners. I moved the grouping of 4 Double X for the same reason the underground RR got moved .. so that pushed my simplex stars and sisters off to the edges, where most of them won't be seen again .. (@@) (<- rolling eyes .. ). Reg LIKED that sisters hearth .. that is the ONLY block he picked .. so i took the simplex star out of the edge and center blocks in the big Ohio and put them in there ..

I do like this layout - (heh .. I liked the last one too :S) .. but with the shifting around, I have the 'big' blocks in the middle and then framed by the smaller blocks .. which means I'll be able to get away with a more simplistic border as well, since I will already have the middle of the quilt framed ..

I'll let this gel in my mind again .. I'm off to work on the math for this - I might even start cutting .. heh .. I had better cut soon before I change my mind again ..

Changes again ...

For some reason this time I wasn't able to look at fabrics tossed willy nilly on the table and pick them out for my blocks - (which should have been my first clue) .. so here i was scanning all my fabrics in to do them in photoshop .. well i started with one colour, then decided to do the rest as I KNEW that I would just have to add more ..

Long and short of it - found some fabrics that really worked out well, but then it dawns on me .. this isn't going to be scrappy; this was gonna look crappy!! Not enough of this or to much of that and the colours that I have just weren't working together .. I really want to have the underground railroad in this quilt as it really shows motion and was a popular block at the time - but i'm still not sure of it .. I suppose I could use Crocket Cabin (slightly earlier period) or jacob's ladder - there's also buffalo ridge too .. this layout might not stay at this point either .. It could just be because i've used the default colours for the blocks and not used other's that are closer to what i have available .. that green for the ohio star .. blech!! At any rate ..

I do like this one better .. I have cut down the number of railroad blocks that i'm using and that will mean that I can likely use an FQ for each section .. that's not set in stone yet .. heh .. i have to do my math all over again :S .. **SIGH** But I trust my math now, and it'll be a snap to get it going .. altho I do have rather have to start from scratch with block meaurements etc ..

The basket blocks just seemed to make it to busy to me as well .. plus i figure i'm going to have enough qst and hst with the other blocks .. I used simpler blocks - more simplex star, added the double X to replace the basket block (and used them so they look like an Amish Star ;)) - Kept the one block that reg loved and picked out for the quilt .. the one block he picks - I guess I had better keep it, and used more ohio stars .. that i think is a nice compliment to the center block being an Ohio star block ..

Okay i've been fussing with this since 11pm or so and it's now 3:50 am .. I'm off to bed .. where did the bloody time go!?!?!?!?!

trees, yard(age), I'm whacked!!

Good news on my quilt math :D :D :D .. I'm right - thankyou everyone that downloaded my pdf file and checked it for me ... it has been suggested to change the usable width to 40" as the newer fabrics aren't as wide anymore .. what's up with that .. they increase the price per yard and give us less .. BAH! .. A lot of my yardage is older, but that is great advise and I will measure my widths just to be sure.

With checking my math, I've realized that I don't have enough yardage to do the background all the same .. what I can do is have the inner blocks one background and the outer blocks a different one .. I do have more than enough for that .. And I think that it would look great too and I have enough to do the backgrounds all the same this way. For the inner ring and the Underground Railroad ring, I really want these backgrounds to be the same. The foregrounds I've already decided will be scrappy - quilts back then were made from scraps of this and that, so this would be more to the period - i have some nice yellows and reds that would be perfect for the foreground for this ring .. and ½ yards of each colour, so getting 4 - 5 blocks per piece won't be an isssue ..

I am bloody tired today! I woke up to my dad knocking on the door (the man has a cell phone, he could call (@@)), and he asked for my help with shopping for a tree for him and doing the plot at my mum's gravesite ... we spent all day it seems running around going here and there .. didn't get the plot done .. needs to have some maintenace done on the ground there first, but we did buy a hanging basket to hang on the shepards crook he had already bought at the gravesite, so that was really good .. and it looks really great too .. I think that mum will like it.

We ended up coming back here to get the dog and then go to his place to cook supper. We made a beef stir fry together that was pretty good!! .. We were missing a few things that makes it just perfect like fresh ginger and broccoli, but we made up for it in other ways with garlic and lots of other veggies ..

I got home and finally got a chance to beat the snot out of the weeds that have been growing in my backyard. In mid to late April, we dug up, leveled, raked, rolled and planted grass seed in our back yard. Well the grass was finally long enough for me to cut it. I wanted to do this earlier this week, but Monday I was busy with other stuff and it's rained just about every day since then. Well I could have done it yesterday, but Kyle broke my weedwhacker so I needed to fix it before I could use it. Didn't bother .. got a new Black & decker one today at Home Depot for like $15 :) .. so it was late when I got home, but nice and cool. Took me bout 30 - 45 mins to whack thru all the weeds in the back .. they were half my height and I'm a shorty ;) .. then to cut the grass. I went over it twice and am pretty pleased with the result. I'm happy enough with it that I finally let Orion out the backyard for the first time since we did all that work :) .. she was pretty happy too. But now I'm pretty bloody whacked .. being outdoors today in nurseries and at home depot then at the gravesite twice, THEN doing my backyard .. Yup I'm tired. I'll have Kyle rake up the weeds and grass tomorrow, then toss some more seed out there and we should be good to go .. all I need to do out there now is to hang my box planters, lay some stone next to the deck and move the old bbq off the deck - just basically rearrange some stuff.

I've gone stark raving mad (!)

I think that I've gone mad .. truly and totally mad!!

Yesterday I pulled out all my reproduction fabrics to pick the ones I wanted for my quilt. Well the background for the lighter parts is a definite - I just needed to find a darker fabric that I had enough of for the background for the Underground Railroad Blocks .. according to quilt pro I needed like 5 1/2 yds of this stuff .. i'm like .. that can't be right .. so I set it up again and redid the yardage calculations - I ended up with 2 different totals :S .. I don't expect the foreground of the railroad blocks to be the same .. I just want the background the same - the rest of it can scrappy .. I just want the backgrounds of each block to be the same. Then I decided - "Okay .. I can have the backgrounds of each 'set' of 10 blocks to be the same .. I can live with that .. so I do the math for a set .. I end up with needing ¼ for the background for the sets, but when I did another calculation I got ½ yd. I need to redo my calculations again. I've done them all the long way instead of counting on quiltpro as it doesn't seem to be able to make up it's mind ..

I thought I would be slick and use excel to do the math for me quick like .. and I got another total .. I ended up with 1 5/8 yards needed for the whole background for that block .. that is 'consistent' with needed about ¼ yd per set of 10, and 2 yards for all 40 blocks .. but I'm not sure .. will do the math again and see.

As you can see, I don't have a HUGE amount of yardage - I have quite a few choices, but not yards and yards of anything but the background fabric for the lighter ring - I think that using the browns or dark blues would be GREAT for the Underground RR ring - those are the ones where I have yards of material .. just not enough to do it all one colour - I have a lot of ½ yd measures and FQs. If these numbers I did last nite are correct, then I will have enough of a brown vine pattern to do for the background - but just barely .. that means NO cutting errors .. no pressure at all .. BAH!

when i did the math by hand last nite, i was so tired that I'm sure that I made TONS of mistakes, so I'll redo it all from scratch again .. but am likely going to wait until after the kid and reg go tonite so I can have some quiet to do this in .. All I need is to get the same measurement twice and I'm good to go ;) ..

I hope ....

Math Wizardess ;)

Woot Woot .. I finally got my numbers to agree :D :D :D .. happy days!!! now .. do i have the confidence in my numbers to start cutting heheheehheheheheh .. i might do a test strip with some other material i have here just to see ..

Thank God that my numbers worked out this time .. i was really beginning to REALLY doubt math for quilting .. and while math isn't my strongest suit .. I am pretty accurate with quilt math

Yard work, other needle work, quilting again ;)

Things have been interesting to say the least. There's been a lot going on, but on the other hand .. there's not been much going on .. i know .. sounds rather ambivalent doesn't it?

Shortly after my last post, we got super busy with yard work - spring clean up outside and the like - just not here, but at my dad's too .. Reg, scalped a tree for my dad, and he and Kyle did a lot of weeding and whatnot there. Then the next day, my neighbour decided to scalp his lawn as he was putting in sod and needed to remove the grass. In previous posts, I've mentioned the lake / moat / swamp that my back yard becomes when it rains - well waiting for the landlord to get us some dirt was getting irksome .. my neighbour offered the top layer of dirt from his front yard and we gladly accepted. What followed was 3 days of Reg digging up our yard by hand and me leveling the dirt after that with a rake .. then rolling it and then laying seed and rolling it again. 2 months later, I'm about ready to cut the grass .. I've more seed on hand now for the patches that will need it .. there are a few spots that didn't take so well - but that's only because I didn't water those enough .. those spots got sun most of the day and needed more water .. course you don't see that immediately .. but after the fact.

I've since gone back to my dad's to weed out my mum's herb garden . (3 years of weeds there, but not to bad) and just last Sunday I did her rose bushes .. now THAT was bad .. the grass had taken such deep root that it was waist high on me and very very thick .. my hands STILL hurt from that - that was another 3 years of weeds. My mum was to sick to do anything with her gardens before she died. But it now looks a LOT better and it'll be easier work when I'm there to keep it up for him. I did some yard work here as well ... planting some cucumber, tomato plants and some seeds for flowers. Since I don't have an actual vegetable garden set up, it was mostly hauling bags of dirt to the box planters. But after doing 4+ hours of weeding at my dad's, my plantings might as well have been a whole bloody acre LOL

I've not done much (read any) quilting until a few days ago .. I was feeling rather disenchanted by my lack of success - altho the scrunchies did do okay considering the crowd at the last table I had - I had 8 hours notice to get ready and stayed up most of the night to prepare them .. I hadn't done the dishcloths yet (I have them now) or the mini coasters. While I working on them over several weeks, I kept having in my head, "why am I bothering .. it's not like i can get a table right now and even if I had one, how much of this would sell???" so I was pretty discouraged, but I did get a stack of knitted dishcloths done - bout 14 of them .. I'm thinking of selling these $3 each or 2 for $5 ... I'll have to let you know how that works out .. altho my aunt and cousin were here the other day and they both just raved about them .. i did take a few of my earlier ones and use them in the house as i hadn't knitted in over 8 years and my tension was a wee bit wonky at first .. but that worked out in short order. I even got adventurous and 'drafted' my own patterns .. They turned out quite nicely, but by that time, I had knitted about 18 cloths and had had enough .. I was more than willing and beyond ready to move onto the coasters.

My dad picked me up the Summer 2008 issue of Quilts and More, and here are a ton of cute projects in there that look like they make up super quick .. They have these english paper piecing coasters that I just had to try .. they made up super quick and are cute. Of course I made a few changes in the directions .. the sizes they offered the templates for were either to large or to small .. so I adjusted the templates for a size that is just right .. they also wanted you to blind stitch down the hex flower to the circle base; to me, that just seemed so unnecessary when you could appliquilt it down all the same time .. so I did that instead .. what is really nice about these is that it's very quick hand work .. I did one with batting and said no more for that(!) .. with all the seams, it was just to hard on my hands to quilt thru all those layers .. I really do like the affect that doing it this way has as well as the adjusted size.

Reg has been talking about how warm it is at nite and I'm kicking myself for not getting started on our summer bed quilt .. the one I had been plotting to do with the reproduction fabrics - I've designed my quilt and have made my notes for how many pieces to cut for it - My issue is that I don't have enough of one fabric to use as the whole background; so what I've done is created a 'ring' so to speak and looks like I'll have enough to do it with that .. I've several different types of fabric in minimal yard lengths so that while I do have enough fabric to do my quilt, I don't have enough to make it all of say 2 or 3 different fabrics .. but that's alright actually .. in civil war days, quilts were made with odd bits and pieces anyways, so this will be more true to the time .. I've picked out 5 blocks from that era that I'm going to use .. Ohio Star, Simple Star, Underground Railway, Basket and a version of the weathervane .. Reg saw that block and said he liked THAT one .. so after the railroad block, this one became the 'focus' of my layout. The colours that I used in my layout were more to create the pattern and the separation of the sections .. I have a lot of blues and greens - which is great .. our favourite colours and our room has dark blue trim in it .. I need to do my test blocks and then i should be ready to go.

I've almost got my sewing room set back to rights .. it had gotten to the point where a bomb going off would have been a great improvement .. with getting ready for the shows and not having an interest due to my sense of failure . .I've not done much in here but check email .. even then .. very little of that .. so once that's done . .in the next day or two, I'll be doing the test blocks .. the basket and the weathervane block ..

Next planned steps

finish cleaning sewing room

test blocks

baste kyle's quilt; kitty quilt

finish handquilting border on small wallhanging

binding on doll quilt

finish Michigan left

etc etc etc ...