Indecision, indecision... on a Slow Sunday...

Well it has been a typical weather week in Ohio... we've had sunshine and 60's and rain and 40's and snow and 30's... and personally I'm done with the rain and the snow... I'll be sending a memo to Mother Nature although I think she blocked me...LOL

When the weather was sunny and in the 60's my lawn guy was able to install all my paver edging around my garden beds and it looks FABULOUS!!  I love the color of the stone which will age and darken over time and the edging will sink a bit too but that will be also be fine....starting from the side yard... oh the chickens were black metal when I purchased them and I painted them... may get a couple more... 

around to the front...

and a view from the corner...

as you can see I have tons of flowers coming up... 

got a couple of daffodils blooming and those irises are gorgeous...I'm not a purple person but I love it in the Spring... I'm seeing leaves for daffodils and for something else I planted but I'm not sure what it is... I'm betting on a pleasant surprise in a week or two... I checked the blog and I had daffodils starting to bloom this time last year too... The winters seem to be getting milder and I'm all for that ... the older I get the less I like snow... or cold... or ice... I totally understand the desire to go to Florida during January and February...

I broke the news to my lawn guy that we are going to have to un-install the large raised bed... this sucker is 4 ft wide and 24 ft long... sheesh what was I thinking? 

  Oh yeah I was thinking I wanted as much space as possible for dahlias... and I still want a lot of space, but maybe I don't really need this much space. So I sort of have a plan for the reworking of this raised bed... I ordered 4 of these metal raised beds...6 ft long 3 ft wide and 2 feet tall. 

 I dithered over what color... couldn't make up my mind...light green? terra cotta? white?  indecision, indecision... finally hit the button and picked the wood grain... yeah I know it is  bit fakey... it reminds me of the wood grain paneling on the side of the 1970 Plymouth station wagon I learned to drive on...well I kinda learned to drive on it, till the day I almost wiped about a half a dozen trash cans... my father then purchased a used 1964 Plymouth Valiant with push button transmission... it looked like this one ... easier to drive and definitely easier to parallel park...I loved that  the little car... oh where was I ? oh yeah,  back to the decision about the color of the raised beds... I decided on the brown because the trim on my house is brown, the shutters are brown, the roof is brown and all the pots I've bought for the landscaping are brown... thought I'd just stick with that theme.

As for quilting and sewing I did get all the rows sewn together on my Kaffe Spool quilt and took it to Delinda for long arm quilting... she does such a great job... picked out a swirly panto and a shiny green thread...

A close up of some of the blocks...

Only got a couple more of the Stack N Whack blocks done...then got side tracked by another shiny thing... I want to make this Layer Cake Loop quilt with the two layer cakes of Cathe Holden's Vintage Soul ... here's the fabric.... very retro 70's!! ahh, sweet youth... here's the fabrics... they are digitally printed and looked like crewel embroidery and crochet!

 

Shouldn't take long to cut it out but other stuff got in the way...You can find the free pattern here ...  and here's the overall design,

indecision, indecision...should I shift back to the Stack n Whack or play with the Layer Cake... hmmm...  to be determined...

And last week I talked about banishing the snowmen and bringing out the Spring decor... I got some cute new bunnies and adorable cabbages I want to display... and when I woke up on Friday morning I laid in bed and determined I was going to start before Friday was over putting things away... and then I listened to the weather forecast which called for snow on Saturday... arghhh... do I really want to put them away if there is more winter to come?  or do I want to ignore winter and move on?  indecision, indecsion... as the forecast changed throughout the day and the "snow event" morphed into less than a half an inch of accumulation expected, I decided to go ahead and get out the Spring stuff... weather update... we didn't even get a quarter of an inch... some dusting on people's roofs and  a tiny bit of frosty stuff in my flowers beds... shessh...

So I got to it Friday night... took 35 hours but as of today the snowmen are safely tucked away in their plastic bins and the Spring decor is strewn all over the living room...  gotta get it all done before Elliott comes over on Tuesday... a deadline is a good thing for indecision! Now I'll  futz a while about where to place stuff...each year I try to come up with a new arrangement... not sure why... no body is going to remember exactly what it looked like last year and no body is going to complain. Each season when I start I dither and then finally just start putting stuff on shelves... as of Saturday evening I haven't gotten past the futzing and dithering stage. I did get all the quilts out and found places for them... on the backs of chairs and the sofa, a stack by the wall quilt, out on the sunroom porch, a stack on the shelving unit, a bunch in the laundry cart... they look good and they aren't all in the exact same place as last year... yeah me!! 

I've been watching various videos about the new releases at the upcoming Needlework Market... a couple have caught my eye... there are 2 new ones from Blackbird and I'll be adding those to my stash. In the meantime we all know that COLLECTING charts is a totally separate hobby than actually  STITCHING charts... and I'm much more productive where collecting comes in. These new charts snuck in last week..

I plan to do this Quaker Stocking as a long rectangle instead of a stocking... 

And this one from Threadworks Primitives caught my eye with that kinda quilty design...

And I was watching flosstube and I dozed off and when I woke up this chart from The Drawn Thread was on my screen... I took it as a sign from the cross stitch gods, LOL.... turns out it was an exclusive to the retreat at the Silver Needle in OK... well a bit of searching turned up a copy of this on ebay... and yes I paid too much but I LOVE it!   A house tucked in a group of flowers PLUS and alphabet!!! Be still my beating heart!!   Now it was charted for silks but I'll pick my colors from DMC.. can't wait to add this to my Spring/Summer displays.

And wait there's more... I've been admiring all the Tiny Town charts from Heart in Hand Designs and finally succumbed to their charm and ordered this one... I have plans to display it in a tray on my dining room table... already got the DMC flosses and want to paint some fabric for it ASAP.

 I don't remember where I saw this book of French samplers... I think it was on IG and bought it on Etsy...

I love the traditional design look of these samplers and may stitch a motif or two from them...

What to start first... the Drawn Thread piece?  The Tiny Town? The bunny head basket one from WTN&T that I got last week?   indecision, indecision... In the meantime my Catholic guilt says FINISH what you are already working on... and I did get a bit more down on the Prairie Schooler Garden sampler... 

my goal is to finish this before the end of the month... I got 5 days... I'm still dealing with indecision about the garden gate... I started backstitching it in a very pale gray, DMC 168, and I've changed my mind several times this week as to whether I like it or not... I could frog it and stitch it in DMC 169, which is a lighter gray than what is called for... indecision, indecision... and then I tell myself Carol, this is just a cross stitch sampler, it ain't world peace... make up your mind!!  Oh I'm very forceful with me, but I don't seem to listen well...LOL

Next week is looking good... Elliott on Tuesday, lunch with the quilty ladies on Wednesday, dinner on Thursday night with a friend from my sons' grade school days, we were PTA  president and vice president for years... lots of fundraisers under our belts, and lunch with other friends on Friday... the weather overall is going to be more Spring like than Winter, and I watched a long range forecast that thought the worse was behind us... fingers crossed they are correct. 

Hope you have a good week ahead too... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and check out the pretties there... and hope to finish up my decorating today and have Nick take the empty-ish bins back to the basement... and maybe get in a bit of sewing and/or stitching!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

The only thing constant is change on a Slow Sunday...

Hello ...so I'm feeling a bit ruminative today... thinking a LOT about change... changes I want to make... Friday  it snowed ... about an inch and for my viewpoint it was a perfect snow... didn't start till the end of rush hour and because we were warm all week mostly stuck to the grass and the rooftops... very pretty... and now it is Sunday and it is well on its way to melting as we will be in the 40's today and by Wednesday it will be 60... I'm happy about that as I'm ready to pack away the snowmen decor and break out the bunnies... time for a change... and one of my favorite saying is... 

"The only constant in life is change."...attributed to an obscure Greek philosopher... 

and along with changing my decorations I've been thinking about re-arranging my sewing studio  and getting a new slipcover for the couch in my living room and replacing my raised garden bed and  changing the direction of the quilt project I played with all week and was so sure I knew exactly what background color and what size it should be... lots of things I think I want to change... whether or not the change actually occurs is another story...

Yep, I'm going to start putting away the snowmen this week and the goal is to get the bunnies out the week after... my quilty lady friends are coming over on the 28th and it would be nice to be decorated for Spring by then, even though it doesn't officially begin till March 19...and the damn time change where I lose an hour of much needed sleep is March 10...grrrr...

I haven't moved any furniture in my sewing studio yet... not sure I really need the 2 sewing machine set up... will need help from my son to re-arrange things and while he's quite helpful I don't want to move things and then a short time later want to change them back...this is my current set up and I just end up piling stuff up around the Janome, which is the machine on the left side..  a gratuitous pic of the messiness...

As for the slipcover for the couch I finally decided on an olive green velvet one... it is going to make quite the statement in my living room... I've been working on buying a new couch for a while, but couldn't find anything I liked better in size and style than the one I have (got it 10 years ago from Ikea)... sent away for lots of fabric swatches and this is the one I choose... 

fingers crossed that the vision in my head is as good as I hope as I stare at this couch every single day from 

my stitching chair. It is going to make a BIG statement... LOL!!

As for the raised garden bed, a conversation with my neighbor leads me to believe he wants to fence the part of his yard for his dogs, that is adjacent to my raised bed in the very near future... and 2 years ago when I had the bed constructed and wanted it to be as BIG as I could possibly get it, he let me build it right up to, and probably on the property line of our yards. If he wants to put a fence up he's going to be right up next to the bed which would make it  difficult for me to reach the back of it... and I'm not really upset about this... when I had it built I wasn't aware of  the variety of raised beds. Recently, I've seen several metal ones that are quite attractive. Two years ago all I saw in metal was the galvanized ones you would use for watering livestock... now you can get them in really attractive colors... sage green, cream, deep blue, forest green, brown, white... go here and you can see how many different styles and colors are available.... you can see in the background of the  pic below that my bed is wood and even though pressure treated it will eventually rot... so maybe now is the time to change it. I would have to pay to have this one dismantled and the new bed installed... I'm okay with that... the rub is the young man who would do the work is the one who constructed the bed and he's quite rightly proud of his work... I don't find any fault in it and honestly this is me changing my mind in light of the property line/fence situation and finding out what colorful choices are available... I don't want to hurt his feelings... I've known him since he was 15 and his grandpa drove him and his lawnmower to my house to mow my yard. Now he has his own landscaping company with all kinds of equipment and this week he's going to install paver edging around all my flower beds... aren't these pretty?

well as pretty as pavers can be...  Got my sorry butt out of bed at 7:30 am on Friday to take deliver of this 1.5 tons of Black Hills Rustic Untumbled Edging... I shall broach the subject of re-doing the bed with him... other problem is it probably needs to be done soon so I'd be able to plant stuff in it this summer... timing could be tricky. Right now he's not mowing grass or blowing snow so its a great time to do the paver project ... and it would be a great time to change the raised bed. I can get deliver of the metal ones in a week or so... 

changes changes changes... keeping me busy...

Okay lets move onto some a bit more colorful and creative... last week I said I was going to  start on a tulip quilt... I changed my mind... instead I had to  stack and whack this Phillip Jacobs fabric... it is a 25" repeat...

and can I say the hexagons look FABULOUS!!! This is what I've got done so far...

I can get 48 hexagons from one half of the yardage I have... so 96 from the whole piece... and it was so  tantalizing I went searching online to see if I could find anymore yardage and I did... another 5 yards...which arrived yesterday... now I tried out several different Grunge fabrics that were in my stash for the "points"... 

this first one is Ale... a favorite goldy yellow...

and then there is this screaming green... its is called Cactus...

and a more subdued green called Vert...

and a soft blue called Faded Denim...

all pretty in their own way... but I knew I needed a trip to my LQS to see if there was another fabric that might be a better choice and at the time I went shopping I had changed my mind from this being a throw to being a full size bed quilt ( more changes)... 

I found this fabric which is called Moutarde... a different goldy yellow with splocthes of  bluey grey ... and I got 5 yards.... these pic do not show the true color of this fabric... I took these at night and I've put in full spectrum bulbs but the lighting just drives me nuts... my phone always makes things look weird and here everything is a bit washed out...

Now while I was shopping a friend suggested another Grunge fabric... it is from the Decorum collection and called Composed .. according the description this color is "Inspired by an antique rug... serene and dramatic ...composed and bold... rooted in tradition, yet still very modern"   Oh my goodness... what an amazing bit of copy...LOL... anyway I didn't take a picture but you can see a pic here, but it was more greeny grayish blue in person... and it made the hexagons look very sophisticated... and honestly it would probably be a better quilt with this  as star points,  but when I was in the shop I was adamant that I wanted to make this a yellow full size quilt for my bed... and now... you guessed it... I think I've changed my mind... I'm not upset about the yardage I've bought ... I'll use that Moutarde in another quilt as it is a lovely goldy yellow... and  I'm back to thinking that all I need is a throw sized quilt... I could use the yardage of the print as a border and back for a throw... indecision... and the more I think about this the more I think I'm going to change my mind... ackk!!.... need to sleep on this and get some graph paper out and see how this works...

Here are some close ups of  few of my favorite hexagons so far...

this ones reminds me of the feathered fans Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen used in the Sisters number from my favorite movie, White Christmas... which you can see here!

and this one is dancing daisies...

and I'm not normally a fan of purple but I like it in this block...

and I love the blue gray in this one... it really goes well with the splotches on the Moutarde Grunge and it coordinated perfectly with the Composed Grunge (can you tell I'm still thinking about changing my mind on this quilt?) and this block shows that Moutarde fabric in the truest sense... 

As for cross stitching I didn't get as much done as I hoped... a couple of evenings when I would have been stitching, instead I was downstairs sewing... excuse the wrinkles... and the washed out colors... I'm thinking I'm going to have to backstitch around the gazebo and the gate so they have more contrast with the linen... I think a light gray will work... I'm pretty confident I can finish this before the end of the month...

 which would be great because these Springy charts from With Thy Needle & Thread  arrived this week...

That bunny head basket is so cute and would be perfect with my collection of bunny heads... LOL... sounds macabre doesn't it?

And I finished a pair of socks this week... again the lighting doesn't show that those heels are a deep purple.. not black... 

I picked up a scrappy unfinished pair  I don't remember when I started...

not sure what I was thinking here and the yarns left in the bag don't seem to totally match up with the finished sock...hmmmm... may need to make some changes...

Benjamin Franklin said, "When you are finished changing, you are finished"...

Well I'm not done changing stuff so I guess I'm not finished...yet... 

I hope you have a great week ahead... right now mine appears to have lots of time to change stuff... let's see how that works out... I'll be linking up with Kathy's Quilts today and then I'm going to do some stitching and some sewing... and if I'm really ambitious I might even start packing up the snowmen... but that could change...

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Strolling through past projects & going off on multiple tangents on a Slow Sunday....

 Hello - well it was another week where I don't know how it got away from me... but it did... the weather was nice for several days... lots of sun  and high 50 temperatures... but then the clouds rolled back in...sigh... and I knew it was too early to be Spring... but I wanted to believe it could be...  however  Mother Nature is fickle and looking out to the end of the week it will definitely return to February temperatures ... I was hoping for a monthly utility bill less than last month... fingers crossed.

I was able to get the borders on the Quiltmaker's Gift hexagons and they laid pretty flat. I drew a chalk line a quarter of an inch from the hexagon edges and sewed the straight of grain borders on before I trimmed the triangle edges. I needed to take a bit in here and there but overall it wasn't too difficult... and finishing that top got me charged up to sew some more.

Warning - this post got away from me... kinda like last week did... and there are lots of tangents ... my mind wanders... A LOT...

Anyway, it all started when I spent some time strolling through my collection of plastic sterlite  bins... I have this closet in my basement, right off my sewing room...  a space we in the Midwest call a fruit cellar... my parents house had a smaller version of this and we stored canned goods in it... mine already had these great shelves built in and they are perfect for the 24 qt size of  sterlite bins... so happy someone 70 years ago created this space for me!!

I'm not sure how big this space is... probably around 10 ft in length...  here are 3 pics of the space from left to right... Halloween and Christmas on the top, Debbie Mumm fabrics are below...

Lots of Moda collections up top and projects in various stages of un-completion... more Debbie Mumm below...

A repeat of the center section... I have no shame...

So  much fabric and so many quilts in different stages of assembly in here... and I know that looking at all of this may lead you to believe I'm rich... that's not the case, the reality is,  I'm just incredibly irresponsible... and I've been that way since 1985...I can resist anything but temptation and boy there's been  a lot of temptation in my life...LOL

Some of the bins I opened were just fabrics ... occasionally I left a pattern inside as clue as to what I planned on doing with the fabric... but not very often...I  definitely need to leave more notes cause the biggest lie I tell myself is "I'll remember that"...  some bins had a couple to quite a few blocks completed, which  was great... then I knew what my previous plan was... and some were total surprises and not always good ones. I did find a few projects that I know I'm never  going to get back to... and that's okay.

I opened one of the bins and saw lots of Kaffe's in purples and teals, very pretty... and some Grunge in the Pear colorway, oooh I like this one a lot... and a book, The Cake Mix Quilt Book by Sew Emma...

well I paged through it and thought "oh I'd love to do this quilt with the spool block that was titled the Banana Split quilt" (all the quilts in the book have dessert names)... and then I dug down a little farther and found 18 finished spool blocks... face palm... I have no recollection of making these blocks... and I checked the blog and I didn't find any mention of these blocks anywhere...  I looked up the publication date of the book, October 2017... so I figure this shiny object caught my eye in 2018... which would make these blocks  about 6 years old... just babies in the scheme of how long some projects hang around here...LOL... and I sure do like them!! 

These pictures don't do that Pear Grunge any favors ... you can see a better pictures here. 

I think my original plan was to make 30 blocks but I'm settling for these 25... should be about 67" square. I already ordered a Kaffe wide back for it!

These blocks are made with the Cake Mix Recipe  #5 papers... 

 I really like making the blocks with these papers. They are quick to sew up... just put 2 10" squares right sides together, put the paper on top and sew on the dotted lines following the arrows and cut on the solid lines. You get all the units for the block and they are the exact size you need.  I have several different pads of these Cake Mix Recipes ... need to play with then as I have lots and lots of layer cakes. 

In going through the bins I found my stash of Kaffe Fasset/Phillip Jacobs fabrics and came across 2 pieces that I had yardage of, which indicates to me that I planned to use them for a Stack N Whack...and I'm still itching to start another SNW...  this  first one is from Phillip Jacobs.

oh my goodness this a a gorgeous piece of fabric!!! It is called Shaggy and those flowers are  8-9" across... the repeat is 25" and I have 7 repeats... I can make some big hexagons from this one and I LOVE this colorway!!!

And there was this piece from Philip Jacobs called Cactus Dahlias... and you know I adore dahlias... the flowers on this are about 7-8" across  and the repeat is 25"... I only have 4 repeats so this will definitely be cut as squares.

And there was this piece from Kaffe... Lotus Flower... it is so soft and  pretty... there is enough here to do a Stack N Whack but then I had another idea... 

I found yardage of this Grunge in a bin with some Crystal Manning fabric and haven't a clue what I planned on doing with it... but it is gorgeous... a soft blue with a edge of aqua and a splash of green...  I think it is called Clear Water...and it goes perfectly with the Lotus Flower fabric!! insert squeal...

I want to make a tulip quilt with the Lotus Flower fabric and use the Grunge as the background... big fat tulips that will show off the Lotus Flower fabric and I even found a great green Grunge... its called Vert (you can just see it bit of it in this picture) ... so this would be a totally FREE quilt since I already own all of these fabrics!  Free is great!!

So many many many ideas... now to find the time.... and boy I had fun strolling through these bins. I concluded that I have bought some awfully pretty fabrics and I still like  almost all of them... there were a few I came across that I can't remember why I would have purchased them... I must have like them in the past... but I'm not that fond of them now...oh well...

On the cross stitch front I stitched and FFO'd this guy... Little Cupid from Emily Call...

now I only stitched Cupid  and added some hearts... Emily's design has a lot more going on and it is so cute but I knew I could only fit a tiny piece into my display and he finished 2" square...

Here are my 2 Valentine's Day displays... one on either side of my TV...

On the top February Basket from Cosford Rise Stitchery is keeping company with Little Cupid.

Below is LOVE from Calico Confectionery and Be my Valentine was a freebie from Lizzie Kate... I made  the little felt jelly roll cake pincushion eons ago...

and  February is from Hands on Designs A Year of Celebrations... I stitched all on them the year the pattern was released and this is one of my favortites... who doesn't love a heart shaped box of chocolates??

Other side of TV...

From left to right the Love Quaker  was a freebie from Wendy Peatross of From the Heart Needleart  and the little angel and the pillow with the little white hearts are from Love Notes by With Thy Needle and Thread. Love is a freebie from the Stitcherhood. 

Be Mine is also from Love Notes by WTN&T and the Baby Alphabet was a freebie from Sheepish Designs. I do love making smalls for holidays like Valentine's Day... just sweet little pieces... and I marvel at how many small freebies are out there... the designers are very generous. In looking for the links for these pieces I found a couple more I'll add to my stash for another year. 

As for cross stitching I've put some time in on my Prairie Schooler Garden Sampler...sorry the lighting is awful...

The  garden gate  was suppose to be dark grey... if I was able to have a fence around my yard (but local ordinances don't allow it) I would have a white picket fence with a white gate.... I might end up back stitching around the gate with a light gray... still mulling it over... after I get this and wall section done the alphabet should go pretty quick... don't know what I'll move onto next... I have a small I'd like to do for St. Patrick's Day... and some past Blackbird Designs stuff also caught my eye (more on that in a bit). 

I've seen snippets and previews of charts coming out at the Needlework Market the beginning of March... so far I'm smitten with the chart from Teresa Kogut called Serenity... here's a link where you could pre-order it...and I like her Hello Spring book too... here's another link site. I just randomly picked the links from a Google search...not sure where I'll order from  yet. I keep reminding myself that I don't have to pre-order anything... they aren't limited editions ... they'll be available for quite a while... but it sure is nice to get them when they are all shiny and new...LOL

The nice weather had me contemplating putting my snowmen away and breaking out my Spring decor... but I'm not that energetic at the moment... I did do a little shopping at Michaels the other day and was able to snag another rabbit driving a carrot car for what is becoming my private fleet of carrot cars... this one isn't too big... which is good, cause they require a lot of parking space.  I also got to thinking about an old Blackbird Design series called the Garden Club Series... there are 12 small charts each about 65 stitches done on various pieces of 32 ct linen... I have stitched the first two...

and I have ALL the charts and ALL the linen and called for threads for the other 10. 

The idea was to sew them all together into one piece when you completed stitching all of them. 

However the linens are from different sources and some are stiff (which I prefer) and others are super limp... and in thinking about this I believe it would be a nightmare sewing these to each other and when it was laced to be framed I'd be afraid that some of the pieces might rip at the seams....soooooo I'm thinking about stitching them as small pillows... they are about 4" square... and I think they would be nice additions to my Spring displays or  if I get a couple more stitched a nice dough bowl arrangement.  I may even over paint or over dye some of the linens... they are all shades of beige which aren't my favs any more... and I will definitely be starching the limp linens. And I'm realistic enough to know that I will probably never get all 12 stitched so I'll start with the ones I like best (which aren't either of the two I have finished...oh well). 

 

So you can see that I've spent the last week strolling down memory lane of past many many quilting and stitching projects... it was a nice trip... and it got me excited to pick back up some older  stuff... which has been here so long I now consider all of this stuff FREE cause I have no memory of what it cost... I think that is a sign that I'm getting really old... that an my aching knees...

If you stayed through all of those tangents you deserve to go get yourself a treat... my current choice  is some dark chocolate covered caramels I picked up at Costco... yummy!  Not a lot on my calendar for next week at the moment... hope to keep it that way... but something always comes up... I want to sit out on the sunroom porch today and stitch... might be the last day for a while I can do that... I did sit out there a couple of days last week... I hate to miss out on those sunny days... 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... I hope you are enjoying my weekly updates... I keep thinking I'll run out of stuff to talk about... but so far I haven't ... and wanting to have something to talk about does motivate me to stay off of social media and actually get something done... not sure what I will I come up with  for next Sunday... hope it is something interesting....fingers crossed...LOL

happy stitching-

carol fun