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