Some adult supervision was probably needed on a Slow Sunday...

Hello - well there was very little on my calendar last week ...lots of time to be productive... but in the end what I have to show for myself was more shopping related than crafty... I stayed up waaaaay too late on Tuesday night and as a result wasn't very focused on Wednesday...surfing the web was mindless... and FUN!... and a little costly...LOL... and I 'llshow you what I found and you can understand why some adult supervision was probably needed... remember you can't help getting older but you don't have to grow up!!  

So let me confess my transgressions right up front... first I wandered over to eBay... haven't been there in a while and there is probably a very good reason for that... some how I get in trouble over there as I find older items I wish I had gotten when they were new and I've lucked into some bargains... to begin you know my love for Debbie Mumm.... both her fabrics and her knickknacks... and you know I LOVE snowmen... so Debbie Mumm snowmen are doubly irresistible as evidenced here...

The bigger guy is missing a broom... I'm sure I can find or  make one for him before January... and I've never seen the skiing snowmen salt and pepper shakers... too stinking cute!

And there was this purchase which is crafty related... I didn't work on my Sandy Gervais GIANT Disappearing  9 patch as I determined that I needed to add something besides the teal to the mix... now Sandy also did some lovely purple Fall fabrics, and I've used them in almost every quilt I've made with her stuff... but all I have left is some scraps... nothing large enough to cut a 5 x 10 piece from... so I searched all over Etsy and then checked out eBay and found 2 yards of this print...

Love the leaves, can't get more Fall than that and this is a more dusty subtle purple ... I think it will go well in the quilt... I hope to play with it tomorrow.  And in thinking about the GIANT Disappearing 9 Patch I found that I had made another quilt with it.... you can see it here... as I recall this was just 1 layer cake and  some yardage for the 5" square to make a lap size quilt. 

Oh I was asked about the construction of this pattern... for a double bed sized quilt I use 2 layers cakes and it takes about 3/4 yds of another fabric for the 5" corner.... So you start by selecting your favorite 10" squares that you don't want to cut up ... you need 36... then you cut another 36 10" fabrics into 5" x 10" rectangles and add a 5" square to complete the block... 

Does that make sense?  The first time I tried this I sewed 9 10" squares together... yikes... that "block" was bigger than my cutting table  and I quickly realized I had to cut stuff smaller before I sewed it together. 

And while I had lots of fun on eBay I also moseyed on over to Amazon where an item I've looked at several times kept popping up as it is a seasonal Thanksgiving piece... and since I switched credit cards a couple of months ago from Discover to Amazon Prime I've accumulated a nice stash of "free money".. and well ... it just jumped into my cart and was paid for with the "free money" and is now living at my house... 

Yep a rather large resin turkey... according to the description he's 10"D x 11.5"W x 12.5"H... very handsome... and it is very evident that no adult supervision was involved in this purchase... LOL... I'm very happy with Tom... I was going to put him on the dining room table but the scale was wrong so he's sitting a stack of quilts in the living room... you'll see a bigger picture farther down.

And that certainly should have been enough  online shopping... but it wasn't there was one more item that I've been thinking about for  a while... and I really tried to talk myself out of it... really I did... but I'm weak and there is no adult here to keep me off my laptop AND it was on sale... so I bought it..

A 96" tall chicken dressed up for Christmas!!!  Wait, how tall is 96"???... 96 divided by 12... OMG... she's 8 FEET TALL!! ROFLMAO.... this is gonna be crazy... I'm going to put here in the small section of grass by the garage and patio... the neighbors dogs are gonna freak out... and my older son may suggest a mental health evaluation... he has told me several times that I am crazy, but it isn't the kind of crazy he can commit me for......... yet........ he's waiting for the right time...LOL   OH if you'd like a GIANT chicken in your yard you can find her here at Tractor Supply... you know you want one.... 

As you can see it was definitely a retail oriented week... no sewing was done, a bit of knitting occurred, and a new cross stitch piece was started.  I began what will be my 6th house from Pinker N Punkin...

on the right, this is the Thanksgiving House.... you can find it here... and I think it pairs nicely with Turkey Creek Manor....which you can see here... 

Now I did get my Halloween decor put away and my Thanksgiving stuff out... here's the living room with the Grungy Gourds quilt on the wall... and look closely in the bottom right corner and you'll see Tom...

The quilt is my version of the Pumpkins pattern from Cluck Cluck Sew all done in Moda Grunge fabrics... I modified a couple of the pumpkins to put my spin on it... 

The tier tray has a great turkey piece from Stone Street Stitch Works and tiny turkey pillow from Bent Creek on the top tier....

and below in the bed of the truck is a Pineberry Lane piece... I think the chart is Fruits of our Labor... 

sorry I'm not linking all the cross stitch today... I'm typing this very late on Saturday and I'm tired and want to go to bed and I'm having a hell of a time adding pictures and trying to fix the spacing... please bear with me...

Over on the right side of the TV cabinet I have another small tier tray with more stitched turkeys... the one on top is from Prairie Schooler and as I remember the bottom one was a freebie I found on Pinterest...and I have some cute turkey knickknacks...

On the left side I have my November monthly from Hands on Designs and more Thanksgiving knickknacks... love animals that have clothes on ... LOL

I'll show more decor next week as I have plans for an updated display out on the porch... but first I need to FFO of these...

I'm planning on giving the little shelf unit on the porch a makeover from squirrels to turkeys and these will be included.  I definitely need to be productive this week. So far I'll I've got on my calendar is Elliott on Tuesday, dinner with a friend on Wednesday and a mammogram on Friday... don't know about you but I'm still adjusting to the time change... it isn't as bad as Spring forward but I'm still a bit off... staying up late on Tuesday didn't help the situation. I did see on X where Thomas Massie called for the bill to come to the floor and stop changing the clocks twice a year... that would be soooo good... and maybe he can make it happen... he is one of those characters who gets attention. 

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... and I'll leave you with my personal Macy's Day Parade display... further evidence that there should be more adult supervision in my life...LOL

the turkeys and the Pilgrim boy with the Costco sized pumpkin pie are 6 ft tall and they light up at night!  and yes my neighbors think I'm crazy!!!

hope your week ahead is a good one!!

happy stitching!

carol fun 

Looking for Tranquility on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well last week was jam packed...an appointment or engagement every day...and while none of them took up the entire day, by the time I got home I was pooped and not very motivated to get stuff done... so I didn't. Still dealing with family members health issues and saying prayers that things resolve themselves... and I'll admit to being anxious about the upcoming election... so I decided to look for some tranquility... and it turns out,  it was both a literal and a figurative search... 

Trying to stay off social media to improve my mental health and be more tranquil... BUT I spent a lot of time online shopping which may have dented my finances... oh well... 

How it started... I was making my bed Monday morning and thinking I LOVE this Fall quilt with Sandy Gervais fabrics...

BUT it has been on my bed since September 1 and wouldn't it be nice to have another bed size Fall quilt with Sandy Gervais fabrics? ... of course it would!

It has to be simple, and I want it to show off the fabrics and what popped into my head was the quilts I've made with the GIANT Disappearing 9 Patch pattern done with layer cakes.  So far I've made 3 of them.... 

However, the first  didn't use a layer cake. This one I made for Nick with woven plaids left over from a quilt I made for his brother, Chris, when he went off to college... when asked, Chris will reply that his favorite color is plaid.. I know it makes no sense but we just go with it.... this is Nick's quilt.

Next I made myself one using a hoarded layer cake of my favorite collection from American Jane, Potluck... I love that I didn't have to cut up those chickens and tape measure prints....

Then I made one with another hoarded layer cake of my favorite collection from Momo, Wonderland... I love the prints with the scissors and the birds...

And now I want to make this quilt with a layer cake of my favorite Fall collection from Sandy Gervais... as far as I can tell it was printed in 2008 and I've used up most of what I had from the collection in other quilts  like my Fall bird quilt...

and this table runner...

and the quilt that is on my bed right now.

The collection is called...wait for it... Tranquility... so I went online searching to see if I could find any fabric from this 16 year old line ... and lo and behold I did!!!  I found a layer cake of Tranquility and Hello Fall (I have no clue when that one was printed) from the same seller on eBay and she only wanted $39 each for them, which I pretty sure was the going price when they first came out... so that was a deal...I know Tranquility is an old old collection because Moda now uses the style of the label on the Hello Fall layer cake for all their packaging. 

But before I found Tranquility I also saw a newer Fall collection ...Sandy Gervais  has moved from Moda to Riley Blake and this one is called Fall's in Town... and it jumped into my cart...LOL... you can see it here. As of typing this on Saturday it hasn't hit my mailbox...

Then while I was trying to research the print date of Tranquility I found ANOTHER seller with a layer cake of it, again at a reasonable price... so I bought it too... for someone who is trying to use up at least a fraction of the fabric she has in her stash, I am not doing a very good job... deep sigh ... I just can't resist some of the older collections ... there were just SO GOOD!   and they make me HAPPY!!  They are cheaper than mental health therapy and I have something to show for my money ... right? right?

Soooo with my new/old goodies I went to my sewing studio (the basement) and started laying out  a Sandy Gervais Fall GIANT Disappearing Nine Patch... and so far I'm LOVING it !! I need to cut some more of the 5' x 10" pieces and I'm hoping the second Tranquility layer cake I purchase comes on Monday. I'm also using some fabrics from the Adel in Autumn  and the Hello Fall collections and stuff in my stash that I have no clue what collection they were from. 

Have half of a top tentatively arranged here... definitely want to see the other layer cakes I ordered as I'd like to add more of the teal and more oranges and use as many different fabrics as I can.  Now even though I can probably get this sewn together pretty quickly, I know that it will take Delinda a couple of weeks to get it quilted, so it isn't going to grace my bed this year... but I also got to thinking about a Christmas quilt with the GIANT Disappearing 9 Patch done with my stash of Basic Grey Christmas collections... I have 4 layer cakes here, 2 of Peppermint Bark  and 1 each of Winter Village and BerryMerry ... I also have a good size bin of partially used FQs from the Jolly Good collection so I have a lot of fabric to work with... 

Perhaps I should play with these first as there is a chance I could get it sewn and quilted before Christmas... decisions, decisions....a quilt dilemma... and to add to my dithering I just saw a video from FQS that gave me another idea for the layer cakes... you can see it here. They did this with fat quarters but I think it could be adapted to layer cakes. 

Meanwhile, I only got a a little stitching done on  WTNT Every Opening Flower...

Those flowers have lots of stitches in them...I  love Brenda Gervais' cross stitch style and her newest Christmas patterns popped into my mailbox yesterday...

And I've seen a couple of new releases from other designers that are Christmasy  and  they are enticing me to move on to Santa stitching... one can never have too much Christmas decor in my opinion. 

The upcoming week looks much quieter than last week, but you never know what will happen... right now I just have Elliott on Tuesday and a meeting with a lawyer/financial guy to hash out some issues on Friday... should have lots of time to sew and stitch... fingers crossed.

The weather has been lovely... temps in the 70's and sunny... we did have a bit of rain on Halloween evening, of course. But we still had a decent amount of trick or treaters. I got  2 BIG bags of candy at Costco and we went through all of one and half of the other. I wasn't paying close attention when I bought the candy, and  was disappointed that there were no Almond Joys or Mounds in either bag... was reduced to eating Twix... such a sacrifice...LOL... weather pattern should continue next week and it is having repercussions for my garden beds. Remember I cleaned them all out in September, and we've have virtually no rain for weeks and weeks... however my dahlias that I cut back to the ground have somehow decided that it is March, not November and they are growing again...ackk!! They are up about 10 to 12 inches... I'm going to have to cut them back again before I can get Dan to mulch which he usually does for me in November. A good hard freeze would make the job easier but we haven't even had a bit of frost yet... Mother Nature is annoying me... 

And another issue that is annoying me is the semi-annual time change...did you think I forgot??  Fall back one hour starting this morning... and while this is easier to deal with than the Spring forward one I still HATE it!!! Leave the clock alone... I've signed petitions to stop the time changing but like so much of the federal government no progress has been made on the issue. Many tell me to just roll with it... and I should... that would make me more tranquil... but it ain't happening to this old gal...

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today and with Quilting is More Fun than Housework... hope your week ahead is a good one... and that you find tranquility too in this crazy world. 

happy stitching-

carol fun