Been Dreaming of Quilting

Hi, It seems like forever since the last time I wrote a blog post. I think it has actually been 24 days. I have been dreaming of sewing and quilting. But… We have been busy working around our house and farm fixing things up. We are going to refinance our mortgage and the new company required us to fix some things first.

We had to take down a 115 year old barn that was in disrepair. There really was no way to save much of it. We did pull out some old beams and lumber that was stored inside but that was about it. We had two other small sheds and an old building that was once a chicken coop that needed to be taken down as well.

Our Barn: End of an Era

Caved In, Pushed Down and Up in Smoke

All that Remains

There were several nuisance trees that grew along that barn and some actually up through the back of the barn. Some branches of the trees that did not fully burn are all that remains other than some old straw that was in the haymound. It burned and smoldered for days. It is really strange to be able to look out back and see the back barn. You never could see it with the view of obstructed by the larger old barn.

My daughter and I did lots of painting inside. We did our kitchen and bathroom. We got a new shower set up and tub/shower surround. We got vinyl flooring installed in the kitchen which I love for the ease of cleaning.

Love My New Shower: Get My Best Ideas there

Love My New Floor

We have spent many days and numerous hours working on the house. To get the kitchen flooring installed, this meant my entire kitchen spilled over in to the living room and sewing room/office for most of a week as we decided to paint while everything was out of there.

It has certainly been interesting and challenging to work on the house with a young puppy under foot. We had to tie Katie outside while we painted in kitchen and she decided to show her displeasure when we were outside with our backs turned to her so we could wash out painting brushes and rollers with the hose out in the driveway. This is what we found when we were finished.

Dirty Katie

Hey Mom! I am helping landscape the yard.

Apparently it is not as fun to get sprayed with the hose to get washed down as it is to dig in the mud created by a leaky hose connection.

If Katie was not making a mess than she was destroying one of her toys or actually our 10 year Black Lab’s prized toys.

Sock Monkey Destroyed

Katie gave Mr. Sock Monkey a Squeakerectomy while my husband was in the shower getting ready for work. He opened the door to see cotton fluff allover the floor and her standing there with fluff hanging from her mouth. Busted!!

I am slowly getting back to doing some sewing this week. I am participating in the Midnight Mystery Quilt Along and our August instructions was to create Flying Geese blocks.

My 36 Flying Geese for Midnight Mystery Quiltalong

My geese are made from silver gray and Catsup red solids. I have picked a Patriotic theme for my quilt.

My Midnight Mystery Quiltalong Fabrics

I have finished cutting squares from my black and white print fabrics to use in the Plus quilt tutorial over at The Colorful Fabriholic. I am going to use the red squares I miscut from the Midnight Mystery Quiltalong and the other prints come from my Charming and Broken Frames quilts. I need to get a design wall up this week as I just can not really layout the squares for this quilt top on my cutting table desk and get a good look at how it should be.

Black,White, Red and Gray prints for Plus quilt

Playing with Squares, Need to Decide how many red pluses to make

I have dug down into my stash of fabric and pulled out some prints that are from the late 90’s or early 2000. They may not really be in style anymore but I thought they just might work to try out the tutorial for Single Wedding Ring over at the Fat Quarter Shop. It is part of their classic and vintage series of patterns.

Somewhat Vintage Fabrics for a Vintage Quilt Pattern with a Modern Take

I hope to get sewing on the Single Wedding Ring blocks this week. My first priority is to design a block for the Fabri-Quilt New Block Quilt Hop. We were given a set of solid fat eighths and we are to design a 12.5 inch quilt block with them without adding any additional fabrics. This is something new for me and at this moment I do not have any ideas on what to create. Mine has to be done and uploaded on September 1st so I better get cracking. I will be digging out my colored pencils and graph paper. Going old school since I do not own EQ7 quilt design software like many of my fellow New Bloggers group that are participating in this challenge with me.

Also for new future sewing, I am signed up to sew in the Dog Gone Cute Quilt Along over at Sew Fresh Quilts. I have my pattern purchased and hope to pull some fabrics this week. This quilt along starts up on September 1st as well.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Our kids are coming home for the weekend and it is family reunion weekend as well. This is always a good time with lots of good food to eat.

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Sewing,

Shelley