Lunch Bag

The kids have been saving empty juice bags for a while now. I used them to make this lunch bag. I would have liked it to be a little smaller, but was limited the size of the bags. I need to shorten the strap a bit and I might take out the bottom to make it flat instead of pleated.


All of that is assuming that I can get it back from Sydney again. She thinks it would make a nice hat or possibly a pillow. We have company on the way so I'll be offline for a while. Hope everyone is having fun without me though.

Lucky Me

I'm not sure if I'm blessed or charmed or just down right spoiled. Look at what came in the mail today! I am the lucky winner of a giveaway from Morning Glory Designs. I started following when Amy , my quilting twin, was doing a block of the month last year. Speaking of which, what ever happened to that quilt? I seem to remember some simplification of the design, but I can't seem to picture the finished quilt. I managed to resist, though it wasn't easy. I do have the patterns squireled away and they might resurface the next time I am looking for a themed sampler. Anyway, I think I was the runner up, and these lovely fabrics were in my box this afternoon. I thought they were fat quarters, but when I opened them to pre-wash, they went selvage to selvage! They are just out of the dryer now and ready to be fondled, trimmed and folded. Thanks so much, Reeze, they will certainly be put to good use.

Spare Change

You may have noticed that I have been on a bit of an organizational kick these days. It happens every summer. Trying to make up for chores that get neglected during the school year I suppose. Finding space in the study/spare bedroom for the quilting machine has been an ongoing process. One of the small items of furniture that needed to find a new home was a wooden two drawer filing cabinet. After consultation with Kurt, we decided that it could become his nightstand, replacing a rickety table that has been serving the purpose. Today I cleared off the table and in my pattern of slightly obsessive organization, decided that all of the change that he keeps in a basket there needed to be sorted, rolled and deposited at the bank. That of course led to a collection of all of the loose change in the house and an entire morning of work. Guess how much there was? It was frightening really.
I think since it was "free" money, that I should be able to spend it on something fun. I'm trying to talk myself out of getting an Accuquilt. I just got a darned Handiquilter, I shouldn't buy anything else, but I'm being very tempted.
Speaking of my charmed life, I talked everyone into going to volleyball with Kurt tonight and got my Square Root top put together. I found some possible fabrics for borders and backings in my ongoing cleaning today, so maybe I will get it ready to quilt before we go on vacation. No quilting for me in the next couple of days, I "put away" the quilting things today in order to turn the room back into a guest bedroom again. Never fear, I still have plenty of regular sewing to keep me going for a while.

Quiet Time

Sydney has been so happy that both of her siblings have camp during the same week. She was very much looking forward to some quality mommy time. She has a different outing planned each day this week. Monday was manicures, Tuesday was a haircut and lunch out, today was roller skating. She has been going nonstop at full speed all week. I finally got her settled down to put in some ear drops for a case of swimmers ear, and before it was time to get up again she was out cold. Lizzie was happy to keep her company and they snored together for almost an hour before it was time to go and get Ryan from chess camp.
I'm working my way slowly through the study stuff. I've got a big bag of trash, two baskets for donation and the rest is getting organized. Not much quilty goodness today, the only fabric I touched was getting ironed and put away. Tomorrow is a fresh start though, and surely I'll find time to get something done.

Blocks Ready to Go

I just finished off the blocks for my Goodwill shirt quilt. I used the highly scientific method of cutting the shirts into strips and then sewing them together until I was out of shirts. I was alternating sixteen patches with four patches until I ran out and then I finished off with the four patches around the edges. I may have enough left in the scrap basket for some sort of border, but it seems to be about the right size now. The blocks are 8.5 unfinished and it looks like they are set 7 by 10. Now that I think about it, a border would make it nicely twin sized. I'll have to see what I can find. It is called square root because it is made of 16 and 4 patches. It was going to be perfect squares, but using the word "perfect" seems to be a little ostentatious. I'll move the blocks around a bit to even out the color placement and then get it up and pinned so I can sew the blocks together in the morning. I'm waiting for Kurt to get home from the airport now, so I'll putter around until he gets here. I'm thinking of quilting it with pink thread in a free motion water pattern. Again, the highly scientific reason is that I'd like to try it out and I have a cone of pink thread.
I took Sydney and Ryan both to get haircuts today and we played board games in the afternoon. They both wanted to sleep in the toy room and Lizzie has been snoring in a pile of fabric I pulled out to iron and put down in my chair. I'm working my way slowly through the stuff from the study. It is nice to have summer to be able to get things like that done.

Too Much Stuff

One of the projects for the summer is to get new carpet. Kurt wants hardwood on the stairs, so we are going to have the downstairs done first. There are only two carpeted rooms left downstairs, meaning new carpet shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?
I wanted to use the new carpet as motivation to get the study organized and set up now that the new frame and machine are taking up a big corner of the room. I can't believe all of this stuff was in the study! It didn't seem like that much at the time, but WOW, it seems like a lot when I look at it all spewed out like that. Now, next step, figure out what it is and where it should go. I'm guessing a lot of it needs to go live with someone else. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.

Another Idea

Maybe something more like this? I started playing with the blocks and thought about alternating 16 patches with bigger four patches. Which is better? Time to go get Ryan from camp. This one is chess and video game production. I hope he's having fun.

Design Wall Monday June 21

I had my sashed log cabins up this morning, but decided to take them down and work on the new shirt quilt. I ended up with 4.5 inch squares alternating with 2.5 inch four patches. So far I am throwing them up in diagonal rows, but now that I look at the picture, the dark teal stands out a lot so I will either spread them out or throw in something else for balance.
Anna and Ryan are both at camp and Sydney is on a play date, so it is VERY quiet around here. Kurt is going on a short business trip tonight, so the quiet will continue for a while. Very strange indeed. I'd better use the opportunity to get some sewing done while I have the opportunity.

Last Stitch

I just finished up the last stitch in Christmas Lights. This was a mystery quilt by Bonnie Hunter published in three consecutive issues of Quiltmaker magazine last year. I've had the top and back done for quite a while, but was saving it for the HQ 16. I am planning on giving it to my sister for Christmas and am quite pleased at how it turned out. I will resist the urge to point out all the mistakes when I give it to her, though I can see them all of course.
We took the kids to see Toy Story 3 this morning. It is rare for Kurt to want to come to a movie with us, but he is quite sentimental and enjoyed it very much. We all had lunch together after that before driving Anna to Girl Scout Camp. I took along my quilt and got most of the binding finished up during the drive there and back. I don't have any more binding machine stitched and ready for handwork, so that may be my project for tonight. I think there are still two more in the pile waiting for edges and I'd very much like to add them to the finished list. I like the growing list in the sidebar, it makes me smile.

Goodwill

We haven't been dropping off at Goodwill recently because the Red Cross picks up at the door once a month. It has been very helpful with trying to keep things organized and get rid of things we don't need. They will visit while we are on our cruise, so I took a load over to the NEW Goodwill. I have gotten shirts at the old store, but even shopping the sale tags, it doesn't turn out much cheaper than buying yardage. The new one has a clearance center though, with clothes for $0.99 per pound! I found these 9 high quality cotton shirts along with a two yard piece of fabric with the tag still attached. The grand total, along with three paperback books was just $5.44. They are all in the washer now. When they come out I'll spend some time cutting them up. I'm thinking of making a simple quilt with the same basic pattern of four patches that the quilts for kids uses. 6.5 inch squares alternating with four patches that finish at the same size. It should come together quickly and I'll have something else to use for quilting practice. I tried to pick out spring sherbet types of colors. I could have also gone red white and blue, those seem to be popular colors. I may make a denim quilt next time. It would be more expensive because denim is heavy, but it wouldn't need batting and it would be nice for using outside.

Quilting Class

I just got back from my quilting classes. I signed up for two out of a possible 6 classes that were offered over a three day period at a machine quilting shop a couple of hours away. There was a cool class yesterday that I though about signing up for, but the logistics of getting away for more than one day seemed tricky. The morning session was on using rulers. I don't have a ruler base, but the ability to do stitch in the ditch seems like a good thing so I went ahead and ordered one. Using a ruler seems to be a slow and tedious process, but I think sometimes it could be worth it, especially when used with other less time consuming techniques. In the afternoon there was a free motion class based on a book by Megan Best. The premise of the book is that you can start with a basic meaner and then add on to it to get lots of different designs. We practiced each of her patterns on sheet protectors with dry erase markers first and then took turns trying them out on the machines they had set up. Most of the ladies there seemed to be very serious quilters. They all quilted for customers and had been at it quite a while, mainly using computerized machines. Despite that, I was happy with my own ability to execute the patterns we were practicing. I am always amazed at the few classes that I go to, one of the main things I learn is that I am doing pretty well figuring things out as I go along. I got lots of good ideas though, as much from other students as from the teachers. It is so fun to be able to talk to other people that are even more into this quilting hobby than I am.
I will definitely start a practice quilt soon. I am going to either make a simple black and white checkerboard or do a whole cloth divided into squares. Then I'll choose a different design to practice in each little square. The other thing I definitely want to try is a circle quilt with long arm raw edge applique. The shop was also a distributor for acuquilt and we got a demo after lunch. Having just invested in quilting machine, I'm not ready to go out and buy anything else, but it is a really cool tool. I have a mini version called a Sizzix that I use for scrapbooking and have always thought that they should make a quilting version.
I have to go do something quilty in honor of the sew-in. Then I'll go check in and see what other people are up to. Happy Friday!

Lonely Logs

Today was our "out" day. Swim team, free movie, fabric store, lunch, silly bandz shopping and the hardware store. After that I folded a bunch of laundry and matched up socks. Not quite as fun as my grout scrubbing of yesterday, but it was a close second. I did get a bit of sewing done on the fill in the blank blocks after the kids were in bed. There is certainly lots of empty space in there for some quilting practice.
Tomorrow is my trip north for handiquilting classes! There is one from 9 to 12 and another from 2 to 5. I've got my camera packed, so hopefully I'll get a couple of pictures to share. I should still get back in time to do some sewing for the Friday Night Quilt Along.
Kurt took Ryan to his football awards ceremony tonight. Did I mention that they won the championship series? The coach had special shirts made up for them to celebrate.

Surprise

The problem with wonky anything is getting them to fit together. I thought about cutting these all down to the same size, but instead followed my recent trend of just sashing them with big borders of white trimmed to a given size.
I think I am going to call this my Surprise! series; Four Patch Surprise, Crumb Block Surprise and Log Cabin Surprise. The surprise? I'm going to sneak one oddball block into each quilt; a nine patch, a solid square and a courthouse steps block. Subtle, right?
We went out to dinner tonight and I only ordered one glass of wine, but it was buy one get one free. I'm all sleepy now so I'll have an early night.

Trade Offs

I used to have a manicure. Now I have shiny clean grout and sparking kitchen tile. Life is full of trade offs. There are very few times that I wish for a smaller house. When scrubbing the kitchen floor is a two day job I can't help but think that we'd be happy with a little less square footage. I got all the grout, all the tile and cleaned and painted the baseboards while I was at it. I think I'll make everyone eat outside tonight. Just got back from taking Sydney to the dentist and I feel like I've earned a little sewing time. Maybe I'll find a bottle of nail polish remover first though.

Fill in the Blank

I'm working on a getting rid of some odd sized squares and using up some more of my crumb blocks. The more scraps I use, the more I seem to produce. On the left are the random four patches from a box of 4 inch squares I came up with while cleaning. On the right are some 5 inch crumb blocks left over after making Crumb Cake. I seem to have enough four patches to make an entire quilt, but I like the look of a variety of sizes and might end up using some of the four patches for something else. As far as the crumb blocks go, I think they look happier with a little space around them. I thought they got lost in the busy green sashing last time. I've also seen people just put them all together but I prefer to spread them out. I also sewed together some more leftover geese blocks and put another round on the wonky log cabin blocks. I didn't mean to be up this late, but sometimes one thing leads to another.

Design Wall Monday June 14

OK, first let me say that for those who are aware of my recent difficulties knowing what day it is, I looked it up and today is Monday June 14. I double checked and I'm almost sure I'm right. I have finished step 1 and 2 of Judy's June Mystery on Friday, so that was still up on my wall this morning. Today was spent catching up on ironing of recent fabric acquisitions and leader and ender squares.

I spent a good deal of time this weekend cleaning and organizing in the laundry and quilting rooms. One of the things I found was a box of random 4 inch squares. 4 inches, what could I use those for? I guess they could be cut down and fed into the 2 inch box, but looking for more quick finishes to practice quilting, I decided to just throw them together into four patches and see how far they would go. I don't think it is enough for an entire top, so I was thinking of sashing them to a standard size of 10.5 inches and then filling in with other sized four patches sashed to the same size. I threw some up on the wall with 2.5 inch base squares, but I have other sizes I could use as well. I think it will come together quickly and give me a good opportunity to use up some oddly sized squares that have been aging for a while. What do you think?

Be sure to check out other people's design walls on Judy's blog. It is fun to see what other people are creating.


Today was actually pretty calm. The girls had swim team this morning and then Ryan got dropped off at Cub Scout camp. I had the rest of the day unplanned until ice skating make-ups at 5. It seemed like a good opportunity to get something significant done, but I was feeling headachey and sluggish today. I think I'll watch a little TV tonight and stitch down some binding. Christmas Lights has jumped to the front of the line because the orphan binding that I have been collecting together for Four Square seems to have disappeared. That was part of the motivation for the cleaning and organizing this weekend, but so far it hasn't shown up. Very rarely do things disappear forever, so maybe it will show up again.

Parrot Biding Done

Sydney picked out a movie while we were out getting the ingredients for a special Father's Day cake this morning. I decided to be social while she watched it and sat to finish the binding on I Spy a Parrot. I think the binding stack has 3 quilts in it right now, so I'd better keep on top of it. When I was done stitching I threw it in the wash to take care of some dog hairs from Lizzie who has decided she loves to lay on my quilts. Then I rigged up a clothes line on the patio to let it dry. I've been trying to find a better spot to take finished quilt photos and this may just do the trick.
I also spent a few minutes this morning updating the look of my blog. For anyone using bloglines, they seem to have some new tools that are very easy to use and customize. Now I'm off to update the margin lists to move the parrot quilt to officially finished status! Then I guess I'd better go and bake a cake. I'm not sure why Father's Day needs a cake, but it is what the kids wanted to do, so off we go to the kitchen.

One More for the Binding Stack

Just pulled Christmas Lights off the frame. I meant to keep track of how long it took to do the actual quilting part. It's hard to say with all of the starting and stopping for life and such. Each quilt gets a little better and a little easier. It was a lot of fun to see the stitching coming together.
I like the way it looks when the yellow hits the yellow and all you can see is a little bit of poufiness.

It was a pieced back, and the quilting really shows up on the black. Now that I look at it in the picture I can see all the mistakes. I'll turn it back over and admire the front some more. It's only 11:14 so I'll go and get an early night tonight. It won't quite make up for the wee hours from last night, but it will sure feel good.

Handiquilting

I decided to load another quilt up today and give pantographs another try. So first thing this morning, after ice skating and mowing the yard and feeding the kids which was about 12:30, I went in to load up Christmas Lights. I chose another pantograph from the packet I ordered from Golden Threads which is called Dandy. I'm using a yellow thread and so far all is going well. I have a bunch of thread that I ordered from Connecting Threads that seems to work very well. It does give off a bit of lint, but am halfway done with the top and have yet to break a thread. The bobbin was even kind enough to be empty at the end of the row so there isn't a single start or stop on the top yet. I'm off to quilt, I'd like to get this one finished off tonight so I can add it to the binding stack which is getting quite tall right now.

Bright and Early

No rest for the weary. Kurt is up at the Cocoa Beach Country Club with Ryan and Sydney at a swim meet. I'm taking Anna to the Rockledge Iceplex for her theater on ice class. We couldn't do three things at once, so we will take the make-up learn to skate class on Monday. How do single parent families ever manage? Sydney didn't want to swim at the last meet on Thursday, but she was so excited last night about this one after seeing how it all worked. I don't know how she is still going so strong after all that rock climbing this week.

"Sew in" Progress

Well, I checked the date again after reading a comment on Amy's blog and found out that the sew-in isn't until next Friday. The same day as my first ever long arm quilting class. Bummer. All is well though, I went ahead and sewed away the evening tonight just in case I can't make it back in time.
Kurt is taking Ryan and Sydney to the swim meet in the morning, leaving me to take just Anna to ice skating. That means I get to sleep in late. Happy day! He even volunteered to chauffeur Ryan to a chess thing this evening (mostly because it is near the bar where his work friends hang out). Anyway, I used the time to finish off step two of Judy's June Mystery. There are 68 four patches with the darker teal and then 36 little skinny strips with the lighter color. I'm not sure yet how they will all fit together, but I'm happy to be caught up. I also worked on some wonky log cabin blocks with the leftovers from last years pineapple quilt.
Sydney was having a blast at her rock climbing show this afternoon. Each camper got to choose three skills to show off for the parents. Sydney did repelling, tight rope walking and the flying squirrel. The child truly has no fear. She jumps in with absolute confidence and lots of enthusiasm to anything she wants to do.

Step 1 and Nifty Cheap Tools

I just finished off step 1 of the June Mystery in time to bop off and pick Sydney up from rock climbing camp. I checked on Amy who has already finished step 1, trimmed a set of blocks for an exchange and put together a challenge top. She makes me feel like I am moving in slow motion. Yesterday while picking up some barrettes to help Anna to get her hair to stay in her swim cap I stumbled on some manicure sticks. Not being a high maintenance kind of person, I thought they would be good to use as a stiletto while quilting. They have colorful sandpaper like ends that keep the seams all headed the right directions without putting fingertips in peril.
The other cheap quilting tool I am in love with is a flannel backed table cloth that I picked up for $3 on clearance. 4 thumbtacks secure it to the wall as a perfect removable design wall. I've got in-laws coming to stay in the near future and am already starting to think about how my studio can transform back into a guest bedroom again.

In more exciting quilt related news; I got a notice through my handiquilters yahoo group that a quilt shop not too far away is having a series of handiquilting classes next weekend. I called first thing this morning and signed up for two classes next Friday!! It is a day off for Kurt so he will be happy to stay home and hang with the kids. One class is about using rulers and the other one is some special BEST technique. That of course motivated me to finally call about getting my free in home orientation that comes with the HQ16, and I'm waiting to hear back from them about when that will be.

Gotta go get Sydney now, I'll post scary pictures of her climbing way too high when I get back.

Crazy Days of Summer

I am still waiting for those lazy days of summer to hit. You know the ones I mean? When you wake up in the morning with a whole day wide open and ready for filling. Today is the closest we've come. I got Sydney off to Rock Climbing camp, and she has an exhibition of what she learned for the week at 3, but until then I am wide open. I got a redbox movie for the other two kids and I think I will finally settle down and get some sewing done. I need to finish step one of the Judy June Mystery and then I peeked ahead to step 3, it looks pretty straight forward. I've been doing some general cleaning and organizing, now I'll decide whether to throw Christmas Lights onto the frame or sit down for some chain piecing.
I saw that Amy is joining in on the Friday Night Sew-In, so I am going to play along as well. I hope to be sewing something, and doing it with other people sounds like fun. Go over to Crafty Vegas Mom and see who else is playing along.

Finally Finished

By the end of the day yesterday I was SO CLOSE to having Crumb Cake quilted. I was on the last row, getting that same excited feeling that comes when you see the finish line at a race. Then, a big thunk and the engine stall light came on. The needle had gotten itself bent somehow and gotten entangled in the bobbin case. %$^ *^@%#% . I fiddled with it for a while but finally convinced myself to walk away before I did some sort of permanent damage, either to myself or the machine. Those are the moments in time that have caused me to sew through my fingers in the past.

I had already figured out my pantograph issues. As usual, it was a combination of several small things. First, I haven't yet installed the hardware to hold the table leaves together and there is a bit of a shimmy in the middle. I wasn't worried about it yet, because lets face it, my pantogropaphy is shaky enough on its own so far that a little table wobble won't make much of a difference. Secondly, I hadn't tightened up the little nut that holds on the laser stylus. It stayed put well enough on its own, but add a little loose table leaf vibration, and it worked its way to a slightly different angle than it had started. Having tackled that issue, I was sure the engine stall bent needle issue would resolve itself in the light of day. Sure enough, after swim team this morning I got it all fixed up and quilted the final row.
The pantograph I chose (in keeping with the Maire Antoinette theme) is called France. It ends up looking mostly like puzzle pieces to me, but when I showed it to Kurt he picked up on the fleur de lis right away. I ordered a packet of pantograph patterns from Golden Threads and this is the first one I've tried. Now that I've figured out how to line everything up, a pantograph does seem to be a simple and straight forward way to get a consistent pattern across the entire quilt top.

Building Rome

I know Rome wasn't built in a day, but it's been more than a day and I haven't yet gotten used to this whole pantograph thing. The first row looked nice and straight. Most of the second row was OK. Then I had to shift the laser doohickey and roll the quilt. It seemed to be working, but then at then end of the row, everything converged and started to overlap. I'm not sure yet what I'm doing wrong, but I think I'll sleep on it. I sometimes have trouble with spatial things. I am almost incapable of backing long distances. Something about looking in the rear view mirror and turning the wheel the opposite way really freaks me out. I'm sure that somehow the shifting of the rows must require the same deficient area of my cerebral cortex as the whole reverse driving thing. That's my working hypothesis anyway. Of course any hypothesis incapable of being tested in worthless, so I'd better try again. Maybe I'm shifting the pattern as I quilt. I could try taping it down. I'll try to come up with some other ideas in the morning. Maybe during my run.


Anna made breakfast for dinner tonight. She hardly needed any help and was very proud of herself. She made pancakes, bacon, toast, fruit salad and eggs cooked to order. Didn't she do a nice job on the table?

I-pad

I wanted to make Kurt a case for his new i-pad. I had something in mind like Melinda made for her kindle and showed on the selvage blog.
Kurt had other ideas of course. He picked out suede in black and gray. It is basically just two rectangles of fabric sewn pillowcase style, right sides together and then turned and top stitched. I inserted a little pocket for cords and such under the cover flap. It needs a little strip of velcro and that will be the end. I couldn't talk him into a nifty strap or handle or anything.
I got most of Judy's June Mystery cut out this morning while the girls were at ice skating. Kurt took Ryan to a chess workshop and played volleyball at the beach. Then this afternoon I dropped Sydney at a birthday party and went to get my toes AND nails done. Very fancy! I even had lunch while I was out and peacefully read a book with no interruptions. I was done with all of that just in time to pick Sydney up again and have a bit of birthday cake before heading home. Life just doesn't get much better than that.
It looks like a rainy evening, daily thunderstorm season has started around here this week. I have an urge to sew into the wee hours, but I am going to try to be good so that I can get up bright and early for a nice long run. Time will tell whether my good intentions are good enough. Crumb Cake is loaded onto the HQ16, I don't think it would take too long to quilt that up after dinner. I wonder if I have any thread that will work?

Little Projects

There has been quite a bit of running around going on here which hasn't allowed much time for large amounts of progress. So instead I'm working away at projects in little bits of time. I finally finished the last little bit of binding on Whirlygiggles so I can promote I Spy to binding bullet on the list. Tonight is the season premiere of Royal Pains, so that will be the perfect binding sewing time. I thought about taking some Dear Jane blocks to swim team, but that seemed risky with the wind and water and sunscreen. So instead I had the girls pick out a skein of cotton yarn from the sale bin at Joann's and made a dishcloth. It worked up really quick and didn't require much concentration. I Googled a couple of patterns but just ended up winging it. 25 double crochets per row until it seemed square and then two circles of single crochets around the perimeter with a little loop added to one corner in case I want to hang it up.
Kurt's anniversary present finally came in. I was bummed that it was late (our anniversary is the same as my birthday is the same as my mom's birthday). He was going to get me an i-Pad before I committed to the HQ16, so I went ahead and got one for him. He was pleasantly surprised and having lots of fun now playing with all of the aps and figuring out how he can use it. He hopes to be able to take it on business trips and use it in meeting instead of a laptop.

Bullet List

I do two crazy things in the summer. One is always a frenzy of organization, the other is maniacal list making. Of course one of the lists I make is of cleaning and organization that I need to do. My dear husband always jokes that the other list I make is a list of the lists. Does anyone else start a to do list with the last thing that you just did so that you can start by crossing it off of the list? Maybe it's just me.
One of the organizational tasks on the list was the fabric in the laundry room. I keep the donation fabric seperate as well as the fat quarters and the non quilt fabric like flannel or home dec, but this is all of the quilt worthy yardage sorted by color. I'm a ROYGBIV kind of girl when it comes to sorting things. I think it just looks prettier that way, don't you?

The other task on the list for today was the downstairs closet which has become everyone's favorite dumping ground. It's my fault really, I started putting the goodwill in there until it could get picked up or dropped off. Now the kids stash all of there $#@& in there as well. There are three big bags ready for drop off and three more that need to be taken to my sister next time we head up that way. Now I can cross that off the list too.

I got a few new fabrics today after the free morning movie followed by lunch and before a trip to Sport's Authority for things the kids are sure they need for swim team. I am thinking of using them for Amy's BOM, but I'll have to audition them and see if they make the cut.
Anyway, back to the making of lists, I made a list last night of all of my sewing projects. UFOs (unfinished fabric objects), WIPs (works in progress), PIGs (projects in a grocery sac), RTGs (ready to go and get quilted), LTP (long term projects), NB (needs binding), and NTD (need to do projects. I think that's all the categories I came up with. So there are 20 projects on my list. Some haven't even been started yet, and some have languished along the way for some reason or other. Obviously I can't work on 20 projects all at the same time. In narrowing it down, I decided to try to pick one project for each of the various stages of completion: planning, cutting, piecing, borders, quilting, and handwork. That makes a nice handful of projects I can work on without feeling like I am randomly jumping from one thing to another. At least it is handful for those people with 6 fingers.

I decided to call this my bullet list. So, without further ado, here is my bullet list of projects for the summer. When I finish one off or move it on to the next stage then I'll add another and so on through the 20. That's the plan anyway.

Bullet list:

• planning = Sister's Choice shams for Mom
• cutting = Judy's June Mystery
• piecing = wonkylogs
• borders = Starlight
• quilting = crumb cake
  
• handwork = Whirlygiggle binding for Paige

How about you? What's on your bullet list?

Summer Days

Yesterday was the first day that summer vacation was regular -- with no postplanning, no vacation, no holidays. It started with swim team at 8 am. Ryan had volleyball camp so Kurt volunteered to drop him off. I got a bit of a panicked call at 9:05 informing me that the volleyball camp consisted of Ryan and 50 girls. I guess volleyball is a girl sport at those ages around here. I can't think of a single school with a male volleyball team now that I think about it.
Then I started in on the summer cleaning list. I organized the Tupperware cupboard and tidied the kitchen before tackling the fridge.

This was before.
And this was after.
I even cleared off all the notes and pictures and magnets from the front. While all of that was going on, Anna had a friend over to play which involved 11 year old drama. Sydney had several friends over and hosted a little marathon of Just Dance on the Wii, no drama necessary. Then she went to play outside, coming home with a skinned knee. Band-aids make everything better at 7. Kurt wanted me to "just check" on Ryan, so that involved spending half an hour driving back and forth through a detour and road construction so I could go and ask the lady running the camp if he was OK. He was of course, so I came back home to finish my fridge cleaning. There was a panicked message from one of the moms who had heard that Sydney got hurt and confused our trip to check on Ryan with a trip to the emergency room for stitches. That required a bit of reasurrance, but after the whole dog mauling incident I guess I can't blame her for worrying.

When all of that fun was finally over, I decided to enjoy a little fabric fondling. I had been wavering as to what to use for the "colored" blocks in Judy's June Mystery. Sydney had picked out the dark and light teal along with the background fabric, but I hadn't decided what I wanted to go with them yet. After pulling a bit of this and a bit of that I decided to use the fat quarter bundle of Girl Scout Fabric that I ordered in January. I got a bit of cutting done for that before it was time to go back through the road construction (no detour this time:)) to get Ryan again. I made yummy baked spaghetti for dinner prompting the kids to ask why I couldn't make good tasting stuff like that all the time. Clean up of the kitchen was followed by clean up of the kids and then bedtime. I made sure to get a nice early night so that I could get up this morning to run. I'm trying to get back into training mode again and Amy's post yesterday helped motivate me.
Speaking of motivation, did you know that today is National Running Day? So go strap on your sneakers and run a bit. I was out bright and early this morning and I'm going to feel good about it all day long.