Jamestown Landing is Quilted

It is entirely possible that Jamestown Landing has been sitting on the quilting frame all summer waiting for its turn.  With my sister coming on Wednesday, I need to turn the quilting room back into the guest bedroom.  That means breaking down the quilting frame.  So first up this morning was finishing the quilting.  It is done now and will get put away until another day.  Now the rest of the cleanup can continue.  Deep breath and onward!

ScrapHappy Saturday Green Green Grass of Home

  

A weekend awaits. Time to sew, time to quilt, time to play.  Just 8 more school days until the end.  Not that anyone is counting down of course.  Until then, an open Saturday of possibilities awaits.  How about you?  Is the grass greener in your sewing room today?  Use misterlinky below to share your progress so far.

Ahhh Saturday!!!

 It has been so very long since I had a nice quiet day at home that I was starting to forget what it felt like.  If feels good!  In celebration of the green month, I pulled out Jamestown Landing and started measuring out some borders.  A small inner border followed by a green string border then whatever size it needs to fit nicely on the bed.  This was a Bonnie Hunter Pattern though hers was in blue.

A couple of loads of laundry, a cycle on the new dishwasher, a bit of pressure washing.  It feels good to putter around the house for a day.  The boys were up late last night for Dungeons and Dragons and Sydney had a friend for a sleep over.  The kind with no sleep of course.  Naps will be a popular choice for the day.  I think there are some bushes to trim in the front yard and then a border to two to sew.  Sigh, relaxation feels so good.  

Math Camp Ends

 Kurt did morning drop off today.  Isn't he sweet?  So I spent the morning piecing the borders for Jamestown Landing.  It all needs a good ironing.  Maybe I'll see if there is a good movie recorded and spend some quality time with the iron.

The afternoon was taken up with closing ceremonies for Math Camp.  Guess who the grand champion was for the Mathcounts competition?  Here is Ryan with his first place trophy!  He was pretty excited.  I know it is hard to tell from the picture, but this is Ryan's super ecstatic face.  I was almost laughing out loud when he answered a question about the area of a triangle and then explained to his competitor how he got the right answer, his little hands were making all of these angles in the air as be walked her through the computations.   So I'm pretty sure he'll join the math team next year, and hopefully robotics as well.  I think he is looking forward to middle school at this point.  

Twice Sewed Quilt

You've heard of twice baked potato, right?  So much more fun than a twice sewn quilt.  It took all day long.  Well, all day that wasn't full of kids and laundry and dishes and such.  I hope everything is all lined up the right way now.  I remember that something got rotated last time I tried to sew this guy together which is when I got sidetracked.  There are borders still to go.  Maybe tomorrow?  Just 4 more vacation days to savor.  I'm soaking up every minute.  

Vacation Play

 Kurt had to go back to work today, but the kids and I are not back until next week.  I am trying to put Jamestown Landing back together.  It was all laid out but I picked up the blocks instead of sewing them together.  BIG mistake.  Never pile up a stack of blocks and then try to reassemble them later.

 Sydney had a sleepover last night and has been playing with her friends all morning.  So far we have done video games, sidewalk chalk and board games.  I think dolls are next on the list.

Ryan has a friend over to play and he'll be here all day as his parents are both back at work today.  They have done video games, go carts, minecraft and movie making.  Hard to believe it isn't even lunchtime yet.
There is a calm moment now so I'll go and see if I can puzzle the blocks together before lunch. Wish me luck.

Design Floor on Monday October 29, 2012

Thanks to the hurricane day on Friday I was able to finish off the blocks for Jamestown Landing!  The rows are all ready to be sewn together.  After that I will try it out on the bed and see if I want to make it a bit bigger. First though, I'm going to look at it for a few minutes and see if I can find any mistakes in the block placement.  The pattern is really clever in how it uses the just two blocks placed together to in different ways, but it would be really easy to get things twisted or sewn the wrong way.  This will be my second quilt from Bonnie Hunter's new string fling book.  I love them both, but I'll be ready to be done with strings for a while I think.  I'm still debating her next mystery.  The first fabric requirements will be out on Wednesday.  Maybe I'll just watch the first couple of clues and then decide about wading in.  I have done really well at finishing things of lately though........

Jamestown Landing

I was pretty sure I had enough blocks done for Jamestown Landing.  First I had to find Bonnie's new String Fling book to check the layout and count.  Much cleaning and putting away of miscellaneous junk followed.  Things are much better organized now, though not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.  These blocks need to get sewn together sooner rather than later before a rabid dog or stray breeze decides to rearrange the layout for me.  The border can wait for another day.

Starry Starry Night

It was still a bit of a blustery day today.  I would have loved to spend the day hanging around the house and sewing mindlessly.  Though there was a some of that, there were also a couple of Halloween parties, a Lego practice and the usual weekend routine.  Most of my mental and emotional energy was spent on my mom who had some complications after a medical procedure on Friday.  I was ready to fly up to be with her, but I think things are more stable now and I'll wait for next weekend to go up and spend time with her when she is out of the hospital.

I have been trying to clear things out recently and dug out this unfinished quilt that keeps popping up from time to time.  Anna designed it to go with her room but then got a fancy bed in a bag from Noanie instead.  I didn't want to abandon the quilt, but didn't feel the need to complete the original queen sized design either.  This seems to be about twin sized, and though it won't cover the entire bed, It will still be nice to have an extra layer to snuggle under.

Instead of the 10.5 inch squares I've been into for quilt backs lately, I went with 12.5 inch squares this time.  There is a wide variety of blue pulled from the scrap bin, the stash and the project box.  One of the bits I pulled out was a panel with a world map on it.  It is kind of fun to see random bits of continents popping out for no particular reason.  Sydney still hasn't forgiven me for the boxers on the back of her crumb quilt, I wonder how Anna will feel about map bits?

I devoted my "snow day" on Friday to finishing the string blocks for Jamestown Landing.  I'll have to count to make sure they are all there, but I think I have enough now.  Just a little more trimming and this one will be ready to go.  

Slowly on Sunday

 I found some time this week to stitch a couple more blocks of the Dear Jane Quilt.  Slowly but surely it is getting there. 

Most of the weekend though has been nose to the grindstone power sewing of string blocks for Jamestown Landing.  All of the Broken Dish blocks are done!  I'm at about 115 for the string blocks now, so just a bit more until it is ready to lay out.  The kids are all off playing with friends.  It has been raining off and on all day but it doesn't seem to have slowed them down at all.  I'm pretty sure school will still be on tomorrow despite all the hurricane day wishes from the kids.  I remember as a child waking up early on the morning of a snowstorm and waiting for the list of school closings to be read over the radio.  I guess this is our own version of that ritual. 

Messy Day

 After taking inventory this morning and catching up on ironing, I realized that all of the Broken Dishes units were done for Jamestown Landing.  That lead me to start in on the string blocks which had fallen a bit behind. I was working my way through the second season on Downton Abbey while sewing.  It wasn't on Netflix, so I signed up for a free trial of Hulu+.  I am much more appreciative of Netflix now after spending most of the afternoon buffering or restarting. 

 As I was making a mess in the sewing room, Anna was working on a mess in the kitchen.  She had decided to make a birthday cake for her friend Sierra and somehow managed to scatter cake, frosting and fondant all over the kitchen. 

 She was quite happy with the finished cake though, and cleaned up most of the mess. 

After lego practice Ryan had his first football game of the season.  He is in a different league this year so that he could be on a team with his friend Troy.   

Oh Happy Day of Possibilities

 I was putting plastic bags over my classroom computer before dashing out for the weekend and pondering the possibilities for the days ahead.  Despite the students best hopes of a hurricane day on Monday, I think the storm will stay to the west and we will all be back at the end of a normal two day weekend. 

 Two days to play...ahh so many choices.  More Midgets for the wall?  More Apple Trees for the orchard? 

Maybe the rest of the Broken Dishes for Jamestown Landing?  Or something new for the rainbow parade?  There is a quilt on the frame and two more waiting for borders.  So many choices, just two days to get it all in again. 

Housekeeping

Today Ryan wanted to have a superhero movie marathon while his sisters were at camp.  He made popcorn for us both as we sat through Thor followed by Captain America.  Tomorrow we will top it off with The Avengers which is still in theaters.  Obviously I couldn't just sit and do nothing while all that movie watching was going on.  Instead I pulled out the little basket that sits on the end of the ironing board to catch leaders and enders and odds and ends.  Boy do those little guys build up in a hurry!  They are all neatly filed away now with a new set of nine patches are matched up and ready to go.  By the time that was all done it was time to go and start the camp pick up route.  Then we got home and tidied the kitchen after the kids helped me clean out my car.  Not a bad vacation day all.  If it goes on long enough I'll actually get to all the little projects on my list. 

Sunday Sewing Day

Today I finally got into the sewing room again.  I would have worked on the borders for Orca/Flamingo, but honestly, I'm not sure where they are.  I started shuffling things around a bit and tidying odds and ends until I stumbled across the crumb blocks still left from the crumb-along at Jos Country Junction.  I had about half the finished blocks I needed but lots of orphan crumb bits in my happy scrappy jars.  So I dug and sewed and ironed and trimmed, making a huge mess along the way. All I need are some borders and my crumb quilt will be ready for quilting. 

While that was going on I worked a bit more on Jamestown landing. I'm not quite sure how many broken dishes blocks I have, or how many I need, but there are some more ready to work through the system.

Weekend Windup

I was so happy to have finished off RRCB that I felt inspired to start a new quilt. This is Jamestown Landing, but in green instead of blue.  It has quite a few pieces but once it is cut out I think I will work on it between other projects.   

Kurt spent yesterday detailing his new car.  After that he was volunteered to drive the kids on all of their weekend errands so that they could all have turns getting rides.