New Year, New post. Welcome 2018!!

It is 2018!!  I will be 55 and Alan and I will retire this year.

This will be a good year.

If you say that enough it comes true, right?

Well, it started off as a pretty fucking cold one.
Pardon my language but I'm REALLY sick of winter and cold.
It wouldn't be so bad if we could snowboard or xc ski all the time.
Which we can't, so winter sucks.

I spent the day working on hand sewing the leaves and berries.
Getting tired of this and I am hardly started.
Maybe it's just the cold weather that makes me grumpy.

Glued down on the left........sewn down on the right.
Thread keeps breaking.  Grrrrrr.....
Had to get a new needle.

My sister sent me ornaments which were our grandma's.
I shared them with Ginny.  We remember our mom being inspired by these 1970's ornament kits and we made quite a few of them.  Alan's family had some too. Now we have more "antique" ornaments to add to the Christmas tree that holds only the family antique ornaments.  Pretty cool.

Another Christmas gift arrived!
My new water crossing/camp shoes for backpacking trips.
Thank you Patty for showing me these.

They are much lighter than the pool shoes I was using.

First day of leather class.
Chris and I are going to learn about Sheridan style leather tooling.
I have no idea what this is.  I just signed up to spend time with Chris and have fun.
Maybe it will help winter go by faster.

Mishka is getting bigger.

She loves Ryan.

Locating all my fabrics.....DONE!
All I need to do now is finish the Raven quilt.
Can't start a new one until it's done.
But I also have to make a quilt for our bed.  The JC Penny quilt is threadbare and falling apart.
A typical quilters house.  Makes quilts but not for their own bed.
It's time to change this!

This is what I envisioned.
The red adds just enough pop and the yellow lightens up the quilt.

For our leather class homework we were supposed to draw up a design for a checkbook cover.
He gave us the dimensions and told us how to add the elements.
He also gave us the formula for spacing......ummmmm....whaaaaat?
It made NO sense to us students.
So I just drew what I thought looked good.
Screw the rules.

Here are some of the rules.
Nope.  Don't care.

I thought I'd attempt to make toothpaste chips, or drops.
You dry them and they can be taken on backpacking trips. 
You use one to brush your teeth.
I had a bunch of sample toothpaste from the dentist.
The instructions said to do in the dehydrator so here we go....

More progress.
(this was taken January 16th)

One of my other Christmas gifts arrived!!
This is so freakin complicated I don't know if I will ever get it done but I feel I will like the challenge.
The hard part is collecting all the Kaffe Fassett fabric for it.
I need a big scrap pile.  Which I don't have so it's fat quarter shopping for me.
I like the funky green background but not so hot on the pink in the star.  

It's January 20th and I'm taking my first longarm class!
I want to know if this will hurt my back.

Our supplies all ready for us.
All I had to bring was money.

THESE are invaluable.  You pin your quilt to these and then zip them onto the longarm.
Easy Peasy.

My quilt is loaded on the machine.

Rolling it up to create tension on the backing.

Spread out the batting and pin the top.

Once it's all pinned you can baste the outer edges.
This is easier than crawling on the floor and pinning the 3 layers.

Once it is basted then you are ready to quilt. 
This is the panto graph we used.
She showed us how to set it up so the pattern lines up well with the quilt.
The blue painters tape is to show you where to start and stop.
You don't look at the quilt, you look at the design.

And then that section is done!
You then roll out a new section and continue until the entire quilt is done.
The quilting runs off the edges which will then be covered by the binding.

And it's done!  Ready to be squared up and trimmed and add binding.
You leave the class with a baby quilt.
I hope someday I know someone who has a baby so I can give it to them!

Maybe the dog would want to sleep on it.
Bah ha ha ha!
She would eat it.
Look at that face.

More progress.
It's now 1/21/17.

I made up a transparent pattern to try to make them all uniform.
I hold it over the stems and glue on the leaves and then berries.
After the first few I didn't need it for the berries.
Ugh, this still sucks.  So slow.

MORE winter!
BOOOOOO!
It's 1/22/17 and we are in a winter storm/blizzard watch.

We live in the lower pink county.
The blizzard is the red counties.
We live on the west side of the pink county.
VERY close to the blizzard.

Isn't this a lonely pic?
I took my cross country skis out to take pics.

Yep, whiteout all around.

After running around on my xc skis and taking pics it was time to clear the driveway.
Very wet heavy snow with deep slush in some parts.
Ugh.

Had to use a shovel to remove the heavy slush.
Good Lord that hurts my back!
Really tired of winter.

New computer - New post!

My wonderful son rebuilt my computer so now it is much easier to post pics and continue my blog/journal.  A lot has happened and it is all good.
Here we go!..........

If I had sheep, I would do this.

My last post was 12/22/17.  This is the cake I made for the Dill family Christmas. 
It sat in my lap on the way to Lincoln.

It started to snow while we were there.

By the next day it looked very wintery.

My sister sent pics of her and Jasmine in Hawaii.
They suck.

Alan bought me thread for Christmas!

I bought the dog a bunny.
YEAH!  I want to see a lot of this out in the yard.
Bunny killing.
Earn your keep dog.

 

This was brand new a few hours before this was taken.

And so was the bunny.
It has a squeaker.  We heard squeaking and the crinkly green thing for hours.

Back to the Raven quilt.
Borders done.
Now to add the bittersweet which is not part of the pattern.
I came up with my own design.
I wanted more "pop" to the quilt since it is a little dark.
(not AS dark as others I have seen since I added the 1/4" border around each block)

The zillions of leaves and berries are ready.  (actually the leaves are shells but nobody understands that)
All put together with the Appliquik method which I love.  It makes it so easy to turn the fabric.
It adds some bulk but that's ok.

Hand sewing time. 
Ugh
Glue down the stems with fabric glue and then hand sew. Soooooo slow.

One of my Christmas presents arrived.  The pattern I have coveted ever since I saw it.
I saw a version of this done in purples and browns.  Stunning.
I will try to copy this as best I can.  I could have signed up with the shop that designed the purple version but I didn't want to pay $600 for the kit.  Sooooooo I am on a search for the right colors, or colors I like.

THIS is the purple version I found on the internet.

Winter Dog.

Went to the Quilted Moose and Sharon was kind enough to do the tedious job of determining fabric amounts and helped me locate the fabrics I needed to come as close as possible to the purple version I like.
I just need a few more colors.  The search continues.

As you can see, it is till winter.  VERY cold. Sub zero cold.
The neighbor decided it was a good day to light his burn pile.
It was burning into the night and was still smoking the next day.