Monday morning has come around again.

WARNING!!!! THIS IS A LONG POST WITH LOTS OF PICTURES! Get your favorite beverage put your feet up & enjoy!

This is the first Monday morning of my kiddo back at school. He started last week but this will be his first full week. How did I commemorate it? I took a nap! Man that felt good, but now it's time to get some things done. I've got my Pepsi & I'm ready to tackle the day!

First off I want to thank the two quilt guilds that hosted me the last two Tuesdays. The first was Walnut Valley Quilters Guild in Winfield/Arkansas City Ks. That was a fun fast day. Mom & I drove down (3 hours) the morning of the presentations. We made good time, because you can drive 80mph on the turnpike. We had enough time to hit the local quilt shop Field to Fabric.

Mom was funny. You see the wire rack right behind us? It stopped her in her tracks & within the first five minutes she had 3 things already on the table ready to buy. What was also different was that she bought more than I did which never happens. We were able to have lunch with her cousin & get to the church to set up in plenty of time. They have 2 guilds and afternoon & an evening. I had a great time at both. I was busy & it completly slipped my mind to take pictures :(

Last Monday we were in Salina KS with the Silver Needlers. It was a great time with a bunch of fun & talented ladies. I did remember to take a few pictures

It was fantastic location for their meetings.

On our way home Tuseday Mom wanted to take the long way home & go through Concordia KS to visit the Orphan Train Museum. She's found out in recent years that we had ancestors who were riders. I was good with that so we maped out all of the quilt stores on the way there. First up was

Kansas Troubles in Bennington KS. Yup all of those KT fabrics that you love this is there home store.

We had to finish our coffee before we went in so we soaked up some Vitamin D at the cute table outside. Here's a peak at the inside of the store

Lots of things to look at.

Next up is No Place Like Home in Minneapolis KS. I love that these small towns in KS have quilt stores!

This store had the best deal on their scraps that I've ever seen, a large bag for a quarter! That's just about free. It was a great store.

We moved on to Concordia KS but the museum was closed for lunch so we found their local quilt store Fabric Essentials & had fun looking around.

 

We went around the corner & had lunch at "Heavy's" That cracked me up & it was good food. 

Now it was time for the Orphan Train Museum. Mom had waited a long time to go so we had planned on taking our time.

She had a great time & we both learned a lot. A lot of orphans found new loving homes because of one man who started it all. She's started the process of finding out more on our ancestors. If you're ever in the area I highly reccomend it.

Now we were headed to Belleville KS. It is located right on HWY 36 which is what we needed to get home & lucky us there was a quilt shop! I could have spent a lot more time in Sew Country. 

There was so much to look at that we had to browse quickly but we both left with treasures & had fun.

I feel like I'm rambling but I'm trying to catch up on whats been going on. I should split it up into multiple posts but if I don't do it now chances are I will forget. 

Saturday August 15 I took a wool appliqué class with my local guild. I love appliqué but have always been intimidated by it, therefore I've never done it by hand. I'm not a big fan of appliqué by machine. If I'm on the machine I'd rather be piecing. I bought my pattern & a kit 

& I was ready to go. Now the original pattern background used a light blue, well that's just not me so I switched things up & my background is black! Here's my first block laid out.

 

I'm really enjoying it. I have finished this block & I have moved on to the next block, daffodils. I'll keep y'all updated on my progress.

I found the time to finish up the alternate color way of "Prairie Stones" 

Sorry that it's not the best picture but I LOVE how it turned out. All of the fabric except the purple outer border are all scraps from my stash. This is a fun quilt to make. I've almost finished writing the pattern. 

   

Now that it's finished I need to decided what to work on next. There are lots of projects to start, some to finish. This pattern from the recent American Patchwork & Quilting caught my eye

I've got all of the fabrics for this beauty. While I was cutting strips for the latest 10,000 piece quilt I was cutting the scraps to get the best use out of the scraps. So that left me with 1.5" strips (used those in the 10,000 piece quilt) 2' strips ( you can see my daffodil block in progress). We'll see how far these strips will take me. The pattern says that the quilt is 75.5"x78". Well thats just not big enough for me. As of right now I'm going to plan on bigger.

 

The 2.5" strips I'm going to be using those for my next Leader/Ender quilt. There were so many that they filled the container.

I'm cutting them into half square triangles. There's a pattern idea floating around in my head on how I want to use them up. 

Lastly I've not done as well as I had wanted to on my embroidery. I have worked on it a lot more but I've just not been able to do a flower a day. Just a few more stitches & block 3 will be done!

 I do hope that y'all are doing well. I'll try & blog more often so that the next post comes to you quicker & isn't so lengthy. I'm enjoying the weather here in KS. It's in the 70's with sunshine & low humidity (which is crazy in August). Check out what other quilters are up to at patchworktimes.com

More later on,

Vicky

Unexpected gifts

In May I was able to go to Manhattan KS & speak to both quilt guilds. I had a great time & was able to meet some wonderful quilters. A few weeks ago I got a large box in the mail. My kiddo asked what I had ordered & My reply was nadda. I was curious. Inside I found a wonderful letter & box full of scraps!

Good Gravey this is the largest box of scraps that anyone has ever sent me!

Mandy R thank you so much for thinking of me & passing these beautiful bits of possibilities on to me.

Now it's time to sort them & get them into their proper homes so that they can be used up! I hope that y'all are having a great day. It has started early here but it's good so far. More later on,

vicky

You never know what life will bring your way

I was having a peaceful afternoon with my kiddo when I got the call. My husbands uncle was bringing over a 30lb ham & would I please take care of it for him. Ummmm, sure. Well this 30lb ham turned out to be a bag of shaved & sliced ham that is frozen, solid. 

Well I was at a loss on what to do. I don't have a large fridge to put it in to thaw ( besides the uncle wants it to go back into the freezer)so I call my knight in shining armor, my husband.  His solution was for me to get the cordless sawzall with a fairly aggressive blade & cut it up

Very thankful that my kiddo is home because this is a 2 person job. We're being careful not cut anything but the ham. 

I had no idea that I would be doing this today. Gotta love life's curve balls. More later on,

Vicky

Doing a little house cleaning & some motivation

First I've never claimed to be the most organized person. I have found though that the more organized I am the more smoothly my life is. Realizing this has been huge for me. I was recently introduced to a Facebook page called "Quilters Classifieds". You can sell all things quilty on this page. I thought that I'd be tempted beyond control & be buying fabric. Turns out I've not bought a single thing but I have sold!

That is huge for me. The first two items were fairly small but today, today I listed quilts. I always thought that I'd never sell any of my quilts. I'm a very sentimental person & I attach memories to my quilts. So it makes it very hard for me to part with them. Well my DH has been very patient with me & has asked where we are going to store all of the quilts. My standard response was I was just going to start another pile. Well when my dear friend Liz asked me the same thing & it got me to thinking. Life got in the way and all of those thoughts were soon lost until today. Today they came back & I went to see if there were any that I was willing to part with. I found 3. 3 is not much but its a start.  (I'm not going to be selling all of them just some of them. That way I can make room for more.) What I did notice is that these 3 quilts were not scrappy at all. They were all made from yardage. I can't think of selling my scrappy quilts but the yardage quilts that's ok.

We'll see if they sell. If any of you are interested just let me know.

Now comes the motivation part. As I was in my sewing room today I noticed that I've got lots of hand embroidery projects waiting patiently to be started & completed. The only thing is is that I'm in the throws of a huge project.

I'm working on these panels & in a year I've only gotten 2.5 done. Thats not good on the completion rate. I need to step up my productivity if I'm going to get this project done. So here's my plan: I want to complete at least one "flower" a day. There are 29 flowers on each panel. I have 10 more flowers on this panel & 5 more panels to finish so that should be 155 more flowers to finish. That should take me a little more than 5 months to finish these up & that happens to be around the end of this year. I think that is a fantastic goal to shoot for. I'll keep y'all updated on my progess.

I hope that y'all had a fantastic day. It was a beautiful day here. Check out what other quilters are up to at patchworktimes.com

More later on,

Vicky