A Crazy Time of the Year and Some Finishes

I want to thank every one who left such sweet comments and emails regarding my last post about the Top 55 Blogs for 2011.  I can think of so many other blogs that are much more deserving, but I'll take those 15 minutes of fame - I was just tickled (or gobsmacked, really) and your comments just added the frosting on the cake.  Thank you so, so much!!!

As most of you are experiencing, it's a busy time of the year.  The kids are ending their school year and many are going through proms, graduations, parties and the like.  We've been going through that too (more on that in a moment), but I've actually managed to get some things done.  I can't figure out how, but why question, right?

I finally finished the sampler that I've now named Sarah Esh's Frogs.   I probably should have found a little frog pattern and stitched it sitting on the grass (although that frog would probably look like snake fodder if I did that)!  This little piece just about drove me to distraction.  I don't know why something so small throws me for a loop, but I can't seem to stitch a straight line with these things - frogs all over the place.  Perhaps I have a mindset that since it's small, I don't need to really turn the brain on.  Obviously, I better keep it switched on at all times.  Anyway, here is Sarah:

Sarah Esh 1926

Barrick Samplers

DMC threads and Mystery Fabric (lightly tea stained)

The linen color is better represented by the first picture.  The only change I made to Sarah were the eyes on Adam and Eve.  The chart called for a blue that made them look like some kind of aliens with glowing eyes, so I switched them to brown.  The blue just unnerved me for some reason.  Sarah, along with Elizabeth Clayton are currently visiting Framer Tom and I hope that I'll have them back next week.  

I have also managed, around all the mayhem and fun times lately, to finish up another real problem child.  The pesky Hatchet blocks for the Civil War Chronicles Quilt.  I can't tell you how many times, once again, I wanted to fling these blocks against the wall, run over them with my car, or sacrifice them to the bar-b-que gods!  Or yes, take a Hatchet to them.  I would keep telling myself that I couldn't sew anything else until they were done.  So I'd go down into the sewing cave, look at them and walk out.  Not the way to get anything accomplished.  But I had to get them done - because what appears in the mail - the last installment of the Farmer's Wife Quilt - Woo Hoo!!  Month 17 and 18 just waiting so that the quilt can finally be put together.  That spurred me along.

Farmer's Wife Goodies

So I'm happy to annouce that the Hatchet blocks are done!!  Not absolutely perfect by any means, but they're good enough for me.  After making 16 of these:

I now have four of these:

Civil War Chronicles

Month #2

(shot far enough way so that you hopefully don't see that my points don't all match up)

I can't tell you what a mind burp I had on these blocks which is too bad because I am now four months behind on this quilt.  But they were a royal pain.  Partially because I had to make approximately 138 Half Square Triangles.  And wouldn't you know, that of all 138, I think that only 5 were totally squared when I sewed them together.  So there was a lot of trimming going on.  I have now learned my lesson.  Instead of thinking that I'm invincible and can perfectly piece these little devils by the line method, I will resort to other methods.  Below is the line method:

Line Method - Draw a line from corner to corner, put two squares together right sides facing and stitch 1/4" on both sides of the line and then cut apart on the drawn line.  This just didn't work, so I will now use those tools that are out there on the market.  I was just too lazy to think of ripping off little pieces of paper, but that could have been mindless work in front of the TV, saved me a lot of time trimming all those buggers down and I would happily be working on something.  So in the future I will be using these:

There are a lot of HST's in the entire quilt, so these are going to become my best friends in short order.

I've also managed to start another new sampler, but I'll hold off on showing that this time around because it's just border and borders are boring.  

Now for a little family stuff (and you can exit out if you aren't into the family thing).  My son, as most of you know is a Senior in High School (or should I say was - he graduates tonight).  With the end of his high school years coming to a close, there are a lot of things that go on this time of the year.  One was the Prom.  Here's a picture of the whole group and I show this because I loved the girl's dresses - much fancier then when I went to the Prom:

The whole group (my son is second from the left and his date, Mackenzie, is in front of him).

And the two of them together!  I felt so sorry for them because the weather was absolutely horrible that night - driving rain and it was about 46 degrees, but they didn't let the weather get them down.  The limo came and they were off to a great evening.

Last night, Mackenzie (who is a Junior) came over, saw us outside and asked if she could surprise Nick and decorate his car for his graduation.  Here are a couple pics - not the best as it was getting dark:

Needless to say, Nick was a little taken back to see this all over his car.  LOL

Yesterday, also marked the day that my daughter graduated from middle school.  Time sure flies and it's a little bit hard for me to take it all in.  But here she is before her commencement:

It's hard for me to imagine her at this stage in her life.  I still think of her as sitting on the kitchen floor with a Tupperware bowl on her head.  Her favorite cupboard and the only one she could get into was the one that held the Tupperware!  Now she's off to high school (why does that make me shiver????).

So that's about it for me this time around.  As I mentioned, my son has his graduation commencement tonight, a Senior All Night Party and then next Saturday leaves for Spain.  It's hard for me to imagine him going off to a foreign country at this age.  A friend today emailed me to congratulate me on his graduating and said that she was sure that I would shed a few tears.  I probably will, but I think that I'll be blubbering like a baby when he leaves for Spain.  For some reason that makes the fact that he's growing up hit home all that much more.  I know that he will have a wonderful time and it will be wonderful experience for him.  And he has instructions to bring me back a pair of sewing scissors from Toledo!!!

Once again, thanks to all of you for your wonderful comments on my last post, and I hope that you have a wonderful weekend!

It's a Mystery and More Darned Frogs

I want to thank everyone for their sweet comments on Elizabeth Clayton.  I'm hoping that I can get her framed soon and up on the wall.  God must have been hearing my thoughts because a 50% plus an additional 20% coupon for framing landed in my mail yesterday, so hopefully she'll be framed soon.

It's been another busy week or so with the end of the school year, but I've managed to get a little bit of stitching done.  Not as much as I would like, but a little.  I started WTN&T's Mystery sampler and it's so much fun to stitch and the colors are so pretty (pix are clickable):

Mystery Sampler

With Thy Needle & Thread

Confederate Grey Linen and GAST Threads

I'm about at the half way mark.  I can't wait to finish this up and receive the next section.

And check out those scissors!  Are those not so cool or what?  A pair of legs!  I couldn't resist these.  And I'm cursing Gabi for pointing them out to me!  LOL

I've also been working on Sarah Esch, but haven't gotten much more done than what you saw the last time:

I don't know what it is about this sampler, but I'm having all kinds of things going on with it.  First I had frogging issues last week, then I ran out of the thread that I'm using and wouldn't you know it - with all the DMC I have around this house, I didn't have another skein of it.  Then on top of it, the frogs came back in a big way.  I think that smaller samplers and I just don't get along!  Why is that?

And I've been doing a little bit of quilting here and there.  I won't tell you how long it took me to get this block done:

Month #2 - Hatchet Block

Civil War Tribute Quilt

Actually I have two of these blocks done - out of 16!!!!  This is what the rest look like:

Seems like every time I sit down to sew, I get a little bit of time and then have to run out and do something.  And I'm two months behind on the Farmer's Wife quilt!  Yikes.  The last month will be arriving soon and I would so love to get that baby together!  

Speaking of frogs, this past weekend was garage sale time in my subdivision.  I ended up stopping at a couple places and scored a new frog.  It's rather usual, but it was practically free, so it had to come home with me.  I've seen these before - it comes in two pieces - but I've always found just one piece of it and not the other, so I was thrilled to find both parts together.  And the seller also threw in an arrangement book that originally came with it!

Seeing as this one isn't as heavy as the others I have, I think that I'll be using this one strictly for arranging flowers, but maybe I'll put scissors in it once just to see how it looks.

And yesterday was a somewhat sad day for me - sad and happy at the same time.  My son's last day of high school was yesterday.  And the prom will be tomorrow.  I hope that he'll allow me to post pictures.  He's rather camera shy!  Anyway, I just can't believe that this day has arrived.  He's done so well and graduated with Honors.  He's still Wait Listed for the University of Michigan, so it looks like he'll be going to Michigan State at least for the short term.  Not his first choice, but I still think he'll be happy there.  Anyway, it made me think about how quickly he's grown.  It seems like yesterday when I had him.  Now he's out of high school and has a date for the Prom.  He's going to Spain in June and then off to college.  When he was born, I stitched this sampler for him.  When I saw it yesterday, it brought a tear to my eye, because my baby - my first born - is all grown up:

Again, thank you for all your wonderful comments on Elizabeth Clayton, and I hope that everyone has a fantastic Memorial Weekend!!

Elizabeth Clayton is a Wrap

Woo Hoo!  Another one off the To-Do list - finally!  I don't know what took me so long on dear Elizabeth, but I put the final stitches into her last week!  I love her, although I look at Adam and Eve as being rather ghostly beings - they're so light!

Elizabeth Clayton

Handwork Samplers

36 ct. Legacy Linen and DMC threads

Top of Elizabeth:

Bottom of Elizabeth:

Sorry these aren't the best pictures.  Michigan has been having the worst weather the past few days.  80 one day - rainy and cold for three days, so taking good pictures is a hit or miss proposition.  Anyway, back in the day, when something didn't stand out all that well on a piece, we'd outline it.  But that was back in the day, so no outlining on Adam &Eve - I'm just going to leave them ghost-like.  Actually they look better in real life.  Another one crossed off that crazy January Challenge and another one for the A&E wall.  Me thinks that at the rate I'm going,  I won't be completing 15 projects this year.  Oh well, it's all about the journey, right?

And where is the A&E wall, you ask?  Well, it's coming along.  I want to get Elizabeth framed and then I'll unveil the wall.  I have templates stuck all over the wall and no matter how I arrange them, I know that I need Elizabeth framed before I start pounding nails.  You have to remember that my husband is anal about holes in the wall, so I don't want to make mistakes!  LOL

After finishing Elizabeth, I went back to another January challenge piece, Sarah Esch.  But we have very pitiful progress - pitiful because those pesky frogs visited:

Not only are these letters boring as all get out, I got to the end of the second line and realized that I had left too many spaces between the "N" and the "O".  Instead of frogging at that point, I just kept going with the next line and then went back and frogged out the O, P,Q & R - you can probably see a little bit of thread droppings - or frog droppings - where I did that.  Not loving stitching these letters at all, after I frogged out those letters, I picked up another WIP - Ann Grant - but I didn't make much progress on it:

Not much done from the last time, but I'm just loving the colors of this one.

Things have been in high gear around here with the end of the year things - dance recitals, track meets, AP exams and all the cramming and my son's upcoming graduation.  So it's been busy and that's probably why Elizabeth took me forever.  Last weekend was the normal round of recitals and would you believe it - I have no pictures!  Well, I do, but they're on the other camera which is not digital, so no great costumes to show this year.  But while DD was at one of her recitals, I took a little hike to an Antiques Market that was being held nearby and scored another frog - but the kind I love - not the frogs involved with threads:

A cut crystal one this time.  The woman I bought this from had the most amazing flower frog, but with also an amazing price tag.  I wish that I had taken a picture of it!  It was really something else.  The little pincushion doll I found at one of the other booths there.  I thought that she was sweet!

Well, once again, there isn't much else to talk about unless you want to her about my son grumbling about AP exams, or the normal trials and tribulations of life.  I did have a shock this week though.  My son informed me that he asked a girl to the Prom - and even more shocking - she accepted!!  LOL  Not really, my son is a great kid, but this is the first I've heard of a girl in the picture.  I guess it's time - he's going off to Spain this summer and then college in the fall, so it's about time a girl showed up in the picture somewhere.  But oh dear, does it make me feel OLD!!

Thanks so much for stopping by and leaving me the wonderful comments that you do.  I'm still having a bit of trouble commenting on blogs.  The Geek Squad can't figure out what it is unless it has something to do with Blogger.  Some times of the day I can get in and make comments with no problem and then other times, I can't - the wireless modem shuts down.  So bear with me - I'm reading everyone's blogs, just not able to comment all the time.

Hope you have a wonderful week, and make it a stitchy one!!

On the 16th Day I'm Resting.

Happy Sunday everyone!  Well, the 15 Project Challenge is over and I don't know if I'm sad or happy to get back to some regularly scheduled stitching.  Quite frankly, I breathed a sigh of relief yesterday knowing that now I can just get back to stitching one thing.  Well, at least stitch on one thing for a little while - I am known to be a project jumper!!  LOL  But in going through my stash, I found a bazillion other things that I would love to stitch, so in a rather sick way, I wanted to keep going - adding new projects with reckless abandon.  But I decided to just stop before I drove myself crazy.  I have come to the realization that I don't need to ever buy another thing EVER (yeah, like that's going to happen!!!!!).

Anyway, here are Projects 9 through 15.  And again, before you chuckle over my miserable progress on anything just remember I have had a husband trailing me around and Mr. Bailey went for his little operation this week and is sporting what is known as the Cone of Shame (pic to follow).

Last Sunday, Day 9, was a new start - Sarah Esch - I just had to get something that was a realistic size into this crazy mix.  You know, something that I'd was sure that I could finish before the New Year rolls around again:

Day 10 was back to a WIP and it was Hannah Lancaster day.  I was suppose to be stitching this with Sandra, but in my true slacker fashion, I took a different road and went sight-seeing by myself.  Sandra's been barreling along on hers, and me - well, I've been driving in the slow lane:

Before:

After:

Again, not a lot of progress, but now that I have a little bit more color in this piece, I'm really loving it.  It seemed rather drab on the cover, but is so much prettier in real life.

Say 11 was a new start day and I picked Miriam Chilvers:

Now, I'm really on the fence with this one.  I have seen this sampler done on this fabric - Vintage Meadowrue, I think - on another blog, but I'm not sure that I'm going to like it.  It actually photographed better than what it looks like to the naked eye.  I may have to revisit the fabric on this one.

Day 12 was back to an oldie - Frances Eden:

Before:

After:

Okay, no chuckling here - not too much accomplished!!!

Day 13 was a new piece - Sovine Palphreyman:

I like this one a lot.  The colors are funky!!!  And fun.  On 34 ct. Cafe au Lait linen.  I just realized as I was typing that, that three of my new pieces are single women - not the traditional A&E's.  Hannah, Sovine and Miriam are all women alone.  I think that I'd like a wall devoted to samplers with just women in them.

Day 14 - well, I was suppose to go back to a WIP and finish on Day 15 with a new piece, but I decided to reverse that because I wanted to spend some time on my last WIP in the challenge, so I went to another new piece - Stories to Live By - Eve.  Another smaller project that should work up fast.

I think that if I had this one and Sovine on scroll rods I would have made a lot more progress on both of them.  Working on a hoop or in hand really slows me down.

So now we come to Day 15 and I wanted to end it with a bang - with the piece that I really, really hope that I can get finished this year - Ann Medd.  When I last took a good picture of her, she looked like this - like a darned bedspread:

Then I worked on her some more here and there:

And on the fifteenth day, I got almost the entire verse done on the left:

Doing the verse is actually a lot of fun.  Unfortunately, there are twenty six verses in total (I think) divided between both sides of the sampler - the first verse starts with the letter "A" and each verse works it's way through the alphabet.  This is "I" and the next one will be "K"  The letter "J" is skipped as it wasn't used in older samplers for various reasons.  This is going to be my focus piece for a while.  Poor Ann was my New Year's start back in 2006 so I think that I really should give it the old college try here.

On the quilting front, I didn't do too much so don't have pictures.  Which is unfortunate because another Block in my Civil War Tribute showed up this week.  UGH - I can't sew fast enough!!!  I hope to spend some time today and tomorrow, while I have a dog sitters around, to put the pedal to the metal and get some sewing done.  But I did add another stash project into the pile (thanks Loraine!!!!).  Many years ago, I joined a BOM for the Dear Jane quilt and then right after that life just got too darned busy and I stopped quilting.  These little bundles have been waiting for me for over eight years.  With the encouragement of Loraine, who is working on this with her mother and SIL, I'm biting the bullet.  No time like the present, right?

You would think after working on the Farmer's Wife quilt I'd be tired of little blocks.  Well, not so, and these are even smaller - 4-1/2"!  I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment.  But how fun this is going to be?

Well, with the aftermath of the past 15 days, this is what my stitching area looks like.  DH has raised his eyebrows a few time and DD asked numerous times what I'm pulling out now:

24 project envelopes full of Challenge projects, a couple new ones and few others that are WIPs (yes, Michelle, Provence is in there!!!):

And a huge mess around the stitching chair.

But now I'm breathing a sigh of relief!  But it's been a lot of fun and made me go through stash and, of course, I made a huge list of other things I'd like to stitch and quilt this year.  Although, truth be told, I'll be one happy camper if I can get through half the things that I've put into this challenge.  (Oh, and a note to my sister Cindy who I know stalks this blog - the Mermaid isn't part of the challenge even though I probably should have added it as one.  She's on her own and I haven't forgotten about her.   She is seeing some stitchy love too!!) 

On the home front - everyone will be out of my hair next Tuesday!  Ya Hoo.  Well, that is if we don't get a winter storm that they've been predicting for Monday.  Fingers crossed it misses us!  DH is doing well with his shoulder, DS is recuperated although still coughing to beat the band - he's had one vicious bug!!  The only caveat to this whole thing is Mr. Bailey.  He had his "little" surgery this week and is none too happy about it, but would you be happy if you had to wear this?

Yes, the Cone of Shame and it's driving him absolutely nuts.  This dog usually runs on high octane, but that cone has really hampered him.  But he'll be able to get it off on Wednesday.  I can only imagine how he's going to be when it's taken off.  He'll probably be bouncing off of walls!  LOL

I have to say that I've had a great time following everyone's challenges these past couple weeks and again, have only had time for a few hit or miss comments.  Hopefully, my life will return to normal this coming week.  But, it's been a lot of fun watching what things people have pulled out of their stash to do, and unfortunately, reminded me of things that I have in my stash! LOL  But that's a good thing!

I want to thank everyone for your wonderful comments to my post on first half of this challenge.  They truly mean a lot to me and do keep me going!!!  I hope that everyone has a wonderful week and can make great progress on their own Challenge pieces!