Before and After

Thought i would show you some of the outside progress on the Duck. there's not a LOT...but i think enough to get a start and possibly make the neighbors happier. LOL

This was a bush of some sort growing outside the bedroom window...along with vines coming into the house and a pile of weeds and crap.

This is what that corner looks like now. i still need to pull the roots out of there and rake up some. bet you didn't know the gas meter was in there...did you?

And the front was pretty rough....paper covering the doors and windows.....shrubs all overgrown over the steps....poor mailman....generally looking ghetto-like.

Now the paper covering windows and door are gone. i painted the inside of the door with white paint....from the outside it looks like there is just a white shade drawn....a little neater.

And i trimmed off the side of that shrub that was all over the steps. the mailman had to hate crawling all over that thing. eventually all those shrubs will be gone.

And near to the street was this other large bush-like plant growing. i didn't like it at all.

Now it is just down to a few trunks that will come out....maybe next trip. there were sticker bushes in there.....and some kind of vines....and some flowers....and a whole rotten trunk full of ants that i'm thinking was the original tree from years ago.

In the side yard was a raised garden type thing with boards around it....full of weeds and who knows what. you can see it there in the very left of the picture....that taller pile of weeds. LOL

The boards are now gone...along with the weeds. i found a tomato cage in there....a nice flower pot....and 2 little hand diggers.  the dirt there is about 6 inches higher than the yard. not sure if i will just spread that out or put a flower bed there. i'm thinking i want to put a water pond on that side....closer to the bedroom window.

I did do a bit of work inside. i opened up part of the wall between the bedroom and the studio. i still have to pick up all the plaster on the floor in there before i can take the rest of the slats off and get rid of the blown in insulation behind it. and the next trip i have to get on the ladder and take down the slats at the top.

And i took off more slats in the living room. and spent some time sweeping up the floors and putting all the debris in the middle of the room.

You can see that i painted these windows white also. it is easier with paint than with paper. it still prevents nosy nellies from seeing in but allows me to open windows easier and not have to keep replacing paper that falls off.

So, although i just spent one day and it didn't SEEM like i accomplished a lot....in fact, i actually did.

I really need some electric connection so i can plug in a fan or 2...it is getting warm in there.

Be back out in a couple weeks.....after my head injury feels better.

Back home again

I survived the heat working at the Duck for a couple days.....but still managed to hurt myself. i whacked myself in the temple saturday morning with my pry bar. man....that hurt really bad. LOL    aside from a very tender head i seem to be fine. no blood running....no stitches. God watches over fools i'm told. siigghhh!!

I got more plaster down off some walls and more slats removed from walls, too. since i whacked myself....i stayed on the ground and didn't get on the ladder. so the next time i go i'll have to do some ladder work.

I did some yard work....took out a large bush that was in a corner of the house...along with a bunch of vines and junk that was growing behind it. i had vines growing up inside the siding....when i took off window trim there were vines inside there. and my sister and i took another huge bush down close to the street. we plan on chopping the rest of that out next time. i sprayed Crossbow all around the house....killing poison oak and ivy and a holly bush growing under the back porch.

The grass is pretty thick so it took us both to cut the grass...over about a 2 hour period....lots of breaks.

I pick up my load of barn wood tomorrow for the Duck's living room walls. will have to haul it down there and unload into the garage for later use. i'm going to call the electric company and have the electric turned on out in the garage so i can run an extension cord into the house. at least i can get a fan hooked up while i work. i had most of the windows open but there wasn't much of a breeze.

We spend the evenings at the beast....so i took my DJ blocks and actually hand pieced some of the blocks together with the sashing pieces for the first row.

Gonna get busy on the longarm tomorrow.....got 2 more quilt tops today at quilt class. i think that puts me about 10 or 11 in line to be quilted....not counting my own.

We went to a great book sale on Friday in St. Charles Missouri. they advertised 25,000 books.  the worker bees were walking around and adding more books to the tables as fast as people were pulling them off. so even if you walked around a table and looked at everything.....the worker bees came behind you and filled up the spaces again. so you had to go cruise around again. it was a vicious circle. LOL

We had a good time and i'm resting up to go again....probably after i quilt at least 3 customer quilts.

Stay cool
Later

Here it is ---- June already!

Dang....where has the year gone.  i actually just planted a dozen tomato plants in the garden yesterday. they are still tiny so we shall see what happens. i also have 2 cushaw squash plants out there that i really, really want to grow and give me some squash so i can freeze it for pies. we are just about out from last year.

I did work on some Dear Jane blocks last night and looks like i made my prediction of 25 blocks done in May. although one of them is a border triangle...but i'm counting it anyway. it was a doozie.

This is my first border triangle...it is on the top...1st from the left. i had to frog about 4 rows and have a do-over. i didn't have enough on the edges for the seam. but i finally got it together. and it looks like an easy one compared to some others. it was paper pieced.

D8   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch. i never seem to get them straight. but when you look at the picture of Jane's....hers are a bit crooked, too....so i don't feel bad.

K7   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch.

J1   Stable magic and glue stick and machine buttonhole stitch.

C1   this one i just pieced as i went. cut the middle square as measured and then added the layers. not too bad. only had to redo the second layer once. LOL

I2   this one was also fairly simple. paper pieced the inside and added the triangles to the sides and trimmed down to 5".

I am going back out to the Duck tomorrow, so will take my DJ box with me and see what i can accomplish in the evenings.

Customer quilts are piling up....i really need to get busy there. and the UFO Challenge quilt this month from Judy Laquidara is not all pieced....so there is another June project. the Mono Color challenge this month from Judy is Indigo....blah!....not my favorite. but i have a piece of backing that color (somewhat) that i am going to draw on and make a wholecloth quilt. it won't be too large....about 55" square. but the challenge will get done (hopefully).

I went out to pick up barn wood from my friend the other day and discovered that the boards were still attached....partial walls. so i am looking for some labor to disassemble them for me....my friend judy thinks she has some leads on that project for me. so, hopefully soon i will have a trailer of barn wood to take to the duck for my living room wall. we are trading quilting for the wood so i will be quilting for her for a few years i think. LOL   that's ok.....judy is one of my favorite people.

Today was payday so i went to town to do some grocery shopping. my goodness...prices have gone up. and we have to get gas for the mowers and tractors and such. after paying electric and phone bills.....we are just waiting for the next payday now. we are fortunate that we can pay our bills and buy food and gas since so many cannot. and we have a home to live in. pray for Joplin folks.

Till next week.....stay out of trouble.
Later

3 more Janes

Who knew Dear Jane blocks were so addicting. last night i paper pieced 3 more.

This is H13...pretty simple and straightforward...done in 2 parts

C3 ... easy checkerboard type...done in 5 strips

And I3   looks like tic-tac-toe to me...done in 3 strips

And for the first time i can say.....no frogging on these.  Yea!!

Looking at the pictures now....if you stretch your imagination....it looks like i did a red, a white (tan), and a blue....we'll say that is in celebration of Memorial Day. LOL

Tonight is the last day of May so i hope to finish a few more tonight....we'll see what my May total turns out to be. 25 sounds like a good number, doesn't it?

More Dear Jane

Once we got home from the Duck i didn't feel like going to the studio...so i stayed at the house and worked on a few more Dear Jane blocks.

I decided to use my Stable Magic and glue sticks on the applique blocks. that is my favorite applique technique. and i stitched them with the blanket stitch on my machine. i tried to use embroidery machine thread that matched the color of the blocks but it kept shredding the thread. I started this block with pink but didn't get too far...then switched to white. but didn't want to do them all in white. so eventually used a gray invisible nylon thread and that worked just fine.

This is E1...different color threads. LOL  the pieces came out too large and overlapped in the middle instead of meeting properly. apparantly my tracing skills are lacking but i am not going to worry about it.

This is F13. i cut the petals a bit smaller so they fit better.

I had problems with C9...but not with the applique. when i was trimming it down...i cut on the wrong line. ugly words were said...LOL...so i just added another piece of muslin to that end rather than do the whole thing over. as you can tell...i am not a fan of 'do-overs'. you'll never see a quilt of mine in a show.....and if you did....it would never have a ribbon on it.....you could just look for the 'oops' in the quilt and know it is mine. LOL

H12 came out just fine. no problems...how about that?

I now have 19 blocks made...not bad for a couple weeks work. perhaps i can get 30 or 40 of them done in June.....or not.  we'll see.

Customer quilts are calling my name so i better go load one and get busy. i am two behind for this month. OOPS!   LOL

Working at the Duck

I drug hubby along....and the dog...and we went up to the Duck on Thursday afternoon. my plan thursday evening was to cut the grass but it was still drizzling...as it had been all day and things were too wet. so we just set up a run for the dog between 2 clothesline poles that were out in the side yard. she has never been tied up and was not too fond of the idea. but i don't have a fence there and the inside of the house just wasn't safe with nails all around and plaster dust. we got her a new harness....just for this purpose.

I gave her a bucket of water and went out and checked on her every once in a while. See that pile of lumber in the back of the picture...by the garage....those are slats pulled off the walls...full of nails. i went out to check on Suzy and her chain went over into that pile of wood. so, i'm thinking...great she's stuck up in there and probably got stuck by a couple nails, too. i go over and call to her...no answer....i pull on the chain...all that comes up is her harness....no Suzy. little Houdini has somehow gotten out of the harness.

So by now i am panicing...where is she....i start yelling for her...and yell for Jim... he comes to the doorway to see what i am hollering about. i tell him Suzy is gone.  then he hears a noise...turns around....and here comes Suzy.....COMING OUT OF THE HOUSE.    WTH??   we can only guess that she got stuck up in the lumber, wiggled her way out of the harness....and came into the house...where she wanted to be the whole time. but, when she came in....she didn't come and find one of us....she just went and hid somewhere so no one knew she was in the house. goofy dog. but it didn't do her much good. i tightened up the harness and Jim put a stop on the run so she couldn't get to the lumber. and she wound up back outside again.

I pulled the rest of the plaster off the walls in the bedroom, 1 wall in the dining room, and the rest of the living room. and pulled slats off one living room wall. and pulled nails out of the studs in the office, bedroom, closet, and whatever was showing in the living room. about a thousand nails....for a couple hours. when you pull off the slats...usually the nails stay in the studs.....so i pulled lots and lots of nails. pulling nails is a good thing...it prevents holes in your shirts and shorts when you go up and down the ladder and get too close to the nails and get stuck. and they all have to be pulled eventually anyway.

We also took a cabinet off the wall in the kitchen. it was above the stove and i didn't want it there. and took down the stuff above the cabinet, too. i don't know why people frame in the tops of cabinets and close in that space...it is wasted space that way. i took the plaster and lath strips off that wall, too. i have piles of plaster all over the house. LOL  i hate picking it all up and dragging it to the garage. i hire a guy to do that for me but he didn't work this weekend..... holiday weekend, so he was probably at the lake somewhere.

Hubby took the old electric boxes with fuses out of the basement and looked at the electric in the garage...trying to figure out what the past owner did. and he took the old ceiling fans down for me, too. and did major weed eating all around the property after i cut the grass. he said he would work for food...LOL....so he picked all his favorites that he didn't have at home....Long John Silver fish...KFC chicken....Sergio's Mexican...and Taco Bell.  here i caught him taking a break.

I pulled a small trailer with my riding mower down to the Duck this time. i was a bit nervous since i hadn't pulled a trailer with my truck before. and my truck is 15 years old and has a problem getting up hills that are a long grade. but it managed to pull the trailer just fine and we made all the hills. well, we didn't do any passing....everyone else was passing me. but we got there just fine. the grass was rather high so i cut it Friday morning as high as the mower would cut .... then cut again on Sunday before we left...and put the mower down 2 notches. so that should work for a week or 10 days. if there isn't a lot of rain it should be just fine. i am going down again next weekend and do some yard work. i have a couple trees by the fence to trim so i can mow easier and some vines and bushes to cut out. and will trim the edge of the curb by the street. probably a couple days of yard business. i have a list...hahahahahaha

In the evenings...we stayed at the Beast...i worked on some Dear Jane blocks. i even managed to stay awake till about 9pm instead of crashing about 8 as i usually do after working all day. i was hand stitching applique blocks. i finished:

C6

D3

The inside of E2. i finished the outside when i got back home.

The 2 'petals' of E10. i finished the 2 squares when i got home.

And the outside 'track' of G3...finished the inside at home.

And i finished a few more when i got home. doing the applique on the machine is much easier than by hand. and faster, too. i think i have 17 blocks done now. i have been skippping around...doing the easier ones....but now i think i feel confident enough and will go back to row 1 and finish them in order. then i can put rows together as they are finished and i think if i can see progress being made it will help me to finish them all quicker. at least that is the plan. LOL

Hope your long weekend was fun for you, too.

eBay is my friend

In trying to bust my stash of older fabric that i no longer want....i am trying to think outside the box to get rid of it. i've given hundreds of yards away....but sometimes even your friends won't take some stuff. and i am on a mission to rid my studio of this old fabric. so i sorted in stacks; kids, animals, light florals,dark florals, misc. i listed everything, took measurements, and took pictures. i had 5 boxes ready to go. i put them on eBay last week and waited. but people don't usually bid until the last day or so. and today is my last day for these boxes. 4 out of the 5 have sold.

That is 80 yards going out.     80 yards.    i am so happy about that. it's like a cloud has lifted to see those empty shelves.  this was all good cotton fabric...just not the latest out there. shoot, some of it is probably 20 years old. but it will be going to live in someone's else's house and that just tickles me. i hope they make lots of great quilts and things.

i still have enough for 2 or 3 boxes but ran out of time. i will try and get those out there when i get back from the duck next week.

I am trying some hand applique on my Dear Jane blocks. so far, i have 2 of them finished.

There is B1.....just some circles....fairly easy and quick.

And this is B12   and bit more challenging but not bad.

That makes 10 i have done so far this month. i am taking more of the applique blocks with me to the duck so hopefully in the evenings i won't be too tired to work on them. i have the pieces all cut out and the blocks marked...ready to go. usually when i have worked out there all day i fall asleep about 8pm...LOL...sad, i know...but demolition is hard work. but maybe if i have something to keep busy with i will stay up at least till 10.

I'm leaving for the Duck tomorrow afternoon and won't be back till Sunday some time. hopefully with pictures to show you of some progress. i am hauling the riding mower on a trailer so i can cut the grass out there. i am having my push mower turned into an electric start...so when that is finished it will go to live at the duck. i am also going to measure the wall space in the living room and dining room so i can figure out how many boards i need to cover it. my friend, Judy, is sharing her old barn wood with me and i am going to put it on the walls.

See you on Sunday or Monday next week. try and stay dry and out of trouble.