Making Plans

The next few weeks are going to be really busy for me as I finish off this year's client quilts. I also have the market show/sale next week that will eat up a few of my days. To help me keep calm and focused, I've been planning out all the things I might like to do during my time off.

I want to get at least several of my own quilts quilted. These include:

apple quilt (circa 2000!), custom and for a Christmas gift
blue/white Chalk quilt
SCQG BOM 2021
#Trending
Grassy Creek, providing I sew those borders. I haven't even started yet.

I have eight other quilts on my personal to-be-quilted list, but those five are my priorities.

I've been debating for a couple years now, but I'm going to rip out the quilting I did on my Under the Sea quilt because I just don't like it.

I could create new balls of selvedge yarn and knit a rug for us. My selvedge bag is overflowing.

I need to repair my son's favorite pajama pants.

I am going to make my daughter a dress shirt. She's going to need business casual clothes for her D.C. trip and she has basically none.

I want to make myself several shirts.

I want to make several more donation quilts for Quilts for Kids. Even though I have other things I should be focused on right now, I did pull out a stack of fabrics I'd set aside for one and started prepping them.

I need to finish binding my Flower Patch SAL. I'm about halfway around it now.

I need to watch more of my IntelliQuilter classes.

I want to learn how to use ProStitcher Designer.

I really need to deep clean my house.

I need to get back on my regular exercise plan and stop eating so much junk (stress eating, ugh). I think my knee is just about ready for the treadmill, but the rest of the exercise may need to wait a few more weeks.

There's so much here that it is verging on chore status. We'll see. My vacation should be relaxing, so if most of it doesn't get done, that's okay. It's good to have goals.

I did fully finish the In and Out mini. I quilted it with Abundant Feathers and did hand binding. It was 14" prior to quilting.

I've made it this far with the trimmings from the holiday runner. The blocks are 4" finished. I'm not sure where I want to go from here. Does it need additional borders? I thought about adding cornerstones and then another border, but I also thought about just adding top and bottom borders and calling it good. What do you think?

I have been working a lot in order to try to extend my break by a few more days. I've completed six more quilts and the queue is under 20!

I quilted this for Brenda. It took me two days as it was a fairly large quilt. Quilted with Basketweave.

Toni's quilt, quilted with Hot Nights. My husband said I needed to turn this quilt to make the flames go sideways to look like Hot Rods (hot rod panel in center of quilt), so I did. This is for someone he and Toni work with, so I figured that was okay. I also bound this one.

Marilyn's Deco quilt, quilted with Ginger Hearts.

Marilyn's Ginkgo quilt, quilted with Even Flow. This one was also loaded sideways so that the pattern ran top to bottom when complete. I was very pleased with how her quilts came out.

Pat's quilt, quilted with Turbo. I also bound this one.

Pat's other quilt, quilted with Stipple. Another binding job. She wasn't sure this one was worth quilting, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve--pattern choice, scale of pattern, batting choice {Hobbs 80/20 batting will shrink 3 - 5% when washed and dried and should be quilted no further than 4" apart. Most Quilter's Dream battings will shrink 1 - 3% and can be quilted much further apart.}, clothes steamer, and some fabric manipulation when necessary.

Meanwhile, my initial thought that Henrietta chicken is a rooster seems to be true. Henrietta's comb and wattles, while not as big as Smoky's, are significantly more developed than the hens'.

Henrietta

Smoky (with his eyes closed)

Beaker, we think

And Henrietta and Smoky have taken to crowing every few mornings. So Henrietta is Henry, I guess. My daughter is kind of devastated by this because she's concerned they will be too loud for the neighbors and also that 2/5 of the flock are roosters and these are her pets. I have basically no concern about the neighbors since the chickens crow around 7:30 or 8 am and we are very quiet, considerate neighbors other than this. I'm not sure how it will go with two roosters though.

Speaking of neighbors, remember last week when I was complaining that the lot behind us chopped down basically every tree on 1+ acres? Well, to add insult to injury, their excavator spent two days burning all the downed trees. We consulted with the fire marshall and the county has no rules about burning other than no trash. 😒 The burning disturbed the chickens but luckily it didn't smoke too badly. The same can't be said for someone else who lives behind us and burns a fire pit pretty much every. single. night. Monday night it was so bad that the smoke infiltrated our house. There was a cloak of smoke hanging over more than five acres. Yuck. How obnoxious.

Another neighbor story: we've discovered that one of the neighbors likes to walk around in his driveway in his underwear in the evenings! My next door neighbor growing up did this as well. At least the current guy wears a shirt and not tighty whiteys or a Speedo bikini. And I can't see him from our house. Do you have any unusual neighbors?

We also had this happen last week. Both times it happened we were at the post office instead. No injuries the first time, no real details this time.