It's Been Awhile - The Rest of the Story

The colors of fall! This was a few days ago before the big wind and all the leaves fell off! I love the orange/yellow against the deep blue. We so rarely have days up here which display the trees to their best.

Well, not too many excuses, but my blankety blank wireless keyboard and mouse started getting flakey and I was forced to use the laptop keyboard and mouse -- horrors. Typing even my blog wasn't any fun.So, I know you are on pins and needles knowing how my attempt at printing on the computer vs. going to Stapes turned out! Well, it was okay! The website is http://www.bigposters.com/ and you just send your picture and then presto/chango a pdf file comes back with the divisions you asked for. To get the size I wanted (5 feet by about 8 feet) it took 49 pages!!!! Now taping together 49 pages in my cluttered house was a challenge but I was up to it so now I have this gigantic copy of my drafted lions and it doesn't even look too pixelated. Now to make some additional lines and group pieces and add labels and then......trace the entire thing onto freezer paper. This will be a very big challenge as 49 sheets of paper taped together into a 5 x 8 foot thing is rather cumbersome to say the least.

Warren is spoiling our cats and this is George behind the 100 foot fence that Warren has put in our backyard so that the kitties can play without being eaten by coyotes or raccoons. Many days we have a standoff, however, between George and the squirrels. He chases them; they chase him.

He will sit for hours looking out this corner of the fence. He is so sociable, I never thought he would be our outdoor kitty but he would rather run out in the screened in yard than eat in the morning! Of course, he doesn't like wind and wasn't too pleased when the leaves piled up but Warren dutifully took care of that.

I have busily been finishing the projects I started at the beach. Among those projects were eight of these market bags, two of each fabric in the picture. I just love these bags as they are sturdy and square and hold a lot.

I also finished these handbags which are also quite easy. I believe they are called Laura's Bag and I know they are from the Creative Thimble which does the Professional Tote which I also like. I used imitation suede where the solid color is and then cottons for the rest. The brown one has purchased strapping and on the other one I covered some leftover strapping of the wrong color. They are lined with the fabric that just peaks through on the wraparound pockets.

Concurrently with all this, I am trying my very best to declutter portions of my house. So, this meant getting boxes of fabric out from everywhere and dealing with it! I had scraps left over from many projects. A lot I have given away but that still left quite a few boxes. Now these may just have one small piece cut from them or half of a fat quarter but still difficult to deal with. My solution (which kept my hands busy for several days) was to cut 6 1/2 inch squares out of all the scraps big enough to do that (I have boxes of novelty fabric left over from the three I Spy quilts I did earlier) and then cut 2 1/2 inch strips with any fabric that went selvedge to selvedge but was to small to deal with and then just strips out of any that was less than 2 1/2 inches wide. The pile of 6 1/2 squares is about three feet high (but neat!!) and the strips fill up a couple of 2 1/2 gallon zip lock bags but they are all neatly rolled like the jelly rolls. I have been accumulating patterns I can use for both as I figure they will be good to take to the beach and do comfort quilts for charity. Two gallon bags are filled with the random strips that are left.

You will note that George helped me with both of these pictures. He is always helping me...

But now I have four huge bags of scraps to put on the giveaway table at quilt club next week -- yeh! I can see the floor of both my bedroom and the spare bedroom and my sewing room -- yeh!

These are the squares which are mostly made up with the novelty fabrics. Do you remember the quilt Jeanne Simpson was working on the other day that I pictured in my blog? Well that was my inspiration for all these squares as it is a nifty easy quilt to make. Almost all these squares are novelty fabric.