Backyard Progress

The landscapers have actually done a ton of work in the backyard, but it's still not looking like much. This weekend there will be a big change as the pavers get laid. The walls that are going up are mostly done, though now that we will be doing the whole yard instead of just a section, there will be another wall later to hide the air conditioner. I took some photos this evening so I could show the progress, but remember, I live in a desert. Grass is not the natural ground covering.

This was the delivery we got yesterday. Yes, all that brick is for our house, and the pallets are two deep on the truck. This photo is taken from our front door. We have a lovely view of the mountains. The twins had a blast watching the forklift bring the pallets around and into the backyard.

For this photo I was standing on our patio. You can see our new low seating wall, which just needs to be capped now. The area behind the wall will be a few inches higher than the rest of the yard. (One of our dogs, Bianca, was successfully getting in almost all the pics I took. We have two dogs, the other is Kate and she looks just like this one, they were litter mates) You can see a different set of mountains in our backyard, Tucson is surrounded by mountains.

 

This photo is standing in the back corner of the yard on the other side of the curved wall. You can see the landscapers built another seating wall next to the shed. Everything from our backyard is shoved up onto the patio, and it's crowded up there!

 

Here is Bianca looking over the backyard from that same back corner as the last photo. This backyard is huge by Tucson standards. Can you see the pallet just to the left of Bianca? They had four blocks left after building the walls. Great estimating!

Here are the pavers that will hopefully be laid this weekend, plus the caps to the walls. Once all of that is done, we will start Step 2 of the yard redo, and order artificial turf, and gravel for the drainage areas.

That's what's been going on outside, but how about inside? On the quilty front, I haven't sewn all week. I have gotten some things done, just not sewn.

I got the Twice Broken Dishes quilt laid out and ready to assemble. I laid out the extra blocks too, and so now the "bonus" quilt is ready to assemble. I also laid out the backing to that quilt so I can finish assembling it.

I cut the borders for Easy Street, the background for Fading Charms, the 10" squares for the backing of the bonus garden quilt. I pulled strips for a piano key border for the Twice Broken Dished quilt, and pulled more strips of a different size for piano key borders for the floral/cream quilts. I had pretty much decimated my 2" strip drawers, so I cut more of those. I pulled fat quarters for DS the Younger's wedding quilt, and I pulled background blacks for another wedding quilt. I trimmed up the pieces I need for the backing of the Film at Five baby quilt, so now it needs to be assembled too. (it's all one fabric, but I didn't have enough in a big piece, so I'm piecing scraps of it together to make the backing large enough) I've emptied enough small mini-bolts to empty over one shelf of them, so the neutrals I had pulled off when I added DH's grandmother's stash to mine are mostly back on the shelves. I likely could shelve all the larger mini-bolt fabrics that wouldn't fit on the big shelves before too. I haven't taken the time to shift fabrics around to make the room where I need it for these other fabrics.

It's funny, I feel like I've mostly been working with pre-cut pieces lately, and my strip drawers are certainly reflecting that. The thing is, I'm emptying a lot of my mini-bolts too, more than I thought I would. Trying to get my backings from stash is a huge part of that, and backgrounds too. For the pineapple quilt I am making using a black background, I need 8 yards of black fabric. I could have gone and bought one 8 yard piece, but I decided instead to clear out black fat quarters left over from making DS the Elder's wedding quilt. Thirty-two fat quarters gone! No wonder I've been emptying so many small mini-bolts.

For the bonus garden quilt I made (from leftovers of my BIL's quilt) I pulled several just over a half yard pieces I had that were garden themed. With 21 inches of fabric, I can get 8- 10.5" cut squares from that. I needed 63 squares to make the backing for the bonus quilt. Several cuts of fabric will be completely busted in that backing.

While I was cutting I started trimming up leftover batting pieces. The leftover batting scraps are overflowing the hamper I put them in, so it's time to piece them together, and get them used! Once I have them all trimmed to the largest pieces I can get with straight edges, I will puzzle piece them together, and see about getting some "free" battings from stuff I could have tossed.