Carolina Christmas...or not

I started Bonnie K. Hunter's Carolina Christmas mystery quilt. Of course, I'm not doing Christmas colors on mine, so mine can't be called Carolina Christmas. I'm not really into naming my quilts anyway, but the mystery is called Carolina Christmas, so if I use the term, hopefully you will know what I'm talking about.

Here is step one in my basket. all of these sets of two squares together, and a bunch of HST's.

I just finished step 2 a few minutes ago. I had to take the HST's from step one, and add three more pieces to each one to make these blocks. This is as far as the directions go right now, so I still have no idea what will be going on the with the twosies from step one. I really do like doing the mystery quilts, it's fun to see where the designers go with things. I also get to try quilts I might have shied away from, so it challenges me in a fun, non-intimidating way. Mystery quilts break the process down into small steps, so you don't have any idea what you are getting yourself into. It's kind of like the old adage about eating the elephant one bite at a time. It's easier to think of one bite than eating an elephant.

I am using a bunch of blues in this quilt. One thing I can say for blue fabric, it does make things interesting because there are so many shades of it. I have everything from a fairly light blue to navy with some blue-greens in the mix. My lights all have a white background, but other than that any print is OK. I have stripes, plaids, geometrics and florals. There are even some novelty fabrics in my blues.

I got the other four scrub tops cut out today. I'm kind of hoping the next clue for the mystery quilt doesn't come out too soon, so I can get some scrubs sewn up. We'll see, tomorrow the plan is sewing scrubs, clue 3 or not.

My washing machine broke on Sunday. It won't spin or drain. I had to rinse out the clothes in the sink, and wring them out so I could dry them. The repairman couldn't come until Wednesday, so I know I don't have any laundry to do for a couple of days. The bright side- more quilting time!

Swing Your Partner blocks done

Here are the last six Swing Your Partner blocks. I couldn't decide which photo was better, so I uploaded two.

There are 25 smaller blocks in each of these blocks, and some of those are made up of multiple pieces. Since I made 12 blocks in total, that means I had 300 smaller blocks. No wonder I was worried about losing some! This project is now being set aside (I know, a UFO, but there is no help for it, other things must be finished first).

What else have I been doing these past couple of days? I made a huge dent in my scrap pile, which has really got me thinking about what kind of quilter I am, and what I like to do, and what I'd like to do in the future. I've been sort of waxing philosophically about the whole quilting hobby for me. That will have to wait for a future post, as I'm too tired to explain it now.

I started Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt. I have most of step one done. Step two is already out, and I'll get to it when I can.

I only thought I was done making scrub tops for now. I cut out five today, and someone asked me to make four more tonight. I am so thankful to have two sewing machines set up in my sewing room now! Now I can have a quilting project on one machine, and a garment going on the other, and can switch back and forth as I wish. It's so convenient, albeit a bit crowded in my small room.

Our Thanksgiving was very nice, I made dinner for 15, which is a small crowd for us. Last night I went to a mini high school reunion with DH (his school), and today I went to the movies with DS the Elder. Planet 51 was very cute. Tomorrow I'm planning on a big sewing day, but we'll see what happens....

Scrubs for DH

Here is what I've spent the last couple of days doing. I finally got these scrub tops for DH finished. I cut them out months ago, but other projects kept taking priority. Here are six scrub tops, and maybe, just maybe, I made a seventh that will end up under the Christmas tree ;-) DH reads my blog all the time, but it is no shocker that he'll get a scrub top for Christmas. I almost always sneak a piece of fabric by him and make it up into a new scrub top for Christmas. The blue one on the bottom is a batik print I bought in South Africa. I got the orange fabric I bought there made into a scrub top shortly after I got back, but this one was in a pile getting dusty. The top left hand corner had a International Harvester print, and this is the second scrub top I've made him out of it. He left almost all of the scrubs tops he had with him in Ecuador while on a medical missions trip. They weren't forgotten, he left them for others to use. There were a couple he left behind of which he wanted duplicates, and if I could find the fabric, he got them.

As far as my pile o' scraps on my sewing room floor, well, I can't really tell it is going down, but my piles of cut pieces are going up, so it should be less! Today is the only day I haven't cut any scraps, but DH won't be home for 3 or 4 more hours, so I still have time to get some cut.

Tomorrow we're going on a day trip to Bisbee. It's funny how things come about: DH and I decided last week on our getaway, that we would go to Bisbee on Tuesday. When we got home, DD#3 comes to me and asks if we could plan a day to go to Bisbee, because she wants to take DSIL there. I asked if Tuesday would work for them, and as it happens, it would, so the four of us are going down there. Bisbee is an old mining town. There are some great coffee shops, antique stores, and my husband's favorite place, Dot's Diner. Dot's has awesome hamburgers, and very good pie. (DH would reverse that and say very good hamburgers and awesome pie) Dot's is in an old trailer, and there are a whopping ten stools, but you are one blessed individual if you are in one of them. The food is just great. DD#3 and DSIL might want to do the mine tour, but we've gone on the tour more than once, so we'll be antiquing and getting coffee. I'm so glad I got those scrubs done, and off my to do list before I take a couple days off, for fun and feasting.

A Little of This, a Little of That

I need to prioritize my projects, but right now, I'm just trying to get a couple things out of my way. I've had two scrub tops for DH partway done and sitting on my second sewing machine since early October. I worked on those today, and they are ready to hem. Hopefully they'll be finished tomorrow. When they are finished I need to decide whether to concentrate on the garments I haven't finished, or Christmas items, or quilts, some of which are one and the same. I would like to give one quilt for Christmas, and I have some garments on my Christmas list as well, but not necessarily the ones I already have cut out. Too many ideas, and not near enough time!

This is my current leader and ender project. I'm making split nine patch blocks which really is easy as a leader/ender project. I already made all the HST's needed. I only have to pay attention to blues and lights, besides those two HST's. It is quick to figure out which you need next, and I will be making split nine patch blocks for a while before it will be time to assemble this quilt. I need 120 blocks for the quilt I'm making.

I assembled a few more Swing Your Partner blocks. I have half of the twelve blocks assembled. I'd like to get the other six assembled, then I can use baskets that have been holding the pieces for these for something else. If you click on the photo to make it larger, you might be able to tell that two of the blocks have the shirt labels on them; a light spiral on the top block, and an orange spiral on the third block down.

On our getaway, I picked up a Christmas ornament. I always get one whenever we travel anywhere. I have a thing for bears, and this bear making a snow angel was too cute to pass up.

Romantic Getaway

I haven't gotten much in the way of sewing done, because I was on a romantic getaway with my husband! (I did actually trim some blocks to size in the car, so that's something). We had no plan, no reservations, just three days off, so we took off on an adventure. One of the things I love about Arizona is how diverse it is. We live in southern Arizona, in a desert valley. The photo at the top of my blog is taken not far from our house. There are mountains all over the state, and the terrain varies drastically with elevation.

We ended up going to the northeastern area of Arizona, and staying in a town called Show Low. I had always thought it a strange name for a town, but now I know why it's named that. Evidently two men shared 100,000 acres, and they decided it was time for one man to move on. They gambled for the land, and it went on for hours. One of them finally said, 'Show low and it's yours.' The other man had a deuce of clubs, so he got the land. Their main street in town is called Deuce of Clubs, more interesting than naming it Main Street, I suppose.

The view from the Mogollon Rim.

Yes, Virginia, there is water in Arizona.

Snowy roads high in the mountains. I got a chance to nail DH with a snowball too!

Mountain range after mountain range.

The views on highway 191 are spectacular!

We were searching for breaks in the trees to take pictures.

A very rugged mountainside.

Look at these hairpin turns! No wonder they don't allow vehicles longer than 40 feet on this road. It is one of the top 10 motorcycle rides in the nation though.

A bighorn sheep trotting on the side of the road. This seemed very odd since we were at a huge open pit mine at the time. On this trip we also got to see wild turkeys. I told them they should lay low until Thanksgiving is over.

We got a chance to go to a couple of antique shops. I saw a few quilts, all appliqued. One of them was all machine done, and not near as old as the shop owner would have you believe. I think I have some of the fabrics in that quilt in my stash. I don't know if they were dishonest, or simply not knowledgeable about quilts. I have some pretty old fabrics that have been given to me, and I wouldn't consider 1970's antique for a quilt, but maybe someone would.

Now that I'm home again, I am catching up on some housework, and trying to prioritize my sewing. I dumped a pile of scraps in the middle of my sewing room floor, and I am determined to spend at least 30 minutes a day cutting them into usable sizes. This pile is just a small amount of my scraps, but if I can get in the habit of doing this a half hour a day, maybe I can dig out another pile, after I work my way through this one. I hate having a messy sewing room, so dumping the scraps in the middle of the room is motivation to get to work on them. I'll let you know if it works :-)