A great day for quilting...
 

Today is the kind of day that is perfect for sewing and quilting. The weather is bad. Right now it is raining and we are expecting an ice storm later this evening. The only thing I might need is sherbert for DH. If necessary we will do without. I am not going out in this heavy rain. The front yard is flooding already and it will only get worse as the day goes on.
So the best thing to do is something I love doing. Right now I am cutting out a new quilt block using my new Accuquilt Me. I am in the middle of making an Apple Core quilt top and am cutting out the Tumbler Block. This is so easy it is hard to believe! It is giving me the opportunity to make patterns I would have never attempted before.
I am about 2/3's of the way done with the Apple Core top and can come and lay on the be with DH to pin each row before going out to stitch it onto the primary quilt top. So today will be a quilty day for me. I couldn't even get through this message without going back to my cutting board!
If any of you are having this nasty weather are you having a quilty day to keep warm like I am??

It's rainy here too and yes, a perfect day for sewing. I'm working on the Bonnie Hunter mystery (my first)
So glad you're enjoying your new toy!!!

Ice storm came thru here last night. After work had to break ice to get into my cart.
once i got heading home, had a n interesting but slow and safe drive home.

today just going out to do chores, make sure everyone in the barn is feed and watered.
lay out some hay. then it is back in to finish basting one quilt and
get another started to baste.

working on a quilt sound warm and fun.

Well today here it is wet gloomy Seattle January. In one of my projects I have kitted out but not yet started is a sampler of 9 large Lone Star blocks, where I'm using blue/white snowflake patterns and instead of radiating stars I will have snowflakes (yes, I know snowflakes and lone stars have different numbers of points). Because January in Seattle is rarely bright white snow, about half the blocks will have a silver shade, or around here known as gloomy grey. It would indeed be a good day to stay inside and sew. BTW, snow is forecast in the next couple of days.

But we have a busy day ahead of us, non-quilting wise. Hubby is getting is hair cut today. Back in August he got his ponytail cut off, so this will be the first cut since then. He has lovely curly hair, he thinks he has "Dr McDreamy" hair (you can do a google on that term!), I think he looks like if Sheldon and Leonard from Big Bang melded their genes into a love child.

We are hoping to hear from people who have a bonded set of mixed terriers, they belonged to her father who recently died. Well hubby is thinking it is one dog too many, I tell him they are small dogs (knee high) and he is lucky I don't love great danes (because there is a great one of those available too!). My one dog is half a bonded pair, his other half died late last year. No matter where he is in the pack order, he will be better off as part of a pack. Poor little thing was depressed and now is just terribly needy. And I get depressed and distressed as I look at my two remaining warm blooded animals (hubby has reptiles), one aging dog and one aging cat... Think I have up to two years left with both of the current pets, maybe more, maybe less... you just don't know.

I'm caught up and done with the Bonnie Hunter Frolic mystery for this week. I'd like to (gasp) actually clean up a bit today. Our water heater went out and got replaced right at Thanksgiving, we have about another 60 days to have the city inspector come out and ok it (which costs us), or the warranty is void. Fabric has landed on top of the boxes we had to move out of the way for the workers -- it is amazing how things here become covered with fabric if not carefully watched. It's like moss growing in the forest sometimes, slow but deepening over time. And sometimes a fabric blizzard comes out and dumps feet of cloth at my feet!

I hope you don't get the ice we are expecting. My sister is house bound as she is expecting 6-12" of the white stuff near Traverse City MI. At least she is not expecting the ice.
I am loving my new toy!! I have cut plenty for both quilts. I only have a few more rows to sew onto the Apple Core Quilt top and I am pretty sure I have almost enough, if not to many pieces cut for the Tumbler Quilt top cut. This is gonna be one quilty day. Looks like tomorrow will be the same way. Stay safe there in Ohio.

This is the kind of day that you may wish you didn't have the animals to tend to but they again this is a part of caring for special animals, no matter the weather. Have fun basting the quilts.

It sounds like you have a busy day ahead of you on this gloomy Seattle day. I don't know when I will get back to cleaning up more. Right now I am so involved with what I am doing I OCD until I have these finished.

I almost hate to join this conversation, for fear I will be booted out. We will be having a beautiful sunny day with a high of 61, normal weather for January in SoCal. I'm having my longarm group over tomorrow, so I will be cooking and cleaning rather than sewing. I do not enjoy cooking, or cleaning, but I do enjoy the longarm group.

In quilting we put aside our other differences -- so no hate for living in place that is nice right now. How nice to have a group day tomorrow, I'm looking forward to my group on Tuesday. I have an almost done binding project and a recent thrift store find where I'm taking off a poly blend border so have something ready for that too.

Put on one of my new thrift store CDs, Peaceful Harp by Lifescapes. Sort of thing my dentist plays but I like it, calming and pretty. Don't think I mentioned that the hair cut is about 30 minutes away. Diane was my hairdresser during the 90s when I still styled my hair and I see her less now with my long hair, maybe once a year if that. Although our children never met, they basically grew up at the same time. But when hubby decided to cut off his hair, he felt he could trust Diane and so now we get to see each other more often again.

Here's a picture of my Toddly McDreamy, after that first ponytail cut. He's lost about 200 pounds and I am just so proud of him and amazed, never knew that was what he looked like. And when I first met him (via the internet) he had a big huge ZZ Top beard too.
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Dunster, your comment is hilarious!
I actually like winter but in Columbus Ohio it isn't very wintry. I grew up in upstate NY- huge difference. It's just gray
and a little rainy but perfect for sewing. We get a rare snowfall but nothing much.
My nephew lives in Orange and he wouldn't move back to upstate NY for anything!

We're north of Juliasb and had rain during the night. Most of today has been an icy mixture which is better than the pure ice predicated. We're under an ice storm warning till tomorrow morning. Supposedly the worst will be tonight. I agree a great day to work on quilts! Been working on the quilt for my dgd's college graduation in May.

The ice storm arrived in Iowa and the electricity has been off most of the night and all morning. The gas fireplace kept things bearable in the living room and my lighted CraftOptics binocular glasses allowed me to work on some wool appliqué for our daughter. Couldn’t see well enough to even use one of the 3 treadles in my living room. Lights came on just a short time ago so no quilting til things warm up a bit. Maybe later this afternoon.

Have no fear you won't be booted out of the conversation. I would take your 61 degrees any day. I use to vacation this time of the year in So Cal. I wish I have a working long arm to host a group with. Have fun.

We don't get a lot of perfect quilting days where the weather makes it perfect. Today is one of those days. I am in N. Oakland County and the worst of the ice is predicted for tonight. I have extra quilts out for if the power goes out tonight. It is always a possibility here. I have a friend that will come over and start the generator.

The plan is if the power goes out to get the generator going and at least plug in the the freezers and get some light on in the house. The TV would be nice but not necessary. I will set up my treadle and just keep on sewing. If it gets colder I will pull out plenty of quilts. The only other thing is to plug in the heater tapes for the pipes. I will then call an official cuddle alert!

I'm sending warm cups of hot cocoa to those of you with ice coming. I remember those days when I lived in Iowa, was born and raised there. I've been in NC for 25 yrs now, where it is 71 today. It's a gray day with sprinkles and I'm taking a break from longarming to check in with y'all.

Like FWLover i am in Iowa and the icing started here around 2pm Friday. I was at work, but encouraged by my very nice and wonderful bosses to head home early - which i did! The roads just started to ice up as i turned onto mine so very thankful that i left early!

We are fortunate as we have had no power outage (so far). Last night i went into my Happy Place and sewed a couple string blocks to keep my mind busy. Our 13 going on 14 year old Boston Terrier (Gracie) is experiencing a myriad of health issues and we had scheduled an appointment for today (Saturday) with the vet to evaluate her condition. We were afraid the roads would prevent us from keeping the appointment but we got there ok.

Unfortunately, the news about Gracie is not good and it looks like we will be scheduling a surgery for her next week. She has suddenly developed a huge growth on her side and the vet fears an especially aggressive tumor. At her age that isnt all thats wrong... deaf, doesnt see well, and has developed a weakness in her hind legs. This is hitting us pretty hard. She still acts like she wants to be here so we will do whatever we can to keep her comfortable.

Gracie likes to be in the sewing room with me so maybe we will both retreat there in a while to try to do something positive. I lost a dear friend in October (94 years old and like a Mom to me) - her sons brought me a huge bag of her fabric scraps knowing she would want me to have them. I know that her hopes were to have those scraps turned into quilts for the needy so i plan to honor her memory by doing that.

Im sorry, didnt mean for this post to take a downward slide. Going to my Happy Place shortly to try to make something positive of the things beyond my control. I think we have some snow and wind on the way, so its a good weekend to enjoy the comforts and blessing of a warm home and some time to quilt. 😊

You're just toooooo funny. Kinda works that way here too.

Hello from sunny California. My quilting days are during the HEAT of summer. I'll hybernate with the AC.

I am in Idaho and we have a ton of snow and more expected today. But I am not sure it's going to happen. I am planning on sorting some yarn and then off to my sewing room to make a quilt for my youngest granddaughter. Everyone enjoy and be safe. I don't like to drive in this stuff unless absolutely necessary.

Priming the pump for a new quilt...

5 below when we got up and it won’t go above 15 today. No wind. I did drive to the grocery store 7 blocks away because Sunday is their Day of Rest (good for them) so it’s okay to have a little on hand just in case.

Please don't send this my way! So far this has been a very mild winter here in the Detroit Metro area. As much as I am not fond of deep snow I dislike the freezing cold even worse. A couple years ago we had a spell of 2 weeks were it did not get above zero if my memory is correct. It was awful.
I am just taking a break from this quilt top. I have 10 of 12 rows completed now. It is pretty exciting to be doing this today. One of 2 scrappy quilts that I am currently making. The second one is all cut out too.

Well, I am south of Dunster by about 90 miles and weather is cool but nothing to compare with the snow and ice areas. I need to get in my sewing room - I have spent the past week going thru bins to get rid of fabric I will never use. I so wish people that make donation quilts lived close to take it.

One nice thing that did happen while cleaning out a cabinet I found some kitchen towels I had bought a while back to embroider. (Actually I had forgotten they were there. One of those thing I put away thinking it was a better place.) And since I had forgotten about them, I ordered more from Amazon. So now I have about 20+ ready to embroider. :-)

Still a lot of bins to go - there is a big box to put the unwanted fabric and when full it will go to a donation center.

Juliasb I am so happy you are enjoying your Accuquilt. They are so fun. I have the Go and bought the DWR die and my friend wanted to make one, so we cut out the pieces for a king size quilt in about 2 hours - which included the ironing. I made a Christmas patchwork with 5 inch squares and cutting them out was so quick and easy for a full size quilt. And the same with my falling charms quilt - with 5 inch squares and the 2.5 inch strips. And the embroidery ...... I just love it! I could go on and on - but it sounds like you are already sold.

We had some sleet earlier and a dusting of snow. Getting colder tonight and warming up tomorrow.

Everyday is a perfect day for me to work on a quilt.

Great thread Juliasb. I agree, today is a great day to spend doing what so many of us enjoy. I cleaned the house this am, made corn chowder for supper and yeast rolls. I then worked at making more stenciled pillows, hopefully I can post a picture tomorrow. I have orders I needed to complete and so I went a head and made a few extras to have on hand.

No bad weather here today, the ice storm is going to be with us tomorrow. No need for me to go out, I just hope we don't loose power so I can sew.

sounds like many of us had the bad weather--in KC area we had 60+ weather on Thurs and then pouring rain, sleet and this morning snow. My daughter lives about 30 miles north of me and they had quite a bit of ice before the snow. So I pieced a quilt all day--and now am ripping! Argh! at least I did manage to catch about noon that our solar installation crew forgot to re-plug in the stock tank heater, so able to break ice and get it started again for the horse :(

Looks like no one from MN has given the MN weather report yet. I live in SW Minnesota. When I went to work this morning it was -15 degrees with the real feel of -24 degrees! Terribly cold. It is supposed to be warmer for a couple days and then back into the deep freeze for most of next week!! I came home form work this afternoon and continued with cleaning my quilting studio. A couple weeks ago, my son helped me move my two sewing stations and my cutting tables around to have a better workflow in the room. Ever since then, I have been trying to clean out and organize everything. It has been quite a project and I am not done yet!

We are supposed to get some of the ice storm today but since we are on the coast of Maine, we may not get it as bad as those who live inland. Unfortunately, my machine is in for a routine update and maintenance so no sewing for BH mystery. Instead, I am painting a guest bedroom in the old part of our late 1700’s home.

It sounds like this storm is hitting a wide swath through the country. Isn't it great to have such a good excuse to be forced inside? Not when the power goes out though! We had rain for about 24 hrs and then waited for the snow. There's a respectable amount out there this morning but it's the ice underneath that is a threat to being out. I spent yesterday using up flannel from a project for my son's birthday. The rest went into a smaller version for his 5 year old. Came out with enough of all yardage to just squeak by--maybe 1 inch?! Literally, cutting it close. They are rag quilts so not a lot of accuracy needed as the fluff disguises a lot of error! I think they will enjoy matching quilts--and especially cuddly during the rest of the winter months. Today I have a queen to get sandwiched. Not looking forward to that as this is part of the process I don't enjoy and then the size of this! But that's part of the process to get to the hand quilting which I will enjoy! Stay safe, everyone!

We had flooding rains turn to snow and sleet yesterday afternoon. I had my current quilt project all laid out to work on, and work called me in. The trek up there wasn't bad, but people were panicking and I had a rough night. Took me almost twice as long as normal to get home in the mess last night, and I am about to head back up there to sort out the damage.

My best deep fryer broke in the rush last night...it is almost as old as I am! Fried chicken happens to be on sale too. I am hoping the weather keeps customers home today, because with only one working fryer I am not going to be able to keep up with the after church rush.

At least when I get home all of my quilt pieces will still be laid out waiting for me!

I intended to add a tip for when the power is out. Buy a few of those $1 solar landscape lights to keep on hand. When you pull the strip the light will come on and they give out a considerable amount of light. No threat, such as with candles and more light from them besides. I don't know how long one will stay lit but for several hours, I'm sure and you would even feel safe leaving it while you sleep, unlike a candle or flame of any kind.

i like this idea. thanks for sharing your tip

a great day for quilting
 

We had temps in the upper 50's yesterday (saturday), with a whole lot of rain, then dropped in the lower 30's overnight. I spent most of yesterday working on some paperpiecing. Today I'm going to work on some crazy quilt blocks, as we are going to have a high of 35, and don't need to go any where.

We have snow but not enough to get excited about. I will go clean my sidewalks and driveway after I enjoy a cup of coffee. I love the seasons though not the gray days.so much. I grew up in Texas so never really got enough snow. I do miss the long, lazy summers. Today is a definite sewing day. I am finishing a couple of Christmas project I found in my fabric cleaning.

That idea about the solar stakes from the dollar store is a good one! I do have an emergency supply shelf/closet and will pick up a few of those when they come in for the Spring. It's subtle but most of my rooms have a candle in them even though I can count the power outages I've had here have been minimal, but growing up in Alaska meant learning that living required gear and preparation. Putting a mirror behind a candle maximizes the brightness.

Dunster-you are just smarter than some of us by living in a sunny climate. I live in northern Arizona where it has been grey, gloomy and cloudy. We had gotten some snow the other day and now it is just a sheet of ice on the roads. Good day to stay in and sew for me.

We missed a huge storm. Most of it went south thankfully. I worked the past couple of days cleaning off my table in the sewing room. It feels good to get that done, and today I can go back to cutting out more Churn Dash pieces on my Accuquilt.

The front yard is flooded but no water in the house. It is on higher ground that where the flooding is. People all around us are flooded. On the local news cast they showed people in theri kayaks paddling down the middle of the roads.
I did get some ice here but not what I was expecting. It missed us by a smidgen.
I also am making good progress on my Apple Core Quilt. I am no on the last row before I trim it and put on some wide borders. I am thinking about hand quilting this one just because I can and for no other reason. I also have all the pieces cut for the Tumbler Quilt. I don't think this quilt will take to long as long as I remember which way the pieces have to go!
Right now it is rest time before I come back and finish this part of this quilt. Such a quilty weekend for 2 days of nasty weather.

It's another great day for quilting here, but we picked up our new dogs today instead.

It was about a 40 minute drive each way in a terrible rain storm, sure Seattle "rains" all the time, but it usually doesn't pour crashing buckets of rain so hard you have to use the fast speed on your wipers. Most of us still go around with a pause cycle in normal rain.

The rain was much better on the way home but we've all been warned that the storm is going to hit in a couple more hours, we stopped by Costco on the way back to get gas, but not only was it normal weekend at Costco, but it was also before the storm shopping at Costco and it was too brutal a line. I make jokes about the TV stations here getting so excited, but Storm Watch 2020 is in full swing!

But we have food, new dogs, and most importantly sewing stuff to do even if the power goes out. Even a bunch of wood for the fireplace.

I posted pictures of the dogs over here
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