Haleluah!!

I finally finished picking out all the quilting I did on my first King.

Now, I get to pack it away till after Christmas so I can get all my presents done... whole 'nother world, holiday gift making is.

Been lots of busy lately too.

Got another custom request, this time it's a quilt though. Here's my fabric pallet I'm using:

There's some from the 'Boy, Oh, Boy' line done by Holly Holderman. I just love this line and the girly one she did like it. Whatever isn't in this line is just coordinating fabrics. Gotta love Chick's N Stitches for nice selection.

I bought between 30 and 40 pounds of apple seconds at Willey Farms in Townsend, DE yesterday for $10, oh yea.

So, last night I made my first batch of applesauce. My house smells amazing!!

I'm hoping to get 2 more batches of sauce and one batch of apple butter out of the lot. I love canning.

Where has time gone?

I thought that things were supposed to be calmer, a little less stressful, and far more productive after your kids start the school year.

Well, I feel like I just managed to get out from under the proverbial rock.

Mind you, I have been less stressed, there is two less monsters to reek havoc around the house all day, and, yes, I have been much more productive (especially during naptime).

But I feel like I haven't done anything since school started...

We have been doing lots of this:

And I have gotten a lot of this done:

I am cutting pieces for I-Spy Bag Service Project at Church, as well as cutting my scraps into 1 1/2" & 2 1/2" strips and 2" squares (so I can actually use them... haha).

I have added quite a few things to the "To-Do" list, and am trying to reorganize a lot.

We have officially lived in our first house for a year now! And... I'm looking around at everything that hasn't gotten used or even unpacked yet, yea.

Granite, most of the unpacked boxes are books. We have accumulated quite a few books since both my husband and I love books (at least we have collected all the ones we want to read, with 4 young kids it's kinda hard to fit in some peace and quite...)

Thankfully, bookcases are a part of re-doing the living room. Finally decided on a paint color for the living AND dining room (they are kinda one big room with a railing and 2 steps between), and even bought it too. YES! I really want more definition between the two, what do you think (both colors are from Sherwin-Williams):

Hep Green- Living Room Color

Vanillin- Dining Room Color

The Vanillin is a little more yellow than is pictured on the Sherwin-Williams website.

Another completely awesome thing that happened lately was that my mom gave me her buffet since she got a new one! Ohh, it's so nice to have more storage for kitchen/dining things. But, the best part of it is that I finally have a place to put decorations and my chachkies!! oh yea...

Now I have something to make a table runner for, cause making one for my actual table would just be silly (haha). But, no, my kids would wreck it if it were on the table, between the food and projects.

Howard's Shirts #1

This was the project that easily deterred me from working on my King.

A friend of mine from church lost her husband this past summer. This particular couple was an amazing example to us all. They are the kind of people that you wish there were more of in the world!

After a little time had went by, I sent her a message asking if I could make her a quilt using her husband's (Howard's) button down shirts.

Now, I hadn't spent lots of time with this couple outside of church, so I wasn't quite sure what type of fabric, or what types of pattern's I'd be working with; plaids, hawaiians, solids, etc.

I was so happy when she said yes!

To get to the good part, here is one of the quilts I made for her. She gave me lots and lots of solids, whew, and she gave me so many that I was able to separate the colors and make 2 different quilts.

Here is the lighter/pastels quilt. I quite like how it turned out.

I plan to start on the next one right after the holidays. Very excited to see how it turns out!

Part 6: Along For the Project - My First King

Lets just say that I really liked the varigated blue thread for the quilting that I choose, I wanted the quilt to be "different".

Lets also say that when I started quilting it, I really liked it. It looked good on the dark green.

Lets further say that I continued to quilt, that day during naptime, and made quite a bit of progress, quilting 4 of the 15 inch squares of the 25 total in the quilt.

The next day, I wasn't so sure I loved it anymore. So, I didn't want to work on it...

Yea

The day after that, I decided I didn't like it anymore at all. Enter the seam ripper, but not quite.

I completely lost my desire to work on this quilt, OHHH NNNOOOOO!!!

So, what was I to do???

What any sane quilter would do, I got out a large plastic storage bag from a blanket I bought quite a while ago, and I folded my giant, king-sized quilt up, placed all the extra fabric and scraps on top, put it in the bag, zipped it up, and put it away.

Crap, now I have ANOTHER ufo on my list...

This thought lingered, and so did my dreams of finishing this monster (noticed the transition...).

An idea!! I can just use white thread and do straight-ish lines on the quilt, that is after I take out all the blue...

So, I have been pulling quilted stitches out for about a week now, working on it while I wait in my rocking chair for babies to fall asleep. I think I will be done pulling it out within about 3 days.

Now I'm excited about it again.

And it only spent about a month in exile...