I Will Get This House Decorated...

I will get this house decorated if it kills me!

Welcome Everyone!

Yesterday was another fun day of blogging and linking and commenting on Easy Street!  I think I'm almost enjoying that more than the actual quilt--almost.

Last week was a "free" week with no commitments.  I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but it is progressing.  This week Monday and Tuesday are free, Wednesday (tomorrow) is my bee party(!) and then I have a meeting on Thursday and an evening party on Friday.  (My husband's work party.  I know no one, so it should be "lots" of fun.)

Anyway, I did get lots done yesterday.  I decided to employ the age-old technique of making a list and checking off what I finished.  Wow, I must say that that technique actually works.  I now have all the decorating done except for finishing hanging the ornaments on the trees--and that should happen today.  I got a lot of little unfinished projects completed, too, and more of the bins stuffed back in the attic.

As for the attic, this is where the "if it kills me" part comes into play.  Let me show you a picture.

 

 

This is the attic at eye-level.  I have to say that I love having a walk-in attic.  (The door is open and you can see my cutting island in my quilting room!)  But what I really want to show you is attached to the rafter.  The rafter is easy to see and to duck for, but it is that small pointy board that I wanted to show you.  Can you see it in front of the yellow bin?  If you can't, follow the nails down.  See it now? 

 



 

This is a hardhat that my husband acquired at some point in his Army life.  It is now just inside the attic door!  I managed to nearly scalp myself not once, but twice while lugging Christmas deco bins in and out.  You would think that after the first time, I would have gotten smart, but no, it took two good whacks.  The second one made me see stars, as well, and I avoided getting up on a kitchen chair to nail/hang things for the rest of the day.  I also have various bandaids on fingers from other small "incidents." 

 

Since this is a quilting blog, perhaps you would like to see a quilt or two.  Not only do I decorate with a patriotic scheme year round, but it also comes into play in my holiday decorations.

 



This is one of my Christmas quilt wall hangings.  One day at our bee when I lived at Fort Bliss, one of the ladies came in with her version of this paper-pieced tree.  I'm guessing it was Christmas 2001--just after the terror attacks.  I had seen that it was a class at the local shop, but wasn't too interested in the pattern.  Well, she had the idea to slip pieces of this patriotic fabric into it, and of course, I fell in love right then and there, so I got the pattern and made it.  (Hey, if I like a project enough, I WILL paper piece to get it!)

Also made in El Paso, but this time for the guild:

We had a challenge for the year to make a quilt combining two holidays.  It was obvious to me which two I wanted to combine:  Christmas and Flag Day.  When I made it, I purposely tried to do so with fabric and not just pattern--so you will find that the flag is made of as many red and white Christmas fabrics that I had, and the Christmas elements are made with patriotic fabrics.

 

 

My favorite element was the border fabric.  It is a Hoffman and I only found a few fat quarters of it back in the 90s at a quilt show.  I frequently look for it on ebay. 

 



Isn't it awesome!

 

Well, I have things to do.  I didn't just decorate yesterday, I also got a chance to dye some fabrics and I'm "dying" to rinse it out and see the results!

 

Have a great day!

JoAnne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Easy Street Part 2

Hi Everyone!

If you are checking back for my Easy Street update, welcome back!  If you are here for the first time, I hope you enjoy my blog.  For all my regular reader friends, I'm so glad we are friends!

The next step in our mystery is to make flying geese.  I love flying geese!!  First up, fabric.  Bonnie was using purple this time.  Her purple equals my...

 

Medium Blue

 

 

We were to make flying geese with the purple/medium blue as the "goose" and our background as the "sky" units.  Bonnie's geese technique involves using the Easy Angle and Companion Angle to cut both pieces from 2" strips.  I had never tried this technique for making geese and I found it very effective.  I love that you can cut it all from the same size strips.   Bonnie has a great tutorial and video in her Easy Street Part 2 blog post.  If you are interested, click on the Easy Street photo to the right.

 

If you haven't yet started this step, here is an important tip:  Don't layer the two different sky units together!  Keep them in separate piles!!!  Good grief, I feel like I spent way more time peeling them apart than sewing.  It was really driving me nuts. 

 

When I sew geese units, I always prefer to start from the "peak" point and work down to the skinny bottom angle.  The first sky units are easy, you just match them and sew.

 

 



After pressing, when I sew on the left sky triange, I will match it up...

 

 

...flip it over...

...and then sew.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that if I start sewing at the skinny point, it sometimes likes to get caught up in the machine.  That isn't good.

I thought the units went together great.  I didn't have any problem, except for the "unpeeling" of the sky triangles.  In case you don't know what I mean, Bonnie instructed us to layer two strips right sides together and use the ruler to cut both at the same time so you have one triange and then the mirror image for the other side--in this technique you have a '"left sky unit" and a "right sky unit."  If I did it again, I would use half the strips face up and cut and then use the other half of my strips face down to cut the reverse piece.  Then I would have piles of "rights" and "lefts."  The piecing would go so much faster. 

Remember last week when I shared some of my "tedium relieving" quirks?  With these geese I employed another one:  the reward system.  The reward system  involves some sort of small treat, Wheat Thin crackers maybe, or M&Ms.  This time it was the crackers.  Once I achieve a certain goal, like sewing the first triangle on my target amount (50 or more,) I can have a cracker.  Once those 50 are pressed, I get another cracker, etc.  Another fun "treat" is a sip of wine.  After awhile you don't notice the tedium any more!  In fact, you don't notice if you are sewing correctly or not!  Neither do you care!  (Until the next day.)  That's why I don't use that reward too often.

Anyway, once both sky pieces were stitched, and the dog-ears clipped off, I had a nice pile of flying geese:

I'm loving the colors!  Oh, and I can't forget to show the rectangles.  One more set of instructions said to cut 64 2" x 3.5" rectangles for a later step.  I easily got those cut while doing the "sky" triangles.

I have one more thing to share.  This weekend I finally got my husband to work on putting out the outside Christmas decorations.  It isn't that he wasn't willing until now, it was that he has been getting home so late from work every evening.  We joked that he hadn't seen the house in the daylight since last weekend, and it was true!  Anyway, you know how some people have those light-up deer for their yard?  We have moose.  Three of them.  One of them we got on clearance the last Christmas before we went to Hawaii.  The moose and most of the decorations stayed on the mainland in storage, so we hadn't used this moose yet.

This moose came out of that box.  Can you believe it?  My husband got it out and put it all together.  I'm impressed, but I'll be more impressed in January if he can fit it back into the box.  I'm guessing that he will, but it will be fun to watch.  Do you know how most people are good at a lot of things, but there is usually something people are really good at?  For my husband, it is folding things to fit into small containers.  He excels at packing (I think it comes from having to pack Army gear all of the time) and especially at putting things back in their original packaging.  As a military family, we save all the original boxes for most of our stuff: TVs, mixer, collectible figurines, microwave, even the shop vac has it's original box!  (All those boxes fill a good part of the attic.  We joke that we are going to have one big bonfire when we finally settle somewhere!) 

I hope you all have a great day!
JoAnne

My Monday

Hi Everyone!

Boy was yesterday a fun blogging day!  Linking up at Bonnie Hunter's with my Easy Street post resulted in many new friends and a few new followers.  Thank you all for the wonderful comments, too.  I think quilters are the nicest/most helpful people out there!

Since I was gone all last week, I was so relieved to look at my calendar for this week and see NOTHING written on it!  Hopefully I can use some of these days to get some things done, like getting out the Christmas decorations, working on some quilt projects (I need to get cracking on the Schnibble for the month), and maybe start the holiday baking.  I'm having family coming here for Christmas, so I'm more motivated than ever.  Speaking of Christmas decorations....

Hello, my name is JoAnne, and I have a problem.  Every year I think I'm going to be responsible.  I can resist temptation!  I will hold fast to my goals!  I don't have to succumb to it!  And then I get the whiff of that cloying cinnamon scent.  I glance over and there is the blur of red and green.  I go closer, just for a glimpse, and suddenly "Well, look at that!  Joann fabrics has a Joann nutcracker!  My name is JoAnne (my name is spelled correctly, by the way--they get it wrong) and I collect nutcrackers,"  is my immediate thought, but I quickly add "I need another nutcracker like I need a hole in the head!"  Luckily, I don't need a hole in the head because that phrase has been repeated often. 

I mean, how much is too much?

 

I hauled these out of the attic last night.  But wait!  There's more.  Oh, the Christmas tree bag there on the left?  It is full of garland.

 

I had to find other space.  Here are three more containers.

 

 

These photos don't show the 6 trees that I seem to have.  Nor does it show all the outdoor decorations (and there are plenty of them.)  Or the two vintage sleds...

 

 

As you may remember (unless you are new to my blog) I just moved this summer from living for three years in Hawaii.  We didn't take many holiday decorations with us, so lots of this I'm seeing for the first time in 4 years.  I found a tree I don't remember ever buying or using.  I also found a wreath, still in the bag, (with tags on) that I must have bought on clearance after Christmas sometime, but I don't remember it! 

 

So yeah, I pretty much need more like I need a hole in the head!  I think I've been pretty good.  I did need to buy an ornament for an ornament exchange.  So far I have three possibilites.  Oh, and we got this year's White House ornament, because we collect those.  And the Swarovski snowflake, we (okay, "I") collect those, too.  But then I had a major slip.  I started looking at the awesome garland that seems to be out this year.  I looked and thought and imagined and looked some more and then I bought--two lengths and a matching swag to use in the middle.  Where?  Front door? Dining room?  We will see, but amazingly, the unknown wreath I unearthed looks like it matches it!

 

I do have too much though, and lots of stuff I don't use anymore or no longer like, so I'm going to do a major purge.  Already I came across 3 (three!) tablecloths that don't fit any tables I own!  I have no idea why I got them.  I also suspect that we have numerous strands of lights from when we did real trees.  (I briefly considered getting a real three this year, but luckily my husband reminded me that we don't have a stand any longer and that I would have to put all those lights on it.  And water it.  And clean up the needles.  I have such a thoughtful husband!)

 

So my goal for today is to work on my Schnibble and go through and purge decorations.  Tonight maybe my sweet husband will get out some of the trees so I can start decorating them, but until then, I have plenty to do!

 

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

JoAnne