A Little Wedding Planning....Drunkard's Path Is On the Wall

The Design Wall is a very patient tool.

The invitations arrived at 7:30 p.m. Monday (a new record for UPS). The hubs, DD, a couple bridesmaids and I  assembled, stamped, and stuffed. Tuesday, I stood in the lobby of the Post Office and affixed numerous stamps to each and turned them over for mailing. Guests started receiving them today. One tick off the Wedding Checklist. Next up...mini pies/cake/caramel apple favors.

The dining room looks like a hurricane passed through..it's currently the staging area for Wedding Centerpieces. I'm working on a lit 'Wish Tree' at the moment. Figuring out the best way to adhere Batik fabric to card stock that will be run through the Accquilt GO! and die cut into leaf shapes to hang on the tree after a guest writes a little wedding wish on it. Great excuse to go to the fabric store yesterday ... needed fall colored Batiks. Any glue recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Been piecing curved Drunkard's pieces for a couple of days now.

I'm really liking the decorative stitching and couching I did on each pie.

And as of last night...the last block was pieced. Tonight they all got a quick press and I woke up the Design Wall.

This is the initial layout. It'll stay there for a bit while I decide if it's what I'm going to actually use. Probably tomorrow I'll start moving things around to try something different.

Not sure I'm seeing enough flow with the connecting stitched pies.

And already I'm wondering just how the heck they're going to stay aligned like that once I start sewing them together (shudder!)

Have a perfect Thursday. Think about joining the Friday Night Sew-In (see the link on my sidebar). I'm tussling with the demons on that...on the one hand, I would really like to be sewing this together so I can move on to a cute little pumpkin quilt (or the  Halloween quilt, whose fabric is arriving tomorrow)...

On the other hand, my neighbor has called Ladies Friday Happy Night....and I did miss the last one because I had Strep......

Decisions, decisions...

I did say I had a most patient Design Wall, didn't I?

Drive By Blogging - First August OPAM

I have no idea how I am still conscious and functional.

Last night after trying to catch up with about 500 emails in a Yahoo Group I'm in, I decided to switch out my iPhone and just lost track of time organizing my aps on different screens. Before I knew it, the clock said 4:15, and I said 'heck with it, let's go outside and look for meteors and the International Space Station".

Didn't see any meteors (well, maybe, but it was a little overcast here and there and I couldn't be sure), but I did see the ISS cruise by, so it was worth the effort.

7:15 AM the hubs is handing me the phone, my daughter is on her way to 'boot camp' and can I drive over to where she is and pick up the grandpup? Two and a half hours of sleep (I take naps longer than that), no coffee, and I'm on my way out to pick up a dog in a parking lot.

I figured I'd take a nap later, but I got involved in a couple of projects, and between the coffees and the adrenaline sleep was elusive.

As you can see above, I have procured Running With Scissors. The hubs was in Manassas, VA yesterday for a softball tournament and I rang him up and sent him on a quest. Seems I was a bit vague and only requested 'red', so he brought home a Merlot and a Cab Sauv. Two bottles!!! Obviously, one was going to turn into a studio accessory. So I found a way to attach some actual scissors, and then I began obsessing of what to use in a vignette.

Right away I knew I wanted a pincushion, so I made 4 (heck, as long as you're going to the trouble)

I filled two with poly beads (in case they should happen to leave the country....Customs in some countries frowns upon sand and nutshells and potpourri fillings). The other two are filled with actual beach sand from Florida. (Shh....this is probably not legal...swiping beach sand.)

And I'm pleased with the final display:

The scissors you see lying there are a paper cutout, and there's a white button that doesn't show up very well in the photo. And oh, yeah, the glass of wine is empty now..but you expected that, right?

Maybe tomorrow, after a good night's sleep, and a small bit of house cleaning I'll be ready to tackle the Drunkard's Path project--though I may surprise myself and try monogramming some napkins (feeling daring today). It's time I started paying attention to the philosophy of the 'bling'.

She's Alive!!

I've been busy, busy, busy. The sore throat I've had for over a week turned out to be Strep, so I was forced to skip Happy  Hour with the ladies last Friday. Sitting idly in front of the sewing machine, wishing I was swilling back wine and hors d'oeuvres with the ladies, I decided that the studio needed a bit of refreshing, so in between an 8 hour tour of Hobby Lobby/Michaels/JoAnn in Columbia with DD on Saturday (we were on a wedding centerpieces mission),  I did a little tear-down...

I pulled things out of drawers...

The piles of junk fast overtook the sewing desk...

And so much 'stuff' was pulled from the closet that I just began heaping it on the floor.

Two and a half days (I moved really slow) later, we were somewhat back to normal in the studio.

The pièce de résistance ..... the studio closet ...

And just in case the Quilt Fairy sneaks in one night...

 

I've labeled the 'task shelves' in the closet so there's no question about what needs to be done.

In pulling all my solid whites and naturals out of the cutting table cubbies for a refold, I sorted out the smaller pieces,  pulled the batting scraps I'd been saving and made a mess of quilt sandwiches for free-motion practice.

The weekend before my daughter picked up some more storage boxes for me on a trip to Ikea, so I was able to reorder the closet shelf.

I love my P Touch label maker. Each box and plastic bin has been tagged for what's inside.

These little bins are from Dollar tree and make great containers for my CDs and DVDs.

Those strip dies for the Accuquilt GO! were just not being stored effectively in the die rack...they took up an excessive area of flat space, so I pulled out the P Touch and labeled them on their ends and stacked them against the closet wall.

And now the die rack takes up half the space since it's got smaller dies in it.

I was forever fishing out hoops from behind the cubes in the closet as they would fall off of the pushpins in the closet wall, so I raided my bedroom closet for the perfect storage solution....

Yep, it's one of those belt rings. Now the lot of hoops just hang on the closet rod where I can grab the size I need.

Cleaning out the solids from the cutting table gave me some room to move in some other project fabrics. I try to keep an entire project of fabric in each cubby, or if I'm still collecting, a theme of fabric per cubby...i.e., dots, Fall, Halloween. I can get about 10 yards of fabric in each cubby...it's all about the fold. :)

Cleared off the cutting table. It's all business now, except for the waving good luck kitty--which reminds me, I should go check last night's Powerball ticket... not a winner :-(

I picked up another small ruler holder in Hershey to maximize how many rulers/templates I can store on top of the table. I've got 12 on the longboard and 7 on the short (are you diggin' the 'surfer speak'? )

All that's left now is to reorganize the bookshelves.

DD also got some magazine files for me at Ikea so those pretty scrapbook paper-covered ones need a go-through to make room for incoming. I'll move what's not current to the shelves in the guestroom next door. This is a project for Friday night, and then I've got the rest of the weekend to spend some quality time bonding with my Bernina over the Drunkard's Path project.

 In class last Sunday, Mimi Dietrich mentioned a wine called 'Running with Scissors',

 so I'll be on a quest to hunt that down tomorrow on my lunch hour. I want the cork (and check out the seal to the left of it).

Today was our 39th anniversary, and since last week's Gladiolas had seen better days, the hubs stopped at Costco on his way home and picked up a lovely mixed bouquet for the sewing desk. There is always something in bloom in my studio, and a Yankee Candle tart in the electric tart warmer. Ripping out a seam isn't so bad a task when you can 'stop and smell the roses' every now and then'.