Week # 26 Stash Report

If this half of the year is a prediction for the next six months, I'm in deep trouble.

I finished some VERY cute wedding dresses for the girls and their cousin, so 5 yards out. I love them! I wasn't sure red and cream would turn out as lovely as it did, and you will see pictures once I can kidnap a camera cord...

Just a piece of advice for myself - don't take the Assistant fabric shopping. This week we bought a lot of fabric... 17 yards for lining for roman shades (but that's not even a drop in the bucket for what I need. We have 44 windows in our house, and most need new blinds!). Then the Assistant picked out 5 fat quarters of blue patterns.

Yesterday, I bought rings, etc., for the roman shades, and she picked another fat quarter bundle of pink. What am I going to do with pink?????

So the totals...

OUT this week: 5 yards
OUT YTD: 108 1/4 yards

IN this week: 23 1/2 yards
IN YTD: 144 yards

YTD Total: 35 3/4 yards IN

That would mean I might end the year 76 1/2 yards in the hole! Oh, my!

Fresh Veggies!

I'm preparing to leave for my 4th day of training now, and just finished taking care of the garden. Even with the bug bites, picking fresh produce makes me feel... at peace.

I pulled lots of weeks - bindweed, some talk weed that grows right under my nose, grass, mimosa tree sprouts... It's my mom's birthday tonight, so I picked fresh goodies for a salad. I picked mesclun (sp?), although it's not really a mix - just one type of green, thinned my turnips, picked peas, dying baby onions, and my first 3 cukes! Two will go in the salad and one will stay at home for DH to eat. The three cukes aren't very big, but they weighed a pound total!

I'm still seriously behind in weeding, but it won't be caught up today. I do look forward to tomatoes (I see flowers!) and lots of potatoes in the coming weeks. The beans are growing like crazy, and there are vines everywhere!

Now to wait on tests for my sister to be her husband's kidney donor. I pray the results are in today!

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

Stash Report Week #25

What a week!

I worked 30+ hours this week running our Vacation Bible School program. For a mommy who's used to working 15 hours a week (mostly from home) this was a long week. My legs still hurt! But it was a success, I think.

I finished my mini-9-patches that are due in September to Bingo-Bonnie from the HGTV message boards, finished my mending for a week or two, and whittled down the scraps in the scrap drawer from the last several quilts - some are in the noodle bags and some have a plan.

I worked on the wedding dresses. The Screamer's dress needs to be sewn at the waist, zipper, collar, and sleeves finished, but the Assistant's and their cousin's just need the sash and trim added. I don't know if those will happen this week, but I now know what I need to work on next.

This week I am attending four full days of training for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. The girls might be crazy by the time I get home on Friday. I didn't intend for all the long days to be three weeks in a row, but I guess it's better than going into July too much.

After the wedding dresses, I'm going to work on trimming down the Assistant's scraps. She has too many in odd sizes that I can't even teach her to sew using htem, so I'm decided I have a rough plan to help her SLOWLY make a quilt (as in, years slowly).

We visited a new-to-me little quilt shop this week after one of our errands. Most of the fabrics were calicos, so I didn't buy any fabric, but the Assistant found 1 1/4 yards of flannels and remnants. I bought a stencil cutter (do these things actually work?) and some snowflake napkins because I am a sucker for snowflakes!

IN this week: 1 1/4 yards (the Assistant needs her own stash. Seriously.)
IN YTD: 120 1/2 yards

OUT this week: 2 yards
OUT YTD: 103 1/4 yards

YTD Total: 17 1/4 yards IN

I can't seem to get my totals any lower. Maybe I can finish these dresses and get one step closer to the positive territory. I can still may 50 yards out by the end of the year, but the Assistant's shopping habits sure hold me back! Maybe I should count up all her yardage and subtract it next week!

We've had lots of rain, so there will be pletny of weeding to do this week. I may not visit the sewing room at all, but I'll be thinking about it plenty!

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

Week #24 Stash Report

IN this week: 1 yard (gifted fat quarters)
IN YTD: 119 1/4 yards

OUT this week: 1/4 yard (trash)
OUT YTD: 101 1/4 yards

YTD Total: 18 yards IN

I'm going to work on the girls' wedding dresses and on the 9-patches, plus mending and trimming the scraps in the scrap drawer. That's enough for the busy week ahead.

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

Week #23 Stash Report

Nada in. Nada out. That will be the mantra for a few weeks as it gets crazy here with "part time" work taking over my life "full time."

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.

Pictures!

The Life and Times of...

DH uploaded my picture for me, albeit sideways, so here is my adaptation of Judy's scrappy stars! I'll be taking it to Memaw, DH's grandmother who recently had surgery. I definitely feel for her after my own surgery! This is not in my usual range of color choices, and some of the contrast is pretty low, but I think it really works out. I wasn't sure as I was piecing some of the stars together - I realized how many of my "neutrals" were much darker than others, and some not particularly neutral at all. Still, I am glad to have used most of a tub of patrioc star prints that I wasn't wanting around anymore, and Memaw, I hope, will appreciate it, as my FiL, her son, is retired military. I machine quilted it, which went much better with the cotton batting than it did when I used to use only polyester (how little I knew then!). I'm still not thrilled with my straight-line quilting, but I think I need a different machine to quilt well. Both of my machines require a plate over the feed dogs, and that just seems to drag the fabric horribly. That's okay - I don't have the money for another machine, so I'll make do, and I do prefer hand-quilting!

I may also be delivering my T-shirt quilt, if DH's takes care of the contacting of his cousin.

I will be delivering an apron as a gift to BiL's girl (DH's brother, not my sick BiL).

The garden is growing! Our yard is not. In the L-shaped bed (in the back), there are peas, onions, tomatoes, spinach, and mesclun (sp?) growning. Maybe a tomatillo or two, but I don't remember. I started all the tomatoes from seed this year, and I'm pretty chuffed, as last year I didn't have a single seedling survive my attempts.

The next bed is mostly empty, so it's hard to tell it's there, but it contains horseradish, garlich, and failed attempts at cabbage, broccoli, and carrots.

There is an entire bed of potatoes and onions, doing well, although I fear we have potato beetles. We will have to do something about that! Finally, the front bed is red beans and pinto beans, with some turnips on one side. Our rain barrels (on the left) are nearly empty, so I'm hoping for rain while we are gone!

from the room of Zana's Ninis,
katie z.