❤️Happy Valentine's Day❤️

Valentines, Hearts and Love!

With our move coming up next month we have been very busy.  

My poor blog has been neglected.  

There just isn't enough hours in a day now to do it all but hopefully once we are moved and settled into our new home our routine will return to normal.  

I did managed to finish my last "Party with Patrick" project due at the end of February.  

It's an adorable Valentine Table Runner, "Love Is All Around" by designer Patrick Lose.  

I had fun choosing the fabric fat quarters with different Valentine themed prints.  

This runner had 12 machine embroidered appliquéd hearts to sew.  

I used a cute pink backed fabric I bought in an Alaska Quilt Shop several years ago for the binding.

  

The runner is so colorful in it's pinks and reds.  

I loved using two different white background cherry print fabrics in the design.  

It really made the red hearts pop out. 

I have started breaking down my sewing/craft room and packing all the stuff away.  

I have 7 large plastic bins of fabric and 8 of yarn.  

I was surprised I had more yarn bins than fabric. 

But then again I have been crocheting longer than machine embroidering.

I hope you have a very Happy Valentine's Day!

I did!

Hubby surprised me with three Valentine Pandora charms!

One charm is a heart with "I Love You" lettering and the other two charms have cute jeweled pink hearts all over them.  

Love Is All Around Our Home!

  

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Ready for the Ride

We have snow on the ground with more coming the next few days.  

I wish I could ride Rudolph to sunny Florida.  

I kind of rushed sewing up this month's "Party with Patrick" wall hanging,

 "Ready for the Ride".  

Things are heating up with the new Ohio home.  

We FINALLY have dates for the two final walk-throughs and the closing in March. 

I will have to break down my sewing machine to take back to Ohio before the closing because it's too precious (to me) for the movers to move. 

  

We're packing our pickup truck for another trip to Ohio before the closing in a few weeks. 

I never knew I had so many baskets.  

They are lightweight but would be awkward to pack into boxes.  

So we stuffed them together into plastic bags and loaded them into the bed of the truck.  

We also packed most of our larger picture frames.

We want to pack the pickup truck today before the snow comes.   

At least with the house stuff we are moving ourselves.  

This trip to Ohio will be shorter.  

We have made all selections for the new house except for the closets.   

It should be looking pretty good with cabinets, counter tops, plumbing, electrical finish work and tile done or almost done.

  

Off to pack some more.

Keep warm!

  

Chilly Willy

Today's the first day of December!  

I have to get busy with our Christmas cards and draft up our annual Christmas Letter.  

Luckily our Christmas shopping is done just have to wrap the gifts this week. 

"Chilly Willy", the November "Party with Patrick" project, is finished.  

Chilly is an adorable snowman wall hanging. 

I had this textured "3D"ish creamy white colored plush fabric on hand called "Minky".  

It looks like snow. 

It's perfect for the snowman. 

I haven't been feeling 100% the last few days so the house is a little messier than I like.  

My biggest headache is paper.  

What to do with it.  

And where to file it.  

My dream is in our new home - because we will have a separate office there - is that all incoming mail will go into the office for processing and NOT into my kitchen as it currently does!  

Anyway that's my dream. 

Kitchen is for food and office is for paper!

My messy little office spot in the dinette.

And I plan to keep my yarn stash in the new home's lower level hobby room so that will eliminate storing yarn in a bedroom.  

Sewing and yarn stash will be in my area of the new hobby room!

Our goal is to have a more clutter free home in Ohio.  

Of course our current home is in a state of disorder with sorting and packing going on in different rooms in various stages.

I have resigned myself to accepting the state of affairs when one is getting ready to move.

We are still a few months away from moving but I will be glad when all of this is behind us.

Now to get busy on that Christmas Letter!

Have a lovely week! 

Ghostly Greetings…I Know I'm Late!

Yes, I know Halloween is over.  

But I'm a little bit behind finishing my "Party with Patrick" project for October. 

It's this adorable wall hanging called, "Ghostly Greetings".

  

It's appliquéd without stitching down the edges of the appliqués.  

I did blanket stitch just the moon appliqué and I tacked down the bats, ghosts eyes and the towers so I didn't have to worry about the spray adhesive coming loose.  

And those are the tiniest windows on the tower.

I had adhesive all over my fingers trying to tack them down.

I finally stitched them down with yellow thread.    

The top layer of the wall hanging has black netting fabric placed over the appliquéd body to give a misty, murky feeling to the dark night. 

I used black felt for the rock/castle, bats and ghosts' eyes and mouth.  

I tried to give the ghosts a more 3D effect by layering batting and white fabric together.

The back is a cute Halloween flannel fabric I received as a gift from my sewing store.  

And I love the fabric I used for the binding.  

It just pulls the colors together and makes the wall hanging POP.

  

It's hanging on my refrigerator as I type this...too cute to set aside for next year just yet. 

   

Thanks for visiting me!

Late Summer Sunflower Place Mat & Home Stuff

Are you ready for another "Party with Patrick" project?  

This cute placemat was fun to stitch up. 

I liked the colors of the sample so I picked out similar ones.  

I had purchased an Anita Goodesign Quilting Box Set and found the cutest sunflower design to use with this placemat. 

 Using my TruEmbroidery software I duplicated four of the sunflower quilt designs into my largest hoop to machine quilt down the yellow and green fabric strips. 

It didn't turn out too badly.

I also stitched a set of four sunflowers down the green fabric strips in green thread although it doesn't show up as much as the yellow stitching.

The binding is filled with small yellow sunflowers on a blue background.

And there she is…my "Late Summer Sunflower" placemat.

My sewing machine will be one of the last things packed!

I started to pack some of my collections for our move to Ohio.

Two thimble collections are done and just one more to do.

I have some small knick knacks I will also pack rather than have the movers do it.

We just returned from another trip to Ohio - this time to have the electric rough in walk through the lower level.

We will have excellent lighting in our hobby area.

Our electrician is great to work with and he has a good crew working for him.

Did you notice the cupola is up on the garage roof?

The ten foot garage doors are in and they will be painted a mahogany brown color to match the front door.

Next week the insulation is scheduled to start and the following week is the start of the drywall.

More will be coming on the new home.

We have selected the light fixtures and flooring but haven't signed off on either yet.

So many decisions.

I can't decide which type of counter tops to go with in the new kitchen….I love the look of Carrara marble but want to have something that is more durable than marble.  Maybe we can find something similar in either quartz, Corian or granite. 

When we were in Italy we drove by the mountains where Carrara marble was quarried.

It looked like snow!

It was beautiful.   

OK…now to get back to packing here at our current home.

Have a lovely Sunday!

New Home & More Sewing

A visitor getting a drink at our bird bath!

The Great Room.

We had another trip to Ohio last week for walk-throughs with several tradesmen in our new home we are building  - electrical, sound and vision for our large screen TVs and central vac system.

Photo above looking from kitchen/morning room into great room.

Room to the left of fireplace is the office.

Room to the right is our master bedroom and bath.

Garage ceiling electrical fixtures.

The trade crews were hard at work.  

It was neat to see all the wires and tubes running everywhere.  

We had so many decisions to make - where to place electrical outlets, electrical box fixtures and hide-a-hose outlets.  

Our heads were spinning!

Over all we were very pleased with the progress.

However, we noticed the wrong window was installed in our great room during our last visit.   

So we were pleased to see on this visit that the opening was reframed for the correct transom window (on order).  

The half wall frame in the kitchen is too high and has to be redone.   

It's suppose to be counter high.

Our custom kitchen cabinets are being built.

I will finally have a white kitchen.   

They also forgot to frame the walls in our hobby room in the lower level.  

I guess it's good we are coming back frequently to catch these boo-boos.  

Front porch with our eight foot Pella door.

It was a busy week. 

Now we have a week at home and then we are returning to Ohio for a family event (we are so thrilled because my Hubby's brother is being sworn in as Chief of Police).

And, of course, we are meeting with suppliers again too.

We are in the process of picking out our electrical fixtures and flooring options.

It's like going into a candy store…there are so many tasty treats to choose from.  

Once we were back home in PA I had one day to sew my "Party with Patrick" design for this month.

I devoted last Sunday as my sewing day and finished this project, "Dealer's Choice" (order digital design here).  

Whew!  

Monday was our "Party with Patrick" class…only three of us finished or almost finished the project.  

I think some of the ladies were "turned off" by the deck of cards design (maybe because of the  dark red and black colors used in Patrick's sample). 

I had no black fabric on hand.  

I tentatively thought of using the colors in a deck of cards - you, know…the red, black and bright yellow of the King, Queen and Jack…

 Instead I decided to use red, white and blue fabrics I had on hand.  

 This way I could use this project as either a place mat (or wall hanging) for 4th of July festivities.  

I had the funniest boo-boo on this project.

As usual I embroidered my name and year on the back.

I typed it all out on my computer using my TruEmbroidery software, printed out the design on paper in actual size to use for placement and downloaded the digital design into my Janome for stitching.

The design was as clear as day on all those screens and the paper.

But I never saw my mistake until it was embroidering the second "0".

I typed in "2004" instead of "2014"!

At least I got the correct decade.

HA!

The Dealer's Choice!

One of the ladies stopped me after class and said I always choose the most beautiful colors for my projects. 

Awwww….wasn't that nice!  

Well, I'm off to work on next month's "Party with Patrick" design, "Late-Summer Sunflower". 

Thanks for visiting!

HO, HO, HO...

Yesterday I was sewing up a storm working on another "Christmas in July" project. 

See the cute "Ho!" printed fabric I used for the ornament!

This one was part of our sewing store's "Party for Patrick" project entitled "HO, HO, HO", another adorable mini wall hanging from Patrick Lose.  

This time I decided to sew all the fabric background pieces together first and then machine appliqué the white squares.

I love the fabrics I chose in non-traditional red, white and GRAY!  

As usual I printed out the patterns in their actual size using my TruEmbroidery software applications to help me position the appliqués on their squares.   

Once the designs were downloaded into my sewing machine, I reduced the size of the HO squares by 10% just to be on the safe side that the designs would fit inside the white squares with no problems. 

All the squares are appliquéd.  

I used white thread for "stitching in the ditch" around the white squares.  

And I used a decorative stitch (#64) on my Jamone for quilting the red fabric around the white squares.  

Wait until you see the back!  

I used that stitch there too. 

   

Sorry the photos are so dark!  There's no natural light in my sewing room.

Today I hope to square up the wall hanging front with the back, stitch it together and cut and sew on the binding.  

I decided to use the gray fabric for the binding.

That will add the wow factor to this wall hanging.  

Stay tuned for the final project.  

Sew true!