Tomorrow is a good day

I was scheduled for jury duty tomorrow and I don't have to go.  It has got to be a good day.  I have not posted in a few days.  It seems weekends are very busy with the kids.l  Austin and Emily stayed with me on Saturday night and Cooper stayed Sunday night.  I don't get any sewing done when they are here.  It was a busy weekend.  I did start to cut short strips of polka dot fabric that don't have to be all that accurate for a New York beauty quilt that I have been wanting to make.  It is all paper pieced and it is probably going to be very time consuming to sew.  Cutting a million pieces of different polka dot fabric is the first step.  It will be similar to the quilt pictured below.  I have been collecting polka dot fabrics for probably 3-4 years.  I have enough to make several quilts I am sure.  I have a stack of fat quarters that is probably at least 18 inches tall left to cut a strip off.  I have already cut about 75-80 strips.  I do a few at a time which is all my shoulder will allow.  My friend Evie and I are going to sew the quilts together when we go back to the mountains.  If you look closely, you will see that it has approximately 70-80 small pieces of fabric in each block.  I suspect it will take a good while to sew each block.  Anyway, I have wanted to do this quilt since I saw it.

I cannot remember what I did on Monday and Tuesday I went to my sewing group.  I stitched this week and I am still trying to stitch at least 15 minutes each day.  I am getting quite a stack of scrappy blocks and spiderweb blocks.  When I get a few more, I am going to throw them onto the design wall and start sewing them into strips for the quilt.  Today is the first day I did not have a chance to actually stitch.  I did square up some of the spider blocks.  Then I went to my friend, Ruthie's house to see if I could get her old sewing machine up and running.  Bill and I cleaned, oiled and greased it but it still would not stitch.  I think it needs a new belt.  The motor sounds strong when you take the belt off.  But it just does not want to go when you put it all back together.  Hopefully, when the oil soaks in and when we find a new belt, it will start to pur.  The visit was nice and we went to lunch when we got the machine put back together.  If we cannot get it running, she has another older singer that used to be a treadle and a motor was added to it.  I know more about singers so if we cannot get this one going, I am going to clean and oil the singer to see if we can get it running.

This afternoon, I planted some "mammoth and some red sunflower seeds, some cone flower bulbs and a couple of amaryllas that are supposed to be pink or peach.  I am forcing the bloom on them.  I have a beautiful red amarylla to go with the white one I pictured earlier.  I will do a picture soon to share.  I hope the new one I got is peach.  Emily came over and stayed with me while Austin and Lisa went to Karate class.  We took a walk to Opal's and I took her one of the amarylla bulbs in a pot.  It should give her something to look at while her foot is healing.  Until we meet again.....