Sunday, July 08, 2012

My very long weekend

American Independence Day, the 4th of July, is one of the few holidays that cannot be made into a 3-day weekend. This year it fell plunk in the middle of the week -- not the best for celebrating -- that is unless you gave yourself the rest of the week off, like I did!

Wednesday we spent the whole day at our sail club: hamburgers & hotdogs for lunch (I tried a version of the "Kiwi burger" (our club has quite an international membership & the current Social co-Commodore is a New Zealander -- aka, a Kiwi -- besides the usual burger stuff, they add sliced beets & a slice of pineapple; I skipped the pineapple but added the beets & quite liked it); lots of fun & games for the kids; Shug & I got in a pretty good sail; then resting & chatting & snacking & reading until dinner; then waiting for it to get dark for the fireworks, shot from a barge in the Bay. A very nice day.

4th of July at the sail club

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Thursday, I was up to my butt in quilt backs. Just FYI, there are 336 5-inch HSTs in a 42 fabric layer cake -- I used all but 10 from my Stitched in Color cake. There is almost as much piecing on the back of this quilt as there is on the front! I also prepped & pieced the back for the jelly roll race top I made at the HMQG retreat. The Guild challenge this month is to get those quilted. Both were then ready to sandwich & baste.

On Friday I did laundry, dusted, vacuumed, etc. But I managed to work in some layout & assembly time with one of my projects for the Low Volume QAL. I also got 2 more Jane Market Bags cut out -- these will be gifts.


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Saturday, Shug helped baste 2 quilts; outside, he set up a couple of saw horses & the plywood work surface he made me. In a VERY fortunate turn of events, as I basted, I found my "humility block" in the Stitched in Color quilt -- but not being prone to humility, I later fixed it. It wasn't so very hot but it was pretty humid & I was very sweaty & a little cranky by the time I finished the second one. Shug also cut some templates for me so I can experiment with them with my low volume, granny calicos.

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It was thunder-y & rainy on Sunday. Luckily we had done errands on Saturday, so didn't need to get out. I could spend a much time as I wanted stitching! And I got quite a bit done: more low value work, prepped the Jane Market bags & began quilting one of the basted quilts!

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I hope you enjoyed your weekend as much as I did mine. What did you do?

6 comments:

O'Quilts said...

Wow..what a post...sailing..you are an athlete! A great man to help you baste and make templates..wow..and not the humble type...Yes!!

Karamat said...

Your pictures make me miss sailing out of Kemah!! I always wanted a Sunfish.

And great progress on your quilts... What a productive holiday!

Rachaeldaisy said...

What a fabulous long weekend!! Those sailing photos are beautiful and I love all your projects as always. I really think I'm your biggest fan. I have to say you are really powering through your projects this year.It's so nice of Shug to help you baste. I tell Gbf it's lots of fun playing with safety pins but he doesn't believe me.

Nifty Quilts said...

Wow! You pack a lot into a weekend. Looking forward to more photos of those quilts you're working on.

amy and the bad cats said...

i gave myself the rest of the week off, too, since i had family visiting, but still managed to get a ton of sewing and quilting stuff done! i can't wait to see your finished stitched in color quilt!

Sujata Shah said...

Wow! Those pictures are fabulous. It felt like I was right there with you! Wish I was too.. We were in Chicago in 111 degrees.
Looking forward to the big reveal of the quilt.