Thursday, November 19, 2015

Bathroom Remodeling & a little bit of Quilting

I know my posts have been few & far between. Life working full time, 10 hour days , mostly at a computer doesn't make for much time or energy left to blog at home.  Usually the last thing I feel like doing is getting on the computer now at home.  I do think about all of those lovely people who I like to read & chat on line with though, & I miss you all. I look forward to growing up (older) & retirement, so I can make it a regular habit again! 4 1/2 years & counting!

The big project at home right now is our upstairs bathroom. This is how it looked before-
The window was looking into a dead space, that we boarded off last year, with plans on expanding the bathroom to get a bathtub back into it!  With our big lifting of the house & building a basement under it, we had the plumbing all redone, & we lost 2 inches of space, that made the bathroom too small for a standard tub.

So now we are taking out the window wall,


& making the bathroom big enough to accommodate a real bath tub! 

Wiring is getting done next, then we can work on walls, floor & get the tub installed, which won't happen until after the holidays. Never enough time on the weekends to get it all done!

On Lily, right now is my friend Carol's last quilt. This was the project she was working on when she died, & I had made a promise to her that we would get it finished for her. She had all but 3 borders finished, & those she had all marked & started. 3 of our Calendar Girls group worked on finishing the applique, then I pieced the top & have just got started on the quilting. I got the first border quilted 2 weekends ago, & then realized I couldn't really go any further until I found something big enough to do a good circle around the blocks. I'd been looking for months now for a template to get a 16 inch circle, & could not find one any where.


I finally called a local glass place & special ordered a 15 3/4" circle in 1/4" acrylic. It wasn't cheap, but I got it today, & it's just right! Maybe now I can get going on it next day off!

Last Sunday I spent the day on a simple project, with minimal (for me) quilting. I've had these blocks since at least 1996, or maybe a little earlier! I won them in a drawing at PALS guild when I was in Muskegon.

I pieced them together, used some of the old Christmas fabric & sort of ugly green trim from my stash, & now all I need do is get it bound on the edges.


I also thought I would share my little gossip piece. It was a project with Calendar Girls, where we played the telephone-gossip game. Mary G went first , making a piece from a photo inspiration. She showed me her piece for a few minutes, & I made this , showed it to Jackie, she made one, showed it to Jan, etc.

Mine I even made my basket hold ephemera.

You can see the others here. It was pretty funny, the direction this took. We had a good laugh over it at  the reveal. We are doing it again this year with a smaller simpler piece. It was too much fun to stop.