AWWW

This is what happens after a long walk, an afternoon of swimming, and a bath. A much needed nap on the couch with a quilt.

Swimming in the river.

We took the dogs to the river again today and let them swim. Tallulah had a blast. We even let her off the leash. She kinda played with a black lab that was swimming after a stick.


Sabueso not so happy about this whole river thing.

Sabueso being forced to have a good time swimming.

First coat of baguette.

My friend Marie (from the quilt guild I belong to) called this morning to offer her services for the shop. I thought she meant for teaching a quilting class, but she meant right now. She said she is very excited about the shop and would love to help with whatever I need. She likes to paint and has done lots of it. We made a date for painting Tuesday evening, but I told her to come on over and at least take a look at what we have done. Anyway, she and her daughter Sammy came over not to just look, but to paint. With their help, we got about 7/8 of the room painted with the first coat of paint. WOO HOO!



Here I am barely half way along the first wall. This is where they joined me.
I don't think the brick will need a second coat. At least the parts that already had paint on it.


Joseph the drywall guy, got the air conditioning vent drywalled in. It needs to be sanded and primed and then it too can get a coat of paint.
Look, we now have a sink in the counter. Yeah!



While the girls painted the walls Robert sanded they "I" beams and got most of them primed. All in all a pretty productive day in the shop. And boy is my shoulder letting me know about it.
We tried a different stain on the concrete in the kids area, since it will be covered with the mats. I like it even less than the red in the office/break room. But, I do love the paint.

Fire Proof

After we finished painting. We went to dinner and a movie. We went to go see Fire Proof. We have liked the other movies made by this church in Albany, Georgia. They are corny-ish, but they have had a great story and message. This one was great. The whole audience got into the movie and there was laughing and crying. Anyway if you get a chance go this weekend and show support for a good movie with a great message.

http://www.fireproofthemovie.com/

Priming the brick. :-(

It was a hard decision, but we finally decided to paint over the brick. Most of it had been painted already and we had tried several methods of removing it, but all of them were time intensive.
And frankly, we are tired of time intensive. So, here is the brick all primed. Tomorrow we paint.



This is the office/break room. Our first attempt at concrete stain. Though I like the color in general it is way too dark. I do like the depth and characteristics of the floor.

Yay the door to the office area is in.

On her own two feet...

...with a little help from her crutches, for a little while longer. Well, it has been 12 weeks since the accident and Megan got the all clear to put weight on her left leg. Yippee!

Time at my sewing machine.

Getting the "It takes a Village" quilt quilted, inspired me to finish one of the other projects I started. Eliza Bliss Esme's baby quilt got pieced today. I was just going to finish the blocks...... hours later the whole top was pieced. I may try to get it on the HQ tomorrow and get it quilted as well. I can't wait to get it in the mail to Cara, since baby Eliza will be here on October 10th.

Mono filament.

I know you have seen this quilt before it was quilted,but here it is again. One of the great things about the HQ training was getting to try lots of great threads. I have been wanting to try mono filament, and thought this was the perfect quilt to try it on. I wanted it to look like wind. Then in the borders I did E,W's which is hard to see in these pictures.
(if you click on the picture, you can see them better) It was really fun, and I didn't break the mono filament one time!!! Woo Hoo! that sure makes quilting even more fun.

Here is a picture of the mono filament so you can see how thin it is.

Figuring out some details.

I think this is what we have figured out for some of the tall wall units we bought over a year ago with Hancock fabric in Roswell. (it's not every quilt shop that has a motorcycle)



This is along the bathroom walls.

I think in this area I will have a crib and some baby fabrics and quilts.

Some cool stuff for the kids area.

Look at these fun, foam, easy to clean floor mats that Robert found. I had been thinking about carpet squares, but I think that this is a much better option.

Another look.

I am so excited about having a kids area. I looked at paint today for it. Yay!

We have a ceiling grid.

Joseph was here today putting in the ceiling grid.

Man things are really starting to come together.

The squirrel banquet.

The squirrels have been enjoying a pecan feast thanks to the one tree we have on our property.

I was sitting on the porch this morning and listening to them rustle the branches and eat their fill of pecans.

It wouldn't be too bad if it wasn't for the mess they leave behind. The other sad thing is that the tree is pushing up the brick on the side of the building, so it is going to have to be cut down. That is making all of us very sad, the humans and the squirrels.

Some blessings to remember.

Our cranky "don't park in my parking lot, you bought a pig-in-a-poke, I don't have to be neighborly" neighbor called today. Introducing himself to me as my neighbor, wanting to know if we wanted a laser printer, he was going to give away for free for our business. I know, I was shocked as well. Yay! Robert walked over and picked up the printer and offered him some free PC support if he needs it. Cool, cool, cool. I would have never thought that that would happen after our rough first meetings with him.

Also, the facade grant we applied for is moving forward. The estimate for the work of new siding, windows and awnings for the two front sides came in at about $8,000 more than the grant is if for, but it is exciting to think we could get the all that work done for only $8,000. Also cool, cool, cool.

I need to write this stuff down and remember it. Thank goodness for blogging to remember the faithfulness of God.

Tension problems solved.

After sewing over pins and messing up the tension in my HQ 16, it has been a long road back to balanced tension. I had been trying to quilt a batik block of the month which I finally took completely off the machine and will spend some time ripping out lots of stitches. Robert suggested that I change the bobbin case which was a grea idea. I loaded some plain fabric on the machine, and loosened the tension lots and lots. Then I quilted my heart out without breaking the thread. WOO HOO! I have several quilts to quilt and was feeling a little stressed at not having my machine functioning. So, life is good. In fact I think I am going to go work on Cara's baby quilt.

Reminiscing.

Tonight we went to Emaline Carr's first birthday party. We had a blast watching her "eat" her birthday cake, actually she mostly just sat there with her hands in the cake. It was funny. I can hardly believe that she is one. We met the Carr's last July. Jeremy is the pastor of the Well, and Melody his lovely bride. We truly enjoy their friendship. Lots of things have happened in the last year since Emaline was born. Some good and some maybe not so good. But, God has proven faithful and we love being Aunt Kathy and Uncle Robert to Emaline. Happy Happy Birthday Miss Emi.

Time to prime.

I rolled primer on the walls in the shop area. Man I am glad that I have been working out again, because I was whipped when I got done with all of the walls. I broke my long handle on my roller, so the walls in the back I couldn't get the primer all the way to the top of the wall. This is the classroom area.

This is facing the front of the shop.

Robert using the sprayer to prime the block in the children's area.

Here's the primed children's area. I have to say I am so excited about having a children's area.

Robert says goodbye to a faithful friend.

The faithful air compressor gave up the ghost today. It was really pitiful as it tried to turn on and build up some air pressure, but it was tired and it just couldn't do it. :-( It was seven years old after all and had logged in lots of hours and projects.
Here's the shiny new replacement.

I have a great window in my office/break room.

Yeah for natural light in the office! I love love love having a window in here!


The space after a coat of primer and some color swatches on the wall.

Finishing Drywall.

So, we hired a guy to finish the drywall. YAY! He and his co-worker did in 2 days what it would have taken Robert and I a month to do. Woo hoo!
The HQ 16 will be about where the scaffolding is.

The bathroom.













The door to the storage area, and the wall where the old walk in cooler was. This is where the classroom space will be.


The storage room and back door.

Paint color possibilities.

Sarah, Ellie and Emma went with me to Lowes tonight to pick out paint colors. I know it is not the greatest picture, but here's an idea of the colors.

Barn door, pinecone, baguette, and rolling pin.

Thanks ladies, it was fun.

Wash tub.

One of the debates among quilters is whether or not to pre-wash the fabric or not. When I first learned to quilt, I learned from "not pre-washers." So, I did not pre-wash. When we moved to Georgia, my quilting partner was a "pre-washer" so, I switched camps. I'm really pretty wishy washy about washing. I do have fairly strong opinions about pre-washing some fabrics, but really I can go with the flow. Anyway, I have been looking for a wash tub to set up a display for the shop about pre-washing or not. I found one this weekend and I am really excited about it. Yay, for beginning to purchase stuff other that building supplies for the shop!

Miscellaneous Sunday Afternoon

Our small group came over for lunch today. Yeah for fellowship with friends and pizza from the Pizza Joint.
Tallulah spent the afternoon herding kids and guarding the Duplos.
My goofy kids. Of course Drew was sitting on the back of the couch which makes his mom cranky) and slid down to lounge next to Megan.

Pieceful Hearts 20th Birthday Celebration.

The Pieceful Hearts Quilt Guild, that I belong to celebrated their 20th birthday today. It was a joint meeting of the day and evening classes. We had a fun time of "show and tell" with our projects and eating lunch together. One of our members aunt owns a quilt shop in Kansas with four other women and they also have a pattern company. They were on their way back to Kansas from a beach retreat and they presented their work at the meeting. The quilts were lovely and the patterns lots of fun. Take a look at their sites. I love the patterns because they have a lot to do with memories and that is one of my favorite things to make are memory quilts. So, I felt inspired to work on some of the projects I have been thinking about.

First Friday

Tonight we walked with our dogs to the Pizza joint, which is about 13 blocks. We haven't done that in a while. We enjoyed eating pizza out on the dog friendly deck. As, we walked back we stopped by the Blue Magnolia and the Book Tavern. Our usual haunts. Then we ran into our friends Kim and Ann sitting in front of Nacho Mamas, so we invited ourselves to sit out with them and drink a margarita. It was a lovely breezy cool evening. Our dogs really did well, they actually laid down and watched people go by. Sabueso attracted lots of petting from people who all have had a beagle in their lives. Hopefully the will sleep in after a long evening walk.

Tybee island here we come.

The plan for Labor Day weekend was to go to Panama City with our friend Pat, but is was my weekend on call and I had to work both Saturday and Sunday. So, for plan B we decided to get on our motorcycles on Sunday when I got done with work. We had a nice ride to Tybee Island, it wasn't too hot until we got to Savannah, then the rest of the ride was hot and humid. The good news is that Robert found a hotel room that was with in easy walking distance to the beach and restaurants. Yea! The hotel wasn't much to look at from the outside, but the room itself was decorated cute and beachy. The down side was that I woke up at 5:00a.m. on Monday with a virus, so the ride home wasn't as much fun, but it was nice to have a last hurrah for the summer. Thanks honey for taking me to get my feet in the ocean one last time this summer.