We've Been Invaded by the Pod People!

We have a pod!  Not the kind from Invasions of the Body Snatchers, a horror film from my childhood, but a storage pod.

This system is a rather ingenious solution to the storage of your "stuff" when you are moving.    They deliver the pod right to your home on a well-engineered truck, loaded with a hydraulic frame.  They lower the pod where you want it, then drive the truck away from the frame, then raise the frame up to clear the pod and re-attach it to the truck.

Charlie and I watched in fascination as they delivered our pod right outside our garage, across the driveway.  It is sixteen feet of empty box.

This will soon look very different.  We want to clear out some furniture  to make our rooms look larger, and get some of the stuff we've boxed up out of the way.

When you are ready, they will come back for your pod and either take it to a storage place, or deliver it to your new home.

Since we do not know how long it will take to build our mountain home, or where we will live in Raleigh when we sell the house. or how long it will take to sell our house, it is hard to know what to put in the pod.

Surely not all my neatly boxed-up sewing projects? 

I am using clear containers as much as possible, and labeling everything else in case we have to retrieve something.  But, I have found enough Un-Finished Objects (UFO's) to keep me busy for years, so I doubt I will need all these unfinished quilt projects to be readily available!

Anyway, if they go into the Pod, I will try to take pictures of them first.  Some of them are pretty nice quilt tops, not far from being finished.

Here is one I found that only lacks an outer border.  I won the blocks at Capital Quilters' Guild Block Party many years ago.  Look at all the piecing I did to set them.  I would think that a green print border would be just right.

Maybe I will leave that one out of the Pod!

The big question...what do I do with my twelve-foot longarm table and my Gammill machine?

Do I look for a rental house in Raleigh with a basement or big room?

Do I store it until the mountain house is finished?

Do I sell it, and buy a new one when we move?

Can't decide.  I am hoping for the first option.

Better get to work filling up boxes to put in the pod!



Ready for the Fourth of July

I decided to attend the monthly meeting of my art quilt bee on Monday.  So glad that I did.  We met at Kathy's house.  During show-and-tell, we got to see the beautiful jacket Roberta made for the Hoffman Challenge.  It is silk  patchwork with appliques of the floral fabric.

Roberta is renowned for her original garments, which have been in many national shows and exhibits.  I, on the other hand, am not very good about finishing patchwork jackets.  I unearthed three jacket UFO's while organizing my sewing room/studio last week.  Yes, I finally uncovered the one that was at the bottom of the heap on my cutting table.

It is curvy patchwork that I started in a Capital Quilters' Guild workshop with Karen Eckmeier.  It is supposed to be stitched to a sweatshirt to form the jacket.  I almost have enough pieces made to finish it.

I also have the unfinished mermaid jacket from a Quilt University class with Linda Schmidt.

I have already painted mermaids to applique to the yokes.  This one will get finished some day.

I also found some patchwork from a long-ago CQG workshop with Linda M. Fiedler.  It was so long ago that I do not have a digital photo!  I had forgotten all about this project.

Kathy took us downstairs to her sewing room to see her new longarm, "George,"  which is a sit-down model from APQS. 

 While we were down there, she showed us all of her UFO's.  I left feeling much better about my own!  Kathy has dozens that are ready to be quilted.  George is going to be very busy!

Yesterday we packed the truck to leave for the mountains.  It was 101 degrees in our driveway when we left, and 72 degrees a few hours later when we arrived in Laurel Springs. 

Upper Mountain Research Station, where we turn off on our road to the cabin

We are looking forward to a weekend with family and friends.  All our kids and grandkids and my sister's kids and grandkids will be here.  Can't wait!  Meanwhile, we will celebrate the Fourth by sitting at the creek and cooling off with some icy adult beverages.

Have a safe and happy Fourth of July!

The Elves Have Been Busy

Yesterday my Gammill was purring all day.  I finished the quilting on two projects, and got about halfway through another.  Can't really reveal them yet, but here are some teasers.

This is a detail of a needle-felted wall quilt that I started for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge 49, use of chiaroscuro, or light and  dark. 

I obviously was not very fast, since this challenge was from around September 2010, and it is supposed to be done in one week!  I guess all together I have spent less than a week on it, but this little piece got lost in my sewing room.  Go figure!  I found it when I was working on the bookmarks for my art quilt group a couple weeks ago.

This one is a small detail of a Pamela Allen class workshop quilt that I started last May.  I am so happy with this one.

Here is a detail from a baby quilt that is still on the machine.  I actually went to a fabric store and chose coordinating fabrics for this project from a Moda line.  Usually I use stash fabrics and make scrappy quilts.  The bright yellow is the only one that I had on hand.  I used the Warm Wishes pattern.



I am about a year-and-a-half behind on making baby quilts.   In fact, I quit piecing almost entirely.  I guess it was because I was doing long-arm quilting for customers, and making small art quilts. 

You know, even when you've acquired a skill set, such as quiltmaking, you do have to use it or lose it.  First, I forgot that I had changed the tension settings on my Janome when I was using metallic threads for the bookmarks.  I made about five long strip sets for this quilt before discovering that my tension was set on "0."  The bobbin thread was one long straight line.  Then, I thought I was using my quarter-inch foot.  I was not.  My seams were about 3/8 inch.  After a bit of frogging, I started to make some progress.

All week I have been discovering what I fondly call "Lily Tracks" around my house and yard.  Lily Tracks used to be crayon, marker, chalk, and paint marks with which she decorated the walls.  Fortunately, she quit doing that.  Now she likes to rearrange things.

I noticed the deer on the roof of this house right away, because it is in our downstairs powder room.

I did not notice the continuing theme of deer on the roof until this morning.

No one has asked me why there was an empty hummingbird feeder decorating one of my garden flagpoles.

Lily had some help from Caden on this one.  They built a "Wal-Mark" by putting gravel from our driveway into the back yard.  And were supposed to get it all out of the grass before they left.  Whoops!

Tonight we are going to Cary to celebrate Christmas with son Dave and DIL Emily.  Poor things, they are going to Florida and Key West for Christmas this year with Emily's family.  We will be going out to dinner, exchanging gifts, and hopefully spending time in their hot tub.  I have been looking forward to that all week!

Speaking of Dave, he asked to borrow some of my "tacky Christmas sweaters"  for a party about three years ago.  You can see them all in this post.  Any way, I never got them back- they were destined to be Tacky Party sweaters forever.  But this year, Dave's office had an Ugly Christmas Sweater contest at their holiday party.  My beautiful Snowy Christmas Chapel sweater with beads and glitter won him $75.00 for first prize!

Okay, maybe on a guy who is six and a half feet tall, it might  does look a little tacky.  But the second place prize went to one of his co-workers, who was wearing another of my sweaters...the The Saggy Stained Sweater with Christmas Tree. I inherited that one from my mother-in-law who also worked in an elementary school.  Teachers really rock the holiday themes from head to toe.

Dave is promising to take me out to lunch some day with some of his prize money.