Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

Quilting Studio Update!

Been working on the new quilt studio. Moved it from the upstairs garage apartment to the floor level full size workshop. I actually moved into the new studio in October, but was so busy with Quilt Festival and holiday customer quilting, that I didn't have much time for posting (and room was in quite a mess).

Here is the 'before' and mostly wasted space and hubbys' storage for motorcycles, camping stuff and airplane overflow parts.

During the process, we cleared everything out, mudded walls, textured ceiling, power cleaned the floor, tiled, painted and so on. Quite a transformation! Since the previous owner of the house used this as a wood workshop, there were already plenty of outlets and lots of overhead lighting, so we didn't have to do any additional work there.

Moved out all the old books, and moved in quilting (& other craft) books and stuff. The Gammill has a new home and Jon even built me a world class portable cutting table. Right now, I mostly leave it under the big window.

Carolina Crossroads Mystery Quilt - Part I

Well, I got about 50 of my rail fence blocks completed, and my sewing machine blew a gasket or something. The top stitch looks great, but the under side is giant loops of fabric. It's like the tension totally went away. I re-threaded top several times and reloaded the bobbin. No help. Wonder if they will do emergency repairs on the weekend??? Fotunately, I do have a back up machine.

I'm using dark blues and reds. I have lots of reds in my stash and scraps, so am looking forward to using these in this mystery. As soon as I get the backup machine setup, I'll be able to finish up the last of these rail fences and move on to Part II.

What Not to Wear !!!

We did manage to get Jon and I and the girls in one shot. Taking a breather while deciding which roller coaste to go on next!

Oh, this is the 'new' me, with dark hair! I've been blonde so long that they kept 'losing' me because the hair color/cut changed me so much! Lindsey did a "what not to wear' on me for my birthday. Went through all my clothes, made me try on everything and tossed almost everything except for the new stuff that we bought that weekend.

Went a whole week with no quilting! Usually on vacations I take all sorts of projects to work on in the hotel in the evenings. It's a good thing I didn't. We left early in the mornings, got back late at night and pretty much went straight to bed, got up and did it again (kind of like lather, rinse, repeat!)

Thanksgiving at Disney

This year we decided that that instead of spending bunches of money on Christmas, that we would spend the money meeting somewhere as a family instead. We chose Disney. What a great choice! Beautiful weather the entire week, lots of roller coasters, great food and MORE rollers coasters! Of course the guys got a little weak kneed on the Tower of Terror, but were thrilled to ride any and all roller coasters over and over.

We all ended up with a 'roller coaster' headache after about 5 consecutive trips on Mount Everest in Animal Kingdom. That was awesome! The first time we rode it was at night, which just made it that much better. Kind of hard to see, I think that lamp light took the focus of the picture, but you see a car going almost straight up the side of the mountain then immediatley coming straight down with screams and so on. Don't want to give anything away, but the Yeti tears up the track and you have to do some backtracking! What a HOOT!