my new sauna

I have a new sauna, my sewing room. I had the morning off yesterday and i worked sewing and cutting, i had sweat rolling down my face, at one point as cutting i dripped on the fabric. It was a nice sauna experience. I kept taking breaks to the rooms that are air conditioned... I went outside at one point and because there was a breeze (blowing from the direction i don't have windows) it felt cooler outside than inside... and it was 105 outside!

It is over 100 again today and its forecasted to be over 100 degrees for the next 10 days. We still have not gotten any rain, in fact a pretty big storm system is headed our way right now but when you look at the next 6 hours forecast map, it breaks up right before it gets to my house. literally right before. This drought and heat wave is getting scary. We have decided to give away all of the horses we can (we have 30) but i doubt we will get rid of many, if i can reduce it any, it will make feeding them this year a little easier. Right now I'm looking for hay because our pastures are dust. we don't normally start looking for hay till December. In the past our horses would be in butt high grass munching away....  hay in the past has been 25 a big round roll and we will be lucky to find it for 75 or under.... at that price, they are not going to get as much hay as we like them to have and we will be feeding more feed.

Just to give you an idea how mind blowing this is, we have had 100 degrees or hotter for 42 days in a row, 10 more forecasted. On average, we get 7 days a YEAR in the triple digits! We are breaking every drought and heat record there is!

anyways, enough about weather... I'm so tired of the weather i could spit.

quilting!!!! I started this:

Striped Stars Quilt

i have smaller pieces from the striped shirt quilt, i think I'm going to use them this way with some different centers on the stars. I also have a solid lavender vintage sheet that I'm thinking i will use for sashing. I just loved the pastel stripes so much!!!

I have also hit thrift stores for more vintage sheets. I found these three for only 4.50 today!

Vintage Sheets

OK, sorry for the bad pics, i took this one in the back seat of the truck since i really don't want Ralph to know that while he was suffering alone at Zippy's, i went to a thrift store!!! but... pretty pretty pretty!

does anyone else do this?

When i get an idea for a quilt, I cant just write an idea for a quilt down, i HAVE to make a block or two of it. I have blocks all over my sewing room of ideas, some are now quilts in progress... others, well they are random blocks, in various places that have no home. I guess im going to save them because someday they may be worked into a quilt or maybe a quilt back. But... do yall do this or are you content with seeing an idea on paper?

Mostly what ive worked on this week is trying to get control of the piles of fabric in my sewing room. Of course i keep getting sidetracked. This is how the process goes. I am sorthing through the pile (i am up to 3 big bins of fabric that needs to be put somewhere so that it is usable. none of it is yardage, its all scraps from fat quarter size to strings. I find a peice of thin muslin that i was going to use for foundation material. I look at it, i look at the nice neat pile of strings that i have been ironing and putting in their proper home... i cut a peice off of the foundation fabric and i sew a couple strips on, ohhh how pretty, im loving it.... well i then DIG in the nice neat box of strips... undoing the work ive done, and i sew some more strips on... now i have a pile of wrinkled messy strips (at least they are still in their proper bin) and string thingy started when i know i dont have enough strings and i know i have 11 other quilts to finish before christmas.... but... i did find out that i do love the way it looks. Im going to keep it until after the 11 others are done and finish a stringy kaliedescope quilt.

I went to goodwill again yesterday looking for more red shirts. I bought 10 shirts for 10 bucks, only 3 of them red. I need about 4 more red plaid shirts!  5 of the shirts i bought were pastel stripes. YEP... i am up to 8, i figure i want about 15 before i can do a striped shabby quilt for myself. I of course have a different design in my head so im sure in the next week or so, i will be cutting into them and making a block or two of the plan... even though it will be months before i can make this for myself.  (ok.. i also went to the quilt store and to walmarts and made purchases at both of them too. I spent 30 bucks on fabric yesterday!!)

Alot of the scraps, im just cutting into squares. 3 1/2, 2 1/2 and 1 1/2. Of course all these pretty little squares call me... i found a bunch of white 2 1/2 squares that i had cut for another project im no longer making... so what do i do... i sit down and start sewing 9 patches, for an irish chain quilt... again... NOT one of the 11 i need to finish by christmas but oh its so pretty and i like making 9 patches! I figure i will make one everytime i find enough white squares for a patch. I have alot of white scraps in my bins that need to be cut into something, might as well be 2 1/2 in squares.

So... i am still not on the plan... i am trying to organize the mess and im creating more projects instead... lol. The heat looks like it will be around for a week or so more... i cant wait till its over!

$16.00 worth of goodies

I went to the "AS IS" part of Goodwill in lufkin yesterday. It really is a mess that you sort through but their sheets are 1.00 a peice. I bought 9 of them. I LOVE the blue floral! The white sheets i will use for background fabric, there have been several quilts i wanted to make but didn't have enough solid white... i have TONS now.

On Saturday i hit a yardsale. I spent 7.00 at it and got a ton of goodness! I love the striped sheets (they will become a back to a quilt), there is a pretty vintage and a five more shirts. I am getting quite a few striped shirts again for another quilt like sharons.. i want one for myself even if i just make a beach blanket out of it.

Here are the sheets....

Vintage Sheets

Ive been working on my goals for the week... i will be posting my progress tomorrow. I think i will meet all of them! woo hoo!