Pinning and Cleaning Day

Our weather has cooled down a little bit--if you call temperatures in the 90s "cooled down," anyway. At least it's not so bad in the mornings and late at night, and I can open the windows and turn off the air conditioning before we go to bed, so that's quite an improvement over the weather we had earlier in the week! I took advantage of it and jumped out of bed bright and early this morning so I could get a quilt pinned out on the patio before it got too hot. Well, maybe "jumped" isn't quite accurate, nor is "bright and early." But in my world, when you go to sleep at 2 a.m., 8 a.m. IS pretty darn bright and early! And if I'm semi-conscious when my feet first hit the floor, that's close enough to "jumping" for me!

I pieced this quilt maybe about a year or two ago. I think it was before I started blogging, so I probably haven't shown it before, but I might be wrong. It's all made from Thimbleberries scraps, and I was so darn excited about it, that I immediately pieced a backing and cut the batting. Other things interfered, though, so I bundled it up and set it aside until now. The funny thing was that when I was laying it out on the tables, I found the batting I had put with the rest was nowhere near large enough for the quilt! I have no idea how that happened, but I suspect I somehow switched the batting I cut for this quilt with something else. Who knows? I sure was happy I had that brand new humongous roll of batting though! It saved the day--and my sanity!

I hope to start quilting this one in the next few weeks. I'd like to get a second quilt pinned while I still have the tables set up on the patio--I'll have to look through my basket of quilt tops and pick something out.

After the pinning, the cleaning commenced. The Boy Child moved out last Sunday, but he seems to have left all his "stuff" behind. I patiently waited all week for him to come and finish the job, but nope, he never showed up. Here's the "before" photo--

I finally got impatient today and decided to bag and box everything he had strewn around the room. I felt kind of mean doing it, but hey! I wanted that room back! I couldn't figure out what to do with all of it, so in the end, I decided to cart it all out to the patio table (the non-quilt-pinning patio table) and pile it all up. And wouldn't you know? About an hour after I finished, the Boy Child called to say he was coming over this afternoon to pack up all that stuff. Ha!

And he actually DID come by, but he pretty much just went outside and rummaged through the bags to find something to wear for soccer and then left again. He said he'd be back, but we haven't seen him. So now I'm not quite feeling as mean for having bagged and boxed everything up.

(In typical "mom fashion," as I was writing this, I thought, "What if something terrible happened to him that kept him from coming back?!" So I called his cell phone, and he's fine--he just didn't end up having time. Apparently he's on his way here now though--of course, it's nearly 10 p.m. Kids! ROFLOL!)

And here are the "after" photos--

I ended up putting the hollyhock quilt on the bed in there and I love it! I think it's just the perfect size for a queen or double; it was okay on our king but not great. Besides, I have a summer-weight quilt I like to use on our bed anyway, so this worked out well.

I've been cleaning sporadically all day long and I still have the kitchen left to clean. I've left that until last because I also want to do some rearranging of the hutch and other decorations in that room. At this point, though, I think it may have to wait until tomorrow because I'm plumb tuckered out! I may--or may not!--head into the Sweat Shop for a little while and work on quilting the blue and white Hat Trick quilt.

Wherever you are, I hope you're having a wonderful weekend, doing whatever you most enjoy!