My plans for this week is to put the finishing touches on my Christmas shopping and then make the two Shepherds Bush stockings that I have cross stitched for my two great grandchildren.  Wish me luck.  My mom has a few quilts she wants quilted for Christmas so If I have any time left, I will try to do what she wants done.  Wish me even greater luck!!!!!!!

I started last Monday morning and did nothing all week except quilt on this quilt.  I had 3 of the sides done but none of the middle where all the roses are.  I quilted all day everyday and Darling Husband cooked dinner for us each night.  A couple of nights I quilted until midnight.   My finger tips are all raw and the bottom of my feet are sore.  I guess it was the way I sat while I was quilting. 

Friday afternoon about two pm I took it off the quilt frame and went over it and trimmed all the loose threads off of it and I delivered it to its owner Saturday morning.  I am doing the happy dance still.

While I was working on this quilt for the last few years,  I would fold it up and put it away in a plastic bag and for the last few months I had it on the quilt frame in my sewing room.  Sometime while I had it in the bag a moth or bug of some kind had landed on it and got stored away with it.  When I took it out to work on it again, the bug has disintegrated on the quilt.  It left a spot on it that looked like dried blood just above one of the roses.  I tried every thing I knew to do to it and I could not get it out.

It will be a WHILE before I hand quilt another quilt.

This is part of the blocks for my Quilt of Valor quilt.  I will add two borders to it and it makes a beautiful quilt.  Thank you all so much.  If any one wants instructions on how to make the blocks  just send me a message or a pm on the HGTV message board.

This is some of my Christmas sewing/cross stitching I am trying to get done before Christmas.

I have made all my kids, their spouses, my grandkids, and now these two are great grand children.

Shepherds Bush comes out with a new stocking every  year.  One year it is a boy and the next year it

is a girl.  I think I have done them all and some of them twice, if I run out of new patterns.

My goal is to get these cut out and made into stockings before the end of the weekend.

Wish me luck because I still need to sew the charms on them. 

 

I promised pictures of my windows for my vintage camper.  This is the before picture.

 

this is the after

Now to spend a little time on them with some aluminum polish and I think they will look like old old windows that have been cleaned and polished to try to make them look new again!!!!!!

Well, it has been a really busy week.  I have never liked camping.  I only tried it twice and I don't know what it is about me and a tent set up under a shade tree on a river bank and thunders storms.
Both times I ever camped in a tent, just about bed time it always seemed to come up a storm and thunder and lighten like crazy......not to mention raining so hard you would think you were going to be washed out into the river.  After the second "tenting out" episode I made myself a promise.  I said "Self if you ever get home, you will never go camping again" That was about 35 years ago. This promise came after a night of camping, storming, squirrels eating all our food, and the truck breaking down in 110 degrees heat on the way home with two rambunctious boys age 5 and 7.

Darling Husband started in a year or so back wanting to buy a camper. Are you kidding me? You are 6ft 4in over 250 lbs and those campers are small.  It would be like stuffing an elephant into a fiat. I am not "Twiggy" either.  I kept telling him he would not like camping, but in reality it was really me that did not want to go there again. I finally broke down and said yes after numerous trips to look at campers.  He finally wore me down and in the spring time this year we found a really nice clean used camper and began our summer on the lakes.  We camped close to home because we did not know how to work the stove. We knew that if something went wrong we could just lock the door and be home in a few minutes. We have had a wonderful summer and learned a lot of helpful hints about the ins and outs of camping.  We broke down this week and purchased our first new camper.  We wanted something a little bigger because DH is retiring soon and we wanted something big enough to spend more time in.  We have been truly blessed by the Good Weathers Gods this summer also.  We have had one weekend where it was really hot.  The rest of the summer the weather was beautiful each time we camped.

I did not get to work on Betsy this week.  I have been busy cleaning up the old camper to get it ready to sell.  I have been cleaning out a flower bed because we are going to have to use up the space to build a shed for the new camper. I have been trying to catch up on some quilting. I have also been trying to get the outside plants cut back and covered up because it is beginning to get cool here at night and you never know when the first frost might fall and kill my banana bushes.   I have worked some on getting the pool closed down for the winter.

I did finish a quilt today for a lady from Aberdeen.  I did an all over stipple or meander pattern on it in a beige thread so none of the quilting actually shows up on it.  It was quite colorful and must have been a lot of work.  I did some leaf patterns in the borders and she is going to bind it.  I hope to put another one on the frame in the morning.
"

I worked for a couple of hours this morning on removing the paint off my window frames.  It says to not use the paint remover if it is above 85 degrees.  I only got to work on it until about 10:00 am. It got hot out there fast.  I got the top layer off.  I will get the second layer off early in the morning.  I got all the old Butty Putty off the back of the windows. That is the gooey stuff that goes around any place on the camper where water could possibly seep in.  (seams, windows etc)  All the windows have little flaps on the frames at the top that keep the water from dripping inside the window.  Those were all stiff and every time I tried to pick them up to clean under them they were brittle and would break.  I hope I can find some of it to replace it. 

I put paint remover on one of my windows and I would let it sit for about 15 minutes and then wash it off with the pressure washer.  I was pressure washing one of the windows and lost my balance and stepped right in the middle of the window.  I will also have to find a new pain for that.  It is a thousand wonders it did not cut my feet when I stepped on it because I was bare footed.  I think the windows are going to clean up really nicely.