Quilt Binding Tool

So I stumbled upon this handy little tool while aimlessly searching the net. There is a video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ex2PajesRvU
that shows how to use it. I always have a heck of a time getting this part of my binding right, I measure, pin, remeasure, pin again and finally I get it done, but it is such a pain. I love the idea of this tool. Anyway, I couldn't wait to buy it online and wait for it to arrive so I made my own, I also saved about $10.00 by making it myself. It isn't as pretty as the original, but it works exactly the same. I ran up to Lowe's and bought an 8" X 10" piece of acrylic for $1.98 and a little $3.00 cutting tool and whipped it out! I figured out the measurements by watching the video on YouTube, at one point they laid the tool down on a cutting mat that has 1" markings on it, so I paused the video at that point, it was pretting easy to figure out. It is 8 3/4" long and 2 1/2" wide, from the end to the marking is 6 1/4" then you just cut a 45 degree angle and cut off the 1/4" tip and there you have it. I used a sharpie to mark it, I wrote backwards on the underside, that is why my writing looks funny, I got my "U" backwards, lol. I did a test with it, and it comes out perfect. I can't wait to try it on my next quilt.

Here is the original.

Videos of Snowmaggedon

This was the beginning......

This was on Wednesday 1/18 about 7:15 AM, no sweat, but today is a different story.

Snowmaggedon 2012

Up until today I have been able to make it to work, but this morning, not so much, on top of all of this snow is a thick layer of ice, it has pretty much made it impossible to drive. Right now we are having freezing rain and people all around here are losing power from the falling trees and branches, so far we are just seeing flickering lights.

Here are our snowpeople that Carina and Dan made yesterday. They are loving this weather (The snow people that is), Carina and Dan are bored out of there minds, Dan has been stuck here since Tuesday night.

I thought our bench looked really cool. The snow is about 6" or so on each of the slats. It doesn't show up well in the picture.

The pond is frozen over, I forgot to get the pond ice ring thing in there, but as long as I don't disturb it the fish should be fine, it wouldn't be the first time that it has frozen.

Unfortunately our Laurel bush took a beating, this section just broke, but luckily Laurel grows quickly and by summer it should be all filled back in. The cedar tree is sagging really low, but so far none of it has broke off.

Got it all working

So after some thinking and some probing with my volt tester I came to the conclusion that the problem was with the transformer in the track light, so I took it apart again and reseated the wires and presto, it works. I absolutely love how bright it is now in the kitchen, I also didn't realize how dirty the old track light was, so this was a good opportunity to give it a good cleaning.

New Kitchen Lights

Craig has been complaining that we haven't had enough light in the kitchen since we remodeled. I was so over electrical stuff by the time we finished, I just didn't have it in me to wire one more thing. I went to Lowe's today to get some light bulbs and stopped by the lighting section and started thinking, (That's a dangerous thing) I thought pendant lights would look great over the sink, that space has always looked like it needed something, anyway, I took Craig back to Lowe's to show him my idea and he was all for it!

Of course I wasted no time getting up into the attic to survey and think about how I was going to tackle this. I decided to run a wire from the overhead lights, that way all of the lights would work off of the same switch. I got back out of the attic and gathered my tools and headed back up. Our attic is very shallow and it is full of blown-in insulation, so I basically have to slither my way around. Craig ran a drill bit up in the location of the new junction box so I could find it, then he cut out the hole for the junction box. I then had to work my way to the area and secure the junction box to the rafters, this was not easy since I had about 10" of space to work in, this is not a job for people with claustrophobia, I think all of those years long ago when I was a contortionist helped as well. Anyway, I fed my wire through the old light junction box to the new box and my work in the attic was done.

So, I unwired the old light so I could tie the new light into it and I discover 3 separate wires coming into the box, I changed out most of our wiring when we remodeled except this one, all of the wiring in this house is so bizarre, anyway, I hooked it up tried it out and........nothing...........argh!!! Neither light worked, so I start over and draw myself a diagram and think and think and think, what is going on here, I then tried just hooking up the old light the way it was and..........nothing again, so I hook up just the new light and.........Success! So I unwire everything, test the wires, figure out which one is the power line, draw it all out again on a piece of paper, go back and rewire everything and ..........only the new light works. I have no idea why my old light (which isn't really old) isn't working, I am going to give it another go tomorrow after I sleep on it. All in all, success, I love the new lights.

Craftsy BOM 2012

Here are my first two blocks in the Craftsy 2012 Block of the Month. They will have two blocks every month for 10 months and the last two months will be lessons on putting them together. I love BOM's, these are "Slash Blocks" and I have to say in all the years of my quilting I have never made these kind of blocks, they are super fast and easy. This should be quite the eclectic quilt, I am just grabbing fabric from my stash, so I should end up with some interesting color combinations.