Category Archive: quilts
More Monster trucks and miracle of birth
Here are more trucks – that’s as many Monster trucks as this quilt will have. Mary came over and we were digitizing – or rather, she was teaching me, when I felt restless and decided we should go check on the sheep at the barn.
I knew tomorrow was due date, but that doesn’t always mean anything, Surprise! The bag had broken and before we got her in a stall, she was in this stage.
We talked her the 4 feet into the stall where she lay down. She was showing little feet.
This little fellow rushed out and
before she finished cleaning his head, he had a brother.
They are still wet, but all are tired and taking a bit of a nap.
Then it was time to try to stand.
Time to figure out how dinner is served. Both were born and trying to find dinner within 20 minutes. I will never tired of the miracle of birth.
More big trucks and sheep
Here are a few more big trucks. It’s going slowly because I have to keep an eye on the sheep. 3 more to lamb. One is technically due today, one mid May and one anywhere in between. Of course then there are the other things like meals and visiting people in the hospital. All of you know what I mean.
Evil eye from mom because she doesn’t want to let me near this baby.
Getting a peak at the baby
Finally — the baby!
If someone will explain to me how to download a video here, I’ll take some photos of the little ones playing and show them.
Spidron finished, barn work
Here you see the front and back of the Spidron Mini Table Topper. It took 4 fat quarters and 1/2 yard for the back and measures 18″ across from point to point. The pattern is available from CD Designs. It was only 9 years in the making.
And here is the definition of a spidron: “In geometry, a spidron is a continuous flat geometric figure composed entirely of triangles, where, for every pair of joining triangles, each has a leg of the other as one of its legs, and neither has any point inside the interior of the other.”
We also spent some time in the barn today. The plan was to plant potatoes until the neighbor called and said we had a sheep stuck in the rose bush. I had to cut branches off to get her loose. So we decided as long as we were there to clean water troughs and give them clean water, and move several bales of hay. Just before we got there, another of our ewes gave birth and has one healthy baby and one that apparently didn’t get out of the sac in time. I’ll try to remember to get a photo of the little one tomorrow.
Monster truck blocks
These Monster truck blocks are applique designs from Hatched in Africa. They have marvelous designs that stitch out so very good. It takes me a little over an hour a block if I count the stopping to trim between stitchings. I marked the fabric so they will stitch far enough apart to get 8.5″ blocks for a great boy quilt. There are 13 different trucks, so I may make 2 or 3 of them twice.
Of course this was done after returning some of the pants to Costco and getting the short size instead of regular. Why should I bother to hem pants, when I could just buy the right size to begin with. Interestingly enough, the lighter colored pants were very few yesterday as the table was covered with the dark blue pants. Today, there wasn’t a dark blue in sight. But the light blue was abundant and had sizes there that were not there yesterday. Do they have little fairies that come in the night time and change everything?
On our outing, I was able to get 12 tomato plants, which are now in the ground.
Clothes and barn supplies
Clothes either wear out or just don’t fit well anymore. So today was the big shopping for clothes, barn supplies, and whatevers. I like the prices at Costco, so buy whatever I can there. Yes, I could go to thrift stores, but that takes more time than I have to go through the clothes and try them on. So I opt for Costco, where jeans cost 14.99 and actually fit me. So 3 pair of jean, a swim suit, and a summer dress should keep me for the rest of the year as I still have some winter tops. I will need some summer tops, but didn’t see anything I liked.
Then off to the farm store, where I have to describe what I want, because I never know the real name of the product. The people who last had the barn did some strange things to it, including taking all the hardware off the doors. So I brought two kinds of wheels to keep the doors in place. I will decide which it needs and take the other back and come home with 5 of the right ones. In addition to that, the hooks are off the doors, so they can’t be kept closed. The sheep have figured one of the doors out, but the second one is in a track, so they haven’t come all the way out.
A GIFT
My daughter and SIL brought this lovely scarf back from Thailand for me. They had a marvelous time and highly recommend the trip.
Finally some quilting:
The name of this small table topper is SPIDRON. It was supposed to be English paper pieced. The date I started it says 2008. OK, I cheated. I had all the pieces ironed around the little cardboard type papers and was supposed to whipstitch them in place. I tried and it looked awful. Then I ironed everything out flat, drew around some of the pieces, and just machine stitched it. Had I known that was going to be the way to do it, I would have cut the pieces with 1/4″ seams, instead of random seams. It is now in one piece and needs to be backed and possibly quilted. I am so glad this is done. I am not in love with English paper piecing. That is the way some of my ufos have happened. Do you have those kind of ufos – where you just don’t want to do it?
Do what you can
Today my motto has to be just “do what you can” because it has been a backward day.
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Shearer postponed for another day
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Mother and son sheep got out. I put them back in and then thought I secured the door. As I was leaving she pushed the door so hard, that I hit the ground. So they are temporarily in another stall, but they could get into the main part of the barn. Other than make a big mess, that won’t hurt anything.
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Dog has been getting out of pasture, but maybe that has been conquered.
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I had a lot of stitches to take out of this table runner because the thread jumped out of the tension disk.
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People are dying. 3 people from church in the last 2 weeks is just too much. One of whom was a good friend. I got to thinking maybe I could spend my time better. What if I reorganized everything so that if I passed on, it would be easy for someone to come in and disperse all my things. Never mind, won’t happen. I can’t get that organized and still work. But there are areas that I could and should clean out. I’ll have to give that some more thought.
So after all that happened, I decided to put the binding on the quilt “Tell it to the Stars” that I showed you yesterday. Putting binding on the quilt was something I could do and did. It is finished now except for washing. The size is 60 x 80″
Tell it to the stars
Tell it to the Stars was a 2014 block of the month designed by Judy Laquidara. I finished the flimsy that year and it has been waiting for its turn in the quilting line up. The binding is done and now I need to put the two together.
This is a close up of the quilting which was called “Blustery breeze by HQ”
This variegated green thread has been around for awhile and it fought me. But it finally decided to submit.
Braided wall hanging
Today was a day of waits. So I worked on the braided wall hanging – not table runner as I thought. These are all the braids and now I need to trim all the rows and put them together, put borders on and quilt.
The plumber didn’t show because the truck was stolen.
The shearer didn’t come because he has an issue with over booking. He did come though and helped us get all the sheep to the upper pasture and in the barn so they can stay dry until he returns on Thursday. He has a half trained dog, who was trying, but not as good as one sees in sheep trials. But with the dogs help, the sheep are where they need to be. And we are tired.
April monthly goals
For April Monthly goals I have listed:
1. Linking up with Elm Street One Monthly Goal finishing Spidron which is hand work.
2. Patchwork times Judy has chosen #1 which on my list will be 11 (since 1 has been finished) It is a braided table runner kit by Jenny Beyer, which is still in the package.
