Category Archive: quilts
Gardening, cooking, some cleaning
After finishing the flimsy for the table runner that I can’t show until October, I headed out to the garden.
The bowl on the left is HUGE. After cleaning and stemming, I stuffed 3 gallon bags full of parsley from the hoop house. The other bowl gave me 2 gallon bags of kale after stemming. There is more kale out there, but since I had already planted and watered 48 little lettuce plants, I was tired and moved into the kitchen for the cleaning phase.
After cleaning all the greens and feeding the sheep, I made the potato casseroles for Sabbath company. Then I prepared a salad with lettuce, red cabbage and celery. I will add the walnuts and let people dress their own. We will also have roasted cauliflower and broccoli. I’m debating if that is enough variety, but I don’t think anyone will starve. I have frozen corn I could cook as well.
We will end the meal with apple cobbler. Wish you could join us.Sheep feed and sewing
This morning we made a trip for sheep feed once again. And today, we hit the jackpot. They had sheep mineral blocks instead of just loose minerals. The sheep like to flip the dishes with the loose minerals, but it is a bit more difficult to destroy a 35# block.
My next project is a test project so I can’t show the completed work until October, but here’s a teaser. I’m doing a quantity of these triangles. Put a square on a corner of a larger square. By sewing the second line
I can cut between the lines and have a little half square triangle which I will someday press and square up for a lot of little squares.
Here is what one of the finished blocks looks like.
Alter Ego snowmen finished
The alter ego snowman is finished and a fun baby quilt. However I see that I need to learn to take photos so they are square. This quilt is square. I just need to tack down the hanging sleeve in the back. The hummingbirds are also finished and since DD wants the owl and flower quilt, I need to tack down the hanging sleeve I added to that. But that is hand work so will do it a bit later.
Tomorrow will be another appointment day with the appointments – one in the morning and one in the early afternoon, so the day is rather split up. It might be a good time to visit Costco or do some other store scouting.
rearrangements, quilted birds
We spent some time this morning rearranging our quarters. Both of us enjoy all the light from this room. That makes it a perfect place for him to play the guitar while I spin. Now why we didn’t think of this before, I don’t know. But we are happy with the new arrangement – at least until unused muscles kick in.
This birthday quilt is now quilted and the binding made. I’ll put it on in the morning. Sometimes if I push it too much, I have to do things twice.
This is the label going on the back.
Linking up to Elm Street One Monthly Goal as I met this goal this month.
And now I’ll go try out the new spinning area.
Jelly Forest quilt
The floors are swept and mopped, the laundry is done and the rest of the morning was filled with errands: taking DD to get prescription, delivering some items, and grocery shopping. All done for another week – maybe.
I was able to trim and bind this quilt, called “Jelly Forest” from the book STRIP YOUR STASH by Gudrun Erla. It measures 55 x 81, perfect for covering one for a nap. I quilted it with the design called “Whisper” by Anne Bright and used a permanent marker to put my name and year on the back of the binding. I will probably keep this one.
I then cleaned the bobbin area out of the three machines I used this week, so they are ready to go again.
Then I cleaned off the cutting table and mounted the purple hummingbird quilt ready to quilt. I’m hoping to get this quilt finished as well as the snowman quilt. Soon, I have to process the scraps into their homes until used. I only did half of my walking each day, but I feel good about the accomplishments. It seems to take so long to get the preliminaries done, and then POP, one gets several finishes.
Here are the new girls (left) of which I promised you a photo. They have integrated well with the fowl we had.
Have a blessed and restful Sabbath.
Humming birds
These humming birds are for the neighbor’s 90th birthday next month. They are humming birds digitized by Hatch in Africa. (I’m sorry, the link above is not working, but you can google is as they have many beautiful designs.) I was told a party was being planned, and since she is sometimes in a wheel chair, I think this lap quilt will be a good size for her. The next time I have, it will go on the quilting machine.
I finished quilting this piece today as well. It still needs to be trimmed and bound. Here is an up close of the quilting.
I neglected my walk today and spent another entire day in the studio getting these 2 quilt to this point. Tonight will be an earlier to bed night. Tomorrow I’ll have to be out and about food shopping etc. Perhaps this weekend I can catch up on the walking again.
Sewing Snowmen and snowflakes
Sewing Snowmen and snowflakes has been an all day project which obviously isn’t finished yet. The digitizing isn’t perfect . It’s a learning process. Even so, it is so very much better than if I had just done a machine zigzag around each of these pieces. It took a lot of time to cut around the fabrics before I could continue to sew. I need to get my Scan n Cut learned to make this faster. Now that I’ve taken a photo of this with the sashing, I think I may have to change that. It has the same aqua/turquoise, but just doesn’t seem right. I will decide later.
It will not get finished as I have other embroidery that must be done tomorrow. A neighbor is turning 90 in April and needs a lap quilt for in her wheel chair. So that is a priority tomorrow.
Mistakes and a finish
Mistakes make life interesting would be an understatement. I started in the studio with a success. I discovered why my design was not getting to the embroidery machine. It was too large. I downsized it, put it in the machine and started my first flower. Then I couldn’t find the applique scissors. I called DH down for a second pair of eyes. He found them in the drawer in which they belong. And we found a pair of reading glasses for very up close work – taking stitches out. 
After trimming, I put the design back under the needle upside down. That’s a great reason to mark your item with a “L” and/or a “R” if there might be a question. Starting again, I marked the L and R, but forgot to put down the bottom layer. 
Here is the third mistake, which I was able to salvage and get right. No, I won’t be wasting the fabric in the first two mistakes. They will be turned into something else. And finally here is one finished flower.
The rest of the day went good, but I certainly feel like I spend hours learning – like Edison from mistakes. This has been a great quilt for learning.
Because of all the large appliques and it is a small baby quilt (34.5 x 39.5) I decided to just stitch in the ditch. Then I bound it with some on the bias binding I made for a different quilt and changed my mind. So I now have one finish for March. If you are interested, this quilt is Debbie Mumm’s Sampler Quilt in her Favorite themes group
www.Debbiemumm.com/Projects/QuiltBlocks/2013/january.pdf
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Hoop house gardening plus digitized owls
Finally I ventured out into the much neglected hoop house to see if anything lived through the winter. I have been very discouraged because through our coldest times, I have found the door open. So I didn’t expect any live plants. Much to my surprise, the parsley and kale (left) seemed happy. The kale on the other side also survived.
The Swiss chard here is coming back and there are still a few onions. Today I eliminated all the weeds you see on this side. Since I didn’t get plants started, I’ll wait another week, then the store should have the organics in and I’ll just buy started plants this year.
Here is one of the digitized owls sewed out.
It’s a small quilt, but is coming along and giving me a chance to learn a new program. There is still another row of larger flowers to put below these bugs.
Disagreement with God day started out with me being impatient with DH, because he wanted to go with me to the store and I had my agenda for the day and didn’t want to wait. However, I did rearrange the schedule and then kept asking him to hurry. I am way behind in the goals that I set for this month and I wanted to at least get one top quilted. I haven’t finished a single project this week. I also wanted to get some embroidery done for the birthday quilt. We got back from the store and one of the daughters called and wanted a homemade gift for a friend’s birthday Sunday. I don’t have the time to come up with something.