Windy Sunday

 I think the storms have all passed and luckily we never had bad ones after Tuesday. Just thunderstorms and rain, which we needed. 

I have made a little progress on hubby's quilt. I now have 12.5 blocks hand quilted, 9 left to unpick and that leaves 14 to quilt. Lots of progress from last week as the unpicking takes a while on each block. I have been fixing as I go as well for a few tears and seam pulls. 

A non-reply blogger asked about the pattern. This quilt is called Labor Day Madness in the Nickel Quilts book below. I collected green, brown and cream fabrics to make this quilt.

It was a year ago today that this guy was added to the family! Boy does time fly. From the very strong and willful boy he was on a leash, training and patience has worked and I have been walking him by myself for the last few months. No chasing after squirrels, turkeys or bunnies we see on our walks. He does try to go quickly to get past the dogs in their yards, but is a lot better than he was and I am comfortable walking him by myself. He is 72 pounds of muscle!

Bear 4/30/2022.

Earlier this week - not spoiled at all. Squeaky ball, lambie and a bone with a quilt to lay on. I'll also be doing dog stuffed animal surgery today to patch up moose, tiger and the dragon so they can be added back into his toy box for play time.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Purple Scrap Challenge

 I posted a couple of these photo's in my last post, sorry!

The table scrap challenge this month was purple, and/or the letters Y and N. I managed to hit all three!

I made a little wall hanging - A Nosegay of Yo-Yo's!

I did a little reading up on how to make Yo-Yo's. I had never done them before! 

I cut out a few different size circles and hand stitched the 1/4 inch seam with some hand quilting thread and pulled them together to get little flowers and buds.

This is where I left it on Thursday. This afternoon, I got back into the sewing room and hand stitched the vase and flowers down.... then decided I needed more flowers and another stem. Wish I would have decided that before I stitched the vase down, but oh well. I made it work! A few more circles were cut out and stitched onto the top. Some walking foot quilting (which looks terrible in the photo but not as much while hanging on the wall above my sewing machine), and then I added the purple binding. My challenge quilt from the scraps on the cutting matt. 

I was a little worried we would get a day of rain, but it held off until just a few minutes ago. Emily got her riding lesson in this morning and had a treat of walking the horses around the property a bit at the end of their lesson. I actually got her to smile for a photo while sitting on Lance before they headed out to wander around for a bit on the horses.

Lance is a very tall horse, but he is a beauty.

Linking up with the RSC and the ABC Table Scrap Challenge 2023. 

A busy day....

 Well, we had quite the storm blow through last night! I think we had an hour of heavy rain, constant lightning and wind. That big blob of red was nearly through when I snapped this photo of my weather app.

My 'castle' with a moat! the water was in the gully there covering the dip in the driveway and nearly up to the tree which is a way's in on the lawn. We had a good amount of rain - I'd guess 4-5 inches at least but that is just a guess. It was all soaked in by morning. Looks like we are under the same watch for storms again tonight. Lets hope they wait until we are home from Emily's spring concert at school. 

I had plans to work on my ABC table scraps challenge today. Alas.... I have spent many hours waiting in various waiting rooms today. I did get a walk with the dog this morning after dropping the boy to school early for his Cambridge testing this morning. Then a quick shower before heading to the eye doctor to pick up my new prescription sunglasses. They just have a slight script for distance and boy, I did not realize how bad the bubbling was on my old pair (maybe 4 or 5 years old!). Across town and through the car wash after adding air to the tire again. A vacuum and clean up of the inside and home... where the tire air light was on again. Sigh. After a quick check on chickens and playing with the dog and petting the cats.... I headed to Meineke to have them check the tire. A nail! Arrgghh. Iffy on patching and since they were new last fall, they recommended going back to where I got them to see about warranty. They were for a patch, but the placement of the nail did not recommend that route so a new tire it was. They got me right in and got it put on. At that point it was well after 1PM, so I got a quick lunch at Panera Bread to go, and headed home to play a little with the animals. I had about an hour at that point, so I started with my idea for the challenge. Y and N are the letters. I did a search last night for quilt blocks starting with those letters. I came up with a Nosegay of Yo-Yo's! I have never made a yo-yo before, so this is my first attempt. I found some fabrics and cut different size circles.

I got them all scrunched up and they looked like this. I pulled a little scrap of green for a stem and pressed each edge in and hand stitched it down. The next thought was a vase of some kind. I pulled a pink scrap and cut this shape out. I need to applique turn it and attach it still. The flowers are just sitting there, not attached yet. I pulled a yellowish 10x10 inch square to place this on. That's as far as I got, before I had to go pick up the boy from school. Progress.

Slow Sunday stitching.

 This was Emily yesterday riding Lance. They decided to change things up since she has been riding Marshmallow for a while. She used to ride Lance a couple of years ago so they got along great! He is a very tall horse.

I have been trying to make progress on hubby's quilt in the evenings, but this usually happens.....

Notice the quilting hoop with the dog on top of me and it? Yes, he does not want me to work on 'his' quilt! Hubby mentioned I might need to make a new one for him, since the dog seems to have claimed this one! Nope. He will have to work it out with the dog when it is done! There are 35 blocks that I had machine quilted about 15 years ago. The thread is looking horrible, so I am slowly pulling it out, one block at a time. I did decide to hand quilt them, so I am doing a little unpicking, and then a little stitching..... when the dog allows!

I have 8 of the blocks hand quilted - and I can tell I have not quilted regularly in a while since I am building that callus up on my push middle finger on my right hand. I don't use a thimble, never could get used to it, so I'm taking it slow to build it up again. I have 3-4 quilts in the hand quilting progress (bear paw, cat and mice, Frosty) so once that finger is back to 'production mode' I'll try and keep it that way with a little quilting each day. 

11 blocks have been unpicked and are ready for hand quilting. Which leaves 16 blocks left to unpick. I think I'll work on hand quilting a couple of blocks today. First, will be a quick trip to Lowes to get new seeds (we did not have luck with the old seeds we planted so will try again. The good news is the shade blocker is working great and Emily's pumpkin is starting to turn orange!). Then a quick stop at Aldi's since baby bella mushrooms are 99 cents this week! I see beef stroganoff in our future this week along with some santa fe rolls and we will try a Nigerian Jollof rice recipe Aidan found as well. 

Linking up with the Sunday Slow Stitchers.

Saturday in purple

 Starting off with the dog curled up on the quilt I am unpicking the machine quilting in the middle and replacing with hand quilting of each block. Curled up with Lambie his stuffed animal from Easter.

I did get the second kite block completed and there were some 1.5 inch left on the backing so I cut it to size and made a couple of these little blocks as leaders and enders.

Then I found the basket of purple and started with some random sewing for some crumb blocks.

The finish this week was of the Garden Path quilt. I made the majority of the blocks last year with this challenge. It finished at 48x60.

Linking up with the RSC.

The dog got a walk with Em and Greg and I. Greg and I checked out the floor plan of a house being built near us - with an in-law suite. Time for a shower before taking Emily to horses. I think I am taking a break from riding until fall when it gets cooler.

Frosty progress....

 I got a little sewing time in Monday night and got the sashing and cornerstones machine quilted. It was a start! I think I am going to mark some cross hatching on the diagional for each of the frosty's and hand quilt them. 

I missed the post indicating there was no scouts tonight, so we headed there (17 minutes from home). Emily wants a new dress for graduation, and did not find anything with Grandma so we tried Bells and Bells Outlet. Nothing. I'll have to ask around for good places to get nice dresses for teens from a few of my girl scout friends. We got home early and it was still light, so Bear got a walk and then for a treat, I did a little car ride with him and Emily. We just went 7 minutes up the road and took the back roads back. He was a happy dog sniffing with his nose and head out the window! 

Garden Path is finished!

 

First one completed on my Spring 2023 UFO list. 

This finishes at 48x60 and will be a donation to the H2H project this year.

Slow Sunday stitching

 I spent a bunch of the day in the sewing room Saturday. I got 2 quilts pinned and one quilt quilted! I reached into my mystery box of fabric again to search for a binding and pulled out a mottled blue - turns out it was a wide backing off cut with fabric color ranging from dark blue/purple to light. I thought the multi colors would work great with this colorful quilt. I did a simple wiggle with the walking foot every 4 inches or so. I was able to make and attach the binding and was hand stitching it down Saturday night while rewatching some Harry Potter Movies. I have one side left to stitch down, which I'll work on Sunday.

I pulled various clips to hold the binding down as I was stitching it. I found that little paper clips like the purple ones work great. I got them on sale around back to school time a couple of years ago.

I needed just a little wider for the extra batting to fit the Frosty quilt. So I zig zagged some I cut off when trimming the above quilt, and it became the perfect size.

Frosty is quick pinned.  I hope to get some machine quilting in on this Sunday as well, since that batik snowflake would be hard to hand quilt. I am not sure if I'll add any hand quilting around the frosty's or not. I think this will be a wall hanging - and using warm and natural it won't need a lot of quilting to keep it together. I have enough of the blue cornerstone fabric left to make a binding for this. I'll be linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Rsc in purple

I enjoyed the morning with a sleeping household. I got up at 'normal' time and let the dog out. When he came in, I checked with a sleeping girl to see if she had fed him - No, turned over and back to sleep for her. I fed him and let him out to chase off a hawk while I shut up the chickens in their coop. I normally take him for a walk shortly after the kids leave for school at 8:15 (hubby is taking them to school now!). 8:30 and a snout on my chair arm with a whine. Sigh. I got dressed and took him for a walk. Still no one up when we got home! At 9:40 I woke up the girl asking if she was going to ride horses today or not? A sleepy yes, so I mentioned the time. Hubby got up around this time too. I got him to take her to horses today, and I cleaned up the kitchen and got a chance to sew! I found some purple scraps and cut out the kite shapes and got them sewn up. I need to pull more of the grey snowflake fabric and cut more of the side triangles for the next one. These are finishing at 8 inches using my Accuquilt.

 

I got off work a little early yesterday and hit the Market of Marion before picking up the kids from school. It is a vendor market that has one wing with fresh fruit and veggies that I like to go to on Fridays. I used to go right after dropping kids to school, but I have hubby bringing them now. I got some roma tomato's, a honeydew melon, some corn, swiss chard and green beans. Not bad for $12.  I also got a local raw honey as Emily finished the last jar last week when she was sick. I had some time, so decided to stop and pick some blueberries! It is blueberry season in Florida the month of April and there is a really nice U-pick farm near the kids school. I got 2.5 pounds and I think Emily ate half a pound of them on the way home! They were very yummy. I have plans to use my mini pie pan and try some blueberry pies this weekend. I'll probably go pick more next week. I still have some in the freezer from last year, but I do love fresh berries.

As for me, I plan to spend the day in the sewing room! I have 2 tops that need to get pinned for quilting and I hope to get one or both of them quilted this weekend. Wish me luck. (Garden Path and Frosty McChill).

Linking up with the RSC.

Snowmen

 

I'm so happy I got a mystery box of fabric from Missouri Star Quilt Co last year. While looking for fabrics to finish this quilt I found a couple of snowflake batiks. I had enough blue for sashing and got that cut. Hmmmm... cornerstones. I didn't want the white. I pulled a dark blue but didn't like it. I dug in the box.... found a perfect blue in there! 

I'll work on sewing these up before I decide how to finish it. I trimmed the blocks to 8x10.5 so right now it will be 30.5x50. 

I've been stuck on making meals the last few weeks. Since the kids took the few ham pieces left from Easter for lunch Monday, I had to start from scratch.

Monday we did roasted veggies and Italian sausage with penne pasta and leftover rolls.

Tuesday was taco meat, so I did a taco salad with guacamole on the side.

Wednesday, hubby was making a brisket but it was not ready for dinner. I pulled some boneless skinless chicken thigh from the freezer and added a bunch of spices and baked them with some rosemary roasted potato. It was a keto curried chicken that we loved but I had not made in a long time.

Tonight is brisket sandwiches with either potato salad or roasted potato (the big pan disappeared too quickly last night) and salad.

Off to sew before I need to go get the kids.

Happy Easter

 I see lots of wild bunnies on my walks around the neighborhood. This one stayed still and the dog did not notice him and walked right by last week. 

We hosted my in-laws for Easter. I did a small ham with a brown sugar glaze, scalloped potato, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, green bean casserole and rolls. There were not many leftovers so they must have enjoyed it. Desert was half of Emily's red velvet birthday cake or chocolate cream pie. She turned 14 on Friday and made and decorated her own cake. It is very yummy.

The kids and Greg pitched in with cleaning up the house and the back patio just in case since the temps were heavenly in the upper 60's today. Quite a change from the close to 90's we have been having. After the grandparents headed home, the boys fixed the irrigation heads that the dog attacked last year. Now we can water the lawn again, since we have not had rain in forever and it is pretty crunchy. The boys headed to Lowes yesterday - Aidan DROVE - and picked up some flowers for the front triangle bed. It got weeded and planted this afternoon and looks a lot better.

 I need to grab some mulch to put down since I raked up all the old and got rid of it. Emily trimmed bushes and cleared out the back part of that bed and it looks a lot better now.

I have been working on hubby's quilt and unpicking the machine quilting I did on it about 14 or 15 years ago. I have 12 of the 35 blocks unpicked and I decided yesterday to hand quilt around the pattern in the block. I have 2 blocks hand quilted. Either the cat or the dog or both have managed to get teeth marks and punctures in the quilt on top of the thread pulling up. Repairs are being made as well. I reinforced the binding last week that was pulling apart. I have not been able to make great progress on this since every time I start working on unpicking, someone decided to jump up and be a lap dog!

The boy is watching a 2021 F1 race and I'm going to sit with my feet up and add some more hand quilting into this quilt. 

Linking up with the other slow Sunday Stitchers. 

Thursday wrap up.

Emily headed to the doctor on Tuesday, since she had intense ear pain starting around 8 PM Monday night. Yup - double ear infection! She said it was hurting since Friday. She is on antibiotics, and it has not eased the ear pain yet. We are hoping for tomorrow. She has been back to school since Wednesday. Not a great way to usher in age 14 tomorrow (Friday). At least she is feeling better despite the ear pain.

How she has gone from this photo - just shy of age 2.....

to this photo earlier this year! Wow. Not sure where the time has gone.

I had an eye appointment today. No dilation since they did it last year. No real change in my vision. My doctor said I have young eyes! Reading glasses if I want are the 1's from the drug store. I am getting new sunglasses, since mine got a crack in one of the lenses in October and I do use those daily to see in the sun down here. Those are a slight script for distance. I think those glasses are 4-5 years old! Crimeny on the price! I don't have eye insurance in my plan and boy are glasses expensive... or I have expensive taste. Oh well, if they last as long as the last pair, I'll be happy.

A stop at Joanns for some wide backing fabric for Garden Path. A stop at PetCo for cat litter and treats for the dog. I did get a little time to sew after I made a blueberry tea bread. I made my purple scrap jar block with a 16 patch block from last year.

 I also cut out the parts needed for 2 more of the light material. I might just stitch up the black one and the brown one this month as well. A shot of the 4 so far this year. I really like the half square triangle in corners. I think with a white sashing and colorful cornerstone it is going to look really neat!

Two of the dogs toys got surgery as well. The moose needed about 4 holes patched up and the sloth lost an arm! (I decided to keep it amputated and just stitched up the arm hole.) Bear won that pulling match with Aidan, who somehow just ended up with the sloths tiny arm in his hand! I hear the next time the tiger needs surgery - I am to add stuffing to the body as someone likes taking the stuffing out once he finds a hole! Silly dog.

Weekend....

 It has been an interesting few days! Thursday, I got my permanent crown placed and had another cavity filled. It finally stopped hurting by the crown yesterday, lots of taking it in and out really annoyed the gums around that area. 

Friday, Emily texted me around 1PM (school gets out at 3:45) saying her throat hurt to swallow and she felt really cold when she moved. I walked into hubby's room and sent him to go pick her up from school since I was working. She did not want to go to the nurse since she thinks they only send people home if they vomit. She fell asleep on the way home and I clocked her temp at 102 when I checked on her! Her fever is down today to just slightly elevated by a couple of degrees, her ear hurts and her throat as well. She is all stuffed up as well, so a good head cold. She will probably be home from school tomorrow. I cancelled her horses on Saturday, so she has been sleeping a lot this weekend.

The boy had F1 racing this weekend. The race was in Australia, so he watched qualifying first thing Saturday morning and then the race first thing this morning. It really was run in the early AM hours so we watched it after the fact. Quite a race as well. Very exciting and he was happy to cheer on Alonso to another 3rd place finish. 

I had a Girl Scout event for appreciation of the adult volunteers last night at Painting with a Twist. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had made that yellow/white area smaller or my well bigger so it covered the light yellow on top. Oh well. The magic wishing well makes me smile.

I got the garden path blocks sewn together into a top today. I had used my 2.5 inch strip die to cut some sashings, but when I laid them out it just did not look good. I need to press this still, but it is measuring about 47 inches by 59 inches.

I also added the binding to my ABC Table Scraps Challenge today. I ended up hand stitching it down since I completely forgot to do it by machine this time. I had an Unfinished Block hanging around in greens that decided to become a little table mat for the table I made in 8th grade that sits next to my recliner. A few of my things I have been using this weekend. My change purse that holds my scissors, thread and needles. Seam rippers, for the next project and my water and YLI blue thread for hand quilting on the Bear Paw.

Speaking of that next project. I made hubby a quilt back in 2008 and it has been used a lot! I did a little binding fixing this week and now am working on unpicking the machine quilting from the middle sections. It is not holding up well, not sure if it is my terrible machine skills, the thread or a mixture of both but I'm slowly working on unpicking it and I'll add some simple machine quilting back to just hold it down. This was a pattern from the Nickle Quilts Book.

A photo of the quilt top back in 2008.

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers (even if it is the unstitching variety for me today!).

Spring 2023 UFO Challenge.

Not many came off the list last quarter but a few did. I might have found more projects while looking for something so I added them to the list. Bonnie hunter mysteries and a Judy Martin 30s log cabin quilt I had cut out 10 years ago and have yet to start sewing it!

 1.) I know I have at least one more cut somewhere to fill that open spot for a 7x6 setting. These are hand pieced.... and might need a little fixing along the way on some of those middle joins. Just ordered some kona solids for an alternate block for these to become a quilt.

 2.) Hexagon flowers on a black background. These are a stack of blocks I hand pieced a few years ago then hand appliqued to the black background a couple years after that!  Not sure if they will become one or two quilts....

3.) Midget Applique quilt from Sentimental Stitches. I need to add more flowers and leaves and the vines... and the bottom yellow border. This one is completely hand pieced.

4.) Ella Maria Deacon blocks - make a few more and finish them off into a top. I believe I was making these by hand. Patterns from Sentimental Stitches.

5.) Purple applique hearts... need to figure out how they want to be set. They think they want a nine patch alternate block in a white and solid purple. I'm not sure if I should listen to them?

6.) Midget block collection - I started these in Vermont in 2010! I have a light blue for sashing.

7.) Civil War Blocks

8.) Birds in the Air block collection

9.) Harmony - hand pieced project started March 2021- one 28 inch block completed - 3 to go.

10.) Erin's Butterfly - I made the wings in 2021.  Need to add one more set of wings... thinking 9 is a nice number?

11.) Garden Path blocks - a few more got added last quarter. missing light green. I made 2 orange during the orange month. I need a couple of bright greens to round this one out. Completed 4/16/23.

12.) Full Stop Sew along.... 2021 . Re thinking this one - might eliminate some of the white space and make a few more of some.....????

13.) 16 patch blocks from RSC2022 - these are becoming scrap jar blocks.

14.) mostly cut out and some 9 patches are made. Hehe... from the first quilting book I had and made a quilt from. Introduction to Quilting 101 - the basics by Sharon Hultgren. I think this was Sunrise Surprise! The four patch from this book is at my Mom's hanging over a crib still!

15.) I forgot I had this. It is a cute birdhouse wall hanging but is foundation pieced, which I dislike. Maybe I can deal with it enough to get this done? Or rework it?

16,) This is a kit I purchased mid-90s - butterfly's. I think all the parts are there and I did start arranging them.

17.) Quilters Patch. A sew along that I completely did not meet my goals on in 2022. One block is done.

18.) Scrappy Flowering Snowball - I started cutting these with my accuquilt from scraps with the color of the month in 2020. I think it is time to start stitching them together. I see I need some orange added and purple and lots of lights!

 

19.) Bittersweet Briar

20) Brimfield Awakening EPP. I did start this and have the first fabric thread basted in purple!

21.) Bonnie Hunter Mystery - On Ringo Lake - maybe step #2?

22) Bonnie Hunter Mystery - Grassy Creek (2020) Think I am on step #4.

23.) Frosty McChill. Put these snowmen into a quilt. There are 12 of them in total that are done.

24.) 30's log cabin tulip quilt.

Quilt Tops: 

25) Cat and mouse is on the frame in process of hand quilting but has been sadly neglected.

26) Vermont Quilt Festival Booth Hop from either 2008 or 2009.  it is 71x71.

27.) Green Tumblers - a hand pieced top. 

**28.) Baby Bear Paw quilt top. Made back from a class in 1999 I think from Yankee Pride.  Hand quilting started 9/27/22.

29.) Trip around the World - 2 inches hand pieced. 60x60.

30.) Y2K Joann's BOM - quilt top

31.) 1857 Quilt Along Top

32.) Spring Hexagons - not sure if this wants to be bigger or not.... 

33.) Triple Irish Chain - green. 80x80 I think. I did find both fabrics extra with it... Might need a green or cream border first or both... Made in the early 2000's. circular feathers in open spaces.