Sunday....

 It is almost to a slow down timeframe in my household! After the go, go, go for the last 2 months I am not quite sure what to do with myself! Emily had her Advanced band competition yesterday which her Dad was tagged to attend and cheer her on. I was at a Cookie booth to sell girl scout cookies for our troop all morning. I have officially decided I am done and this is my last year leading a troop and I'll Juliette Emily next year. It was a scramble to offload the last of the cookies we had in stock yesterday. I have one more case of thin mints spoken for that will be picked up later today. I did drop off 14 boxes of assorted cookies to our Home Town Hero's yesterday - We donated them to our local fire station and ambulance crew. Lets just say there was a huge smile on their faces when I dropped off the box and said -'Thank you for all you do.'.

Kids are off to Grandma's house for the day - the first time in over a month I think! I need to do some cleaning (sigh, I've put it off long enough I guess!) and then I will have to finish cutting out the memory quilt things so I can get that sewn together. She really wants her quilt so I MUST get it finished for her. 

I will take some time later today to add more stitches to the Hexagon QAYG to get another section together. This is the one that I needed to add more hexagons to in order to have the right number to finish off the quilt. The Thomas the train and the bees make me smile on this one! I am itching to finish up the Hexagons so I can get back to hand quilting my Endless Diamond quilt in the hoop. 5 Hexagon QAYG sections completed of 8 - working on section 6 now. 

As for the butterfly's - I had a thought Thursday night and I think I am going to go with it. Instead of using fabric for the body of the butterfly, I am going to embroider it! We will see how it turns out. I did get some black embroidery thread so I'll give it a try and see how it looks. I also need to prep the yellow butterfly for applique to the background this month as well. It looks a little off kilter in the photo - and it is slightly higher on one end in the photo - but I'm going to leave it. When in nature is anything truly 'perfect'? 

Linking up with the other Slow Turtle Stitchers at Kathy's Quilts. 

Sunday....

 Well, I have not seen the very disappointed boy yet this morning. After an 11 hour day at the FIRST Robotics competition yesterday we all are exhausted. They were extremely disappointed to not advance but we are trying to find the positive with him - your Lego Robotic run time increased from the last competition and you did much better on your project presentation. All in all, it was a great experience for them and they really have grown this year and learned to work as a team. Another positive - he was offered a spot in the AICE Robotics program at the high school he plans to attend. He was offered a spot in the AICE program already so will be in both programs next year. He plans to do something in engineering in his future. This was his team - Issac, Aidan and Payton. So far 2 of the 3 are in the AICE Robotics program... the 3rd one is waiting on a spot to open up.

With all that time yesterday I did not sit and take a single stitch while there. Too much going on and we were trying as the parents to make sure the boys were where they needed to be all day. Their Coach (teacher) had 7 teams there and the other Coach got pulled in as a Judge so it was all on him. 3 teams had Robot malfunctions so he was out straight trying to fight fires all day. 

Today is a prepping day - I'll be playing with interfacing and adding it to some tops so I can cut parts for a Memory quilt. Yes, not much progress but the pile of 6.5 inch squares is getting bigger. I just need to add more variety from the clothing provided and then I can start playing with layout. The goal today is to get all the cutting done.

I hope to relax tonight with some slow stitching. Since the month is nearly up, I really need to stitch down the teal butterfly before March begins. That will be this evenings task I think. I also need to finish up the red one from last month! These are called Erin's Butterfly and I found the pattern in Great Scrap Bag Quilts by Jan Halgrimson.

Looks like this week is advanced band extra practices after school for the girl for the upcoming competition. They had a concert for preliminary judging and more experience playing in front of an audience on Thursday evening. They did really well. I was impressed with how good they sounded as a Middle school band. 

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers. 

Sunday, Sunday

 I have been doing a lot of slow stitching this week. The QAYG Hexagons are close to having 4 sections done.. which when stitched together is half of the quilt (88x34).  I have the last row to attach on the 4th section and then I might just stitch all 4 sections together. This turned out better than I had hoped!

I started the red applique of Erin's Butterfly onto the background. I hope to stitch the black body today and add the antenna. I also prepped the teal butterfly to it's background for February. 

I don't think Emily got to the coop yesterday so I'll do a quick clean out there and check their water and food bins. So far - no more critters in the backyard other than the chickens, thank goodness. 

I know a quick run to the store for lunch items for the kiddo's is on tap, unless I stop in Inverness after picking up the kids from Grandma's house tonight. I have a batch of oatmeal chip cookie dough chilling in the fridge waiting to be baked off. Those might last until Tuesday.

Aidan's team advanced to the next round in Robotics so there will be lots of early and late times at school to work on revising things a bit. I should be able to go to the next one and watch as it is local here in Ocala instead of up in Tallahassee like previous years. Emily will have extra band practices as well as she was boosted up to Advanced band for a couple of concerts they have coming up in the next couple of months. Emily is just doing the Horse Evaluation team this year in FFA and not showing the chickens. She has that in a couple of weeks at the state fair in Tampa.  Of course, girl scout cookies arrive next Saturday as well - so my month of February looks to have lots of juggling and hand work opportunity time. Good thing I have lots of possible projects to select from! (Hexagons, embroidery frosty, cross stitch, knitting, crochet, applique)

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

RSC in Red

Finishing up with red this weekend. I hope to make a few more nine patches in red. I used 1.5 inch strips for these and it looks like a ruler set I already have will work for the other 2 parts needed for the Jacks Chain quilt. This year I will work on making bunches of nine patch blocks. I am using a white dot print - because I know I can get more of it easily.

I added another crossed canoe block in red for 2 this month. I love how it looks like a curve but is really just an illusion.

The butterfly block has been hand appliqued onto the background and the body is back basted. It needs some embroidery antenna and the body stitched down. After a double kid late pick up (Emily normal time 3:45 and Aidan at 5:30 so we hung around the school for him - we live a bit away and with Friday traffic I was afraid I would not make it back in time), then home for a quick bite before I headed to Inverness 45 minutes away to swap cars with Papa Andy. I was too tired to finish up the butterfly last night. It should get completed tonight if I am not too wiped out from Thinking Day with Emily and the troop. I am transporting 4 girls and my co-leader so I needed the bigger van.  We chose England this year. They moved the venue since it is COLD here in Florida today. It is not slated to get much into the 40's all day where I am, so a bit chilly for people who do not have proper clothing for cold weather. It will be in the 80's again in a few days! 

 

 

Linking up with the RSC Challenge. 

The boys are off to a robotics tournament  (FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) in our area. There are 10 teams from the middle schools and our school is sending 6 teams. It is the first time Aidan has gone so it should be a good learning experience. He and another boy on his team put in extra hours before and after school this week to finish up their projects. Thank goodness the 3rd one is back from being out for 10 days so he will be able to be there today as well to help out. Lets just say he was really excited and anxious, but really excited last night when I picked him up from school. Something about a robot flip worked and is worth up to 40 points? They also have a quick jab to move the chicken out of the way instead of going around it? I think it will make sense after I see the video Greg will take today but the teacher was laughing and gave them a fist bump. He might have also called their Homeroom teacher and got them excused Friday morning to stay in his class to continue working for the 40 minutes before their block day class started! They got from 8am until close to 11 to work on it as well as 3:45-5:30 last night. It was a long day at school. 

I'd better grab breakfast before the girls start arriving at my house. 

A little red stitching...

I got the inner circle cut and hand stitched to the wings for the red butterfly. I think I picked the black for the bodies of these and just need to cut out 9 of them and then I'll start the process of hand applique to the background and adding some embroidery antenna as well.

I had forgotten I planned to use the crossed canoe die this year for the RSC. I pulled this red and some white dot print and quickly stitched up this 9 inch block. I think I will pull another red and make one more - 2 each month for 10 months will make 20 blocks. 36x45 will make a nice baby size quilt I think. 

 I still need to make some little nine patch blocks using 1.5 inch squares for the eventual Jacks Chain quilt. That will be this week's project I think.

I continue to stitch together the hexagons I was making last year. The second section of 12 is now stitched together. 2 down and 6 to go!

Linking up on Saturday morning with the RSC.  

RSC in red

 Finishing up 2021 projects.

I made the last 2 blocks for the RSC Squares this week. Now I can play with the blocks and start stitching them together. I do need to press them first - the ironing board was full and I was too lazy to clear it off for pressing.

Peanut had to inspect the blocks.

I also cut out the wings for Erin's Butterfly in red. They are stitched into their wings. I need to press, cut the inner circle and hand stitch that to each wing and then I can baste it. I think I was planning to applique them to the background this year and add the body and antennae. 2023 for hand quilting it. I will have 9 blocks - when the red is completed I'll have 8 and just need to add one more color to the mix.

Linking up Saturday with Angela and the RSC.

Wednesday check in....

 The kids are back in school! If you heard a big cheer this morning, it might have been me dropping them off to school! They both indicated that just a few of their teachers wore masks, the principal did (as they said he always has his on! Smart man!). Not many kids did- about what it was in December. As the Florida government passed a law in November not allowing masks mandates, vaccine mandates, and allowing parents to opt out of quarantining and isolation.... it should be an interesting month.

I opted out of a GS leader meeting tonight as I know the only ones wearing a mask would be me and Jenny, another leader who lost a parent to a few girls in her troop in October to COVID. I am planning to meet with my troop for our normal Monday night meetings,  but we meet at a church where masking is required and the girls and parents respect that. There are only 6 now so I can spread them out well too.

Lets see - meals for the week since I know I struggle with coming up with things I figured others do as well! Monday it was cool (60 degrees and lovely weather from the 85 on Sunday!). I decided it was a great night for meatloaf and baked potato with green beans. I use the Betty Crocker cookbook for my meatloaf - and use about 3-4 pieces of white bread instead of bread crumbs because that is what my Mom did!. We add mozzarella to half the loaf in the middle (emily does not like the cheese in there and she helped make it) and ketchup on top. Tuesday - I had ground pork to use since I forgot to separate it before I froze it and there was 24 ounces in the package. I had half a cabbage in the fridge and some carrot and scallion so I made Egg Roll in a Bowl on Tuesday night. Ms. Emily made some rice in the quick cooker (Pampered chef version of insta pot) and added some soy sauce and an egg to make her version of Japanese Steak House rice.  Wednesday.... it was lemon chicken with thyme over rice with green peas. I believe if I remember to get mushrooms tomorrow we will do beef stroganoff on Thursday with a green salad and egg noodles. Friday - Papa Johns Pizza (supporting the local economy!). I have been doing salads for lunch with cucumber, roma tomato, olives, hard boiled egg and a home made vinegrette. Breakfast has been oatmeal with craisins and a little brown sugar. 

As for sewing.... I have been stitching away at hexagons and have all the black ones into sets of 4. I'll prep the needed extra hexagons to finish up the color sets tomorrow and then will begin putting the sets of 4 into sets of 8. 

I have tomorrow off so I will plan to do a little prep work on the memory quilt and sew the last 2 blocks needed for the RSC21 Squares quilt. I was able to find and cut out the parts needed for the four patches and all the other squares for a maroon and a red block.  I also pulled out the little basket of red scraps and cut out 20 'wings' for a red butterfly block. I should be able to  machine stitch that tomorrow so I can hand baste it in the car line tomorrow.

I may take the 2 crumb blocks in red and stitch them together to make a table placemat size rectangle. I am picturing a nice white snowman on one side of the placemat. He might need a jaunty top hat... we will see what happens.

Saturday in green

 A few touches of light and bright green this week - I cut out a slew of hexagons last night and about 10 are ready for prepping for stitching. If I am tagged with the horses run today that is what I will be working on. 

I pulled some darker green and stitched up this block since I did not have a dark green in the mix for this collection. Something about forgetting the correct size to cut things and my block ended up 12 inches instead of 16! oops. All fixed now. 

I got a bright green butterfly block stitched and basted. All set for applique onto a background next year. This is going to be a multi year project.

I saw this bumblebee this week and managed to get him right after he came out from getting some nectar. 

I hope to see more green and some bits of orange later today when we head to the pumpkin patch! I wish the cool front had gone through already, but alas it looks like later tonight. It will be a hot and sunny day walking around the field. 

Linking up with the RSC Challenge.

Sunday stitching

 Happy Thanksgiving to our northern neighbors up in Canada. Kathy reminds us each week to slow down, breathe in and stitch to relax. After a little picking up, cleaning and errand running I am ready to settle in with a movie and some relaxing stitching. I might have also promised the cat he could snuggle on my lap if he would let me sew for a bit earlier!

I forgot I had one orange hexagon left to 'quilt' and this time I will embroider a pumpkin. I completely forgot to prep more hexagons in bright and light green so maybe I'll do that later tonight.

Done!

I was working on drawing, cutting and sewing these butterfly wings together by machine earlier. I need to mark 1/4 inch around those circles and cut it out still. That will go on the inside of the butterfly, then I'll basted it 1/4 inch in all around for future applique onto a background.

Done!

Then the seam ripper will be in use to remove the bottom border off Aidan's Twilight Hopscotch quilt. One errand was to look for more of the blue dot print for the backing but alas, they did not have any at that store. I'll try another one tomorrow or come up with another solution. 

The top section with 2 rows of blocks is the 'new' section.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Finishing off orange

As I was looking through the blocks I am making for the RSC - I saw I had not done the Full Stop one. Angela mentioned a dash at the beginning of the month. I decided to give it a try - 2.5 inch by 4.5 inch for my dashes. I added a top and bottom to that in white. Then I added a 6.5x2.5 on each side and stitched them together. I think they came out pretty good!

I also stitched together the butterfly's and basted them. Next year I'll work on adding them to a background I think. 

I never got to the garden path blocks in orange. Oh well, that's what the catch up months are for.

Linking up Saturday morning with the RSC.

 

Teal wrap up

Why he thinks he is helping while laying right here I have no clue. Peanut is a very needy boy!

I have parts for Erin's butterfly. I need to hand stitch the middle curve then baste it still. The full stop question marks, the garden path blocks and one of the scrappy squares in teal.

I'll link up Saturday for the RSC where we will find out Septembers color for the challenge. 

 

Saturday in Purple....

Lets see how the month went in purple, shall we?

I added a few blocky blocks in purple this month.

I stitched ahead and got my 30 purple Hexagon QAYG done.

I added my purple Erin Butterfly to the pile.... missing green and red I see...

2 of these purple blocks were added to the pile. I am missing the green in this set so I'll catch up on the next green month.

Linking up with the RSC Challenge. I hope to finish up the table topper today.

Thursday, the boy and I headed to Fort King here in Ocala. It was a self guided tour of the grounds with posted information to read all about the various wars. They rebuilt the fort walls a couple of years ago. We were the only ones there. We liked the garden, where we saw herbs, egg plant, tomato, peppers and a few other plants growing. This pretty butterfly allowed a nice photo. After the fort Aidan and I went out to eat at Moes Southwestern Grill. It was a nice Mom and son outing.

 

Saturday RSC in purple

I have been in avoidance and so not really sewing. The graduation quilt is to the point of needing long borders attached. I really dislike cutting and sewing long seams. I may remeasure.... is it really needed? Sigh. Since I am not letting myself sew other things until that gets done, pinned and machine quilted not much has happened this week. It will get tackled this weekend however - it is mid month and the kids will be overnight at Grandma's to head to the car races tonight.

A few more purple hexagons were added this week and a slew more were prepped. 

The purple Erin's butterfly was made and basted. While out with Emily we picked up a background fabric for these - it is a big white dot on white. I need to figure out the size to cut for applique. It recommends 12.5 but that is really tight with them filling out the whole block so I might go with 14.5 or 15 with extra space around them.

I pulled out the hearts I made last year - hand applique from a charm pack. That left some interesting cuts leftover which I started sewing together. I think I'll cut out that middle that is created and the rest might go into a crumb block of some sort. I believe I have some of those around the sewing room somewhere. I can't touch those until the grad quilt is farther along in the process though!

I found some extra blocks and added a purple border on one that will be finished off into a table topper I think. I also sewed four leftover friendship stars together for another little 12 inch block. That one might become a hot mat if I can find that batting in the sewing room!

Linking up with the RSC where everyone is playing with purple.

A little Sunday Slow Stitching

 I spent the morning digging in the pile of purple scraps and tracing out the wings for Erin's Butterfly. I need 20 of them and found a good variety in my scraps. I stitched them together on the machine and then will hand stitch the inner circle part and then baste the seam allowance down all around so it will be all set for applique to a background at some point in the future. 

I'm doing these with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge but it looks like I missed green (there is another green month I think so I'll add that one then) and last month's red was missed. I might pull out the reds and prep that today as well. While I am thinking of that, I'll stitch the inner purple onto the wings.

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers. 

Sunday stitching...

 It has been a s l o w start for me today after a long night! Emily and I went to the drive in last night (a girl scout event) and watched a double feature. Tom and Jerry and then The Blind Side. We got home around 11:30 - hubby was waiting up for us. Emily and I had chatted on the way home where we wondered if he would be awake. I told her he probably would be since we tend to make sure the other gets home safely before turning in for the night. 'Why' she asked. I said that is what you do when you care about someone... you make sure they are home safely!

Our badges for the event and our ticket vouchers for our meal and popcorn for the movie.

The cats didn't care I got to bed late and Sophie wanted food before 7AM. Since I was awake.... I let the chickens into the run about 7:15. The splitting headache (probably not enough water yesterday and lack of sleep) had me back in bed when the neighbor decided to play weird music at 7:40 AM that I could hear inside my bedroom with everything closed up. I might have opened the slider and said something like 'seriously, loud music before 8AM on a Sunday?'. Amazingly, it got turned down within 2 minutes. That response has never happened before!

Some Advil and a little sleep had me waking up at 11AM and feeling much better. I sent out some prep work for my girl scout meeting tomorrow night (digital photography!) and maybe my photo's on the blog will improve starting next week? One can hope =)

Grandma is feeling better but called off on having the kids go over today for the day. The boys need to make a trip to the trash/recycle center today. The garden needs some weeding/tilling and the car will get taken to the drive through car wash so I (kids) can use their vacuum to clean the interior.

After those tasks.... it will be prep work and a little hand stitching for me to relax. Maybe outside in the sunshine in the high 60 degree temps. Perfect temps to be outside stitching today.

I need to stitch the remaining 3 blocks for part one of Harmony, then prep the part two blocks - half square triangles and stitch them up before block 3 is started on Monday. Completely do-able as they are easy steps. No progress on these this week since Tuesday.

I will also prep some more green hexagon blocks for the quilt as you go blocks I am making each month in the RSC color. Darker green this month of March.

I have the pink and yellow Erin's butterfly all basted and ready to be appliqued onto the background.  I machine stitched the blade wings, then hand pieced the circle part on and hand basted the 1/4 inch seam. I just need to cut out the background square, attach them  by hand and cut out the black body part to stitch down in between them. I'm not sure how many of these I will make - 9 maybe?

The pink and yellow ones so far this year.

I'll settle in this evening with a little hand quilting on the hand pieced quilt along quilt. The cats have been 'helping' this week with that project! Kathy asked about thimble use.... I never could get used to having something on my finger so while I have adjusted to using a hoop or frame, I prefer my fingers bare when I am quilting. 

We have an abundance of eggs (all 9 are laying!) - so I decided to make a quick quiche with some leftover asparagus yesterday afternoon. I did not bother getting out the recipe... or measuring! I chopped the cooked asparagus up and added it to the greased bottom of a glass pie plate. My recipe uses some milk and a little mayo, blended together.  then the eggs.... I used a bunch of the small to medium ones (maybe 7?) and a couple of extra egg whites from the sweedish meatballs last week. Poured that in then checked in the cheese drawer - added some provolone slices and some shredded sharp cheddar. Into the oven for 45 minutes covered and breakfast this morning was waiting for a warm up! I got mushrooms on sale for 99 cents for 8 ounces yesterday, so I'll be making my Sweet Tomaot's restaurant - Cream of Mushroom soup later today. Recipe is under the recipe tab at the bottom. My lunches for the next few days! I love this soup.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Stitchers....