Thursday

 It was a hand stitching night last night! I got another ED block completed and a great start on the next one. Somehow.... I only prepped 3 of 4 of the white corner kites. Lots of time was spent looking as I could have sworn I had it all prepped! Oh well the middle and 3 corners are all ready and once I make that last piece the 4th corner will be stitched up in a jiffy. Thank goodness my Lightning won the game with a little over 7 seconds in the 3rd period last night. I was too tired for overtime hockey!

I did a little drawing on the white board in my office.... this is what I think the border of the midget applique will be.

I laid out a couple of sides with the vines to check it out this morning. I'll prep some flowers and leaves after work and play around with it some more. I know I can't get all 4 sides to look alike but I'll try and get them similar on the 'curves'. 

Here is a comparison shot of the chickens from last night while Emily was cleaning the babies cage while Greg and I were supervising the chicks.... and watching the sky with lightning in the distance and big dark grey clouds blowing by. 

These ladies are about 10-11 weeks old now. We think eggs might start by weeks 16-20ish.

These are the babies - we think the bigger ones - the Barred rocks are older by a couple of weeks than the little Easter eggers. One of the Barred Rocks is smaller, sneezing and breathing heavier. We will see if she makes it. She is eating and drinking so fingers crossed.

Endless Diamond - found the original inspiration!

This photo popped up in my facebook memories today! This was the original quilt that I saw and fell in love with the pattern. 

This was my original attempt at drawing the block. I still have this piece of paper!

My version of the hand pieced block. Mine is a lot brighter than the original I am noticing.  A little bit of the brighter colors sure do make it sparkle. I have the 9th block in process and the 10th is already cut out and marked and sitting next to my chair. 

 

FaLaLa Sew Along.... Starting 9/21 at Jacquelynne Steves Art of Home....

Jacquelynne Steves from The Art of Home did a wonderful beginner to quilting sew along earlier this year. She is starting a free FaLaLa Sew Along 9/21 that will run 6 weeks soon. This will be a holiday or Christmas table runner. A few little embroidery blocks and she always has a fun setting. Will you be joining in? I signed up for the e-mails to deliver the instructions to me... we will see if I actually do them though! I could see some cute projects with the embroidery of the wreath and the holly leaf.

You can find the link to sign up here.

Endless Diamond

The 8th block was completed this morning. I managed to get this above shot before the below happened. Inspection time. 

I prepped another block yesterday so I have something to stitch while yelling at  watching the hockey game tonight between Tampa and NY. 

The boy wants to go look at fish today so I'll bring him to PetSmart and PetCo to do some investigative research. 

 

Slowing down Sunday

 There will be a little slow stitching and prepping today! I need to cut some more white parts so I can finish hand stitching block #8. There might be 49 of these for a 84x84 quilt top. We will see though! I'll also prep another 2 blocks for piecing today. 

I really do plan to get some stitches in on this quilt on the frame. It has been sadly neglected with the concentration on the hand piecing.... and helping with homework and ag projects!

My OMG for September is to start the applique border plans for the yellow. I 'think' I have a plan for these so I need to prep some vines today and maybe some flowers and leaves. 

Aidan wanted to make a cake so he did a red velvet cake yesterday (and cleaned up and washed his dishes after!). Both kids were 'decorating' it when I got home from Aldi's yesterday. They did Labor Day for the holiday! It is currently half gone =0!

Yes, we seem to have acquired 4 new baby chickens this week. 2 easter eggers and 2 barred rock chicks. The older 4 were feeling neglected on the blog - so Emily and I extended their area a bit this morning to give them some grass to eat as there is none in their enclosure. They ate a bit but were happy to walk back into their area after a little while.  These are about 10 weeks old now. 

Linking up with the other slow stitchers on this hot and humid Labor Day Weekend in Florida. 

RSC in red and maroon.....

 It is always fun to play with a new color at the beginning of the month.  I'm getting so anxious to finish off the cobblestone blocks for this RSC quilt. I cut and sewed up the red....well more maroon is in the stash so this is a more maroon strip. Once the yellow is done... (no, I have not made that one yet!), I will have 10 strips. Each strip is 14 blocks so about 63 inches long. 10x4.5 would be 45 inches across. Hmmm how about a 2 inch grey strip in between them..... that would make it around 57..... but if I do a row of black cobblestones and one more grey strip..... it will be 63x63!  

Then the question becomes what order do I put the strips in? A rainbow gradation? Willy nilly? Hmmmm. Decisions at the end of the day are never a good thing! (I'm writing this Friday evening). I just laid them out for a photo - no specific order.

I had my mini magic star blocks sitting next to the machine and finally trimmed them up to 4 inches and sewed them together. These had purple in them from August's color.

Linking up Saturday with the RSC.

I noticed I don't have to resize my photo's anymore when I add them to the post. That is a nice change!

Friday....

It appears I have a new nickname....'enabler'! Thanks Julierose =) Happy to pull others down the rabbit hole with me.

 Julierose and Chris will be joining in making some quilt as you go hexagons sometime in November. You are welcome to join us if you want. You can read about this project here from yesterdays post. It appeared no one stopped me and instead encouraged me to start another project! Now who really is the enabler here? My thought process is I should be able to finish off one or two of my RSC quilts by then so I can start something new. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! =)

I did get my 7th Endless Diamond block completed last night. My join at the V is a little off, but it fits at the end and I won't see it in the finished quilt so it stays! I need to cut out a set of whites to go with the colored parts already cut out for block 8. 

I also spread out the Easy Breezy Leader and Enders that I have been stitching around other things. I need to prep some more.... and find the missing last row of once that I was working on last week. It is somewhere near the sewing machine I am sure.

The new additions to the house. Aidan's chickens all think they are parrots and immediately hop to your shoulder. His older one Lily (emily renamed his!) does and this one Maple does.

I believe this one is mine that I named Poppy. Emily wanted a 'flower' theme and yes, since Lily is a flower in the first batch we let Maple in as a name. They do have pretty leaves in the fall after all.

The sleep in the weirdest ways! Rose, Myrtle and Poppy.

 Maple and Myrtle are Barred Rocks - A Plymouth Rock variety that will be the black and white striped and lay medium brown eggs.  Rose and Poppy are Easter Eggers and will have eggs that are colorful - either blue or greenish. I think the Sexlink Chickens we got earlier will lay large brown eggs. We will find out on those in a couple of months! That's my Friday update from 'the farm!'.