Sunday

 I will be working on my midget applique quilt today. I have the vines stitched down on two borders and these 2 flowers were added to this one. I need to prep some more flowers and some leaves to add to this.

The cat liked that extra vine hanging off the edge.... and thought it was a toy! Silly cat.

It appears we have cooler temps today in Florida with a high around 80 degrees! So much better than what we have been having. If Greg's back can handle it - we will take a trip to Lowes to get lumber and spend time outside working on the second coop.  The new set of chickens will not be the same size as the others for a bit so we can't intermingle them yet.... and this way we will have a place to separate them out if needed. These temps will be so much nicer to work in than the feels like 100+!

Linking up with the Slow Sunday stitchers.

RSC in Red...

Sorry if a few are recaps from earlier this week but they do have red in them! 

These are my Endless Diamond blocks I am hand piecing. Mine is drafted based on a photo I saw online but there is a pattern called Grandmothers Prize in a book called Great Scrap Bag Quilts 1980 by Jan Halgrimson. I got my book second hand from an on-line book store. My blocks are 12 inches and 12 are done. Time to prep some more!

This is my Stars and Nines top all sewn together. I have yet to hit Joann's for backing.... I was tired after the drive up to Gainseville yesterday and then a 1.5 hour sitting in the car and the drive home. It was HOT outside- 90 degrees and humid. Seems the AC was not working in the building so Greg was not a happy camper while in with the VA associated docs office either. This one is 48x60 and I have one more set to make a smaller version still.

I love how grouping the shades of colors really makes for a vibrant quilt.

This morning I finished stitching up one Stashbuster block to add to the other stars and nine block and 16 patch block in bright reds, and one flower for the midget applique border. I'll make another stashbuster and 16 patch block in maroons I think. The sweet confetti blocks will get made for next Saturday.

Linking up with the RSC Saturday morning. The kids have insisted I really need to get dressed up now. Something about horse riding in a little over an hour... she thinks I need to be presentable to go to the stables! If their wifi is working, I'll be checking out the link party then. Too hot to be stitching today.

I am so tempted to prep a few hexagon quilt as you go blocks though... I got an early anniversary present in the mail yesterday. Since I had to order something from Amazon, I went with the Quilt Sense Hexagons & 60 Degree Triangles in 3 sizes instead of the Daisy and Grace templates. They should work the same... and I can use the 1 inch hexagon for quilt marking once I ever put my hexagon quilt together! I will be good and get the midget applique to a top before starting this new project though =)

 

Progress?

 I don't know why I put certain things off. Usually, they are not as bad and don't take nearly as long as I think they will! Example - fixing the batting the kittens scratched up on the frame last year. It ended up taking me about 30 minutes.... yet I put it off for a year! I am a master at procrastination!

This time.... it was the midget applique quilt border. I have been putting it off forever! I decided this was the month to make progress and made it my One Monthly Goal. I put it off again, well I did make a bunch of vines with my bias binding maker 1/4 inch. They were sitting on the sewing table for a couple of weeks. 

I was on  a 1.5 hour video staff meeting yesterday after lunch. (I did have the camera on for the beginning until Peanut made my boss burst out laughing while the VP was talking as he walked across the keyboard... twice! I turned the video of me off after that and just watched them and listened... and stitched!) I finished piecing the white edges to 2 of my endless diamond parts and then attached them to the middle section. 12 blocks completed and I love how they are looking. 36x48 is the size right now.... it will get bigger.

I had pulled some fabric for flowers during lunch and worked on making some yellow circle centers and multi colored flowers and circle flowers while on the call. 

Since there was a hockey game last night... I knew I needed hand work (go Lightning - who will see Dallas in the Stanley Cup Finals!). I laid out the midget quilt and put the border along one side. I played with how I wanted the vines and used a few pins to attach them to the yellow border. I got this one side stitched down during the first period. I guess I should have prepped the top as well.... 

I'll stitch down the flowers in bits of time here and there and will be making a bunch more. I am thinking I need 5 or 7 flowers for each corner. I probably need to add a few leaves as well. Hindsight.... I guess I could have used a little vine sticking out of the curve as a spot to put the flowers.....but maybe I'll have to tuck some leaves here and there along the vine and near the flowers. Still a work in progress but it is moving forward.

Thursday...

 I managed to get the blocks sewn together yesterday afternoon on the stars and nines quilt. Only one set of 4 got swapped around in the sewing =) I plan to head to Joann's today to pick up a cotton flannel backing so it is soft. Maybe I can get this one pinned tomorrow for machine quilting this weekend. It looks like we 'might' get a little cool front to kick the temps into the 80's..... might become outdoor weekend work between weeding and working on the 'new' coop since we can't intermingle the chickens until they are the same size. This works out ok, as we need to separate the chickens for a bit after bringing them home from the fair in February..... and we will have an area to separate out if anyone gets sick. Speaking of sick... Myrtle is separated in a recycle bin with a heat lamp and wire fencing on top as she had a respiratory infection. We got the antibiotic Monday and she is a lot more feisty now - she even flew up out of the cage when Emily took the top off to change out her water this morning! Still sneezing a little but her breathing is better.

In between those seams I made a 16 patch block in red and started cutting out one of my stashbuster blocks....before I was asked to help make cookies in the kitchen by Ms. Emily. Peanut butter hershey kiss cookies were made last night. I have not had one..... willpower for the win! Ignore the toes that need a painting in the photo! Maybe that will get done this afternoon?

I also knocked out a 1.5 hour online training for girl scouts that needed to get done before Saturday for our fall product sale. Now to do the training and set up the troop for Clover  and Cheddar Up payments. Hopefully those are not as long.

Unfortunately 4 of the catfish have not survived in the tank. Seems the water PH went really high and they prefer a low ph. The last one perished this morning. We are currently changing out the water a little at a time to try and get the ph lower. I went out to get deionized water yesterday and picked up a few other things while at the grocery store. Got home and was missing a bag. Darn it - self checkout and left it at the store. Called and yup - they had it. I had to head back and get it.... it was the expensive bag - frozen shrimp, pork chops for tonights meal, can biscuits for last nights meal and a package of burrito's for the freezer for Gregs quick meals after getting home late from work.

Stars and Nines...

 I managed to make the yellow blocks I needed Sunday and decided 48x60 was going to be big enough so I laid out 20 of the blocks.

I seem to have swapped a couple of these around (left side bright green, purple, green and light blue) when I started sewing.... doesn't that always happen? I hope to get this sewn into a top later today after work. I'll have to find some snuggly cotton flannel for the backing of this. I have a roll of warm and natural and I know how I plan to quilt it. A scrappy binding will eventually finish it off.

Sunday... a day to relax....

 Yesterday was a stressful day for some reason. So much to do and not enough time to do it. Today.... I plan to relax and putter with a little of this and a little of that and some hockey watching in the afternoon before I head to pick up the kids tonight from Grandma. 

If you click on the photo - the bottom left is the last one I did. Notice the little penguin in the middle diamond =) 

I plan to add some stitches into block #11 of the Endless Diamond block and get it finished up. I started stitching this at horses yesterday. Then I'll switch to hand quilting on the frame to make some progress on the Cat and Mouse quilt while finishing up the hockey game. I make the middle 4 diamonds, then the corner parts with a color on each side of the white diamond. Then I add the white sides to all 4 corners before adding them one at a time to the middle. They are a little wrinkled since I just pulled them out of the bag I took to horses. Block #12 is prepped and ready to go as well. I try and get one of each color of the rainbow in each block pulling from the scrap bins. Hand piecing lines are drawn on the back of each. Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers and Oh Scrap. 

block#11 

There will be some machine and fabric playing in yellow to make a couple of nine patches and friendship star blocks this morning. Then I'll play around with those blocks added to 18 others (or 23? not sure if I want a 48x60 or 60x60 quilt) and get them sewed together. I had hoped to do this Saturday, alas that did not happen.

First it was horses with Emily.... we left the house at 10 and got home close to 1. Then I made my butternut squash pasta with brussel sprouts for lunch ( and used up the leftover supplies from the last time I made it!) Then it was lots of water testing..... we seem to have gotten a 36 gallon aquarium on sale 1/2 off on Monday for the boy to get fish. We tried the water at Petsmart Friday night and it was too high in the PH so no fish. He was very disappointed! I prodded Greg to help him adjust it and we had to made a trip to the store to get distilled water to swap some out....... a little more testing and it was around 5PM. I had a zoom wedding at 6:30.... the pet store has been understaffed the last 2 times we went so when hubby offered to take him (despite being in the car killing his back)... I let him! It was a good thing too, they arrived home at 6:30 as the wedding was starting! (Congrats to my niece and her husband!)  Myrtle the chicken attended as well - Emily was holding her. This is the one Greg named and is currently in her own 'cage' inside as she is sneezing and seems to have a respiratory infection. Antibiotics are arriving on Monday for her. Tractor Supply gave us another little barred rock in case this one does not make it. Emily named the new one DC - Daisy Chickolotta. She is a baby and about half the size of this one.

After the wedding and dinner was picked up, it was time to deal with the e-mails from 2 of Emily's teachers. Seems she is having issues with submitting things - documents not saving and work not being turned it. 3 weeks in before the teachers raised a red flag? Seems she is too shy to speak up in class. It was an extremely frustrating evening trying to have her show us around in teams, what she could not figure out and her brother trying to be our tech support. Figured out one thing just started so we showed her how to use chat to let the teacher know and ask how to proceed. Just need to do that with the other one... she was 'done' by the time we got to that subject. A very stressful evening.

The boy was tickled pink though - he got to watch his silly fish swim all around and get used to their new home. He got 4 velvet swag sword tail (orange), 3 hb blue guppies and 4 algae eaters called Otocinclus catfish to start.

RSC in red....

 I got a little red sewing in this week. I think I am going to go ahead and make the 2 blocks of these stars in yellow as well so I can sew 20 of these up into a special quilt to mail out soon to someone special for a quilty hug. I hope she will like it. I have been making 3 of these 12 inch blocks each month so I'll have 10 leftover at the end of next month.

As you can see, I also made a cobblestone row in black this week too. I was going to get that one all set to go.... but wanted to use the stars and nines for this special quilt so that got bumped up in the priority.

I seem to have finished off 2 of the Endless Diamond blocks this week... so I had to prep a couple more of these blocks for handwork during the hockey game tonight. This is one of the blocks I prepped with my templates and the mechanical pencil and thin pen I use for marking.

Linking up Saturday with the RSC Challenge.