I've Been Busy!

Hello everyone,

I have meant to do a post on my blog for a couple of days, but it just hasn't worked out. I have been working feverishly on projects. It has to get warm here soon, doesn't it? I know I will be outside a lot then, so I want to get as far along on projects as I can. We had snow again this past Sunday, but it didn't last. The worst part of the day was the wind gusts. We just hunkered down inside and tried to stay warm. So far, April has had nastier weather for us than March had. Still no garden planted. They are calling for more rain to come in tomorrow. If it misses us, we might actually be able to get something planted this Saturday. (grin) Our oldest daughter is cooking for Easter. It is nice to have grown daughters to take over the family gatherings once in a while. (grin) I should get to see the grandbabies. That will be wonderful. I haven't seen them for over 2 months. I need to get some grandma time in. LOL

Now, on to what I have been doing. I finished the Peter Rabbit challenge quilt, but you will have to wait till Easter to see it. I will also post the links to the other 4 ladies who participated in it. I went very simple, but I think it turned out cute. I finished the binding this morning. Yesterday, I basted my niece, Amy's graduation quilt (the disappearing nine patch). It took me pretty much all afternoon. I finally got tired of basting with thread and finished it up with pins. I hope I don't regret that, but my back was killing me. I hope to start quilting on it soon. I got it all basted, folded it up and laid it on my bed. I turned away to do something and turned back to find this.

Doesn't Aeris look nice and comfy? LOL She beat Callie to it. Lately she has been more trouble than Callie. Here she is laying on top of the bag my dh carries to work. He has to change clothes before he comes home. Isn't she cute?I finished the blanket stitches around the running beagles last night while watching Biggest Loser. I love that show, but didn't care much for last night's episode. I guess I really don't care for the game play. I also don't care for Ron. I just think he is too bossy. Oh well, it is a game, after all. I am surprised that they all weren't sick after all of the junk that they ate during that temptation. Anyway, I will share a couple of pictures of the running dogs. Here is one of the lighter dogs. As soon as Kevin left for work, I got it out and decided to get it sandwiched. Since this will be a wall quilt and not receive a lot of wear/washing, I decided to use leftover pieces of batting in it. I used my walking foot and a wide zigzag stitch to sew the pieces together. I just butted them up end to end and sewed. It should work ok for this project and I used up some of my batting pieces. (grin)I now have it all sandwiched and pin basted. As soon as I get off here, I plan to get started quilting it. I marked the quilting lines last night, but they don't show up in the picture. It should quilt up quickly. I am so excited! I won a $25 gift certificate to Amazon from Cheryl. I love books as much as I love quilting. Thank you so much Cheryl for the generous gift. Well, these quilts aren't going to quilt themselves. LOL Everyone have a great day. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. I hope to post again tomorrow, so until then, take care.

What Happened?

Good day everyone,
Well, winter just wasn't ready to let go. I woke up to pouring down rain, then looked at the thermometer to see it was only 29*. Ohoh, that spells trouble. I was supposed to go get all my mom's bills figured out today and visit a bit with her. My dh didn't want me on the roads. It wasn't slick, but we didn't know which direction the temps were going and he didn't want me taking a chance. So I called mom and postponed till tomorrow. Then, once it got daylight, I went out and took this picture.

This was about 3 hours ago and it is still coming down. I think we have 2 or 3 inches on the ground so far. It won't last long, though, because it is supposed to be in the 40's this afternoon. Spring weather in Missouri is always so interesting. (sigh)

I heard someone knocking on my door a little bit ago. It was my mail carrier. He brought the package I have been waiting for. It is my yellow onion sets and Yukon Gold and Pontiac potatoes. We decided to order these from Jung's this year. We usually purchase these around here, but haven't had good luck the past few years, so decided to give Jung's a chance. Of course, it will be a while before we can get them planted. I am sure it will be at least another week if not longer before we can get in the garden. Especially since they are calling for more rain in the next week. Spring will get here some day. LOL

I finished the embroidery on the center beagle last night. Now all I need to do is blanket stitch around each of the running dogs. Then I can draw the quilting lines on and get it sandwiched to quilt. I was straightening up the pile of projects that stay beside my rocker last night. I found this table runner. It only needed a little bit of primitive embroidery around some cherries to be ready to quilt, so I finished that up.

This morning, I got it all marked for quilting and have the backing ready so I can sandwich it. I really should be working on some other projects, but this is mighty tempting. LOL Please excuse the messiness on my cutting table. I just can't work on things without leaving a mess. LOL Normally, tomorrow I would be taking Kevin's check to the bank and probably getting a few groceries, but since I have to go to mom's, I guess that will be put off till Saturday. It's just as well. Kevin's new glasses finally came in. We both ordered them the same day, but he has to have safety approved glasses where he works. So it took about 10 days longer for him to get his. We will pick them up Saturday. I know it is grocery shopping time since the fridge is getting bare. (grin) I will work on a list in a bit. Now, I guess I had better get back to the beagle quilt. I think I will sandwich this little runner and put it away for a while, or I won't get done what I need to get done. LOL Anyone else have that problem? Doesn't is look like it will be fun to quilt? This just may make me work harder on the projects I need done before May.

Everyone have a great day. If you have green grass where you are, enjoy it for me, would you? It is still snowing here, even though it is now 35*. LOL Thanks for visiting and please come again.

Happy April!

Can you believe this is the first day of April already? This year is just flying by. It is still cold here today. The weather people say we have a couple more weeks of up and down weather. Supposed to be lots more rain coming in. I can handle the rain, just not more snow. Looks like the garden will be late in getting planted this year. I will eventually get it planted.

I worked on several projects yesterday. I got another block quilted on my Peter Rabbit Challenge. I got all of the square in a square blocks done for the froggy quilt and the first step of the pinwheels done. I finished the borders on the disappearing nine patch for Amy. I even started the embroidery on Kevin's beagle quilt. I decided that I would machine applique the beagle and running dogs. After about 4 inches on one of the running dogs, I just felt it wasn't working for me. Oh goodness, have you ever had to rip out a machine blanket stitch? It is not something I would want to ever do again. Took me about 30 minutes for 4 inches. Then last night while watching Biggest Loser, I started doing a hand blanket stitch around the main beagle, only to figure out after another 4 inches that I was doing it backwards. Yep, the thread that is supposed to go along the edge of the fabric was about an eighth an inch inside the fabric. Ok, more ripping. Lets just say my ripper and I were very close yesterday. LOL I am using black DMC floss to do the blanket stitch. Then I second guessed myself and thought I should have used floss to match each piece, but you know what? I was not ripping out again, so black it is. (grin) Here is what the center looks like so far.

It isn't like I don't have lots of floss to choose from. I have 3 cases full, plus a bunch in a sack that won't fit in my trays. I guess I need to get back into counted cross stitch, but I keep telling myself the floss will keep. I have most of them neatly wrapped around bobbins and stored in cases. (grin) I started out making counted cross stitch samplers that had the names and marriage dates of our kids. Well, I have 3 daughters married and am 2 samplers behind. I also started out making birth announcements for the grandkids in counted cross stitch. I have 4 grandkids and I'm 2 behind on those. (embarrassed sigh) Maybe I should concentrate on cross stitch this summer while it is too hot to have a quilt in my lap. Hmmm, probably not, since I enjoy quilting more. LOL Plus cross stitch projects just move so slowly. I get bored before I can get them finished. Well, on to important stuff. (grin) I finished the borders on the disappearing nine patch for Amy. I know you are dying to know which fabric I picked. I took some leftover pink fabric and made little 4-patches for the corners. I hope I have enough of the green for the binding. It turned out 57 inches by 67 inches. That should be big enough for Amy to curl up under. Here is a closeup of one of the corners. This is all of the pink and pink paisley fabric that I have left. Is this cutting it close or what? LOL
Well, I think I will get back to work on the beagle quilt. I can only work on it while Kevin is at work. I also know myself well enough that I need to get it done while I am in the mood. If another project pops into my head, I will be off and running with it. LOL That is why I have so many projects going at once. If I decided Ihad to finish everything I had started before I could start another project, I wouldn't be able to work on anything new for a couple of years. LOL Everyone have a great day. Thanks for visiting and please come back again.

Working on quilts.

Good day everyone,

It is another windy March day here, but it is 61* right now. Our snow storm on Saturday did not amount to much. If you lived out in Kansas you probably got dumped on, like 18-24 inches of snow, but most of it went south of us. We had a little bit of snow, but most of the precipitation that we received was in the form of sleet and freezing drizzle. The roads were pretty slick for a couple of hours, then the sun came out and melted it away. So hopefully that is the last winter storm for the season. Now I get to wait again for the garden to dry out enough to work.

We had a good weekend. Dh spent most of it piddling on the computer or watching movies. I spent it sewing and quilting. Not much else we could do, so we both did what we enjoy doing. We were in the same area, so we could talk to each other. I found this cute little baby quilt, all cut out. I think I cut it out about 1 1/2 years ago but never sewed it together. So as of yesterday afternoon, it is a flimsy.

This went together really good. In fact I thought I would get the whole thing done without even having to rip out anything. Nope, not to be. I just could not believe that I cut the border one inch short. (sigh) I have my own way of doing borders. Usually it turns out great, but not yesterday. I sewed the star block on one end of the border, then sewed up to about 10 inches shy of the other end. Then I laid out my other star block, measured, added 1/4" and cut. The thing I did wrong, was I went by the inner dark blue border seam instead of the outer. So I was about 1 inch short. (another sigh) What to do...I had enough fabric to cut another border strip. but it would mean a lot of ripping out. Did I really want to do that? Nope. So I ripped the star block off the end of the border, sewed another small piece of border fabric on the border, then added the star block back. Here is how it turned out. If you are right on top of it, you can tell, but it isn't very noticeable from a distance.

I thought about putting some applique animals in the big white blocks, but I have decided not to do that. I think I will do a lot of quilting in them. I have a beautiful feathered circle quilting template. What do you think? This is intended for a little boy. Will the feathered circle be too girlish? Another thought is to do a cross hatch in 1/2 to 1 inch squares. I supposed that would look better for a little boy. I am in the baby quilt making mode. LOL Lots of babies due this year in our family. My brother has 6 sons, no daughters. Two of them are expecting babies. I figured there is a good chance of at least one boy. I plan to make a couple of pink quilts to have on hand too. It never hurts to have baby quilts ready. I am down to three blocks and the borders on my Peter Rabbit Challenge baby quilt. I haven't done alot of work lately on the Savannah Star, so no progress on it. I did start another quilt this morning. This is a Froggy quilt. I had bought the fabric for this several years ago. I was planning on making it for Ashton. He will be 6 this summer. LOL (Shows how long ago I started it.) Anyway, I had one block put together in a double nine patch design. It was before I was 'into' quilting. I didn't even have a rotary cutter and mat. I used cardboard templates, drew around them on the back of the fabric and cut them out with scissors. LOL I am thankful that I didn't cut up all of the fabric. Now I know why I never finished the original. It was blah! Not enough contrast. See what I mean. I have been stewing and thinking about this quilt for a week or so. The frog fabric is too cute to just discard (Like I would do that to fabric anyway!LOL) I also have a piece of fabric with larger frogs in it. I believe I intended it for the back. Now I just piece the backs if I don't have a big enough piece. (grin) Anyway, since I enjoyed putting the above quilt together this weekend, I decided to use the same pattern for this. Here is what I came up with. I made up one each of the two blocks to see how they would play together. I like it. I used the fabric with the larger frogs in it for the center square in a square block on the left. I added some light yellow for the light fabric in the pinwheel in a star block. I'll worry about the borders when I get these all done and put together. LOL What do you think? Isn't this a big improvement over the double nine patch that I started several years ago? So far, just making these 2 blocks has been a blast. I am finally 'feeling' this quilt. LOL I am sewing like a whirlwind. I want to have several projects pieced, sandwiched, and ready to pick up and quilt on during breaks in my day. Spring is here and that means a lot of busy work outside. When I come in from working outside, I am usually too tired to sit at the machine and piece, but I'm very seldom too tired to sit with a quilt in my lap while watching tv. LOL

I still haven't decided for sure what fabric to use for the disappearing nine patch. I laid it out with different choices.

Since these don't show up very good, I will show you some closeups. Here are choices #1 and #2.
Number one was my original choice, but now that it is together, I think it blends in too much. Here are the next two, #3 and #4. Finally, here is #5.
I asked Kevin which he liked best. He chose #4 and #5. I am leaning towards #4. That fabric is just so pretty in my opinion. What do you think? This is for an almost 18 year old girl. I just want it to be about lap size. I figured I'd cut the borders 5 inches. That should make the quilt about the size I want and also let the pattern in the border show up good.

Well, I guess that is it for today. I sure have been quilt newsy. LOL Everyone have a good day. Thank you for visiting. Please come again.

It's Friday!

Good morning everyone,

I love Fridays, because that means the weekend is almost here. This weekend will probably be pretty slow since we are supposed to have snow coming in. Everything was just getting so nice and green, now I guess it will be white for a few days. They say we are on the north edge of the storm and should only get 2-4 inches. Hope they are right. It is about 25* here and the wind is really howling, so it feels much colder. At least when it is nasty outside I can work all weekend on my quilting without feeling guilty. (grin) Dh will probably watch movies while I sew and quilt. I was so glad to get back to Internet Explorer 7. I won't be doing any more upgrades any time soon, let me tell you! LOL I did not get as much done yesterday as I hoped, so maybe I can make up for it this weekend. I want to try to get the top pieced for the disappearing nine patch today. Here are a couple of the fabrics I have pulled for the borders.

Once I get the center put together, I will see if these play nice with it. LOL If not, I have lots of different fabrics I can pull for my stash to try. Here is more of a closeup of the darker border fabric.

Here is a closeup of the lighter border fabric. I think I will put a narrow border of the green around it first, then go with a flowery border. Do any of you like either one of these? I will have to see when I get things together. They might be too much pink, but I kind of like quilts with just a few colors in them. Of course, I also like quilts with lots of colors. LOL In fact, I don't think I have ever seen a quilt that I didn't like.LOL

I was in Wal Mart last week and noticed that they had gotten in a bunch of pretty fabric. Now I know I do not need more fabric, but since the south Wal Mart has taken their fabric all out, I figure it will just be a matter of time till the north one does too. We don't have a quilting store near us. We have Wal Mart, Hobby Lobby, and JoAnn's. So when I get the opportunity to get something to stock up, I do. My hubby is so good about not saying anything when I come in carrying a bag full of fabric. LOL Here is what I brought home with me last weekend. Another view of the pretty fabric. Some of this will probably become aprons or purses. Not sure yet, but I sure liked everything I brought home. I have my Peter Rabbit challenge about half quilted. I am about 3/4 done with the quilting on the Savannah Star quilt. I really need to get started on the quilting for the beagle quilt. I want to have that done by May 9th. My mom's birthday is May 26th. She has strongly hinted that she wants a rooster quilt. I haven't even started that yet. I am trying to do some block of the month quilts. I guess it is a good thing that our weather will be nasty this weekend. Maybe I can catch up on some of this. LOL

Well, my dh will be leaving for work soon, so I need to get off here and help him get around. Everyone have a nice day. If you are in the path of the winter storms, stay safe. Thank you for visiting and please come again. By the way, since I am back to IE7, I can once again get my pictures where I want them. (grin)

Disappearing Nine Patch and IE8

Hello everyone,

It has been cold and windy here, so I guess winter just wasn't ready to let go yet. In fact, they are calling for snow this weekend. I really hope they are wrong. I guess I will have to wait and see. (grin) It dawned on me yesterday that I have a niece graduating high school at the end of May. I will need a gift for her, so I decided to make a disappearing nine patch lap quilt for her. I found some pretty pink paisley-like fabric, some pink with tiny green specks fabric and some green fabric, all in my stash. I have all of the nine patches made and 5 of them cut. Now I need to cut the rest of them and lay them out in a pleasing manner, then sew them together. I also have some pretty pink, beige, and green floral fabric that I think will look fabulous as a border. Just hope I have enough of it. Since I want to make this all out of my stash, I will make do with what I have. I actually have several pinkish floral fabrics, so I know I will find something. LOL Here are the first 4 nine patches.

I had several pictures planned, but may not post them since blogger is uploading so incredibly slow. I have other things to do today. LOL I will try again. I took the nine patches and cut them in half both ways. Ok, this morning I updated to Internet Explorer 8. I so wish I had not done that. I have had nothing but trouble since. I can not even count the number of times I tried to move the above picture before it finally worked. When my dh gets home, I am going to see if he can help me figure out how to get IE7 back. I am hating this newer version. You know what they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. My dh said it was my decision whether I upgraded to 8 or not, but I know he probably wouldn't have. Now if I can just get my old one back, I will be happy and content. I am going to try once more to add a picture and if I have problems, this will be it for today. I had several pictures to share, but this is just making me too frustrated.

Now that I have all of the 9 patches cut in half twice, I need to decide how to arrange them. I have 2 or 3 different arrangements or I can just mix it all up. LOLThis is the first one.

I got the picture to go where I wanted, but it wasn't easy and is so slow. Boy, I hope I can get 7 back. Here is the 2nd arrangement. Ok, that is it for me today. It is just taking too long to get the pictures uploaded, then where I want them to be. Sorry to cut this short, but I have other things to do. Everyone have a good day. Hopefully if I can get rid of IE8, I will be back tomorrow. Thanks for visiting.

I have a new toy!

Good afternoon,

Another week has almost passed since I posted. I just can't seem to get with it enough to post more than once a week. I guess once a week is better than none, right? LOL We had a beautiful weekend here in northwest Missouri. Dh and I spent most of it outside. Now today is another story. The wind is blowing so hard that our house is shaking. We have a wind advisory in affect. Even have some storms coming in. But back to the weekend. (grin) Friday I made a quick trip to the bank and grocery store. I also wanted to get the license for our car, but the DMV was packed. I waited in line for 30 minutes and there were still 8 people ahead of me, so I just came on home. I knew we had to go to town on Saturday anyway. I was so proud of myself when I came out of the grocery store. I only bought healthy things, mostly veggies. They had several things on sale, so I stocked up. My fridge is full. That is such a good feeling. I love peppers. They had yellow, orange, red and green peppers on sale. I bought some of each. I took a picture of the bright colored ones as I was chopping them. I like to chop them up and freeze them. Then I can use them in about everything I cook. LOL I just open the bag and take out a handfull, then fasten the bag back. Works great for me. Look how pretty these are.

I have them all chopped up and in the freezer. I wish I would have thought to take a picture of them before I chopped up the orange and yellow peppers. They were so pretty. The green ones are still in the fridge waiting me to make stuffed peppers out of them. I could about live off of those. LOL I also got some zucchini, eggplant, asparagus (I only buy this in early spring as it costs too much at other times. It was $1.99 per lb.), cabbage, tomatoes, mushrooms, avocadoes, onions, cucumbers, blackberries, and several different varieties of lettuce. See, I told you I bought healthy stuff. LOL I also got a good deal on diet lean burger, $1.39 per lb. So it cost me about $65 to stock up my fridge with healthy stuff for us to eat this week. I was really happy about that.

Saturday was a busy day. We were at the license bureau 15 minutes before it opened and there was already a line. Goodness, they are a busy place. We finally got our license, I stopped at the post office, paid our insurance for 6 months, then headed off to pick up my glasses. I really like them. I got the transition lenses. It is so nice to not have to always pick up the clip ons every time I want to go outside. I also picked up the few things I needed from Wal Mart. Kevin told me he was going to look at something back in lawn and garden and for me to meet him back there when I was done. Look what he bought me. I call her Katie. LOL

Here is another view of her. Isn't she pretty? We have a wonderful 8 Horse Troybilt rear tine tiller. It is too heavy for me to run. Well, really not run, but to turn at the end of the rows. It just kills my upper back and shoulders. So Kevin has to do all of the tilling. The only bad thing about that is that he doesn't always have time to do it when I need or want it done. (grin). He had told me he would get me a tiller I could run this spring, then the economy took a dive and we decided to wait. I was disappointed, but understood. So I was really surprised when he wanted to buy this for me. I used it to till the first section of our garden. I actually tilled it 2 times. I can turn it with ease at the end of the rows. Now if the wind would just lay enough for me to plant some stuff. I figure there is no point in planting the neighbor's field. LOL While I was playing with Katie, Kevin was putting new wheel bearings in the car. He changed them both. Now that was a messy job. LOL He was rather greasy when I came up from the garden.

I am so behind on starting my indoor veggies. I usually start them by the 15th of March at least, but this year they were started on the 23rd. Should be all right, though. I would rather plant things out in the garden a little late than early anyway. Here I have things laid out ready for me to begin. I planted 4 different varieties of tomatoes, 2 varieties of sweet peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, eggplant, cabbage, and basil. They are covered with plastic and hopefully germinating. I will peek daily to check for little sprouts. I have been busy working on some quilting stuff, but nothing finished, so no pictures really. I will share a picture of a top that I made last year. I think I will get it sandwiched and ready to quilt soon. It was an online quilt along from Judy L. I'm not sure what she called it, but I call it Shadowy Stars. I don't think I have shared it on here before.
Here is a closeup of the stars. I actually love the way this turned out. I am anxious to start on it, but it will probably be at least a month. I have a few projects that have to be completed first. Well, I think that is enough for me today. I bought some pretty fabric at Wal Mart, but I will save the pictures of that for tomorrow. I hope you all have a wonderful evening. I think the storms are getting closer because it is getting really dark here and I heard them say on tv that our county is under a flash flood watch. So I need to get off the computer. Thanks for visiting and please come again.