The beagle quilt is a flimsy!

What a gorgeous day it has been here in Missouri! It is currently 75* with a normal March wind. I have not been out in it as much as I had hoped. I really wanted to get K's beagle quilt ready to do the embroidery work on it. I managed to get the last border sewed on and all the little running dogs fused around it. I think it is going to be cute. Now all I need to do is a blanket stitch around all the fused pieces and some embroidery on the dog's face. Then it will be ready to sandwich and quilt. I should be able to get it done by May 9th.

Sorry for so many pictures of the beagle quilt, but I couldn't decide which ones to use, so I used them all. LOL I have been quilting away on the Savannah Star quilt. It is about half done now. I would like to get it done before I start quilting on another project, but I'll see. Sometimes I just have to start a new project. (grin)

I finished the hobo bag. I was kind of shocked at how big it turned out. Even though I cut it all out and do know how to measure, I didn't expect it to be so big. I guess I will use it to carry library books or projects when I visit the kids. I took a picture of it with my hand laying on it so you can see how huge this bag is. LOL
Here is the inside. I had this checked fabric in my stash. It was definitely not cotton. I melted part of it when I touched it with my iron. I suspected it had some polyester in it. So I had to turn the iron down for the lining and back up for the outer fabric. I am glad to get that checked fabric used up. I am not really happy with this bag, but it is done. (grin) Yesterday was an exciting day. I received a birthday gift from Bren. I did not have a thread storage case, so I will put it to good use.
She even put some thread inside of it and it is Guterman. How sweet was this! Thank you so much, Bren. I love it and already have put some of the thread to use. (grin)Well, I have about an hour till it gets dark. I really feel the need to get outside and walk around, so I am going to go ahead and post this. I hope you all have a great evening. Thanks for visiting and please come again.

Working on some purses.

I know I said I would post yesterday, but I got started working on a purse, and just couldn't quit. LOL I am sure you all were on the edge of your seats waiting to see my updated sweet potato pictures. Right? LOL So without further delay, here is what the sweet potatoes looked like on Saturday. You can just barely see the root system on this one, but it has a good one which I am assuming is why I am getting such great slips. The other one is not doing well at all. I have already broken off about 6 slips and have them in water. I noticed this morning that some of them have little roots starting. This is one month after starting them in water.

Here is a closeup. Sorry it is kind of blurry, but I think the leaves are pretty.Ok, enough about the sweet potatoes. LOL Yesterday, I decided to try one of my new patterns. A new pattern is always harder until that first one is made. This took me pretty much all day. I picked out 4 coordinating fat quarters and went to work. I think it turned out pretty cute.

This purse was made different than any I have made, so it took quite a bit of reading the directions to figure it all out. In fact, I read one section of the directions about 10 times till I figured out what they were telling me to do. This is the inside. The camera flash washed the color out. It is dark red/black. It has 2 pockets sewn on the inside.It would have looked better with a black zipper, but all I had was this navy blue, so I used what I had. (grin) Here is the top of it zipped closed. It looks lopsided in the photo, but it isn't. Photographer, I am not. LOLIf I make any more of these, I will change some things. There were several places in this pattern that I know it can be done easier. (grin) It has one pocket on the front. The pocket is deeper than it looks from this angle. Again, the photograher's fault. Well, what do you think? It called for quilted fabric, but since I didn't have any, I quilted it myself on the machine. I used a piece of quilting fleece on the back and quilted either 1 inch or 1 1/4 inch squares on it. (I can't remember right off hand.) I used my little quilting helper thingy. (Sorry, don't know what it is called, but it fastens to the foot holder and runs along the line of stitching you have just done so that you have even rows of stitching.) I sewed all the vertical lines first, then came back and sewed all the horizontal lines. I am sure this is much more than you wanted to know. Sorry.Today I have cut out another bag. I call this a hobo bag, not sure what the official name is. I want to get it sewed together, but also want to work on the beagle quilt. I sure wish I didn't have to sleep. I also have not done any hand quilting in a week. Can you believe it? I really need to get back to that, but I am also having fun making purses and bags. LOL Here is what I am working on. I put a couple of scraps of the fabric around the picture on the pattern front. The outside of the bag will be the blue with daisies and the lining will be the blue/white checked.
I think I will try to get the beagle quilt ready to applique the little dogs around it. I can work on the bag while K is home, but I want his quilt to be a surprise. So I need to get off here and get to work. Everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

It's my birthday!

Good morning everyone,

Can you believe we had the biggest snow storm so far this season on Feb. 28th? Yep, we received 6 inches according to K. Then the wind got up, but fortunately the grader went through and plowed the drifts. I imagine the grader drivers are getting bored waiting for winter weather. LOL Anyway, it is supposed to be at least 75* by the end of the week. How crazy is that? Just normal Missouri weather.

Today is my birthday! I wish my dh didn't have to work so he could share it with me, but we sort of celebrated yesterday. He asked me if I wanted to go eat out at Ryan's, but I told him I would rather go to JoAnn's. So, being the sweet guy he is, he drove me to JoAnn's and waited patiently in the car for me. (He hates going in the store about as much as I hate going in O'Reilly's. LOL) I got some good bargains. I have been wanting some more purse and tote patterns. They had all McCall's patterns for $1.99, so I bought six of them. Aren't there some cute purses here?

I have been wanting a mini-iron for a while. I am getting kind of tired of steaming my fingers with the big iron when I press little pieces. So I used my 40% off coupon and bought a Clover mini-iron. Dh and I got a chuckle over the warnings. It said to be careful because the rod and little iron part get hot. DUH! LOL

They had fat quarters for $.99 each, so of course I had to have some. LOL I can see some of these becoming purses. Can't you? I also bought some Warm and Natural cotton batting. It was on sale for $5.99 a yard when it is normally $10.99. So I got a few yards. I also picked up a couple of pieces of fabric for backgrounds. I am sadly lacking in background fabric. So, this is what I spent my birthday money on. (big grin) You are supposed to buy something you love with birthday money. Right? I spent $88, but my receipt said that I had saved $136. How cool is that!? Dh drove me yesterday because I hate driving on snow. We stopped by a deli on the way home and got some chicken strips, stuffed mushrooms, and jalapeno poppers. Oh my, those jalapeno poppers were good. I hate hot stuff, but was assured that they were not hot. I don't know why, but they weren't hot, but so good! I also picked up one piece of cake. I wanted a cake for my birthday, but not a whole one, so I bought myself one piece. I will eat it later. Dh didn't want any. I know I am not supposed to have it, but it just wouldn't be my birthday without a piece of cake. You know what I mean? This morning, my sweet K also handed me a Hershey's bar. He knows how much I love them. He said he only bought it for me because it was a special day. So can you see a sugar high for me today? LOL I had better do lots of walking around to burn it off.

My sweet friend from Alabama, Teresa, sent me these amazing gifts. I love these books. The apron book has a few patterns, but lots of little short stories about aprons and beautiful pictures of them and some hints and tips about different things. I read it through in one sitting. I have already been planning some pot holders to make from the other book. It has some cute patterns. Now the mug is just the best. You probably can't read it, but it has my very favorite Bible verse on the front of it. It is Phil. 4:13 'I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.' I just love the inside of it as well.
Aren't those little butterflies darling? Thank you so much, Teresa. I love everything.

I really hope this post doesn't come across as me being self centered. I debated about posting this, but this is a journal of my life and this is what is going on in my life today. (grin) I have heard from Carolyn and Isaiah. Just 3 mores kids to call mama. Come on Cathryn, Hazel, and Jon. Mama is waiting. LOL A big thank you to my friend, Bren, for posting a birthday wish to me on her blog. She is such a sweet person and amazing quilter. You should check out her blog. I'll bet if you do, you will come back regularly. Thank you all for visiting my blog. I have some pictures of my sweet potatoes to show tomorrow. How exciting is that! LOL Please come again.

Working on the beagle quilt

The weather certainly changed around here. Yesterday at noon, it was 60*. Last night as we were going to bed, it was 15*. Now they are saying we have snow coming in. I guess winter hasn't let go yet. I went to visit mom early this morning. I got all of her monthly bills in order. I had planned to do that tomorrow, but didn't want to take the chance that I would have to drive on snow. I hate driving on snow, even a couple of inches. We had a good visit. She gave me some earrings and some money for my birthday, Monday. Then my oldest brother stopped by. I hadn't seen him since Christmas, so it was good to catch up. He even remembered my birthday and said he would call me on Monday. (grin) He actually gave me some money and told me to treat myself to lunch the next time I am in town. How nice was that! I filled the car with gas before coming home. It has dropped from $1.79 to $1.62. Not sure what is going on with the yoyo gas prices, but sure hope we don't have a repeat of the over $4 a gallon of last summer. I got home just in time to get dh off to work. He is glad that it is Friday. He's looking forward to a couple of days off. I don't blame him. He works hard through the week.

I spent most of the afternoon working on the beagle quilt for dh. I am loving it so far.

What do you think? I paper pieced the zig zag border. I think it is called 3-D in my EQ6. I got the beagle design from this site. They have some amazing applique pictures of animals.

I am trying to decide what to use for the outside border. Which of these do you like best? The dark fabric at the bottom?Or this lighter fabric at the bottom? The plan is to put a 3 inch border around the quilt, then applique this little running dog around it. What do you think? One of these fabrics or a completely different color. He loves blue. Here is the little dog template. Isn't it cute? I put the beagle quilt up till next week. I hope to be able to start quilting it soon, but first have to do all the hand applique. This project has been fun to create and I think my dh will really love it.

I have also been working on some bags and purses. I have already showed you some of the bags I made this week. Here is a purse. I am not really pleased with it. The quilting just doesn't show up well on the flap. I should have used the fabric that I used for the back for the flap. Oh well, maybe I will make another one. Here is the inside. I tried to hold it open so you could see the pockets. LOL Here is the back. Like I said, I am not really thrilled with this one, but it does remind me of spring. LOL Do you see what I mean about the backing fabric? If I had used it for the flap, the quilting would have stood out nicely.
Not sure what the plans are for this weekend. I guess that will depend on how much snow we end up getting. Dh keeps asking me what I want for my birthday, but I can't think of anything. Maybe I will just tell him to buy me some more batting. LOL Sounds like a good birthday gift, doesn't it? He has suggested us going out to eat, but not sure I want to do that. I guess I will just wait and see what sounds good at the moment. Everyone have a nice weekend. I don't usually get time to post on the weekends. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

I feel better!

I feel better today than I have in over a week. Having the tooth pulled has been so rough on me, but I didn't even wake up during the night needing pain meds last night. I think I have finally turned the corner on this. I haven't done much of anything for 8 days, but sit and quilt or read and watch tv. I did manage to keep the necessary things done, but no extras. My hubby was so sweet and told me to do nothing but take care of myself so I could heal. I am still really sore, but the pain isn't throbbing and is controlled with Tylenol. (grin) It feels so good to be getting back to normal. I haven't even been on the computer much in the past week. So I am sorry if any of you were having problems leaving comments. Milah and Bren both emailed me to tell me I had a problem. I hope it is fixed now. If not, then I don't know what to do. LOL Thanks ladies for giving me a warning.

Look what I received in the mail this morning. Milah had four of these and offered up a challenge to 4 quilters to come up with a baby quilt using this pannel any way we wanted. I took her up on it and she sent the panel to me. I have some ideas already. I need to have it done by Easter.

Isn't this just darling? Here is a closeup of one of the blocks. Sorry about the wrinkles. I was so excited when I got it that I grabbed my camera and took a picture before ironing it. (grin) Thank you Milah! I love these prints.

I finished sewing the binding on the Tulip quilt a little while ago. I am trying to use up my scrap batting so the batting for this little quilt was thicker than I usually use for wall quilts. It turned out pretty good, though. It was fun quilting. Here is a closeup of the tulips. Of course, it wouldn't be one of my projects without showing the back.(grin) Doesn't this make you think of spring?
I had my fabric all folded and put away, then decided to see how many projects that I have started, but not finished. I found 6 bins with started projects and that is just the ones that were easy to get to. So now I have them all drug out. I have 3 baby quilts started (not counting the panel Milah sent me) and some table runners and a couple of large quilts. These bins are stacked up around my ironing board, so it is a tight fit, but if I don't leave them in my way I won't get them finished. (grin) I started on K's beagle quilt. I have the center square fused on, but have to do the embroidery on it yet. I think I am going to do a hand blanket stitch around the pieces. I also started on the borders. I am doing a different border than I have ever done before. I tried using templates. Do you draw around them or what? Didn't like that. So then I tried rotary cutting them, but it was an odd angle and let's just say I didn't have enough patience. So I am paper piecing these borders. The whole quilt will only be abut 30" square, so not alot of paper piecing, but I cringe with each piece because it wastes so much fabric. (sigh) Here is the center square. I think it will look better once I have the embroidery done on it. I think my dh will love it. I have half of the paper piecing done, only 12 more blocks to go. I hope to get the main quilt together tomorrow, then I can start working on the quilting next week while dh is at work. I just heard on the tv that winter is coming back. Not sure what that means, but hoping it doesn't mean snow. I am all prepped and ready for spring. LOL We got the wheel bearing put back in the pickup, so both vehicles are now in working order again. I am so blessed to be married to a mechanical man. He has saved us so much money over the years. When I say 'we', you of course know that I really mean dh. LOL I am just the 'go-for', but it saves him time and steps. Next on the list of repairs, is our Troy tiller. For some reason it won't start. Dh doesn't seem to think it is serious, so I am sure he will get it fixed in time for my spring planting.

I guess that is it for today. I hope to be back on the ball again with my blog, because I really do enjoy writing it. I do want to send out some hugs and get well wishes for Ashton and Ava. They have been sick with a nasty flu bug for the past week. Sure hope you both feel better real soon. Grandma and Grandpa are sending you lots of love.

Everyone have a great evening. Thanks for visiting and thank you to everyone who asked about my tooth problems and/or said a prayer for me. I appreciated all of it. Please visit again.

Some finishes and some bags.

I haven't blogged in several days. The tooth getting pulled has kind of kicked my behind. It is so sore that I can hardly eat. I am still mainly eating soup, jello, and pudding. My dentist warned me that this would be a painful healing since the root of my tooth had a knot on the end of it. He was right. I am now wondering if I should have taken him up on his offer of pain meds. Oh well, it has been 5 days now. Surely I am over the worst of it. So much for my low carb eating. I have been afraid to even get on the scales. When you are living on soups, it is hard to eat low carb. Oh well, I will deal with the diet when I feel better. (grin)

I sewed the binding on the cat quilt and now I am working on the tulip quilt. It has been lots of fun so far. I still have better than half of the Savannah Star to quilt, but I'll get back to it. Here is the finished Cat Quilt.

I really like the way this little quilt turned out. Since it is all machine quilted, I won't show you a picture of the back. While trying to take it easy, I have been going through some UFO's. I found this table topper that I machine quilted and just wasn't pleased with, so I put it away. I decided to do some hand quilting on it and finish it up. I call this table topper 'Midnight Rainbow'.

Here is a closeup of the little bit of hand quilting that I did on this project. I did this in 4 spots. It will actually make a cute table topper for a round table.

The fabric is actually much brighter than the picture shows. I just wish I had hand quilted the project, but it is finished. Here is the back. This weekend was so cold. The wind was really blowing and it was 3* when we got up on Saturday morning. I think it warmed up to about 25*, but the wind sure didn't make it feel like that. My dh and I took the truck and went to town. He needed more parts for the car, to get some cutting torch gas, and I needed groceries. We got everything we needed and started home. We were about 1 mile away from home (God is so good. This could have happened on I-29!)when the truck started making a funny noise. My dh drove really slow so we could get home. Can you believe it, the wheel bearing went out on the front driver's side? So this meant that we now had no way to go anywhere. Dh was determined to get the car fixed or he would have no way to get to work today. He worked hard most of yesterday and finally got the car fixed. I helped a little, but he kept sending me back into the house. He knew I wasn't feeling well. So the car is on the road, but the pickup is down. He is picking up the bearings today and will work on the truck this week. I am so tired of things breaking down around here, but I guess that is life. (sigh)

Since I was basically in the house by myself all weekend, I decided to make a little bag. I am very pleased with the way it turned out. I started out with a pattern, but soon discarded it for my own ideas. I think it turned out cute. The outside is made from a charm pack. The oringinal pattern didn't have any pockets, but I love pockets, so I put pockets inside of it. I am debating on whether to fix a little strap over the top of it for a fastener. I could make a tiny strap of fabric and sew a shank button on the opposite side. I think that would work ok. It was supposed to have a zipper, but I didn't want to put one in it. Here is a picture of the inside. See my pockets?
I plan to make some more of these, but will tweak it some more. I may also make some a little bigger. I decided to try another bag this morning. I don't like this bag, so doubt that I will make another one. It is from a pattern I found online. I pretty much followed directions, but didn't like the way it went together. I also added an outside pocket and appliqued a bird onto the front of it. There is a pocket on the inside and one on the outside. It is pretty little. I think it is about 6"X6 1/2" and 3 inches deep.
It is warmer today. I keep hoping spring is here. I guess I just need to be patient. LOL I want to work some more on the tulip quilt tonight. I have been in the bag making mood the past few days. I just may try another bag when I get off here. I have some ideas buzzing around in my head. My dh laughed at me yesterday afternoon. I was playing aroung on my EQ6 and have come up with so many projects that I want to do. I just kept printing templates out. He asked me when I was going to quit planning and start doing. LOL If I just didn't have to sleep! LOL I hope you all have a great day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.