Big Stitch Quilting

Can you believe I am doing three posts in one day? LOL I have not shared any sort of crafting in such a long time that I was afraid you would think this is no longer a quilting etc. blog. LOL  I am working on some BOM blocks, just about caught up with my May blocks, but today I thought I would share a new to me way of quilting. It is called Big Stitch Quilting. I am quilting Birdie Stitches this way.  I am using a Fons and Porter Utility quilting needle that I got at Joanns. It says #5 Embroidery on the package. I am using Perle cotton #8 ecru color. I just cut off a large length and go to town. I still make the knot and bury it inside the batting just like normal hand quilting.

I bought this PVC hoop thinking I would like the square hoop better. I haven't used it much, but so far I have not been too impressed. I think I will go back to my round wooden hoop. I am glad I used a coupon to buy this hoop at Joanns. (grin) At least I didn't waste too much money. Who knows, I might like it on another project. (grin)
Here is a closeup of one of the blocks and sashing.

So far, I am really enjoying this way of quilting. It is quicker and no worries about getting tiny stitches. LOL Of course I still love quilting the regular way, but this is a nice change of pace.

I was so excited to win this Aurifil Sashiko Thread Collection a while back. Sorry I don't remember for sure where I won it.  I know it had something to do with Pat Sloan and Quilting Bloggers.

Aren't these some fabulous colors of thread?

Well, I think I am done posting for today. LOL Just thought I would share my experience with Big Stitch Quilting. Thanks for visiting. Please come again. Have a wonderful evening.

The ducks and chicks are 2 weeks old.

The baby chicks and ducklings are just over 2 weeks old. Goodness they have grown fast. I had to make a special trip to town this morning to get a bigger waterer for the ducks. LOL A gallon waterer just wasn't doing it. They can go through a gallon of water in less than 2 hours. So in order to prevent a day of walking back and forth between the house and the brooder, I bought a bigger waterer. I took a bunch of pictures this morning. The chicks are at that awkward stage where their feathers are just coming in.

The chicks have feathered out more, but the ducks have grown lots more. Of course, the amount they eat probably accounts for that. LOL

Well, I think that is enough pictures for now. At this rate the ducks will be ready to move into the big chicken house before long. Can you believe how much they have grown in just two weeks? Thanks for visiting. Please come again.

Izabella Turned Four!

Our sweet little Izzie turned 4 last Saturday. We had a family party in KC on Sunday. What a fun day that was. I took lots of pictures, but will just share a few with you. Here is Izzie and her big brother, Noah. They are so close.

Here are Izzie and Maddy waiting for the candle to be lit. Hmm, we never could keep it lit for more than a few seconds. It was windy. We sang happy birthday anyway. (grin)

I love this cute pink hat on Ava.

Ashton taking a second from playing to pose for his grandma.

Noah.

Maddy.

That is Izzie above. Not sure why Blogger won't put the label above the picture. Oh well. This is all 5 of them waiting for that first piece of cake. Look at where all those eyes are focused.

It was a wonderful day. I treasure every day that I get to spend with all 5 of the grandkids since it usually only happens a couple of times a year. I hope you enjoyed seeing our grandbabies. Yeah! I am a bragging grandma. LOL

Meet Our Rabbits!

The week after Easter, I went to a swap meet/flea market that was only a few miles away. I had never attended one of these before. It was fun, but there was so much to see... all kinds of animals for sale or trade. I saw chickens, guineas, ducks, geese, turkeys, quail,  pigs, goats, sheep, puppies, rabbits, and even some calves. The rabbits are what I was looking for. I met this nice couple from our area and bought some rabbits from them. I bought 2 does and a buck. They are so tame and pretty/handsome. I brought them home. Then told Kevin we needed a hutch. LOL Yes, he knew I was planning to find some rabbits, but as usual we weren't prepared. So, we got to work and built a hutch.

We didn't want to spend a lot of money on this, so most of it is from scrap and recycled lumber. (The front leg on the right, isn't leaning like that. It is the angle of the camera.)  We still need to get the roof on, but need to buy some plywood first. It will have a pitched roof when we get done. We laid a couple of pieces of tin on top and held it down with 4 concrete blocks. Kevin said that would be enough to hold the tin on. He was wrong. LOL We live on a hill and get lots of wind. About a week after we got this built, we  had a day with furious winds. I was sitting in the house and heard tin rattling. I thought, 'Oh no, the hutch!' I looked and sure enough it had blown off. It took 3 tries, but with the help of the Lord, I finally got the tin back on and the blocks weighting it down. Then I drug 4 more blocks out and put them on it. Then for good measure, I stacked 2 tires in the middle of it. It has not blown off since. I am a good finagler!

So here is our Buck, Sam. He is such a love bug. Isn't his color gorgeous? These are basically just mutt rabbits, but I don't care. He has just a bit of Lop in him. That is why his ears flop around some times. LOL

Here is Sara. She is the eater of the bunch. Wow can this girl put it away!

Now this girl was supposed to be called Abbie. Hmmmm, she has such attitude that her name became Sassy. She tried to escape by going right over Kevin's shoulder when we first put her in the hutch.  She has pulled on her feeder and dumped the pellets. She just has attitude, but she is the friendliest one. I love her.  By the way, their feeders are now fixed where they can no longer dump them. We took care of that yesterday. (grin) Here is Sassy, our attitude girl.

We built the does cages in one unit  (a wire separates them), then screwed it on to the base. The base legs are treated 4X4s set into the ground. The buck cage is separate, but also screwed onto the base. At the moment, I have cardboard stapled over both ends and the back. Before winter, that will be replaced with plywood. I might also remove it once the summer temps begin to sore. They will need every bit of breeze they can get. 
Here is another picture of Sam before I stapled the cardboard on it.

I hope you liked seeing our rabbits. I visit them quite often throughout the day. They are so soft. When we bought them, we were told the does are sisters and 4 months old. The buck is about 5 months old. 

Thanks for visiting. Please come again.

Baby Chicks and Duckings

Good morning all,

Today is Kevin's birthday, so I have some plans in the works. I plan to pick our cherries and make him a pie. Since I do not like cherries, I won't be tempted to eat any. (grin) Can't eat the crust.  Being gluten intolerant is a pain, worse even than diabetes, but it is what it is. Ok, enough of the whining.

 Kevin is on vacation this week, and we have been so busy. We worked Monday getting the brooder area divided and ready for the ducklings and chicks. They were supposed to come in the mail today, but 7 a.m. yesterday the post office called to tell me my chicks had arrived. Yikes. I didn't have the heat lamps on or their feed and water out. I had to scramble to get all this done before I went to pick them up. I am so glad that I made the trip to Orschelns on Monday to get the feed and heat lamp bulbs for them. Something told me they may be early. (grin)  Oh my goodness, they are so cute. Here are the baby chicks. They are just running all over their brooder area. LOL

Aren't they cute? I have 5 Buff Orpington pullets, 5 BO cockerels, and 6 Barred Rock pullets. The hatchery sent me an extra BR. I love this hatchery. We have always had wonderful luck with their poultry. Their customer service is so good. This is Cackle Hatchery  in Lebanon, MO. I just can't say enough about this family owned business of 75 years. If you need some baby poultry, they are a great place to buy them from.

The hatchery recommended that I spread their food on a paper towel for the first day. They now have a nice chick feeder.

Here are the ducklings. I know they are messy, but they are just so much fun to watch. What characters these already are. LOL They found their food immediately. Much quicker than the chicks, and they eat like little pigs. I have 5 Pekins, 5 Khaki Campbell, and 6 Rouens. They sent an extra Rouen. So I have 16 chicks and 16 ducklings.

They dart over to their food, then run to the water. I stood for a long time just watching them. I was kind of concerned because it got down into the lower 40 last night, but those 250 watt heat lamps did their job. They were all running everywhere waiting for the food this morning. LOL

I'll try to get some better pictures now that they have settled down.  My brooder house is 8X8. I used a large cardboard box opened up to divide the ducklings from the chicks. The ducks eat different feed from the chicks and are so much messier. They need to be separated. Unless we get a duck house built this summer, they will share the hen house this winter, but adults do ok sharing.

I hope you enjoy seeing my new babies. Paula, I know you will be squealing. LOL I wish I could get good pictures like you do, but photography isn't my thing. LOL We also have rabbits now. I will do another post on them, so Blogger doesn't get upset with me for too many pictures. LOL Also want to do a post on my first 'big stitch quilting' project.

Everyone have a great day. Thanks for visiting.

Oh, goodness, this is different!

I came here to make a post about our new rabbits, but now I find everything on Blogger has changed. Yikes! i do not deal well with change. Dang it. Now I need to learn everything over again. Why can't they just leave things like they were? You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!  Well anyway, I am going to use this post to try to figure things out. If this works, I will introduce you to our new additions. I am going to go find a picture to add so I can see if it works. Here is a picture of Madsion taken in March when she and her  daddy visited us.

Now for a few Easter pictures. (Might as well see if I can post multiple pictures.) Noah loves to dress up.

Ava with her egg haul. LOL

Ashton gave me a big smile.

Izabella with her Pebbles' hair style. LOL

We had a good time and a wonderful egg hunt. We had a BBQ, our first of the season. I warned everyone about the tics and sure enough, some of the kids found a tic or two on themselves. This is the country, not the city. LOL After dinner and the egg hunt, we all went up to visit my MIL in the nursing home. She was thrilled to see everyone. I am very proud of this picture. It includes all of our kids and grandkids except Maddy with MIL.

Ok, I will try to identify everyone. Back row left to right: Jon, Jeremy (Cathryn's husband), Bob (Carolyn's husband), and Isaiah. Front row left to right: Ashton, Hazel holding Noah, Carolyn holding Izzie, MIL, Cathryn holding Ava.  And because I couldn't decide which picture I liked better.....

Now to see if this works. If it does, then it may be easier than the old way. LOL I will try later to make another post. I have piddled so long with this one, that I don't have time to do another one at the moment. Thanks for visiting. Please come again and have a wonderful evening.

Kevin's Christmas Lap Quilt

This week has been a stressful week. It has rained almost continuously since Monday afternoon. We did have a few hours break yesterday and today so far. It rained most of the night, though. So of course it is way too wet to do anything outside.
 Last week a deer ran into the side of the car while Kevin was coming home from work. It is dented, but we will live with dents. Hopefully the crazy deer survived. I am thankful my sweetie was not hurt and no significant damage was done to the car.
This week, the driver's side front wheel bearing went out of our car. Our only other vehicle is an old, old pickup that is on its last legs and drinks gas like nobody's business. Kevin was able to take the old truck and get the car parts. When I went to bed Wednesday night, I prayed to God to just give us a couple hours of sunshine and no winds on Thursday morning, so we could get the work done on the car. It costs us at least $20  day when Kevin has to drive the pickup to work. We got up Thursday morning, to lovely sunshine and calm winds. We got the bearing thingy put on in less than 2 hours. As we were putting the tools up, we noticed that the wind was really picking up and the clouds were once again rolling in. Our God is so amazing! He gave me exactly what I asked for. (big grin)
Yesterday and today has been spent trying to figure out some of mom's paperwork. Evidently some of it got lost in the mail. (Either that or she misplaced it. Don't know which.) She was about to lose a bunch of her benefits. I am so thankful to my sister-in-law, Gina, for going and taking care of this for mom when I just couldn't right now. (Big sigh) Maybe life is going to calm down for me now. I sure hope so. I have been too stressed to even sew any. Not good.
Anyway, I figured I'd better share pictures of Kevin's Christmas Quilt that he didn't get till the end of Feb. LOL Here it is.

Please do not look too closely at the intersections. LOL I bought those 5" charms at Walmart. It was in a pack or 100 precuts. Hmm, I had Kevin help me lay them out in what he thought was a pleasing look. I never even thought to measure these squares. I just picked them up and sewed away. LOL Well, they are definitely not cut square. Once I figured that out, I almost just put the whole project away, but Kevin really liked these fabrics, so I continued on. He said he didn't care if the squares didn't all meet just right. I bought some extra fabric for borders and finished it . No way I was going to rip all those squares out, trim them, and sew them back together.  So be aware if you buy one of those $10 packs of 100 precut 5" charms from Walmart, they are not all cut true.

I had thought about trying to machine quilt it, but decided that would be more work than hand quilting it. LOL It would have helped if I had not gotten bored with it. That is why it took me so long to finish. All those similar fabrics and quilting 'X's just got boring after a while. Sorry no pictures of Kevin holding it. He would rather have a tooth pulled than get his picture taken. LOL But Callie sure gave her approval. This was within minutes of finishing it. LOL

Here is the back of it with Callie and Aeris both laying on it. I think Kevin had been laying on the bed, using it. When he got up he just threw it off himself. Didn't take our ladies long to find it. LOL

Well, that is it for today. Thank you for visiting. Please come again.