Is this ugly enough?

Good evening everyone,

It is so hot and humid here that I have been hiding out in my sewing area for the past 2 days. We finally got rid of the storms, now the heat is here.(sigh) It was just a tad over 100* here a little while ago. I talked to my daughter in Kansas and she said it was 107* at her house. (Yuck!) I hate winter, but I think I hate heat worse. I get everything done outside really early, so I don't have to go out in the afternoon at all.

Our oldest grandson turns 6 on July 2nd, but he is having his birthday party this Saturday. We will give him a card with some money in it, but then I thought about making him a wall quilt. Do you think this is ugly enough for a 6 year old boy? LOL

I would hate to walk into this in the dark. Goodness, I have outdone myself on ugly and scary. Here is a closer view, if you can stand it. LOL I'll bet Ashton will like it. I hope so, anyway.

I had quite a time with this. I found the pattern at FatCat Patterns. So I printed off everything. Then traced all the pieces onto fusible web (There were a lot of pieces too!). I forgot that you usually have to reverse everything to have it turn out looking like the picture. (Why is that anyway? Why not just put the pattern pieces like they need to be?) Anyway, so I was trying to put this together by looking at a picture, but everything on mine is just the opposite. It took me most of the afternoon, but I finally got it done. He is a mirror image of the pattern. (grin) I think I will sew a simple border around it, sandwich it, and quilt it as I machine applique it. No one will see the back anyway since it will be hung on the wall. I am not very fast at machine appliqueing, so this is going to take me a while. I hope I can have it done by Saturday!

I won a giveaway on Kristie's blog a couple of weeks ago. I received my prize today. It is 4 fat quarters of flag type fabrics and 1/2 yard of pledge allegiance fabric. If I ever get caught up with things, I would like to make a patriotic quilt. Thank you, Kristie. I love it.

I know this is short, but the heat is getting to me. I am going to fix me something cold to drink and a cold salad, put my feet up, and just chill the rest of the evening. One good thing about this heat is that I don't eat as much. LOL Everyone have a good evening. Thank you for visiting.

Redwork Projects!

Good evening everyone,

I am much later getting on here than I had planned. About noon, we had more storms blow through. It didn't amount to much, but kept me off the computer. I guess that is a good thing. (grin) Of course, it also kept me off my sewing machine, not a good thing. So I spent most of the afternoon doing some redwork. I am doing a darling cherry pie picture. I'll show it to you in a bit.

Speaking of redwork. I won the 1st day giveaway from Sandi. She was celebrating her one year blogging anniversary. I received my prize yesterday. I am so tickled with it. Sandi could not have picked anything better. There are 2 vintage Aunt Martha transfers, 4 skeins of floss, 18 (8 1/2 inch) squares of Mary Englebreit red cotton fabric, a package of Mary E. self stick notes, a cute gift bag and darling card. That fabric will be so cute as blocks around a redwork piece.

Aren't these vintage iron on transfers cute? They brought back memories for me. My grandma used to embroider tea towels with designs kind of like these. There is a price tag on one of them that says $.55 from T,G, & Y. I remember going to that store as a kid, but it has been closed around here for at least 20 years. Grandma used to buy her crochet thread there. The designs are kind of hard to see, but the one on the left is a bride's work week and the one on the right is called hillbilly romance. It is funny. Thank you again, Sandi. I love these.

I told you last week that I was going to work on some redwork projects. These first 2 had medium weight fusible interfacing ironed to the back of them, but it must have been old because it started coming loose as I started stitching. It didn't matter, though, because it was already held in place by my stitches.
One good thing about the interfacing on the back, it made the design area stiff enough that I didn't need a hoop. I started out doing a stem/outline stitch on the star of this welcome design. It didn't take me long to deside I didn't like that stitch much. So I finished the star then did the rest of it in back stitch. I guess I am just a backstitch kind of girl, because that is what I have been using the most of. The cherry pie design has a regular piece of batting behind it. I have been using a hoop with it.
Here is what it looks like this evening after working on it this afternoon. I may try doing some work without the hoop now and see how that works. So far, I like both the fusible interfacing and the batting behind the design area. The batting kind of makes it look like it is already quilted and is easy to tie off the thread in it, but I didn't have to use the hoop with the interfacing. I will say, though, that if my interfacing was newer, it might have made the needle sticky going through it. Wouldn't want that, so I will probably stick with the batting behind. I am having fun with this. By the way, I found all of these fabulous designs to download free from here. If you like primitive, you will love her designs. I am afraid to say that I added to my evergrowing pile of printed off projects, but I already have several of them prepped and ready to start. (grin)

Ever come up with a new dish by accident that your husband loves? That happened to me today. I was planning to fix hamburgers for lunch. (Dh works the 3-11 shift.) When I went to get the burger, it was still frozen in the middle. I already had my skillet getting hot, so I just dumped it in. I chopped up about 1/4 cup each of onion and red peppers (cause I put these in almost everything I cook) and 3 mushrooms that needed to be used. After this was all cooked, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a drained can of red kidney beans. Then I looked in the fridge and found about 1/2 cup peas leftover from my supper last night and about 1/2 cup steel cut oats leftover from our breakfast. Hmm.... Yep, I dumped them in, then added some sea salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin. It turned out good! My hubby said to be sure to write the recipe down so I could make this again. So now, if I forget, I will come to my blog and check it out. LOL I think I will call this Hamburger Surprise. (grin)

Well, I have rambled on long enough. Of course, I have talked to dh in the mean time while typing. He usually calls me every evening during his break to make sure I am doing ok and see if I need him to pick up anything for me. Isn't that sweet? Yesterday, since the weather was actually storm free, I used my sewing machine alot. I came up with 2 kitty quilt tops from leftover blocks and strips. I plan to practice machine quilting on them. Anyone else make quilts for your cats or dogs? Everyone have a good weekend. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

The Almost Cat Quilt!

Good morning everyone,

Could it be? Could we have a day without a storm? It seems like a daily event anymore. I am beginning to think we are living in the northwest. LOL If it ever quits raining for more than a day, we have so much to do outside, it kind of overwhelms me. So I hide in my sewing area and try to forget about it. LOL I have tried to do a post 2 days in a row, but both times, I started to hear rumbles of thunder. Since it takes me so long to do a post, I knew better than to start one. I always unplug electronic things when lightning is in the area. Lightning and electronics just don't mix!

My hubby has discovered steel cut oats. LOL I have been telling him how good they are, but he was thinking of oatmeal and always said no thanks. Finally, yesterday he tried them and liked them. LOL So I am fixing more today. If he would have just tried them, he could have been eating them for a couple of years. (grin)

I decided to take the leftover strips cut off the ends of the wild quilt strips and make a little quilt for Callie. She loves my quilts. (grin) So I trimmed all the strips down to 4 inches wide. (That was the narrowest of the strips.) Then I found some old, old fabric in my stash. Carolyn, remember this dotted fabric? I think you used some of it when you were still home. I still have a little bit of it left. Then I found some 2 1/2 inch plaid strips I had cut from leftovers from a jumper I had made for myself several years ago. I started putting all of this together and liked the results.

Hmm, I had 14 strips, so I fixed another set to have 15. Sorry Callie, you will have to wait for another quilt. I am turning this into a baby quilt. She doesn't look too happy, does she? Then I needed to decide on a border. I thought about this planet fabric, but it wasn't quite right. Besides, I have several yards of it, so I would like to save it for a bigger quilt. (sigh) I am frugal like that! (My kids would probably say cheap, but I prefer frugal! LOL)
Then I thought about this fabric with the parasols in my stash. I had bought a yard of it a while back when it was on clearance. I think it worked pretty good. What do you think? Here is a closeup of one of the corners. I really like this little top. So now I will have to come up with something else for Callie. LOL I may use this pattern again. For scraps it turned out very nice. I sewed the binding on a little table runner yesterday. Oh goodness, did I ever have trouble with that! I had to completely take it off and sew it on again. Even then, it didn't turn out great, but it is on and staying on. LOL I was sewing on this during a storm yesterday. Sewing on black when you are nervous might not be the thing to do. LOL Here is a closeup of the center block. I took a Thimbleberries cherry pattern and appliqued them on the center block. Now don't look at that point that I cut off the center block. No way I was redoing that binding again. LOL That is it for today. I think I will take advantage of a day without storms and use my sewing machine for a while today. LOL I have a few redwork pieces to show you next time. I have found that I am better with the back stitch than the stem/outline stitch. Maybe I just need more practice? I am doing that, so I hope to improve. Everyone have a good day, and thanks for visiting.

My Wild Quilt Top!

Good afternoon everyone,

I have had a hard time getting here to post. I had to go to town Friday morning to go to the bank and get groceries for us and MIL. I got back about one. The net was down all afternoon. Our power started going off and on during the evening. Once it straightened its act up, I tried the computer again and the net was back, but I was just so out of the mood to post.

We had very sad news Saturday. My sister-in-law, Gina's, younger sister passed away after a nine-month long battle with bone cancer. Dana was 28 years old and leaves behind a daughter, 9, and 2 sons, 6 and 4. This is just so heartbreaking. Dana's funeral was today in Topeka. I am asking anyone who feels the need, to pray for Dana's family. They are having a rough go of it. Gina is doing her best, but she lives in Missouri and they are in Kansas, over 2 hours away. I feel so bad for these poor children. They are sweet, adorable kids.

We did not get much accomplished over the weekend. It rained again Friday night, so was too wet to work outside Saturday. I just didn't feel like doing much on Sunday, so I went to JoAnn's. (grin) That is always good therapy when I am down. Sunday was the first day of their Firefly Frenzy sale. I bought lots of fabric that was clearance priced, then half off that. Alot of these are what was left on the bolt. If there wasn't at least 3 yards on the bolt, I just took it all.

Everything I bought was 50% off with the exception of the Fons and Porter quarter inch seam markers (40% off) and the insul-bright and 6 X 12 omnigrip no slip ruler (used 2 - 50% off coupons) and the bright blue fabric under the ruler. I bought that to make a shirt for dh. It cost me less than $5 for enough for a shirt for him. (big grin) The insul-bright is normally $6.99 per yard, so I was glad to have a coupon for it. I plan to make some potholders and this is used in the middle, not supposed to melt. I bought the Quilter's 80/20 baby batting because I always seem to have a baby quilt that needs quilted. I probably should have bought more batting, but I figured I had spent enough on this shopping excursion! LOL

I finished the top on Dana's quilt along. I was pleasantly surprised at how it turned out. It is 72"X84" as is, so I don't think I will put any borders on it. Now to get it quilted. I am actually considering trying to quilt it on my machine, just straight lines with my walking foot. Bren, am I crazy to try this? It has so many seams and I have so many quilt projects that need to be hand quilted, I thought I would try this. Of course, I may end up regretting it. (sigh) Here it is with my dh holding it up for me.
I am having quite a time getting this blog post done. We had a nasty storm last night. Our power was out from about midnight till 7 or 8 this morning. The lightning was wicked. We heard it hit something, but haven't found it yet, so I am hoping it was just a tree in the timber. We had 4 1/4 inches of rain, so now all the creeks and rivers are flooding. We are supposed to have more storms come back this afternoon with another inch or two rain possible. (sigh) I really don't think I will ever catch up with the weeding in the garden now. Anyway, right in the middle of writing this blog, the power went off again. (Thank you blogger for automatically saving the posts!) It was off for about 5 minutes, so I guess they were working on it. Now I am trying to hurry and get it done in case the power goes off again. LOL

I have been busy working on some other projects. I have 2 redwork pieces almost done. I finished the quilting on a table runner and just need to bind it. I took the leftover strips cut from the wild quilt and made the cutest little baby quilt. I was pleasantly surprised with it, but more about that tomorrow. I want to get this posted. Everyone have a good day and if you are so inclined, please say a prayer for Dana's little sweeties. Thank you for visiting. Please come again.

More Storms...

Good evening,

It has been another stormy day. I checked the weather this morning when I got up and we were supposed to have storms move in late this afternoon. By 8:30 a.m. we were hearing rumbles of thunder. Not long after that, it started raining. We had lots of thunder and lightning. I unplug the computer and my sewing machine when there is lightning in the area. We have had it hit our house many times over the years. I would cry if it hit my computer or sewing machine. (grin) So I just don't take a chance. (grin) It rained off and on most of the day.

Today was a handwork kind of day. I found some Aunt Martha's transfer pencils. (You know what I mean, you trace over a pattern, then iron it on fabric.) I had ordered these over a year ago, but never tried them. I had another brand transfer pencil, but it stunk! I just figured these would be the same, but they aren't. I had some designs that I had printed off the computer from here. I turned them over and traced over the backs with my pencil. Then I used my old iron to transfer them to some Kona natural cotton. (I knocked my poor old iron off the ironing board several times. It finally protested and began spitting water all over everything. So I had to replace it, but I keep the old one for dry ironing.) (Works for me. LOL) I think they transferred very well. It actually looks much better in person. My flash washed it out.

I think this little 'welcome' one is really cute. I plan to do these in redwork then add some blocks around them to make little wall quilts.

I know, I know I have so many projects started, but I needed a change of pace. If only I didn't need to sleep, or clean, or cook, or work in the garden and yard, just think of how much I could get done. LOL I enjoy redwork. It is another peaceful thing I can do in front of the tv. I am trying different things with these. The Bless Our Home is pinned to a layer of batting. I will embroider right over it. The Welcome has a medium interfacing fused to the back. I am hoping these will work. I read that it is better to have something on the back of your embroidery piece. I shall see. Does anyone do it any differently? I am relatively new to redwork/embroidery, so I'd love to hear how you do it.

Yesterday, I got all the wild quilt strips pressed and cut into blocks. I ended up with 42 blocks. So I guess it will be 6 wide and 7 long. Not sure if this will have a border, but it will be a pretty good sized quilt, even without borders. This is Dana's quilt along. I had planned to put them together today, but the weather changed my mind. LOL Quite scary looking, aren't they? LOL Shaking my head here, because this is so out of my comfort zone. I am hoping they look better all together, some how.

Well, I'd better get off here. I just saw lightning flash again. (sigh) Looks like we are in for some more storms tonight. My garden is loving the rain, but so are the weeds. I may never get caught up with the weeding once it dries out. Everyone have a good night. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

Harbor Town and Garage Saling!

Good morning everyone,

We had a rainy and stormy weekend, but I got alot of sewing done. (grin) Kevin had lots of plans for working outside this weekend. It didn't happen. We woke up Saturday morning to rain. Isaiah called and asked me to go garage saling with him. Kevin was going to go till he saw the radar. He knew that once the rain stopped and the sun came out, that the humidity would be terrible. He was right. LOL So I joined our son. We went to lots of garage sales, but didn't find many bargains. My favorite find was this fabric. I ended up with about 8 yards and a panel for $6. Not bad, especially since this is good quality fabric, just older. LOL

I also found 2 skirts and 5 blouses for me. I think I spent about $4 on these. So I guess I didn't do bad. I spent about $10 and came home with clothes and fabric. Here are the skirts and blouses.

Isaiah spent about the same as I did and went home with a floor lamp, 3 pairs of jeans and 5 shirts. I think he was happy with his treasures. LOL After dragging his mama all over town, he took me out for lunch. I enjoyed the day with our boy. I came home and took a 4 hour nap. My dh woke me up because he thought something was wrong with me. LOL It was an all town garage sale. So we would park and walk around the block hitting all of the sales. We did this several times. Also, we were in Isaiah's big truck. My short legs had quite a time climbing in and out of it numerous times. He had to give me a hand several times. I was completely worn out. LOL

So other than garage sales and a nap, I didn't get much accomplished on Saturday. We went to bed and Kevin said, 'Now we have lots we have to get done tomorrow.' Didn't happen! We had more storms come through Saturday night. It was too wet and muddy to work outside on Sunday. So what did we do? Kevin watched a marathon of 'Lord of the Rings' movies. I believe it was about 9 hours worth. Me? I sewed all day! What fun I had! I got the Harbor Town top together. It is now ready to sandwich and quilt. The hardest part of this cute quilt was the picket fence border.

I just started chain piecing them and soon had the borders pieced. I decided to go ahead and use the red/white checked fabric for the triangle setting blocks. I had to be really careful with those long bias edges, but I got them fastened onto the center. I think they look OK.Then I got to have some fun. I made 3 houses and the lighthouse. I really enjoyed making that lighthouse. I am thinking about making another one and just adding some blocks around it for a small wall hanging. I think these turned out pretty good.
The fabric that I had intended for the setting triangles worked great for the lighthouse. So I guess it was a good thing that I messed up the cutting. LOL I added these to the picket fences, then to the center. My flash washed it all out. Sorry about that. As you can see, Callie approves. I added the last border and now I have a flimsie all ready for sandwiching and quilting. (grin) This is supposed to be a wall quilt, but it measures 49 inches square right now. It will take up a large wall space. After I got Harbor Town all put together, I decided to take a break from the sewing machine. I got on the computer and piddled for a while. Then my MIL called to warn me about severe weather coming in. Carolyn called after that to tell me our county was under a tornado warning. Now just to show you how differently we react....Kevin is watching a DVD (remember the Lord of the Rings marathon). He gets up, looks out the north window, then sits back down and watches his movie. Didn't even put the tv on so we could check the weather. Me, I am checking radar on the net, then put my little Walkman on so I can hear our local radio station. They are talking about the tornadoes forming in our part of the county. I am pacing back and forth from window to window. I am normally really afraid of storms, but we weren't having any wind, rain, or lightning. So I went outside to see what was going on. I was fascinated. I had never seen the clouds look like that. They were all twirling around and around. I know it wasn't too smart, but I stood out in the yard for half an hour just watching the clouds. I heard on the radio that a couple of tornadoes did form from these clouds but didn't come down. By now you all probably think I am a nutcase for standing out in the yard watching clouds that have the ability to form tornadoes, but our neighbors were doing the same thing. LOL I could see and even hear them. (grin) Anyway, all we got was some rain, but my brother, who lives in town about 10 miles away got baseball sized hail. It broke the windshield out of his new truck and dented it all up. Mom got golfball size hail. I haven't checked back with her yet today to see if it destroyed her little garden. So I am very thankful that we did not get any damage from a very stormy night.

After all of the excitement from the storms passed, I checked and saw that Dana had added the next part of her quilt along. So I decided I'd better get caught up. I plan to spend today working on it. Hopefully I will have pictures to share tomorrow of my wild quilt. LOL Now I had better get with it or I won't have any time for sewing today. Everyone have a great day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

Harbor Town and a visit with Isaiah!

I am actually blogging 2 days in a row! LOL Will wonders never cease! I had a nice visit with our son, Isaiah, yesterday. He came and spent the afternoon with his mama. So I did not get as much done as I planned, but that is all right. I spent time with one of my babies. We checked the garden. It looks like everything is coming up. The zucchini and green beans are looking good. Then we went down to check on the chicks. (Sigh) He agreed with me. It looks like most of my banties are roosters. It figures. I lost one earlier this week. I think it was a little pullet. I just found it laying dead in their shed, no wounds or anything. So I guess we wait and see. After the chickens, Isaiah helped me carry clothes in off the line. We had a good visit.

I have been busy this morning. I made chicken noodle soup for Kevin, washed up all the dishes, and got all my chores done. Now I have the afternoon free for some quilting. (grin) I still need to finish pressing and cutting the blocks for the wild colored quilt along quilt. The quilt I am enjoying working on the most right now is a Thimbleberries pattern, called Harbor Town. This one has been fun. Here is a picture from the book, so you can see what it should look like.

Isn't this cute? Lynette Jensen has the same taste that I have. LOL I just love all of her patterns. I have the star blocks, wharf blocks and sailboat blocks all done and put together. I had a certain fabric that I wanted to use for the setting triangles. It needed to be cut 16 3/4 inches square, then cut in half diagonally. I was very careful and cut it 16 3/4 inches one way. I thought I was just as careful for cutting it the second way, but I cut it 15 3/4 inches. (Crying here!) Here is what I had intended to use. (of course, I had the fabric doubled when I cut it) Since I messed this fabric up, I had to go to my stash and try to find an alternative. What do you think about this one? I will probably end up using it. I have the picket fence border all cut and ready to sew. If I get it done in time today, I will probably work on the lighthouse block and house blocks. I may do them a little different than the pattern. I am thinking about making each house a different color instead of all the same. Maybe just different reds. I'll know as I start making them. LOL Here are fabrics for the borders. The beige is the picket fence, of course, then the blue and the final border will be the green. See, I told you I like matchy-match. LOL I know this is a short post, but the Harbor Town is calling my name. LOL Everyone have a good day. Thank you for visiting my blog and please come again.

I took a break!

It has been over a week since I have posted on my blog. I guess I took an unscheduled break. I didn't intend to, but it seemed like every time I got on the computer to write a post, something would come up and I would never get it done. I might as well admit it. I also just haven't been in the mood for writing. Sometimes it takes a long time to do a post because it takes so long to get the pictures on here. When blogging starts feeling like a chore to get done, it is time to break for a while. (grin)

I won a blog giveaway from Kristie. It is some patriotic fabric. I have been wanting to make a patriotic wall hanging. Thank you Kristie. I will post pictures once I receive it.

I have all five of my clotheslines full of drying clothes. That feels good. The sun was shining when I began this morning, but now it is cloudy. Things will still dry as long as it doesn't rain. No rain in the forecast, so I should be ok. I would have taken a picture, but the underware is on the front line and I don't want to flash pictures of our underware for everyone to see. LOL Dh just left for work, so I decided to get on here for a while.

I am working on a project that is way out of my comfort zone. I am doing the quilt along from Old Red Barn Co. I took 12 fabrics that were at least 1/2 yard and cut them into 2 1/2 inch strips. I used bright fabrics (at least they are bright for me) that I would normally never think of putting together. I just decided to go with something totally different for me. We shall see. This is a really neat quilt along. Dana has already given away several wonderful prizes. She has drawings each week. We are in week 3 and there are 6 weeks total. At the end, she is having a drawing for a Janome 6600 sewing machine. I am drooling, just typing that out. LOL Here are the strips. See what I mean about the different colors. No matchy-match. LOL

I wanted to make this quilt completely from my stash. Several of these fabrics were leftovers from previous projects. Here is all I had left of most of these after I got all the strips cut. Normally most of these would be tossed, but I decided to keep them to tie my tomatoes up. I will have the most colorful tomato patch in the county. LOL

The next 4 pictures are of the first blocks I have cut. I sew 6 strips together, then cut those into 12 1/2 inch blocks. I get 3 blocks from each set of strips, with about 4 1/2 inches leftover. I hope when they go together that they look better. So far, I am just not feeling them. (sigh) This is so out of my comfort zone, that I even feel a little uneasy posting the pictures. It has nothing to do with Dana's quilt along. I have seen a quilt she made with this pattern and it was beautiful. It is about the colors I chose. I should have stayed with my dark and matchy-match colors. LOL Oh well, who knows, by the time it is all together, maybe I will love it? (grin)

I am also working on another quilt with a lighthouse, ships, stars, and houses. I may share some pictures of it tomorrow. I have the center together. I put all of my future projects together. These are just future projects that I have printed from the computer, not projects from books or that I will create in EQ6. Think I will live long enough to get them all done? LOL Lots of them are embroidery or applique. Now my dh knows why we have to replace the ink cartridge so much. LOL Well, I think I will go work on Harbor Town. Everyone have a good day. Thank you for visiting. Please come again.