Some purses and pot holders

I apologize to everyone trying to read this first half of my blog. This green does not work at all! I will probably just stick with black. If I knew how to change the color after it is already typed I would, but I am too lazy to type it all over again. Luckily the first couple of paragraphs was just me rambling anyway. LOL  

Good afternoon,

It is another rainy, dreary day here in northwest Missouri. I really believe this month will go on the record as the wettest October. It sometimes rains or drizzles for 2 or 3 days in a row. I don't think we have had more than 3 days in a row all month without some sort of precipitation. I was sure hoping for some nice sunny days before winter sets in completely. I still have hope. I don't think we have had our normal warm spell after frost.

I have been kind of bummed out lately, so Kevin suggested I take some time off of quilting. You know I am not feeling good when even the thought of quilting doesn't pick me up. LOL   So I have basically just vegetated in front of the tv for the past week. I have only done about 3 hours worth of hand quilting this week. That is pretty unheard of for me, but I am getting the urge to quilt again.

I made a couple more purses last week. I decided to change them around and make them easier for me to work on. Took that zipper out and put a little fabric hook on. All I have left to do is sew a button on and these are done. This first one is done in pinks and greens. Here is the front. You can see the green front pocket.

Here is the back of it.

The inside has 2 pockets in the lining. I really don't miss the zipper at all and it was much easier to sew without it.

This purse was made from yellow and blue fabrics. I love, love that blue polka dot fabric, but sadly I have almost used all of mine. I will have to see if I can find some more. Here is the front with the pocket.

Here is the back. Isn't this butterfly fabric adorable?

 Here are the pockets.

These were fun to make. I machine quilted the fronts and backs. I also machine quilted these potholders. I just used my chalk pencil to draw a big 'X' from corners to catty corners. Then I used my walking foot to sew on those lines. I used the little bar thing that hooks onto my walking foot to sew even 1" lines all one way, then turned and sewed the other way. These were just mindless fun. Here are all of them together. These were made from a book given to me for my birthday from a dear friend. What do you think, Teresa? I haven't tried any of the hard patterns yet. LOL  The book is called, '101 Fun-to-Quilt Pot Holders' by Trice Boerens. It is a good book.

I took pictures of two of them at a time so you could see them a little better. I used 2 layers of cotton batting and a layer of Insul-Bright in the middles of them.

 

 

There are 2 potholders here, but I just left them stacked since they are just alike. I took some chicken fabric, sandwiched and quilted. I think they turned out cute.  Kind of looks like they are behind wire. LOL I usually hand sew binding on the back of quilts, but I just used my machine to sew them down on the back of these potholders. They don't look quite as nice, but sure went on quicker.

Tomorrow is grocery day, so I will be out in the crowds. I hope I don't run into anyone who is sick. So far we have avoided sickness during this nasty, cold, and dreary month. I would like to keep it that way. I need to get my grocery list made. I used to enjoy grocery shopping, but anymore, it is just a chore to be done. I think when everything in the store started costing more, it just kind of killed my enthusiasm. (grin) I hope you all have a good day. Thank you for visiting my blog. Hmmm, it seems that I started this blog in green print, but somewhere along the line it went back to black. Oh well. I have it done. That is what matters. LOL

 

Happy birthday JON!

Oh goodness!
I am such a bad mama. I forgot our youngest son, Jon's birthday. He turned 21 yesterday! How do you forget that? I sent him a card last week, but didn't call him yesterday. Jon, if you are reading this, I am so sorry. I hope you had a wonderful 21st birthday! Here are just a few pictures that I found of Jonny. He is like his dad and does not like to have his picture taken. LOL

Jonny is our tallest child. He is like a gentle giant. (Not really that tall, but if you are over 6' tall in our family you are considered a giant. LOL We are a family of short people.) Jon is laid back, easy going and never gets excited over anything. He is very even tempered, and tries to help everyone, but don't do him wrong. He has a long memory for those who have done him wrong. He keeps his hair really short because he has curls very similar to our granddaughter, Ava. He doesn't like the curls. LOL  From the back of his head, he looks just like my dad. We are blessed to have him for a son.

He loves his nephews and nieces. Here he is with Noah.

 

 

 

This last picture was at Izzie's birthday party. He will kill me for posting this. LOL But I thought it was cute. 

Honey I hope you had a great 21st birthday! You know your dad and I love you and are so proud of the man you have become!
Nothing like having your baby boy turn 21, that really makes you feel old.

Thank you for visiting. Please come again.

Nice weather finally

Good afternoon,

We had such a nice day yesterday. For the first time during this month, it got up into the 70's. Of course, with the good, you have to take the bad. LOL The bean bugs are out in force. These are the fake lady bugs that smell horrible when you touch them and that bite when they get under your clothes. We have soy beans planted all around us. They are beginning to harvest them. So the bugs are swarming. They were so bad yesterday, that I just gave up and came back into the house. They land all over you and are so annoying.

Oh well, I still had a good day. I spent it cooking for the freezer. Now my freezer is full and meals are a snap to prepare. I cooked up the wrinkled apples, boiled eggs, cooked spaghetti, cooked brown rice in my rice cooker, cooked beans in the crock pot, and baked 2 batches of corn bread, 1 batch of biscuits, and a large batch of muffins. Most of this is now divided into meal sizes and in my freezer. This makes it much easier to fix Kevin's lunch. I usually fix extra for our lunch and put some in his thermos then grab some corn bread or a muffin from the freezer. His lunch is then ready. I am glad to have all that cooking done. Now I can play today. LOL

I finished this little stitchery a couple of days ago. I used DMC #115 for it. I love this pattern. It is a free pattern from Kaaren . I enjoyed working on it, and it only took a couple of evenings.

I also finished a small red work mini quilt. I just call this one Cherry Pie. I know I got the pattern online somewhere, but I printed it off a while ago, so don't remember where I got it. So please forgive me for not giving credit to the creator. I love to take these red work projects and turn them into mini quilts. They are quick and cute projects.

I had a friend ask me to create some place mats for her. She asked me to do this in the spring. I finally got them done. The cherries in the middle are fused on and hand blanket stitched. The stems are done with a stem stitch. I really don't like this stitch. I much prefer the back stitch. I decided to machine quilt a crosshatch on them since they will probably be washed a lot. I just quilted right over the applique. Don't know if that is a no-no or not, but that is how I did it. LOL

 I kind of like the way the backs turned out. I guess these could be considered reversible.

I received this in the mail last Friday. I won this pattern on Linda's blog. Isn't it cute. She creates some really cute patterns.  I hope to make a bag from it soon.

This is what I found on my ironing board this morning. Please forgive the horrible ironing board cover. I desperately need a new cover. It is even torn. All in good time.LOL Oh, before I forget....I have decided to just stick with the cheap irons. I had one of the expensive ones. It didn't last as long as the cheap ones. As soon as the warranty was up, so was the iron. So I will just buy a cheapie, use it till it quits, and buy another one.

Since Callie was taking over my ironing board, I thought I would go sit in my rocker and do some hand quilting. Hmmm..... this is what was in my rocking chair.

Well, seems Aeris has taken over my rocking chair. So I decided to get on the computer. So far, they haven't taken over my computer, but give them time. LOL

We have been trying to eat healthier. It sure is hard to buy groceries when you have to spend so much time reading labels. Now we have to worry about the genetically engineered food. (Big Sigh) I wish I was rich and could afford to hire someone to do all of my shopping, only buying organic things, no GMO at all. Anyway, a friend put this link on a forum I am on this morning. I thought it was good, so I am sharing it with anyone who wants to avoid GMO. Why don't they just leave the veggies to grow the way God intended?

Well, thank you for visiting and listening to me ramble. Have a good day.

I Went Shopping!

Good afternoon,

I had such a fun morning. I went to the JoAnn's Columbus Day sale. I really went because I was getting so low on fusible interfacing and wonder under. Then I got in there and saw all of the beautiful fabrics that they had marked down. Most of these were nice quality fabric. Well, you know already that I just couldn't resist.
Here is my haul for the day. I came home about broke, but flying high. LOL

Look at these gorgeous fabrics. Do you see why I couldn't resist? LOL

 

I have been looking for a variegated red DMC floss #115. Of course Wal Mart no longer carries floss. I checked at JoAnn's and Michael's. Neither one of them had this particular number. So today I checked at Hobby Lobby. Success! Isn't this pretty? It will make some lovely redwork projects. I bought 12 skeins. So I should be good to go for a while. LOL

As you can tell from the first picture, I got all my fusibles. I bought a few yards of Wonder Under, 4 yards of Heat and Bond (I have never used this brand, so I hope it works good.), some fusible interfacing, insul-bright, 2 packages of sewing machine needles and 2 marking pencils (They were on sale, buy one, get one free.), and several yards of tea stained muslin. I have started using muslin for the backing on my small quilts. I love how it turns out. I think Bren suggested this. Thanks Bren.

I made a couple of purses this week. I thought I'd share the first one with you today. I found some coordinating blues in my stash and went to work. First I machine quilted the front and back. I used Warm and Natural batting. After that, I used a variety of different fusibles on the pockets, sides, and the lining. It turned out pretty good, but took me all day to make. So I changed the second one and it went much faster. I will share it next time.

 

That little pocket on the front is perfect for putting your keys in. I am notorious for laying my keys down and forgetting where I put them. I can't tell the number of times I have had to retrace my steps in a store, looking for my keys.

Here is the back of it.

Finally, the inside. It has two pockets sewn onto the lining. Then I had to put that zipper in. Of course, the very first thing I did was break a needle, which flew up and hit me in the cheek. Let's just say, I was glad to get this purse done. LOL

Well, that is enough for today. Things seem to be going faster and easier since I switched to Firefox.. Doing a blog post is no longer so time consuming. Maybe, just maybe, I will post more often. LOL Everyone have a great weekend. Thank you for visiting.

Working on Fall Projects

Hello,

It looks like I will be doing good to make one blog post a week. It has been a long week. We have had some really windy days. Today it has rained pretty much off and on all day. It is supposed to be cold, windy, and rainy this weekend. We even have chances of snow on Sunday! I am so not ready for winter, but I guess my opinion doesn't count. LOL I love fall, but as soon as it turns cold, I am ready for spring. 

I guess I will share a few pictures of some of my projects in the past month. This is called Autumn Splendor. It is, of course, a Thimbleberries pattern. I have wanted to make this table runner ever since I saw it in Lynette Jensen's book 'Quilting for Harvest.' So one day, I decided I was just going to do it. I made the nine patches, fused the applique pieces on, then machine blanket stitched around them and sewed the whole thing together. I really can measure, but I was really surprised at how large this is. It is a table runner, but is 28 X 52 inches.

You can see how large it is in this picture with Aeris beside it. She just had to test it out. LOL
I have this all marked and sandwiched, ready to hand quilt. It has to wait in line. (grin)

Please excuse any weirdness in this blog post. I am still trying to learn about Firefox and I have updated something on blogger. Pictures aren't going exactly where I wanted, but at least I don't have to edit HTML. That was a pain. 

This is a wall quilt called Pumpkin Patch. You guessed it. It is another Lynette Jensen pattern from 'Quilting for Harvest'. I really love this book. This quilt was supposed to have another 5 inch border all around it, but I decided to leave it off. I just couldn't find anything in my stash that I liked with this black border fabric. I think it is big enough anyway. It also is marked and sandwiched, waiting to be quilted. 

 

 I also wanted to share what my sweet husband made for me. He knows how much I enjoy redwork, but I have to struggle to get the designs traced on to my fabric. I have been using a bin turned over a desk lamp, but it is awkward and gets hot. So he decided to make me a light box. He asked how big I wanted it. I think it ended up about 14 inches square. He bought a small florescent under cabinet light. Then he took some scrap lumber and built a box. He fastened the light to the bottom of the box and drilled a hole for the cord. He sent me to town to buy a 14 inch square piece of plexi-glass. I love it. It works great and doesn't get hot. If you don't count the cost for the scrap lumber, it cost him about $14 to make this for me. What a guy! He said we can take the top off , turn the light around and add another light if needed, but this puts out plenty of light. I may paint it some day, but for now it is just fine for me.

 

 I will share the last two blocks for A Quilter's Garden, then I am off to bed. This is block number 11 called Starburst. 

 

Block # 12 is called Tulips. I have all twelve flower blocks done now, but probably won't get the top together till after Christmas. I guess it depends on how I get along with my Christmas sewing and quilting. LOL

 

Well, I hope this all worked, because I need to get to bed. I think I am going to JoAnn's in the morning. Their Columbus Day sale starts tomorrow or rather later this morning. LOL I have really gone through my fusibles the past couple of weeks. I have fused a trout, eagle, 3 chickens, and a calico cat. They are all waiting to be machine blanket stitched. I also made 2 purses this week and finished another redwork mini-quilt. I have the pieced borders all waiting for my Birds and Blooms quilt and just about have all the needle turned applique done on it. I have found that I really get a lot done when I don't spend so much time on the computer. Bren, if you are reading this, I tried to comment on your blog post earlier, but there must have been a glitch. It wouldn't let me. I'll try again tomorrow. I forgot, our internet service was down for 2 days this week too. I really miss it when I don't have it. Everyone have a great day. Thank you for visiting.  

No More Blogging Goals!

Good afternoon,

I made a blog goal to make at least 15 posts in the month of September. Hmmmm! I made five. So no more making goals for how many posts I will make. I don't know what is going to happen in life and sometimes it takes so long to load pictures, that I just don't want to do it. So I will make a post when I can, and that will be ok with me. While I have not been blogging, I have been really busy quilting. (grin) I have several pictures to share, and just hope I can. We switched to Firefox as a web browser instead of Internet Explorer. So far I have really liked Firefox, but this is my first time to try to blog since the switch. I will see how this works.

I mentioned before about taking some of my redwork projects and turning them into wall quilts. These were lots of fun. I made this one in a log cabin style with red and blue fabrics from my scrap bin. I think I will call this 'Primitive Doll'. This one quilted up really fast.Here is a closeup of the original redwork project.

This is another fun one. I am calling this 'Welcome Fall'.




Ok, I still like Firefox better, but it is different to move my pictures in the post. I am having to cut and paste the Html code instead of just clicking and dragging the pictures where I want them to be. So this is taking me longer than I thought. Posts may be shorter from now on. LOL Before I leave, though, I will share the next two pictures from The Quilter's Garden. Block #9 is called Verbena.
Block #10 is called Fan Flower.

I am going to do some more research and see if I can speed the uploading of pictures. I think I would post more often if it didn't take so long to upload the pictures. The sun just poked out. It has been raining all day. Good to see the sun.

Thank you all for visiting. I have more pictures to share, maybe tomorrow. No promises, though, since tomorrow is grocery day. I hope you all have a blessed day. Not sure what happened to my signature. LOL

Winona