Caught up on Birdie Stitches.

Good afternoon,

It is really hot here today. Supposed to be in the upper 90's with a heat index of 107*. Can you say yuck! LOL I went out to take a walk about 9. Waited too long. About 20 minutes into the walk, I was getting hot and had a cramp in my leg. So I decided to wait till the sun goes down for the rest of my walk. I may have to settle for doing a video if it doesn't cool down enough. My blood pressure is doing really good. Blood glucose is good when I eat as I should. (grin) I have lost 21 lbs. Need to kick it up a notch since I go back to the doc in about 3 weeks. Would like to lose at least 25 lbs.

Since it is too hot outside to do anything, I have been getting a little bit of sewing and handwork done. I am on the 3rd border of the pink baby quilt. I can stand to hand quilt as long as I have the ac on. (grin) I also just finished the June block for Birdie Stitches. I struggled with this one. The pattern posted didn't click with my other blocks. So I put off doing it till I saw Terry's post. She changed it. A light bulb went off in my head. Well why not? It is my quilt. I can do whatever I want. Right?  Now since I cannot draw, at all, I used parts from the June block and pieces from previous blocks to create this. I like it and it fits in with the other blocks. After all, June has been spent watching my garden grow. LOL Thanks Terry, for the idea.
Block #6

Now without going back through my blog, I cannot remember which of these blocks I have posted, so I am going to just post all of them. I know some will be repeats. Oh well.
Block #1

Block #2

Block #3

Block #4

Block #5

I also got block #6 of Henrietta Whiskers done. I will take a picture and post as soon as I get the little bit of embroidery done on it.  I came up with a way to put my Retro Nine Patch blocks together, but not sure I like how it looks. Just doesn't click with me, so it is put on the back burner while I think about it. I took a picture, but it didn't turn out good. What is new, huh? LOL  I decided to make actual 9-patch blocks using the colors that I had used in the embroidery. I think I should have separated things with sashing. Not sure what it needs, so thinking about it. Here is the rather lousy picture of it. I may try to have Kevin hold it up so I can get a better picture. Lots of times, seeing a picture helps me decide what needs to be done.

A couple of weeks ago, our son, Jon, and his friend, Kim came to visit. They brought stuff for a BBQ. We had such a fun afternoon. I just took a few pictures. Of course, Jon is like his dad and doesn't like to have his picture taken. (big sigh)

Jon was playing ball with Buddy.  Buddy loves this ball.

Here is a picture of Kim. She is a lovely young woman. Kevin and I really like her.

Well, that is it for me today. Please keep the Missouri River areas in your prayers. It is not good. Our county is having some severe floods. Several towns have been evacuated. This will go on till at least the middle of August. So a long time to be on the watch for flooding. Kevin is still able to work, but that all depends on if the river goes over the levee or breaches. Bad situation for all concerned.

Thank you for visiting. Please come again and have a wonderful day!

Winona

Portrait of Callie!

We had rains coming right towards us. Then all we got was a little shower. We could really use about a 1/2 inch of rain on the garden. I say this, then feel guilty for wishing for rain. Our county is preparing for the worse floods we have ever seen. Yesterday the Corps started releasing 150,000 cubic feet of water per second from the Gavin's Point Dam, S.D. They said it will take 3 - 3.5 days to reach our area, but we are already seeing flooding. I-29 is closed north of us due to water on the road. They are releasing this amount of water until sometime in August. Goodness, that is a long time to have water standing. We are fortunate to be on high ground, but most of our county are not. So once again, I ask that you pray that our levees will hold.

On a little lighter note, I finished the machine applique on Callie's Portrait. I have had fun with this, so not sure why it has taken me so long to get it done. I fused it down over a year ago now. LOL Anyway, here are a few pictures of it. I still need to embroider some whiskers on it, then I can sandwich and quilt.

Here is a closeup...

A little different angle...

It turned out looking quite a bit like my Callie. I will admit, though, that I really didn't start out trying to make it look like my girl. It just kind of happened. LOL I believe I showed this to you last year when I got the fusing done on it, but it wasn't a good picture.(Not that these are great pictures either.LOL) This pattern is from FatCat patterns. Sindy does an awesome job of creating patterns and most are free. Sorry I don't have her link, but just Goggle FatCat patterns and you will find them. Here is a picture of my Callie so you can compare.

As you can see, it is not exact, but pretty close. I love my baby.

Our son, Jon and his friend, Kim came to visit last Saturday. I'll share a couple of pictures of them in the next post. Thank you for visiting. Please come again and have a wonderful day.


Winona

Just relaxing

Today was grocery day. I am always tired when I get home from fighting the traffic. The stores were crowded today. The roads were crowded today. Road construction caught me in a traffic jam.  I was just glad to get home, unload, and get everything put away. LOL
There were so many big grain trucks on the road today. I finally figured out what was going on. We are expecting large floods here next week. I think these trucks were hauling from Cargill. Cargill is located in the flood plain. I also talked to Jonny. He said he has been advised that he might have to get out at a moments notice. He has all of his valuables gathered together. His apartment had 2 feet of water in it in 1993. They say it could happen again. I told him he could come here. I guess we will see what happens.

I did a little hand work tonight, but nothing much to show, so I thought I'd show you where I like to spend time in the shade when it is hot.

Carolyn's BIL made this for me. It is so comfortable to sit in. I sit out here and watch the hummingbirds. I tried to get a picture of one, but not sure how much he shows up.

Here are the flowers I received for Mother's Day. I seldom have any luck with flowers, but these are doing great on our porch steps. Can't forget to water them when you have to walk right past them every day. LOL

Aren't these pretty?

It is nice to sit in my chair, smell and see the flowers, and watch the hummingbirds. I don't do enough of it, but it does help to de-stress at the end of the day.

I don't think I shared a picture of our little cultivating tiller. We decided to get something to help us with the cultivating. We used to have a Mantis and knew that it was a good tiller. We had enough money saved to buy a cheap cultivator, but really wanted another Mantis. I came up with the idea of each of us adding some money to the pot and calling it my Mother's Day gift and Kevin's birthday gift. So here is our little tiller. I love it. We have already used it several times. This is a 4 cycle, so we don't have to mix oil with the gas. Much easier.

Not much else going on right now. I only got half my workout done tonight, so I think I will go work out some more. Both Jon and Hazel called. Talking to them is more important than a workout. (grin) Please keep all the people along the Missouri River in your prayers. When the Corps releases a record amount of water from the Gavin's Point Dam the flooding is supposed to be horrible. The flooding will be bad enough, but they are predicting the water to be high for a couple of months.

Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a wonderful weekend.

Winona

A Change of Plans

I am doing the Henrietta Whiskers BOM (along with several others). I am enjoying this BOM and have learned lots from it. You can click on the little squirrel over in my right side bar to go to the site.  I used Heat and Bond for the first time ever to fuse the pieces on to my background blocks. I had thought I would be able to do a hand blanket stitch around the edges. No way! That stuff is so hard to get a needle through. I knew that I would never finish these blocks if I did the hand stitch. So I machine appliqued around each piece. I usually use Wonder Under. I will go back to WU. It is much easier for me to work with. I have done a hand blanket stitch around pieces where I have used WU. I had no problems. One major thing that I learned is to cut out the center of the fusible on a large piece. Some of these blocks were so tough to do the embroidery, that I thought I was going to have to get my pliers out to pull the needle through. LOL  So, a lesson learned. I will continue to use the Heat and Bond to finish this project. Don't want to switch in the middle, but then go back to my old faithful Wonder Under!
Here is block #1 of Henrietta Whiskers...

Block #2....

Block 3 is still being worked on. I have just a little bit of embroidery left on it.

Block #4

Block #5. This one is really stiff. I should have cut the centers out of the fusible.

I have block #6 printed off and hope to work on it this afternoon. I really love this BOM. I still need to add some button and a few embellishments to them.

I have also been working on my Chicken Heart wall quilt. I have the half square triangles done for the outer border, but decided to put them on last. At the moment I am attempting to do needle turn applique. Not sure how much I like this way. It is much faster to do machine applique. I am struggling along. I know the checked fabric doesn't look square, but this was a kit and I did the best I could to square it up.

I am also quilting on a pink baby quilt that I put together last fall from orphan blocks and scraps. I'm about a third done with this one.

I also have the current Birdie Stitches printed off. Just need to get it traced. LOL As you can see, I have definitely gotten my mojo back. I have so many projects floating around inside my head, that it makes me dizzy. LOL I  hate to sleep because I could get so much more done if I didn't have to rest. (grin)

It has been terribly hot here, but we have a break in the heat today. We have already had a small storm with some rain. More predicted. The heat has made it unbearable to be outside in the afternoon. Kevin and I have been going out early to work in the garden. We now have everything planted and weeded. Of course, I know we will have to weed several more times, but we are caught up at this time. The yard...not so much. I got gas to mow and weed eat, but now it is rainy. I guess we will have some tall grass to mow next week.

I guess that is enough for today. Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a wonderful day!



Winona

Retro Nine Patch

I finished all the embroidery on the Retro Nine Patch blocks earlier in the week. The basket blocks were just posted to finish it, but I am thinking I may get on my EQ7 and come up with my own finishing blocks. I'll see what I can come up with. I took some pictures of the finished stitcheries, but some of them came out kind of blurry. Sorry. What can I say? Photography is not my thing. LOL

The next two blocks...

And the center block...

Now I need to figure out how I want to finish this one.  I started on Chicken Hearted yesterday. I have the base put together, the half square triangles made,  and all the applique pieces prepped. I hope to work on it in a bit.

I think I will work out first. Tomorrow is weigh-in day. Uggg! Not looking forward to that. I ate quite a bit of high calorie food last weekend. I guess I'll see if it decided to stay with me or not. LOL While picking up some of the 'not so good for me' food last weekend, I also found a little bit of fabric. I got these at Walmart. Our Walmart just went through a remodel. Oh my! How I hated going in there for a while, but I will have to say, it does look great now. I am starting to figure out where things are, so I don't hate going in there any more. (grin) Anyway, the two fabrics on the left were bought for skirts for me. Once I lose another 20 lbs, I plan to make them as a treat. (grin)

The brown is intended for a backing of a small quilt and the purple is just because I liked it. LOL
Then I saw these fat quarters and just had to have a few. I am thinking these would work good in an applique flower quilt.

I spread the fat quarters out so you could see the colors a little better.

Well, I guess that is it for me for today. It is still to wet to work in the garden, plus the heat and humidity has arrived. So I think I will go work out before it gets any hotter. Then I can play this afternoon. (grin) Thank you for visiting. Please come again. Have a great day.


Winona

A Walk Around the Garden!

We ended up getting quite a bit of rain during the night, so the plan to work in the garden today is put on hold. That is ok, though, we still have plenty of time to get the sweet potatoes, cucumbers, watermelon, and muskmelon planted. Of course, with all this rain we have had, the yard needs mowed again. All in good time. (grin) Anyway, I walked down to the garden this morning and got some pictures. This is probably boring to some of you, but I kind of want to keep a record of it, so I'm posting pictures of our garden.
This is the whole garden from the top of the hill. Our garden is located in a field, so it is surrounded by tall grass and weeds. We have a push mower, self-propelled mower, and weed eater. No rider, so we have to pick the areas to keep mowed. No way can we keep up with the whole 5 acres. It is times like this that I miss my goats. They did a great job of keeping weeds under control.

That is where the old rider gave up the ghost. I guess Kevin leaves it there as a landmark. LOL We planted 18 tomato plants this year. I hope to be able to make some salsa, sauce, etc.

I planted little short rows of sweet corn so it would pollinate better. The rows run north and south. We usually have a south wind during the summer.

This is the first year I have planted okra. I don't even know how to fix it. I guess I need to do some research.

I planted 3 rows of green beans back in the last week of April. It was so cold that they never came up, or so I thought. I almost tilled them out, but look at them now.

These are the sweet peppers, eggplants, and the onions and potatoes behind them.

These are the best looking potatoes we have had in years. I planted 4 rows of Pontiac and one row of Yukon Gold.

Isn't this potato bloom pretty? As you can see, I already have them hilled.

This year we decided to plant some pole beans. Now Kevin needs to get a fence up beside them so they can grow up it.

I planted cabbage as an afterthought. Kevin thought it was too late for them, but they are looking good.

The last two pictures are of our spaghetti squash....

...and zucchini. I just planted 2 hills each of these. That should give us gobs.

Kevin broke some new ground for us this year, so we could increase the garden. With groceries going up each week, I look forward to when we can eat out of the garden. I hope you all enjoyed a tour of our garden. I will be posting some updates of it as it grows. Thanks for visiting and please come again. Everyone have a wonderful day.


Winona

A Couple of Wins!

My blog reading, commenting, and posting has been pretty sporadic  this year, to say the least. I have had the good luck to win a couple of great giveaways, though. First I won this Connecting Threads kit from Billie. It is called Audrey's Sewing Accessories Kit. I think this will  really come in handy if I ever get the chance to make it. Thank you so much, Billie. It is great.

Here is the fabric for the kit.

Next I won this adorable little wall quilt kit from Paula. It is called Chicken Hearted. Isn't this just the cutest thing? I hope to start on it this week. I plan to do needle turn applique on it. I need the practice and this looks ideal for practice. Paula, I really love this little kit and can hardly wait to get started on it.

I have been doing some embroidery this week. I have all 5 of the Retro Nine Patch stitchery blocks done. I am now ready to begin block #6 of Birdie Stitches.  In between working on BOM's I did these two little stitcheries. The first one is called Apples and Blossoms.

This is called Bless Our Home. I love this design so much that this is at least the 3rd one I have done. I plan to turn these into little mini quilts. I love taking stitcheries and adding scraps around them to create a little mini. (grin)

I have been waiting for storms to get here all evening. I believe they must have gone south of us. All we have had are a few sprinkles and a couple of thunder boomers. We had a nice rain yesterday morning, so we are ok on moisture. Our garden is looking great. I'll share some pictures of it soon. Well, it is getting late, so I need to get this posted. Thank you for visiting. Please have a great night.