Daisy Star is a flimsy!

Good evening everyone,

I just spent about 1 1/2 hours talking to a very good friend. She reminded me that I haven't posted a blog in a while, so I figured I'd better get with it before I forget all I wanted to post. LOL

Kevin and I had a stomach bug a couple of weeks ago. That really put both of us out of commission for a while. In fact, we both pretty much stayed in bed for 2 days. That is unheard of for us. Thankfully, we are both right as rain now. (grin) Speaking of rain....we have had a lot of it. Hard to believe that we are on the last half of May. It has been cold and rainy all month. Still no garden planted, but what would be the use? Mom has seeds planted, but says they are not coming up. I hear that it may get up to 75* tomorrow with sunshine. I may just sit outside all afternoon. LOL

I finished sewing the borders on to the Daisy Star quilt this weekend. I think it turned out pretty good.

I had Kevin hold it up for me so I could get a picture. Now it joins my stash of unquilted tops. I am now trying to get Double Delight put together. It was a Bonnie Hunter mystery a year ago. Lots of little pieces, so I work on it, then put it up, but I really do want to finish it. I am also spending my evenings doing some redwork. Sometimes that is so peaceful and relaxing for me. Also kind of a no brainer. Just follow the lines. Look at this cute little saying. I love this.

I also finished this 'honey' project.

I also finished this 'primitive friends' redwork this past weekend. It was a busy weekend, craftwise.

I love to take these little redwork projects and make small wall quilts out of them. I use the redwork as a center of the quilt, then build blocks or strips around them. They are a breeze to quilt up and I can use from my scrap bins. These make great little gifts. I have several ready, now, just waiting on me to get creative and come up with the rest of the quilts .

I thank you all for visiting. I know I have been a bad blogger, but sometimes I am just not in the mood to write anything. In those instances, you probably would not want to read what I write. LOL Everyone have a great day. I will try to do better.

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

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.

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.

A Visit and Redwork Projects

I didn't get to blog yesterday. Did you notice? LOL I usually do this during the late afternoon. Yesterday, our almost 24 year old son, Isaiah, came by to visit his mama. He had gotten a 'new to him' pickup and wanted to show me. It was so good to see him. We sat and visited for a couple of hours. I hadn't seen him since Christmas, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It is always great to see one of the kids.

This was taken last year on my birthday. I forgot to take a picture of him or his truck. Still getting used to this blogging thing. LOL Not sure why he has the funny expression on his face. Guess he was humoring his mama with a picture. (grin)

I have been busy working on the Savannah Star quilt. I have about 1/4 of it quilted. I also did a little bit on the beagle quilt. Not sure where I want to go with the rest of the blocks, so I am taking it slow. I'll know when I have the right design. I still have almost 3 months till I need it. Plenty of time. Since I don't have much current to show, I thought I would show some old projects again. Can you believe that I just started learning to embroider last year? That's right. I could cross stitch. I have been doing that for over 20 years, but not any of the other stitches. I decided I wanted to learn. So I went online and found some free patterns, and also found tutorials on the stitches. This is my first redwork project. I decided that if I was going to be doing some embroidery projects (cause I really loved doing this) that I needed to be able to make something out of them. I decided to just start adding borders till I had a little wall quilt. Simple is good, right? I just added simple borders around the picture and used 4 patches for the corners. This has gone to live with a very sweet friend. I decided to do my second redwork project in blue. (grin) For this cute little picture (By the way, can you tell that I just fell in love with primitive work?) I decided to start putting strips around it, log cabin style. Sorry I can't remember where online I found these free patterns so I can give credit to the very talented lady who drew them. This little quilt has gone to live with another sweet friend. I had fun making it.
I even remembered to take a picture of the back of this little quilt. I forgot to take one of the Bless This Home quilt's back. I had this sunflower fabric left over from an apron I had made. I thought it made a cute backing, although you can't see the quilting very good. I seem to pick busy fabrics for my backings on small quilts.
It is nice out today, but they are calling for snow to move in tomorrow. Not sure how much yet. They keep changing their minds. Whatever we get shouldn't last long, since it is supposed to be above freezing next week. I had planned to hit the President's Day sale at JoAnn's, but no biggy if I can't go. I had just planned to buy some more Guterman hand quilting thread. I love that stuff. Thanks Bren. I still have several spools on hand, but when it is 50% off, I like to stock up. (grin) I plan to work some more on the Savannah Star and maybe the beagle quilt. I think I will play around a little bit this afternoon on EQ6. K bought it for me for Mother's Day last year. I still have a lot to learn about this program, but love what all it can do. Since Valentine's day is only a couple of days away, I have been flirting with the idea of making a small heart quilt. LOL Just what I need, another project started.

I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.