Flora and Fauna

There seems to be a theme emerging on several of the blogs I read daily, namely Anna and Sharon, displaying the beautiful flora and fauna in their yards. I thought I would jump on the bandwagon with them. My husband showed me this little nest last weekend when he was mowing. I have been watching it all week and decided to get some pictures last Friday.
Aren't they adorable. There are five little baby robins in the little bitty nest. I couldn't get any closer because mama robin was really fussing at me. After reading Anna's post about her baby hawks I decided to run out and try to get another picture of the robins. This little one (well, not really so little)was out on a limb just chirping up a storm. I didn't want to scare him away to look into the nest so he(she, maybe) is the only one I could snap.
Can you see him/her out there? I guess it's almost to to fly the coop, make that nest. I'll try later this evening to see what the other four are up to.

Now on to the flora.
This is the first bloom on our hybiscus. This one is almost as big as a dinner plate. As you can see from the next picture, we are about to have many, many more blooms. I just love them!!

And, going from big to little this next shot is of a miniature pansy. I've never seem such small pansies ever.
This is a close up shot but each bloom is about the size of a nickel. So darn cute!! I'm a real dunce where gardening is concerned and was so surprised to see this one grow up and bloom this year. I REALLY need to get some books and learn a thing or two about the plants we have here in our yard.

These fields are not ours but this is what we see on all four sides of our property. And as the lyrics go - The corn is as high as an elephant's eye (even if we do live in Ohio and not Oklahoma).They planted soybeans last year and we find we really like the look of the corn better.
So, do you have any flora or fauna around your place you would like to share? It would be fun to know what's blooming at your house!

Thanks for stopping by! Happy quilting!

She's Done

She's done. Are quilts she's? Not sure but it seems right to me. After whining to all you good listeners yesterday(thanks!), I finished up this little jewel. One of the nice things about these Lori Smith Four Plus One Patterns is that you get a complete quilt out of five fat quarters. It's a small quilt, but it's a quilt.


Here's the back all pieced together. The only thing is that you have to be really careful about your cutting. I'm not sure I will only buy five for the next one of these I try. It just made me real nervous with the cutting and then I goofed when cutting the bias stems for the applique and ended up having to use the cream for the back instead of the brown you see around the little churn dash squares. It's not a big deal except I didn't get all five fabrics on the back.

I don't think I will do too much quilting on it so I should finish it up quickly.

This is my next project. It's sad, but I bought this pattern at least 5 years ago. I had forgotten about it until today when (still on my cleaning/organizing binge) I rediscovered several patterns and kits stuck down in a drawer.














I'm going to make the garland. Many moons ago I bought a bolt of muslin with my 40% off coupon at JoAnn's. I have most the DMC colors already. So this afternoon while doing laundry, I spent some time with the light box and tracing pen. I can begin stitching whenever I'm ready.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!

Distracted

Monday was just one of those days. Tuesday I became distracted. While looking through my stash for a backing needed for a christmas stitchery(yes, it's never too early to start sewing for Christmas) I was overcome by a horrible smell down deep in the tote bag I was perusing. It was awful. Nothing doing except to take all that fabric (most of it was fat quarters) and dump it in the washer. It was a washer load (and a little left on the laundry floor, if I'm completely honest). Well, you know what came next. I had to iron all that fabric once it came out of the dryer. Since I was on a roll, I grabbed my scrap bucket (one of them at least) and started ironing those little scraps. That rubbermaid bin(luckily a small one) has been a tangled mess for years with me just diving in and making it worse every time I needed scraps for another project. Two days later I have it all nice and ironed, organized and put away.

In the meantime, I am still distracted by everything. Most evenings my husband and I sit down to watch a movie. That's when I pick up my handwork. So this week I have been working on some stitchery kits I bought in Columbus last month at a booth called The Good Life. Both of the ladies were so very nice. That's the same booth where I bought the Quilt Pati's also. This is the one that started the whole ironing binge. As you can see I did find a backing fabric for it or at least you'll have to take my word for it since all you can see is the top and the batting.

Here's a close up of the stitchery part. It was really fast and easy.

I didn't get it basted together until last night to start the quilting on it. I was too busy with these.

I will have to decide on borders for both of these. I really enjoy doing them. They are so relaxing to do. It's sad but I almost can't watch a movie anymore unless my hands are busy. But not too sad!!

I'm also still working on this.
I have almost all of the pieces made. I just need to sew together the top and bottom half square triangles and then I can put all the pieces together. Then where do I go from there? I am so distracted by it all. I'm just going to have to concentrate on one project, get it finished and then maybe this mojo of distraction will disappear. There are just too many fun projects to be done!!

One last thing - Penny is having a little beauty of a give-away that you will WANT to be included in. Jump on over there and take a look.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!

One of those days!

Ever had one of those days when you struggle and fight to keep all the pieces together? I'm not talking about life; that would be a really bad day. I'm talking about just sewing together a quilt block. You just know you cut out the correct number of pieces because you counted them at least twice. You have everything right there together so you can just sew, sew, sew. But then when you do finally sit down at the machine you don't have the right number of pieces and have to drag out the mat, rulers and rotary cutter AGAIN. Then when you do start sewing you can't seem to lay your hands on the right pieces. You are chain sewing along and "what's this? I am two triangles short AGAIN?"

I've had one of those days today. I sat down this morning to begin sewing this little Lori Smith pattern. I bought it in a kit at the NQA quilt show in Columbus last month. I spent Sunday afternoon cutting out all the pieces and just knew I would zip right through it. No, Nope, Uh Uh, No way, how many other ways can I say it? It just was a fight from the beginning. Let me just tell you though, it wasn't the pattern. Although, the pieces for this little jewel are miniscule they did finally go together just fine. It was ALL me. Just one of those days!!


I put the scissors and pin cushion there so you could get the scale of these little beauties. I love the pinks and browns that are in right now.




When these are squared up they will only be
3 7/8". The block is about 4 3/8 right now. My chubby fingers really struggled with those little half square triangles and I still have all the little pink and cream ones to make for the center of the quilt. I sure hope I get my act together. Maybe I should just wait for another day.

On a more positive note, I finished up the Coneflower Wool Penny rug that I started in a class at the quilt show. Pat Sloan was so much fun and also a wealth of knowledge about wool. I only work on handwork in the evenings so it took me a while to get this finished up(I was still working on hand quilting my grandmother's quilt when I started it.
Thanks for stopping by. I feel better now that you let me vent my frustrations.
Happy quilting!

Hanging of the Quilt

Here's another view of my latest finish. I got the idea of hanging the quilt from a rod out of one of the million (probably an exaggeration!!) quilting magazines I read. It's such a great idea. The rings have little clips on them so you don't have to bother with sleeves or loops to hang the quilt and it's very easy to switch them out for the seasons. Now I just need to get cracking on quilting the fall wall hanging or we will be summery around here all the time. That wouldn't be too bad if I didn't love fall so much!

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!

Finished another one!

I am continually amazed at how time just seems to fly right by. This week is now half over and it seems like it was just Saturday when sweet kid #3 left for San Antonio. What fun she is having.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening sewing on my OC mystery quilt. Here are is a picture of the blocks finished. Actually, it is just one of each of the sets of blocks sewn. I now need to print out step 6 (the last!) and put this baby together.

I spent Monday in front of the television (something I don't normally do during the day) watching a marathon of The Closer on TNT. We just love this show; probably her southern drawl. I had seen most of the episodes but they were leading up to the new season's launch that evening. While watching I was hand sewing down the binding on this quilt. (Side note - I would love to learn how you bloggers get web pictures into your blogs. Any help???? Thanks)

The fabric is from the 2003 Thimbleberries club. Our local quilt show owner in Oblong, IL designed the pattern and we used it in place of the summer quilt in the program. I finished the top in 2003 but didn't start on the hand quilting until just recently(took a break and made my grandmother's quilt)but now it's done!! Next is the fall quilt from the same year that needs sandwiched and quilted. I have a couple of months before it's needed so I'd better get on it too.

Better run. I hear my sewing machine calling! Thanks for stopping by.
Happy quilting!

Scraps and Scrappy Quilts

When I first started reading quilty blogs last fall I was continually amazed at the generosity of quilters. After only four short months of blogging myself I have begun experiencing it first-hand. Nicole of Sister's Choice Quilts is one of my favorite blogs to read daily. Besides making the most beautiful quilts, she also has one of the cutest dogs I have ever seen. Even if you were not into quilting her blog is a must read just to keep up with Ozzie's antics. Back in June she was blogging about a project she took apart in order to get the design to work. When she showed the pile of scraps she said she was going to trash I quickly left a comment telling her to just ship them my way. She did!! They arrived Wednesday and what a haul it was. The picture just shows a portion of them. I am taking part in a postage stamp quilt squares swap and knew these would be great for that. I have already cut a 1 1/2" square of each of the fabrics for my quilt. There were over 50 different fabrics in that gallon sized zip-loc bag of scraps. Thanks, Nicole!!

I have been working on these squares for my Orange Crush mystery quilt. After all the warning Bonnie gave in the instructions about making sure the red/black squares were turned just so, I still got one of them turned wrong. So this morning the seam ripper and I spent some one-on-one time together and FINALLY all 30 of these blocks are done. I am off to begin the cutting on the orange and blue fabrics for step 5. Hopefully, I will get those blocks sewn up this weekend and can start getting the quilt top sewn together.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!!

Home Sweet Home

It's fun to go visit family and friends (well, mostly fun; more on that later) BUT it's also really great to be back home. And just let me say, that I'm home to stay (for a little while, at least). Our trip to Texas was looooong but oh so worth it. My grandmother seemed to really love her quilt. It was wonderful to spend so much time with her and my mom. My one regret is that I didn't get pictures of my grandmother with the quilt. I'll have get my mom to help me out there!! (Thanks mom, just helping you finish up that film). I wish I could say the trip down and back was uneventful. Oh how I wish I could!! The trip was 17 hours each way. We were within 35 miles of mom's house on the way down when we heard something unusual. We knew right away (because we felt it) that we had a flat tire. You know that feeling? Well, we pulled over and just looked at each other. We were only half a mile from a rest area which had a gas station but I didn't want to drive that far on the rim. So what did we do, you ask?

Well, I'm pretty independent as you can tell from the fact that sweet kid #3 and I were on this long trip by ourselves. I've made the trip several times alone. No sweat! But it's been about 30 years since I've had a flat without my husband being with me. So I call him, like he can help, being 16+ hours away. (Side note - Aren't cell phone just the greatest little things?) He suggests the can of Fix A Flat in the little emergency kit we have. So (for the first time since it happened) we get out of the van to look at the tire and Nope that's not gonna work. It had flat blown in half. But by doggie, (sorry, we were really close to the Texas border) with his wonderful moral support we changed that there tire and were on our way. (Second side note - Don't you just hate those little donuts they call spare tires?) We were right proud of ourselves.

Here's my third(and final) side note - Do you know that the entire time we were on the side of that busy road (I-44 in Oklahoma) not one person stopped to help two females changing a tire. OK, I said I was independent; I didn't say I was a feminist. I would have been more than happy to let some Oklahoma cowboy change that tire for us. But, NOOOOOO not a soul stopped. This little Texas girl (well, maybe not so little) was sorely disappointed in her Oklahoma neighbors.

Getting down off my soapbox and on to the quilting front, I got back to work yesterday on my Orange Crush. The mystery is solved already but sadly I fell behind. So back to my sewing machine I go to sew up half square triangles for step 4. I also had some interesting mail today but since this has gotten long enough you'll just have to wait until tomorrow for that.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Quilting!!

Secret Project Revealed

People have always said that I am just like my Grandmother. I take that as a compliment. She is a very special lady. She is a strong but loving woman who has always been one of my biggest cheerleaders no matter what I have attempted.

I remember spending time with her and my Grandfather every summer. She was a golfer so while she played golf at the country club we got to swim. I say "was" because she is now 93 and doesn't spend much time on the course anymore. She was actually pretty good. I always love looking at all her trophies she has displayed on shelves in her bedroom. She is still active at her church in north Texas. She is a "class mom" and loved dearly by all. She played the organ there for many years. We had such fun there growing up. She makes the best pecan pie this side of the Mississippi River. In fact, so far I've found, she makes the best pecan pie on either side of the Mississippi!

When my Grandmother turned 90 my mother threw a huge party for her. During the party I collected signatures for a quilt to commemorate the occasion and her life. Unfortunately, it has taken me 3 years to finally get those signatures into a quilt. Fortunately, the quilt is now finished!! This trip to Texas is to deliver the quilt.

I used the "cracker box" square to set off the signatures. The fabrics are an assortment of '30 prints that you can read about here.
















I hope that people will always compare me to my grandmother. In my estimation, you would have to try very hard to top that compliment. I admire and love her deeply. Sorry it took so long, Grandma.

Eleanor Burns

If you ever have the opportunity to see Eleanor Burns with her Victory Quilts show don't miss it. She is a hoot. Her new book Victory Quilts is out and she has put together a fun show that highlights WWI with quilts. Here are a few highlights from the show.

This was just the introduction. You can see a little of the sampler from the book behind her.










As you see, she changed for the show. Behind her another of the quilts from the book.

















Her son, Orion, was a big part of her show. Here they are doing the Victory Polka. He was a lot of fun. He and Cindy, her store manager, ran the booth at the show while she taught classes daily.












She would show up at the lunch break to sign books. I have been wanting her Egg Money Quilts for sometime now so I bought it and had her autograph it for me. This picture, however, was taken Thursday night after the show.









As you can tell, I really had a great time at the quilt show. I took a machine quilting class the final day and had a blast. I'm not sure my machine will be as easy as the Janome 6600 we were sewing on but I'm gonna give it a try.
Thanks for stopping by.
Happy Quilting!