Blustery Day Quilt

 I have a soft place in my heart for Winnie the Pooh. I am a huge fan of this wise little bear and a Winnie the Pooh quilt has been long overdue.

I've hunted Pooh fabric for a long time, but this was my favorite as it most closely resembled my memories of these beloved characters.

We didn't let the chiddlers watch much television when they were small, but I do remember buying 8 tracks of a Winnie the Pooh series and apparently we watched them enough that I learned all the voices because when we read the books we had, aloud, I was able to mimic the characters. I had forgotten that until the chiddlers reminded me. Sadly, I have lost that ability, but I have not lost my love for this cast of characters.

This fabric has been in a bin for some time and I finally decided to dig in and make a Pooh quilt. I fussy cut the scenes into 5" squares and was able to get 25. I would have liked to make the quilt bigger, but 5" squares seemed to be the best size for focusing on the characters.

I decided to use a pattern I designed 8 or 9 years ago. The alternating blocks are a 2 different quarter square triangles blocks so I started with 6 1/4" squares. I'm documenting the details here because I know I will be making this design again and it will be easier for me to reference this post when I do.

6 blue

8 yellow

10 green

Those became hsts;

4 blue/yellow

8 blue/green

12 yellow/green

Then I made 2 different combinations of quarter square triangles 

16 of the left

8 of the right

 

This is a simple quilt. The hardest part is making sure the orientation of the quarter square triangles is correct in order to insure this design. It finished at 46" x 46" .

I added a 6" border and a minky backing

 Jackie's perfect blustery quilting, and blue binding were the perfect finishing touches

I do wish I had used a softer blue and even a softer green, but it's what I had in my stash and I'm happy with the finished quilt

I don't know if I made this for grandbabies or for myself..maybe a little of both. 😉

Doctoring Allie

 One of the little barn kitties ( I'm calling her Allie Oop) was injured last week. DH was out at the barn putting shoes on one of his horses 

when we noticed her walking a little gingerly. We don't know what happened, but she had an open puncture wound and it just kept getting worse. No pictures, because it's pretty icky. I cleaned out the water trough we used for a brooder and store in the barn and isolated her in there after trying to clean out her wound. I kept a fairly heavy wire panel on top, but every morning, she had somehow climbed up and scooted the panel over enough and escaped. She was always bright-eyed and obviously feisty enough to climb out, but that had to have hurt her to climb out because she had a 2" open wound on her tummy. They are barn kitties and free to come and go and seek adventure (and hopefully mice)

I called our country vet on Thursday and took her in on Friday morning. They were swamped and told me to just drop her off. They just cleaned her wound up good and gave her a strong antibiotic, sending me home with a 10 day supply. I bought some Vetricyn and am applying that as well. We don't usually want our barn cats to be gentle because with all the predators in the mountains, their chance of survival here increases if they are wild, but I'm glad she's so sweet because it makes caring for her much easier. 

I set her up in Skeet's crate where she absolutely can't escape, hoping to keep her wound clean as she heals. She looks pretty pitiful

She is kind of giving me the stink eye here

But I bring her out 4 or 5 times a day where she likes to soak up the sun and follow me around

Welcome home

They were glad to be reunited. This is Bindi

And Charli

Every time I let her out, she makes her way to the barn (about 100 yards), but I'm trying to keep her injury clean and until that heals enough , I'm keeping her in Skeet's crate, in the garage for much of the day as well as during the night. But this is her happy place

Now we're working on putting some weight on her,

 but I think she's on her way.

Gingham Farmhouse Quilt

 A few years ago I made couple of gingham baby quilts for a friend's twin granddaughters

And soon after, I made a third that our granddaughter has claimed

And I've made another here

And when I stumbled upon this print, I thought a gray and white quilt would be fun. As much as I love this print, I will say I struggled with the strings...so many strings! It's a Michael Miller fabric and this is the first time I've had a fabric produce so many strings. Still, I loved the print enough to deal with the strings.

Sandy used a gray thread and a design called Vortex

I backed it with this print because I thought a touch of red on the back was fun and I bound it with a gray.

In hindsight, it really wasn't the best choice because the background is an off-white and the front is a true white, but it's fine.

 It was made with love and someone will love it and that's all that matters.

It finishes at 68" x 80" 

I like the simplicity of gingham quilts so I'm fairly certain this won't be the last.

This one has not found it's forever home, but the kids haven't seen it yet. 😉

Playing With Scraps

When we moved last fall, my scrap basket was overflowing and I dumped everything in a large tote to make it easier to move. This 32 qt bin holds a lot of potential.
                                    

There's nothing like moving to make you wake up and realize just how much fabric you actually have. Well, maybe not YOU, but in my case, it was A LOT.

I made this quilt 

from this book a few years ago

 Recently I decided to make a few more from the same book and commenced to cutting down scraps

Then I saw that Bonnie Hunter recently posted a leader-ender challenge using 2" strips and I was already pulling those and cutting more.

I made 6 of the 4-Patch Fun blocks just to see if I'd enjoy making them - these are fun

so I'm kitting up more to keep next to my sewing machine

I'm also cutting 1.5"  and 2.5" strips as well as some 5" squares for a future project.

I'll be interested to see how much of a dent I can make this month. It looks like I'm going to be bellied up to the ironing board and cutting table for the foreseeable future