December Sewing

As busy as everyone is in December, I have found some time to work on a few things. I pieced a toddler quilt and quilted it at a friend's home on Wednesday. She bought a quilting machine earlier this year and offered to let me give it a test run to see what it was like. It was FUN, but I still think I'll wait until Jackie retires before I consider buying one. I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it and I think the reason that it was fun was due to the fact that I got to spend the day with my sweet friend.

And ya'll think I live out in the sticks...this gal, who is also a ranch wife and my co-worker, lives twice as far from town as I do and her driveway (aka: dirt road) is 23 miles long.

I made one more block for a scrappy 'NEXT' Christmas quilt and I plan on making this my leader ender project in the New Year/ Hmmm...I think this is the same block I shared previously, but suffice it to say, I DID make one more:

 I made lots of these lined drawstring bags to replenish my dwindling supply:

Well, truth be told, I'm still making them and the above photo is from a few years ago. I love these things and I've made so many that I think I need to laminate my pattern

You can find the pattern HERE and although Jenny offers one size free, it was highly worth purchasing the pattern for the other sizes.

I made another set of potholders for the wife at North Camp:

And I surprised myself by jumping in on Bonnie Hunter's On Ringo Lake Mystery and actually making some progress:

Clue one is finished and clue 2 and three are cut out:

Haven't touched clue 4 and clue 5 will be posted tomorrow...yeh, not a chance. We tuned in to the NFR each night and I spent that time drawing diagonal lines on the endless 2" squares called for in the 2nd and 3rd clue:

And yes, I have a very attentive line drawing assistant.

Today's the 21st...it's 10:30 here and ya'll know that's at least 2 hours past my bedtime, but I haven't been on the computer in 3 days and this was the only way I was ever going to get a post in. Doesn't everyone try to get a quilt trimmed and bound 4 days before Christmas when presents are still unwrapped and baking still needs to happen?

Quilts in Progress

I apologize if ya'll went to read this post and it disappeared. I think our 8 year old computer is finally nearing the end. I'm still running Windows Vista on it!  And now that it is beginning to eat blog posts, it is time to let it go. We do have a laptop, but all of my 25,000 plus pictures are on the PC. Most of them are backed up on an external hard drive, but it's time to back them up to another location where I can access them from other devices. I really do have a love-hate relationship with technology.

So, I'm attempting to rewrite this post. Sigh. Skeet is not happy with me as we should have been back from our morning trot long ago and we haven't even left yet. Hang on Skeeterbug!

I think I'm finally caught up on baby quilts for a bit...at least for a week or two. I've got 2 big quilts to bind but it'll be a while before those are done. I'm a slow binder. I only work on bindings and hand stitching in the evenings and there's not much time to bind during these long summer days. I've still got a few quilts in various stages and I think it's a good time to take stock and make a list.

Now, this didn't all happen in a day or two...or even a week. This has taken place a stitch at a time, here and there, over the course of probably the past 3 weeks.

1. A while back, I bought this line of On Deck from Craftsy

to make this quilt and I finally opened, pressed, and cut it out

2.  Then in my attempt to use up leftovers from an old Lilly and Will line, I cut and pieced a top using the Baby Sails pattern, substituting bunnies for the sail boats

The pink and  white piece is large enough for a backing. but I still had leftovers

So I made 100 QST and am piecing those into a top. And I think there's enough left for one last quilt from the leftovers of the leftovers. :)

3.I made a southwestern wall hanging quite a few years ago. It's just been sitting as a top because I couldn't decide if it needed a border or not, but I finally just cut a backing and will hand it off to Jackie

4. I bought this piece when I needed $3.00 in order to reach free shipping status on an order and was determined to get it into a baby quilt

So I pulled coordinates,  made a slew of HST's

And pieced it into this design:

And that led to yet, another leftover quilt:

5. When we're on the our way to anywhere and I'm not driving, , I grab my little box of EPP and make a little progress

6. I worked on the May and June clues for the Two- Step Mystery Quilt over at My Carolina Home. The last clue is coming out today and I'm excited to get this one finished and gift it to Grandma Lillian:

7. I am making bias binding for this one. This is the one I'm most excited about:

8. And I'm currently binding this one:

9. This one was put on the back burner in June because June got crazy with cow works and the kids coming home on 2 weekends. I would much rather have the kids home than sew and I love that they enjoy spending time with the old folks.

 I was very careful and pieced slowly on this one, but it still didn't fit together the way it should and I became frustrated, but now it's time to stop procrastinating and get back to work on it.

O.K. Skeet... we can go now

                           

Finished Quilts...Soon

This is a happy way to begin a Tuesday:



I've got bindings to make and stitch as time allows.

Crossing Time Quilt

I finished piecing my Indian Summer quilt and pulled out another project I had started last year. I saw this quilt:

In this magazine that I have from 2010:

It looks like a simple patchwork quilt on point, but it's actually made of hourglass blocks:

I don't know why I was drawn to it because I haven't felt the need to make anything in the teal and red colorway that has been so popular, but I liked this before that combination became trendy. They are pretty together, but I just have nothing in those colors around my home. Still, I kept thinking about this quilt and then when I finally looked closer, I realized that I HAD bits and pieces of that line of fabric. It was a Moda line called Wuthering Heights and I won it in a giveaway 5 or 6 years ago. There was quite a bit of dusty pink in my pile, but I eliminated those for this quilt.

I also have a weakness for hourglass block quilts. I made this one from a couple of layer cakes:

And I loved how this one looked completely different, yet used the exact same block, giving a nod to color placement.

There wasn't much of the teal in my pile and I dug deep into my stash to come up with one that would work. What I found isn't a great match, but I had actually looked for about a year at other shops for something that would coordinate to no avail.

This is 50" x 55" and I would have loved to have made this larger, but I was limited by the lack of teal fabrics. I didn't have a lot of the other colors left either, but I had just finished piecing this when I unearthed one of my project boxes with leftover Portobello Market fabrics from this quilt:

So I pulled some of those and mixed those in with what I had left and some of the fabrics coordinated well. Still, no teal. So I'm trying to decide if I ought to add borders or not and pulled some options:

I may attach regular borders or I have enough of a variety for a square in a square border. I could add a piano key border, but I'm not sure if that would compliment the quilt. I'm going to have to sleep on it for a few days before I settle on one or the other...or neither...or both...or a combination of all of the above. In other words...I haven't decided. :)

Bloom Where You Are Planted Quilt

Bloom Where You Are Planted

That has always been one of my favorite sayings and I really had to put it into action when we moved here 11 years ago. It was a really difficult transition for me to move from our beloved mountains to this flat desert. It took me a couple of years to acclimate and I was obstinate about accepting the change. God wanted to bless us here and I kept pitching a hissy fit and telling Him that I did not understand why He planted us here. But He makes no mistakes and all of His plantings are intentional...and perfect.

I wrote this a few days ago to post about this quilt today and then this morning I opened up my devotional and read this:

I am  going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert...There I will give her back her vineyards. (Hosea 2:14-15) -from Streams in the Desert Devotional

The NKJ version reads:
 Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
Will bring her into the wilderness,
And speak comfort to her.
I will give her the vineyards from there,
And the Valley of Anchor as a door of hope;
She shall sing there,
As in the days of her youth,
As in the day when she came up from the land  of Egypt.

Yep, Perfect timing, once again.

I'm an optimist by nature. A glass half full kind of gal. Make the best of it. Cowboy up. Hitch up your britches and get on with it, but I struggled with this. I was still thankful for this lifestyle, and for each moment with hubby and the chiddlers, but I sure did miss those mountains.

It took a while, but soon, I began to see the beauty in this land:

The blessings that bloomed in the most unlikely places:

And so I continue to bloom where He has planted me and I've come to love this land. I am always amazed of the desert wildflowers that grow in this place of little rain and since it is really hard to grow blankets of wildflowers here, I decided to change my medium from seeds, to fabric.

For some time, I've had the hankering to make a simple wildflower patchwork quilt. I've collected floral fabric for a a few years, gathering bits and pieces that appealed to me here and there:

I finally set about cutting 5" squares from each fabric and stitching them into pairs last fall. I'm fairly certain that I had photos, but they seem to have vanished.

I wanted simple with flowers just tossed about in wild abandon and I wanted a whole mess of them:

Mission accomplished. :)

Plus Quilt Using a Jelly Roll

Seems I am always drawn to the Plus quilts that have been floating around for the past few years. I've made one and gave it to my Mom and have been hankering to make another. That, combined with leftover jelly rolls strips that were begging to be used, turned into this today:

                                

It's just baby sized now and I'm debating on whether to make it bigger. I do have another jelly roll of this Moda Breath of Avignon. It's an older line that I still really like, but need to use. Those jelly rolls have got to go and it's awfully tempting to just sit here all day and sew:

Pulling Fabric and Biscuit Baking at 3:30 a.m.

Our niece is expecting baby #2 in January. Bethany's always been such a neat kid and she is the first grandchild. She spent lots of time with us on the ranch during holidays and summers - treasured memories!  Alas, we don't get to see her much anymore, but when she had her first child, I made this quilt for him:

                                   

Bethany is a teacher now and she loves to fish so this was definitely the perfect quilt for her baby boy. Now he is going to be a big brother to a little sister and this is the quilt pattern I have chosen for her:

Bethany was very involved in 4-H and her Mama taught her how to sew. She sewed all sorts of clothes while she was growing up so I thought this little clothesline filled with cute little girl outfits would be just the ticket and now I am in the process of pulling fabrics. I love this part and end up creating quite a mess before I settle on my final selection.

Maybe this:

Perhaps this:

It's a start:

I'm trying to shop at home. My bins of fabric hold their breath when I open their lids and wonder who will I choose?

Oh, boy! I think I've been spending too much time inhaling bleach fumes. I've been cooking for a crew all week and if my fabric is beginning to talk, that's probably the first sign that I need a break. :)

The second sign? Well this morning I stumbled into the kitchen at 3:30 and starting mixing up a batch of biscuits. Gosh they looked nice as I popped them into the oven. Time ticked away and said biscuits wouldn't brown. And they were flat. Who messes up biscuits? -Raises hand- Then it hit me. I had added cornstarch instead of the called for baking powder. Seriously? Yup. Yes, I know. The cornstarch container looks nothing like the baking powder container.

                           

That's what happens when a 50 yr old has too many 3:30 am wake up calls in a row. And I've still got 2 more days this week.

I texted my friend M, who was also up at that ungodly hour slaving away over a hot stove, feeding a cowboy crew in Texas. I knew she would commiserate with my situation. She's so tired and has cooked so much that she said she even cooked in her dreams. We're a sad lot us two, but I love and miss her and we are planning an escape in the not too distant future. And what do you wanna bet we'll get together and end up talking about food!

And Then There Was One...

 I made some progress on the Don't Fence Me In quilt this week. It's the last UFO and I have procrastinated on this one time and time again. I think this fabric has aged long enough:

If I recall correctly, I bought this to make valances for a front room in the house we lived in in Texas. Plan B. A quilt. I knew I wanted to make it bigger than the 42" width of fabric and that meant I'd need to piece the strips and match the horses. I thought about it long enough that I had convinced myself that it was going to be a big mess, but once I finally gave myself a good talking to, I just gave it a shot and it didn't turn out half bad. I can live with it. No horses tails are growing out of shoulders so it'll do.

Then I had to reconstruct a pieced strip I had made many moons ago.

I have no idea how I made it, but I still really liked it and I needed to make more. I didn't have a pattern and apparently those particular brain cells have ceased to exist so new brain cells were called into action. I had run out of the original fabric so new fabric was pulled and cut and pieced. I snuck (I was always taught that wasn't a word and 'sneaked' is the proper form, but that sounds awkward) in a few minutes here and there and after 10 days I finally had a quilt top.

Now I have a question. To border or not to border? I've still got plenty of the brown and blue and cream and black fabrics. Presently it measures 77" x 87". I don't need it for any particular spot, but I just couldn't decide whether it would look better with or without a border. Any thoughts?

I may actually get to cross this one off the UFO list one of these days if I can stay focused. I wouldn't bet on it either. :) I've got 7 quilts at the quilters and this makes 8 so there will be lots of binding going on around here at some point and another baby quilt is in the works. Pinks and Grays and my stash is VERY limited on both.

 We've had  3" of rain since Thursday night - most of it early this morning and that means it's too wet to get around much without tearing up the roads so we're not venturing far today. We've got friends coming out to watch UFC fights tonight and fajitas and queso are on the menu I'll be donning my apron before long, but until then, I'm going to settle on a design and see what I can dig up.