Back Roads Finished!

Sewing has not been happening around here lately, but that's not a complaint. Between company and our fall cow works, and our boy being home, 3 trips to Texas, and a trip to look at bulls, another to pick them up, and putting up apples and mountains of green tomatoes, it just hasn't been a priority. Good thing too because there hasn't been an extra moment to sew...or blog. -insert sheepish grin-

However, a few months ago I picked up a few quilts from Jackie and I have found a bit of time to stitch on this binding although this one took me almost an entire month to bind.

It's a great cuddle size at 70" x 84".

 We had so much fun in Amarillo when we went for the WRCA Ranch Rodeo Championships a few weeks ago, but when I had had my fill of socializing, I just wanted to crawl in the back of this wagon with my quilt:

Jackie quilted this fun barbed wire meander across it that has little stars running across the wire:

This quilt came to be as the result of extra blocks I made for my Western Many Trips quilt...the Wagon Quilt. :) I used Bonnie Hunter's wildly popular tutorial from HERE .

I just set them together with a sashing and liked the end result. I didn't want these extra blocks to become orphan blocks and end up forgotten in a dusty project box and now I get to cross off another quilt from my UFO list!

I'm horrible about labeling my quilts, but I'm trying to be better about it. After all, I do have a machine that does most of the work for me. So I stitched this label I made a while back to the back of this quilt:

And by the way, this backing may be my most favorite ever:

I found it last winter in an Amarillo Quilt shop. Another finished quilt that will often be called into action during the cold months of winter:

Country Roads, Take Me Home...

to the place I belong...

I was away this last week helping my Mom and as much as I enjoy spending time with her, I begin to hyperventilate long about day 3 when I'm in a city. She doesn't even live IN the city. She lives in a very quiet subdivision, but I can't breathe. Just the thought that there are too many people surrounding me makes me cringe. I grew up here, but in my very first post ever, I mentioned how I always felt like a fish out of water and that still holds true today...maybe even more so.

Those of you who are regular readers know that I even have trouble dragging myself the 30 miles to town once a week.

This time I flew:

 That too puts me off balance. I grew up flying as we flew to Europe a lot to spend some summers and Christmases with family, but I hadn't flown in over 20 years until we flew out to California for our boy's Marine Graduation a few years back. That was SO worth it, and I wouldn't have missed THAT for anything in the world, but I did a lot of praying.

I'm not a fan of flying, but I took along some hand stitching to settle the soul.

Stitching does that, but those of you that sew, know that. It's hard to explain it to someone who doesn't sew. My mom asked me to make some potholders for some of her friends so before I left, I blew off the dust from my sewing machine and stitched some up so that I had bindings to work on. I have 2 quilts awaiting binding, but they are both 100" x 100" and would be a bit unwieldy to work on while flying.

I like to drive the back roads, but Mom thought I ought to fly and even though I am on the downhill slide to 50, sometimes you still do what you are told when your Mom is doing the telling. :)

I laughed when I saw this sign:

That is me up there and unfortunately, our girl inherited that trait although I blame hers on the fact that she never wears matching socks. :)

Flying from Dallas, there was a darling 18-month old little girl seated behind me who was so good. She serenaded those of us who were seated in close proximity to her with multiple renditions of "Tinkle Tinkle Little Star". She was using her indoor voice and it was very sweet. Some might be irritated by this musical concerto, but you could not help but grin and be completely charmed by her unless you were a close relative of the Grinch, and even then, I'm thinking she would have wormed her way into even your heart.

When I arrived and opened my suitcase, I had a lovely note from the TSA:

Hmmm...I wonder what they deemed suspicious. Could it be the paper piecing box of hexagons  (no scissors), or the chocolate covered almonds? Surely my devotional didn't raise the alert. The note says they search random pieces of luggage, but they broke my zipper. :( Perhaps I should have left them a note on the off chance that they would search my suitcase that told them that they must hold their tongue out in order for it to zip properly.

My parents have built an amazing circle of friends through the years. I love their friends. Some of them even come out to visit us and spend holidays with us. They have become extended family. They all live on the same street so there is always something going on. One leaves flowers at the door, one brings a homemade Lemon Meringue Pie, one invites us over and cooks amazing salmon for us and another invites us to dine on Ossobuco, another leaves a still warm loaf of banana bread at the door because we are gone, another invites us over for dinner and a movie, we attend a grandchild's baptism, we have a group of them over for supper...and brunch, we gather at one home and everyone sets up tables in the circle drive on Halloween for trick or treaters...hundreds of trick or treaters, and everyone brings food to set up in the garage. I am wiped out when I get home. I guess you could say I have reached my socialization threshold. Or I have reached my socialization saturation point. LOL Yup. Socially saturated. That says it best.

I felt a bit better once I looked out the window and began to see crop circles instead of houses:

 And before long, I recognized the Cap

and even spied part of the ranch:

Our girl came home this weekend! She came home on Thursday to spend some time with her Daddy. She said, "I know how he gets when you're away". :) And she too needed some dirt road time. Being socially saturated runs in the family. LOL So it was nice to have both of them greet me when I arrived at the airport and it is really, really good to be home.

'Here Fishy Fishy' Baby Quilt Finished

It's time for Amy's Blogger's Quilt Festival and although ranch life has kept me away from the sewing machine lately, I have a quilt to add to the fun that I recently finished. Thank you, Amy, for giving us a place to gather and celebrate our love of quilting!

                                                

There will be lots of wonderful new blogs to discover and get ready for a slew of new inspiration as you browse through the wonderful quilts and read the stories behind them. Click HERE to be inspired!

If you popped in here via the festival, welcome to the end of the dirt road where quilting meets ranch life.

Every time I work on a baby quilt, I fall in love with it. These little fish were so much fun to applique. I've got a long way to go before I'm satisfied with my applique, but I just had to get over it and dive in or I'll never improve.

 Same goes for the quilting. I'm new to FMQ and I'm pretty tickled with it on this quilt. I didn't have one tuck or bobble on the backside although my stitch length seemed to vary and I'm thinking that had a lot to do with the fact that I wasn't able to keep a consistent speed. I need a cruise control on my machine. :)

                           

I stitched slowly on the applique, but I still had my thread sort of lose tension every so often. Not sure what causes that, but I'll play around with some practice pieces and see if I can get it all lined out. You can see it on the mouth of the little starfish here:

                    

I adore that little starfish with his wonky eyes. I straight line quilted the chevrons.

                               

 Boy, those little buggars gave me a run for my money, but in the end, things lined up ok. This pattern is from Heather Mulder Peterson's book: Little Quilts 4 Kids. Her directions are wonderful, but I just had to get my head on straight when piecing them in order to make the best use of the fabric. This is Heather's fabric line as well and I'm thinking I need to add some more of it to my stash.

Then I didn't have a clue as to how to quilt the background fabric so I kind of winged it and I am thrilled with it! It was fun and liberating although my shoulders were sore when I finished.

                                      

I backed it with a green that I had in my stash that matched perfectly and the fun multicolored chevron stripe print in the fabric line made a darling binding.

             

And I added this little label that I showed y'all the other day:

      

And here's the finished quilt for a very special little boy::

Isn't that a darling pattern?

This quilt measures 44" x 47",  and it's on its way to my awesome niece and her husband who had their first baby in July. Yes, I am late, but I was waiting on the release of this fabric. They are avid fishing fanatics so I knew I had to make this quilt, using Heather's darling fabric, for her sweet baby boy.

Quilt Labels

Can not even put into words how good it was to have our boy home for a bit... nor how hard it was to put him on that plane yesterday. Ugh. Now we're counting down 8 months until he's back from his next deployment. It's going to be a long 8 months.

We have enjoyed his presence, his amazing hugs, his quick wit, his sparkling eyes when he gets tickled, the conversations, the soothing sound of him playing his guitar, and it is far too quiet around here today.

It's been a coon's age since I've sewn anything - over a month, but I have a few quilts that are back from the quilter's and ready for binding so I tried to fill some time to stop myself from moping. Not sure if I was very successful, but I did manage to get some quilt labels made.

Labeling my quilts has always been a struggle for me. Don't rightly know why because I do think it's important. Whenever I run across a quilt in an antique shop, the first thing I think is, "I wonder who made it". I've never seen one labeled.

So I am making it a point to work on that and I thought I would share a few that I made yesterday while I pouted and sniffled my way through the day.

I made this one a few weeks ago for the Here Fishy Fishy Baby quilt for my niece's first baby. I mailed it last week and  I'll show it to you in a couple of days.

This label is for another quilt I just finished that took me an entire month to bind. That tells you how much time I've spent with needle and thread lately:

  And this one is now stitched to the back of the Barn Star quilt I finished back in January:

I made this one up for Bonnie's Hunter's Easy Street. It has been quilted, but still awaits a binding and looking at it, I will probably make another label on a lighter background. That blue doesn't read very well on the gray. Oops...missed clipping some thread tails on some of these.

And this one is for another quilt I just got back from the quilter's. I can not wait to tell you about this one, but it too still needs to be bound:

I made this one is for the King of the Jungle baby quilt that I need to finish next:

This label goes on the gigantic Western Scrappy Trips quilt that is on our bed. It is our Covered Wagon quilt, so named because a friend (Hi Saska!) said it was big enough to cover a covered wagon. I am thinking of embroidering our initials in the horseshoes.

And lastly, I made one for my Scrap Jar Stars quilt:

Once I make these labels, I really like them.

They don't take much time. I spend more time browsing through designs than it takes to make them. I only have access to a few fonts with the Digitizer Jr program I have, but it has served me well. Once in a while I think about purchasing the full fledged program, but when I think about shelling out that much dough, I just can't do it.

There are so many ways to label your quilts so consider this my public service announcement to just choose one and get those quilts labeled. I've printed some labels and used a pigma pen on others. These labels have a few tears on them, but at least they are finished. Now please excuse me while I go add a few more tears to a pillow.