Lately

I've been chipping away at my Jellystone quilt as time allows, but progress is slow. One of my readers requested I share my progress and not wait until I finish the quilt to share. I know I often post when I begin a project and when I finish one and not much in between. I'll try to be better about that. I've been working on HSTs

But sewing time is a little harder to come by lately. Last Friday we shipped out a load of heifers:

And that calls for cookies for the buyer/truck driver (the eggs are for our camp man and his wife):

Then our camp man got hurt so I was called in to help process some heifers:

Yesterday I fixed them(the camp couple, not the heifers. 😄) a Chile Relleno Casserole and today I'm making them some bread because I was told that was their comfort food:

We also took our sweet new stud colt

in to the vet so we could get him cut (here's what he thought about that!)

And we're celebrating a rare green spring with 2 recent rains (0.8 and 0.6 here at the house)

And that caused the Mustard to explode in the yard, growing over a foot in 4 days so the first mowing session of the season took place:

I know it's pretty, but it chokes out the grass and around here, growing grass is a constant struggle:

One Saturday we had a special Brangus Sale at the sale barn and then we had the Angus sale this past Saturday plus our regular Monday sales so that cuts into the week a little, but I really like my job and the paycheck helps support my quilting habit so I'm not complaining. 😉

                              

So my sewing time has drastically diminished, and when I DO get back in there, I think I'll be spending more time with my iron than my sewing machine:

Hamburger Vegetable Soup

I know many of ya'll are tired of gray days, but around here they are few and far between and when they DO come around, we get pretty excited:

And yesterday was one of those days:

Cool, wet, drizzly, soggy and gray means soup's a simmering:

I found this recipe here: Togetherasafamily

We've always got a deep freeze full of ranch raised beef. When we were growing our family, it seems we went through ground beef fast, but now I'm always looking for ways to use it up. This one was a keeper.

As always, I made some changes. I doubled the meat, added Rotel instead of diced tomatoes, added more Worcestershire, and sprinkled crushed red pepper flakes on top. We like spice!

Hamburger Vegetable Soup

2# lean ground beef
1 onion, diced
2 cloves minced garlic
2-3 peeled, cubed potatoes
4 C beef broth
1 can tomato soup
1 can Rotel
16 oz frozen mixed vegetables
1 Tbsp Worcestershire
Pepper
Granulated Garlic
Seasoning Salt

* Brown ground beef, onion, and garlic. Drain if needed, but we have our ground beef processed extra lean. Season with pepper, granulated garlic, and seasoning salt. Add potatoes, beef broth, tomato soup, Rotel, vegetables, and Worcestershire. Simmer on stove for 30-45 minutes. Serve with dollop of sour cream and a good french bread roll.

Next Project

On Tuesday I pulled out this project that's been in a bin for many moons:

The strips of dark fabrics were already cut but I still needed to cut them down into the designated squares so I worked on those. I also pulled some neutrals and got those cut:

Lots of cutting! :

This is where I'm headed:

It's in this book:

I like so many of Carrie Nelson's patterns. I liked a lot of her Schnibbles patterns, but I never made any because I was too busy making big quilts. I made 2 of her Pick and Choose quilts:

                                    

And this one (Ginger Belle) is on our bed - I made it bigger than the original pattern so that it would fit our King-sized bed:

This one is another one I want to make:

I'll make it larger too - and this one:

One more:

I want to make this quilt from her Farmhouse Favorites book too:

Yep. I'm a Carrie Nelson Groupie. 😊

Under the Needle: February

February was a mixture of snowy, wet, sunny, windy, cold, warm days. We're delighted with any and all moisture because that means we may actually have a green spring. We don't get many of those around here. February was also a happy month for sewing.

I made more progress on my HST Chaos quilt - it's supposed to be my leader-ender project for the year, but I have become smitten with these little low volume prints and I ended up sewing 20 blocks and laid a few out:

Then I had to re-evaluate as the blocks weren't nesting the way I liked. I decided that my 4-patch base wasn't the best course of action so I spent some time with my seam ripper and remade my blocks in this manner:

I cut and pieced the blocks for the Economie Zoologie quilt that I bought on clearance as a kit from Craftsy a few years back and stitched it into a top. I need to find something a little less colorful for the back because the top is pretty happy:

I cut and pieced this Wildflower pattern that has been in hiding in a bin for too long:

And I cut and pieced this baby quilt top:

I am making the binding for a quilt I picked up from Jackie on Monday:

I also pulled out my bin of potholder pieces and am attempting a machine binding.

Epic fail 😏:

I'll be ripping this out as we settle in to watch rodeo this evening. I have one finish this month: this baseball baby quilt:

It feels good to be making progress on some projects. I actually made a quilty road trip with some friends on Thursday. We went to one of our favorite shops for the first time in 2 years. We had a ball, but would you believe I walked out without buying a single thing? It's true - I walked out empty handed. I looked for a binding and was on the hunt for a couple of backings, but although I do my best to support local quilt shops, I'm not paying $12.99 / yd for backing. I was tempted by numerous pretty fabrics, but I have so many projects ready to work on here that I just could not justify bringing more home. March is going to be busy so I'm not expecting to accomplish as much in regards to sewing, but I'm ok with that. There's more to life than sewing, but a little stitching is good for the soul when things get busy.