Summer?

We have had the worst weather this spring. We don't get tornados or hurricanes here in South East Idaho, but it has been a long winter. Spring has been cold. Since April we have had snow, rain, snow, rain, sunshine(one day), and on and on. About 1 good day to 10 days of yuck.

Last week it froze, rained, rained, and talk about wind! Three to four days of 35 - 40 mph winds with gusts up to 50-60 mph. We put the top on our patio cover and then took it down again. I was afraid if we didn't we would find it in Wyoming!

We finally got enough good weather to plant tomato and cabbages out side.

My sister's hobby greenhouse is doing good. This spring she added a long low raised bed for salad plants. She was using large pots for greenhouse tomatoes. She built a raised bed in the center for the tomatoes instead. Lots and lots of 5 gallon bucket loads of rocks(for dranage) and even more of bedding soil.

All the tomatoes have blossoms.


This is the long bed with radishes, lettuces and onions.


These are the fuchsias she bought as tiny seedlings a couple of months ago. They will go on the patio soon.


The last three years we got almost as many tomatoes from the greenhouse as from the outside garden. Last year it froze the tomatoes on June 17! We will see what happens this year.

Finishsed UFO

Last weekend I worked on a UFO from my stack of quilt tops. It's a wallhanging I made out of some leftover flying geese blocks and some other scraps. Some quilters call the little pieces "crumbs". I had the backing and the batting alread to go and had sketched a lady blowing the "wind" in the sky. Then it got buried in the pile. I found it and decided I should finish it.

I have been following Leah Day's blog: http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/
for about a year. Lots of interesting designs on Leah's blog. Very inspiring. I went back to the beginning and practiced some of the designs on squares for potholders.

When I found this UFO, I decided to practice on it.



This is a closeup of the "Wind". Click on the picture to see it larger.


A bit of detail of the trees and ground.

Work room mess

I have been working on some four season wall hangings lately. My workroom is a mess. I have had the company of our two dogs off and on. Dizzy the doberman and Lily the Lhasa. I keep two small dishes so they can get water and a snack when they come out to visit me. It is finally warm enough that I don't feel guilty running the heat enough to be warm as I work.

Someday I am going to redo the chair cover. It's held on with safety pins now. And the seat cover keeps coming off.

A look at quilt tops I had in storage

I spent some time yesterday taking pictures of the quilt tops I have made in the last few years. I don't have any of them quilted. I wanted a record of what I have so I can put them in by "brag book". I decided to post them here also.

This is the oldest. I made it during the 70's, but never got it quilted. The fabric is cotton/poly, which is what we mostly had then. I'm thinking of selling it as a "vintage" top.


Several years ago I bought 3 pieces of fabric that were related. I put them together in this quilt along with a light sage green:



Its one of those things that you look at after a while and you wonder "What was I thinking?" I don' really like it now. I think I will use it as a practice piece for machine quilting.

I used the leftovers for this quilt:



For several years I bought "space" themed fabrics when I found them with the idea of a space window quilt. This is what I came up with. It's perfect for a young astronaut:


This is a wall quilt to go with it:

Here is another quilt I made with the leftovers from the space windows quilt. Another good quilt for a future astronaut.


This was a fun quilt. I had several remnants: a native american inspired watercolor pattern, a tie-dye type with four main colors, red, blue, green, and yellow, A piece of orange and a piece of grey. They all went well together laying on the table. The pattern is called jewel box. I fussy cut the centers of the blocks. After cutting the tie-dye fabric into squares, I sorted it into stacks by predominant color: red, green, yellow and blue. I used up all of the fabrics. I didnt have more than a hadfull of scraps left.


This is my fractal quilt. I used an illustration on the cover of Scientific American as my guide. It was finished during the winter of 2005. It just kept growing. after finishing the center, it needed a border, Then another. It turned out about 100 by 110 inches. I can't get a good picture because it is WAY larger than my design curtain. I wrote to SA about permission to publish my pattern, but they say I have to contact the Mendelbrot estate. We will see. I want to redraft the pattern smaller or just use the center area for another quilt at some time.




Last summer I put together this tree quilt. I am thinking about putting a solid green border on it to make it larger. I still have some of the green fabrics, I could applique a vine around the outside using those scraps. Maybe.


Most of these have been stash buster quilts. I have been trying to come up with quilts where I only had to buy one piece of fabric to complete the quilt. The only quilt I bought the fabric for spacifically was the fractal quilt.

Spring? That was yesterday.

Yesterday started out with sunshine and ended with snow. We thought it was spring.

We have a large pond with goldfish in it. We keep water in it year round. In the winter we turn off the pump and put an aerator in it for the winter. The goldfish just sink to the bottom of the 3 foot end and hybernate all winter.

The water in Sand Creek and the irrigation ditches in this area is shut off during the winter. The wild ducks come back to Sand Creek every spring before the water is released. A pair of ducks come and swim in our pond every year. They were there yesterday. A sure sign of spring. And the Daffodills are comming up.

Today I woke up to a couple of inches of wet snow. The snow/rain is going to be around for a few days.

It's been a long, hard, cold winter. I would love to see the sunshine for more than a few hours. Another day, I guess.

I have returned.

I'm sorry I haven't posted for so long. Shortly after the last post, I ended up in the hospital for 3 weeks. After coming home, I was not up to much for a long time. I couldn't do cross stitch or other hand embroidery. I just couldn't concentrate on anything for a while.

Just before Christmas, I decided to work on my "Dear Jane" quilt. It was so cold, that I didn't want to run the heater in my work room more than to keep it just above freezing. My work room in a finished room at the back of the detached garage. So I started hauling my sewing machine, and the quilt, etc. to my bedroom. I found an old iron and my portable ironing board. Then I hunted up the quilt supplies.

Two years ago in January, I started a Block of the Month for this quilt. Every month I received a packet of fabric and instructions for 8 squares and 2 triangles. I had started making the blocks, but quit after the first 4 months. The packets kept coming. I decided to keep getting it when I was out of work, since I already had half of the packets.

I started doing one or two blocks most days. Some days I didn't feel like working on anything. Slowly the blocks built up: 169 blocks unfinished size of 5 inches. 52 trianges for the border.

Today I finally got it all put together. I have NO IDEA when it will be quilted.

My design wall is a sheet put up as a curtain over our food storage shelves. I was unable to get a full picture that showed the whole quilt, but, here is my quilt.

This is the center before the borders.


This is the left half...


And the right half.


And here is the best I could do to get most of it in one picture.


I will try to post more often.

I finished the title quilt

Hi! I finally finished the quilt pictured in the title. It is two blocks, a butterfly and a flower. I started this quilt more that 10 years ago. I cut out all the patches for the blocks and sewed a few of each, then packed it away. I found the pieces about 5 years ago and put them together with red. I found a butterfly print for the back. After quilting about half of it, it went back into storage for a few years. I took it out last summer and finally finished it this September. This quilt reminds me of my mother. She taught me how to sew when I was 8 years old, and how to quilt when I was 14. She died before I started this quilt, but it was quilted with the feathers she liked.

Thats my dog Lily on the bed. She hates the camera.

I decided this quilt is for my bed. When the weather started changing, I put it on my bed. I had forgotten how warm a quilt is. At least for now, I don't need the other blankets I usually have on my bed in the winter.






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