Blog Update

I didn't realize how long it has been since I last posted on my blog.  I have been busy, with various things, but not anything specific or important enough (in my mind anyway) that would make an interesting post.

The weather has been dicey around here in the Pacific Northwest, so I haven't been able to take pictures of finished quilts like I would like.  But, I have gotten binding on four quilts, and will have to  make future posts at a later date.

I have also been working on some BOM's and custom orders for my etsy store.

This is a custom order for a bigger fleece blanket.  Usually I make these fleece blankets in smaller blankets for babies.  The customer saw me making a baby blanket using this fleece print, and wanted to know if i could make one bigger, I said this was the last piece and since the fleece print was "old school" design for this team, it would be difficult to find more to make a big one.  Well I was off across the state visiting a hole in the wall kind of quilt shop, and lo and behold they had this fleece print.  they had about 2 1/2 yards left, so I bought it and contacted the customer.  Of course, the customer was ecstatic and said yes to me making it for them.  It measures 5' X 6', which makes a nice couch throw.

I also have been working on the Vintage Sampler blocks, I got a little behind, I am just now woking on Block 5, which came in the mail last week.

Here is block 3

These are churn dash blocks.  This month they started adding the sashing pieces so when at the end, all the pieces will go together nicely.

This is block 3 fillers that go in and around the major blocks of each month's package.

This is block 4.

Two of the blocks are 12" square, the one on the left is called "Woven Star" and the one on the right is called "Star of Hope", and the filler block is some more Broken Dishes.

Fall is a very busy time of the year.  Just like spring there are so many things that need to be done outside and in all the garden  and flower beds.  Lots of clean up and dead head work that when done, make for ugly pictures.  But, I have wanted to make a pathway from the backyard sidewalk to my greenhouse.  I dug out the dirt and hauled in the filler and hauled in the flagstone to make this pathway.  It was really hard work, but very satisfying to get done.  I know it is a little crooked, but my herb barrels weren't placed perfectly either, so the pathway follows their setting.  I really don't care, I am stating that it is quaint and since it is my work, I will claim it in all it quirkiness!

My rescue dog photo bombed my picture!  

Warmest...

Harvest Time

Its that time of the year again, harvesting of the garden.  Yesterday was a full day of harvesting, as it seems many of the veggies and fruit ripen all at once.

I canned 11 pints of green beans last week, and this is what we picked again this week.

Potatoes didn't do so well, I think I need to address how they get watered. These were volunteer plants that came up from not getting all the potatoes out of the ground from the prior year.  I'm also thinking that volunteer plants don't produce as well as newly planted potato eyes.  Gardening at my house is always trial and error.  

These are honey crisp apples, the best apples in my humble opinion.  My little dwarf tree over produced this year, and the weight of the apples, broke the trunk.  I will have to replace this one and start over.  Having to get a new apple tree, will spur me to finally get some other fruit tress and build a mini orchard.

My husband and I are originally from New Mexico, and we love hot chili peppers, especially the anihiem green peppers.  Grown here, they don't have as much heat, but they have good flavor.  It doesn't stay consistently hot enough here in the Northwest to create the heat in the pepper.  The little yellow one are Hungarian yellow hots.  They have a nice bite to  them!

Also, last week I canned 13 pints of salsa and 9 quarts of stewed tomatoes, and they just keep coming,   I am putting this batch in the freezer, until I have enough to can some more.   

My strawberries are prolific this year.  I pick this amount, about two quarts, every three to four days.  I can't remember the specific type of strawberry plant that I bought, but they are ever bearing type.  I am so surprised they are doing so well, as I had about 20 leftover plants that I didn't know where to put them, so I just stuck them in a garden bed at the back of the property, that was just plain dirt and straw over it to keep the weeds out.  I stuck the strawberry plants in the straw, and watered them.  The first year yielded very little, but I didn't get back to them during this spring, and they anchored in and just took off with yummy strawberries all the time.

This is just a small sample of the carrot harvest this year.  I pull about this much or a little more each week to eat fresh.  I plant enough to harvest throughout the winter.  I just put some straw on top of them and pull what we will eat each week.  

I didn't even get to my neighbors house to pick plums.  She has a bumper crop this year.

So it goes, another great garden year with good produce!

Warmest...

Ongoing June Update

Well, it has been quite busy around here for the last couple of weeks.

I finally got this little lap quilt quilted.  It took much longer than I would have liked.  Only because, I chose to quilt each little piece of the quilt.  Starting and stopping, cutting the thread and starting again takes a lot of time.  But, it is now done, and it went on a trip with my mom.  Her favorite color is blue.  More can be seen about this quilt here.

I have jumped on the vintage sewing machine bandwagon, and decided to get this one out of my garage storage to see what I could do with it.  It is a Bernina Model 1130, and is still selling for around $800 - $1200.  It was made in the '70's, so it is holding it's value nicely.  It has 10 feet, including a walking foot, a retractable plug in cord, and a leg lift attachment that will lift the pressure foot while you are sewing.  Never used one before, but can see where they would come in handy.  But after all that, it is missing the correct pressure foot.  I looked for one online, but a new one, genuine or not,  runs around $140.  WOW!  A lot to spend just to see if the machine works well,  I can turn the flywheel, the light comes on, and the bobbin winder works, so now I have to ponder if I want to spend that kind of money to get a pressure foot.  I wrote about this with my own Viking Designer II machine's pressure foot that cracked and is not working properly, and its replacement cost is around $250!  It all boils down to the machines that are electronic, and have electronic connections to the foot pedals causes the high prices.

I think everyone knows by now that my favorite color is pink.  My sewing room oozes pink, and it has all kinds of pink sewing decor.  So, when I was out garage sale(ing) with a friend, and I came across this pink iron, I knew I had to have it for my sewing room.  When I saw that it was only $8, I knew I really had to get it, and the little sticker swore it still works!  So I bought it, brought it home, tested it and sure enough it works.  The retractable cord does not work, so I just put a little clip on the cord to hold it out so it stays plugged in.  

The garden work continues, I have pulled the pea plants and then planted beans in the spot.  Below is the picture of the pepper plants that I started from seed in my green house.  I planted over 35 plants, hoping to get enough with the tomato plants to make salsa this year.

I made a resolution the last two years, to work on getting UFO's done in my stash.  This few months I have pulled out tops that I had completed.  I have had 5 done at my long arm quilter to date, she currently has 4 more to quilt, and the picture below is 8 more ready to go.  When I say ready to go, I have to stitch the backing together and cut batting off a big roll.  Then I have to fill out paperwork for each quilt before I can drop them off.  But, I will have to wait until she is done with the 4 she has before I send over any more.  I am still waiting for a nice day here in the Pacific Northwest (and when I don't have any gardening work to do) to get pictures of the completed quilts.  Most of these completed quilts are BOM's from 2004 - 2008.  I didn't get pictures of the progress work of any of these quilts, so it will be limited posts about them when I do get pictures of the final quilt.

While I was digging through my old UFO's, I came across this next project.  Back in 2013, I was spending late nights trolling through all kinds of quilting blogs, and came across this "Mystery Quilt" by Heather Spence.  I felt that it was a good cause (for cancer), and I was intrigued by doing a mystery quilt.

This mystery quilt called for a jelly roll in the fabric requirements, and I had just picked up this jelly roll at the quilt shop I worked at back in 2013.  It is a fabric line called Whimsy, by Fig Tree for Moda.  See the red line through the price?  It meant that it was half off, and I then got my employee discount, so I was invested in this mystery quilt for about $15.00.  

What I didn't do well in considering this jelly roll for this quilt, is the fact that there were not distinct darks and lights.  This is what I would call a "muted" color line of fabric.  So after I tried to sort out the darkest colors and made up the top, it is really hard to see the the pattern of the block and the way it should look in the quilt top.

This is an isolated block, and it is hard to see how it should be for the quilt.  

Oh well, I am going to go ahead and quilt it up and use it for a travel lap quilt or a donation quilt.

Thanks for stopping in and catching up with all my ongoing projects.  As always, there will be more to come.

Warmest...

Gardening and Sewing - Hand and Hand

This time of year is picking up in the garden, my mom and I shelled peas this week, ended putting up about 9 quarts.  Doesn't sound like much, but when you are shelling them, it is a lot to get done.

The rest of the garden is planted, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and soon lots of peppers.  I have fenced off the chickens, so they can do some free ranging in the back yard.  They are happy campers.

This is under my needle for the last few days.  I finally got it back out to do the quilting myself.  

I am so close to being done, I have two corners and the border left to get done, but as always, something seems to pop up that take the front burner.

We went to a city in our fair State of Oregon, called Bend (supposedly it is in the top 10 best places to live in the whole United States).  It is a fairly small town, and they have three quilt shops.  So we stopped at one and they were holding a parking lot sale, where customers can rent a parking space and set up to sell their extra quilting stuff and fabric.  It is just awesome to attend.

This is the first thing I came across, a vintage toy Singer sewing machine.  It was made in the 50's and is so cool.  It has an on/off switch (no foot pedal) and no bobbin.  Simple and a nice addition to my vintage collection.

Then I moved on to another parking space and this quilter had a extra large bin of scraps with a free sign taped to it.  I asked if I could have all the scraps, because you know, I am still needing about 400 different fabrics to finish my cheddar bow ties.  To my surprise, she said take them all.  I bagged them up, two grocery bags full, and brought them home and sorted them out.  This is a pile that is being cut for the cheddar squares.

This is just the start of the pile I am going to be cutting out over the next couple of days.

And alas, the progress of my cheddars to date.  The bag in the back of the picture has 600 completed squares.  The bowl has about 250 so far.

Then yesterday, that new BOM I posted about here came in the mail yesterday.  It is block one and the initial flyer of the BOM.   

I better get going and get busy!

Warmest...

Busy Spring

Spring, as usual, is a very busy time for me.  Mostly with the greenhouse and then gardening, both the vegetable beds and the flower beds around the house.

First off, the new fruit will be coming ripe in a few weeks, so I dug out of the freezer all the frozen fruit from last year and made jam.  I ended up canning 54 half pints of cherry, raspberry, blackberry, and triple berry.  

I also had my sister in law of New Mexico, send me some green chili.  Twenty pounds of frozen chopped chili.  So I canned about 50 half pints of chili, but didn't get a picture.

Then I got busy planting about 65 tomato plants (those are the plants with the bamboo sticks).  There are more tomatoes off to the right where you can see only one corner.

Now you can see them in the box next to the green house.  The box in the lower left corner is lettuce, spinach, beets, chard, etc.  and the box in the middle back is cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli.  Then in the back box is the peas, glorious peas.  They are so prolific this year again.  We should have a bumper crop!  in front of the peas in the same box is carrots.  There are the regular orange carrots, yellow carrots, red carrots and purple carrots.  They all taste the same, but they make for a pretty bake vegetable dish.

And of course there are the chickens.  They didn't like being cooped up in their little space, so we temporarily fenced off a portion of the yard, and they are happy campers.

Next up in the greenhouse are tender annual flowers, like foxglove, sweet william, and holly hocks.  Then some herbs like basil, purple basil, chamomile, parsley, marjoram and dill.

I haven't had time to get out all the marigolds I started back in February, so they are blooming in the perfect conditions in the greenhouse.  The egg carton flat is some moss rose, maybe I can get to them this Friday????

These plants are miscellaneous items, some house plants, some stragglers of tomatoes, peanut plants to little to be put out yet, etc.

These are my 53 pepper plants that finally have come up and needed to be transplanted into these 4 inch pots. Now that they are in the bigger pots, they will grow pretty fast.   These will go out some time in early June.  

 I also have two other vegetable beds full of watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, winter and summer squash, cucumbers, and more cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli.  And, I also have four flower beds that we spread two yards of bark dust around.

So, there you go.  Spring is all about being outside getting lots of gardening done. 

My next post will have a couple of things I have been working on in my sewing room.  Believe it or not, I do spend my evenings in the sewing room.  All about balance between work and play, right?

Warmest...