Little Girls Visit To The Farm

When you come  to the farm, first you have to endure the lush foliage of the century old sugar maples that line the long drive way.

It is important to not go too fast or you might miss the opportunity to pick up some stones.

Once past the trees, you enter the big yard. You don't see the old farm  house yet.
You have to keep on going.

The old farm house is surrounded by big old Colorado Spruce trees. 

 And what is this? Little girls picking Gramma's hydrangeas?

Helping water Gramma's geraniums and hosta and bug boots.

Picking raspberries.

Make sure there are no raspberry bugs on them.

A short visit to 86 year old Great-Grandma to take her some raspberries.
Had to call ahead to make sure she was home since she was running errands that morning and had an appointment. She still drives herself everywhere.

Then we went to a picnic at another farm.
What is Grampa doing to Devan's face with that big chunk of ice?

  Oh yes. She had ice cream.

Then she picked up Gramma's camera and took some pictures. Lots of pictures.
Pictures of her bug boots. Pictures of her knees. The grass. And . . . what's that? That blur.

 Smudges of ice cream from sticky fingers on . . . Gramma's camera lens. Yup.

Don't forget my 

200th blog post give-away

with the ice cream smudges on the camera lens.

Sticky Summer Blessings,
Chris

200th Blog Post and a Give Away

I have reached a milestone with 200 blog posts in the almost 2 years since I started blogging. What a journey that has been. I looked through some of my bookshelves and picked out 4 books that have been great reads but it isn't likely that I will ever make any of the projects in them. So I will share. In order to win, please leave a comment telling me which book you would choose if your name is drawn. It would be fun to see names from each of the 6 continents that I see on my stats page and each of the many countries around the world where readers of my blog come from. The draw will take place in 2 weeks.

Bed and Breakfast Quilts by Mimi Dietrich

 

Dutch Treat by Judy Garden

Threads from the 30's by Nancy J Martin

Fancy Applique by Elly Sienliewicz

My 5 week quilting drought has ended as I prepped CCCQ block 27 yesterday. I had to cut out 3 more background blocks since I gave away 2 and messed up one when I first started this block of the month nearly 2 years ago. This block came with some detailed instructions on the order to prepare the little bits. I started with this little tooth comb shaped flower by pinning it along the stem where it will sit under the stem. The teeth finish at about 1 cm. So a bit tricky in stitching them in. I am not able to write beside each picture so just scroll down to see what I did.

The leaves. I traced around them with a frixion pen.

Placed the leaves over the stitched down comb.

I began the applique on the comb to make sure that it fit.

And that is as far as I got. Don't forget to post a comment for a chance to win one of the books above.
I am linking with quilting readers garden and slow stitching Sunday.

It's good to be appliqueing again Blessings,
Chris

199th Blog Post and a Give Away Coming.

Today is my birthday and the count down has begun. Only 731 days until I get my first pension cheque. I can hardly wait. But I guess I will have to be patient because a lot can happen in 24 months.

I have not done any quilting on any of my own projects for 5 weeks now. Ya. I can hardly believe that. I have quilted up 2 for my daughter and am helping a friend make one as a wedding present for her daughter. I will be doing the machine quilting as soon as we complete all the machine applique and assemble the top.

In the meantime, I keep dreaming. I saw this antique President's Wreath at Mary's Shop in Bedford Pennsylvania last year and I think I would like to make my own. It can't be that hard to draft the pattern from a photo. And, I believe there are 9 of these identical wreaths on it. One of these days.

Antique President's Wreath

This is my 199th blog post. I had uploaded the photo a year ago and forgot to write the post, but I am dreaming. I thought I would do a give away with the next post. I haven't decided yet exactly what I will give away. I have hundreds of books and patterns. I could choose a couple of those. I have more than lots of fabric and fabric bundles. Not too eager to part with them, yet.

The little girl grandchildren and their parents are away on vacation for 2 weeks and the house is very, very quiet. I got half a chapter written for my book and went to the market yesterday with my Sweetie. We brought home lots of veggies, fruit and butter tarts. Saw only one field of wheat being combined. We do not grow wheat but do buy lots of wheat straw from a neighbour. I have been teaching a woman's weekly Bible study group so I need to spend time preparing for that. And the house looks pretty good since I have a new cleaning lady that has been coming in every week to clean before the Bible study group meets here at the Farm.

I have registered and booked a room at the Blue Gate Garden Inn in Shipshewana Indiana for the Just Takes 2 Retreat November 11-15 with Brenda Papadakis and Gay Bomers. I am so looking forward to that. I am already  mentally packing and planning which of my Just Takes 2 projects I will take to work on, since I have not completed any of them yet.

But first, I have a huge box of mail and invoices that need attention. They don't open and file themselves. Somehow I forgot to pay the property taxes last month and its time to register more new baby calves.

Blessings,
Chris

A Bit of Long Arm Quilting and Strawberry Picking

I cannot believe that it has been a whole 24 days since I did any applique! Yesterday I pulled out a CCCQ block and managed 2 stitches before being distracted.  Last week I rented time on a longarm for 2 days and quilted up 2 quilts my daughter made last winter. And the owner guy at the shop asked if I was willing to sell this one. So, we succeeded in making a "guy" quilt. It is the same brights I am using in my DJ2 and black Kona cotton. Using a computer generated pantogram, I did an all over geometric design in bright variegated King Tut thread. It turns out that one of the turquoise prints has the same design on it. The machine is a robot so I just baby sat it. It took 3 1/2 hours from pinning it on to completion. I had lots of time to think about whether or not I was willing to invest in such a creature. I think not. I have too many other things to do right now. That and it is really hard on the back to do all the pinning.

Most of our family house guests have returned home and these 2 little girls have been here at the Farm for the past 2 weekends. We took them strawberry picking for the first time and had a blast. They picked more than they ate and they did not pick too many green ones. Tomorrow they are coming for another sleepover and there are raspberries to be picked. They are the perfect height for that.

I finally had time to read over the 11 page evaluation of my manuscript and they have asked for 2 more chapters. So that will be my task over the next 2 weeks.

Summer Blessings,
Chris

Sisters Time

Facebook has been all astir about the Sarah  Morrell Quilt by Di Ford since March. The official kick off date is today with the center block. The plan is to do 3 blocks a month. The center is 20 inches and the other 60 blocks finish at 10 inches. This is not for the faint of heart.

Di Ford's Morrell Pattern

The pattern is now available at sentimental stitches. I have been drooling over this quilt ever since I saw Carole's post two years ago and ordered the pattern from Threadbear in Australia. It arrived in Feb 2014 and I proceeded to find fabrics to make it, someday. Because choosing fabrics is not my strength, I got 2 fat quarter bundles of French General from Craftsy for 40% off back in November and a few plaids from Threadbear on my Australia trip. And I bought the rest of the bolt from Pinegrove Quits in  Buffalo a year ago. You get the picture. I have been preparing for this for a while now. Can I resist the temptation to jump right in and start it? But when is the "official:" start of a new quilt?  Is it when I start cutting fabric or putting in the first stitch? I even located some Winterthur reproduction panels for the broderie perse. Today, as I was catching up on blog reading, I scrolled down through 4 years of Sue Garman posts to find her insights on her twirly balls technique, since that is the same pattern in the center block. Why should I hand piece a gzillion triangles when I can applique them?

Fabric for the Morell

In the meantime, it is the first of the month and that means the next free Ben Biggs BOM block. I downloaded it, saved it, printed it off and taped the 4 sheets together to prepare the layout.  But it did not seem to fit right. So I measured it. Now I cannot imagine how I could have made a mistake in printing it off. After all,  I am on my 4th printer since I started this in Jan 2014. Sigh. I went back through all the patterns I have printed off so far. All 19 of them. I only have about 10 machine applique down and only one with the corner buds because I could not decide what colour to make them. Thankfully. It appears that some of the patterns have been printed  "fit" and some "actual". This may not seem to be too big a deal. Except that had I stitched down all the corner buds to date, many would have been off set and that would have bothered me very  much. So, most of my patterns have been printed off to make 15 inch blocks instead of the 16 inches that I had hoped to make.

Ben Biggs # 19

I went back and re-printed the two that were too big. Then, I traced and cut out the shapes from the wash-away fuseable that I am using and put everything back into the box. After all, I am trying to only focus on completing the Criswell Quilt. I have not done any stitching for the past ten days since it has been family time here at the Farm. My three sisters and I went on an overnight shopping trip to Buffalo NY. We visited several quilt shops, shared a hotel room and did not kill each other. Actually, it was a lot of fun. And, I found a few fat quarters of Shot Cotton stripes for the 1718 Coverlet that released the next bunch of blocks. I have 16 done so far. Also, two months of Antique Wedding Sampler blocks were in my mailbox when we got home. 

Sisters

We ended up at The Quilting Bee in Fonthill where I had attended a lecture/demo by none other than Judi Madsen of green fairy quilts last week. I do not own a long arm quilting machine but thought I could learn some skills anyway. Back in Feb I had  booked a long arm for next week at a local quilt shop for two different days to machine quilt up two wedding quilts my daughter made last winter. This machine is a robot and will do a simple edge-to-edge design and I just have to babysit it, but that is okay for now.

Me and Judi Madsen

Now that I have turned the page on a very messy calendar to the new month of July, I see that I have lots to look forward to, so any quilting aspirations will have to wait until another month. My son and his family are moving next week so I will have the three little girl grandchildren here for the next two weekends and I am leading a small  ministry group for women here at the Farm on Tues nights in July. I have a meeting with my editor tomorrow to begin the first official edit of my book and I will be machine quilting the Bed of Blue Roses in sections. Good thing that most of the family house guests have returned home. The rain has finally ended and the sun is supposed to shine for 2 whole weeks.

Wonderful Family Blessings,
Chris