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I thought this pattern was Corn and Beans

but it does look like Ocean Waves. 

The blocks so far are just randomly placed. 

I will let the little girls play with placement after I get a few more colours made.

And the 6 year old added her option.

Blessings,

Chris

linking to: off the wall Friday
myquiltinfatuation.

Throwback Thursday Quilts made before blogging

I started blogging Sept 4, 2013. It took me a while to figure out what I was doing and how to do it. It took me longer to figure out how to stop being a no-reply blogger so I could interact with my readers. After a while, I found some linky parties and started dialogues with many quilters around the world. What a wonderful journey that has been. One of them is Sandra at  mmmquilts who hosts Throwback Thursday Quilts made before blogging.

This is one of my earlier quilts that I actually completed and gifted. One girl that was working for us milking cows and doing a hundred other things, was going off to college so we decided to make her a quilt. So, for her birthday in May, I gave her a bag of fabrics and a picture of a Wagon Wheel quilt I saw in a magazine. Earlier, I had asked her what her favourite colour was. She paused, lowered her head, a bit bashful, for her, and said burnt orange. No problem. I had some yardage and a whole wack of orange and golds and browns.

It took me a few months and many stitches removed and redone. I had machine quilted it in that (in my opinion) horrible monofilament thread that kept stretching and breaking and nesting. On the back is a panel with folded hands and the Lord's Prayer.  It is all half-square triangles and squares.
She dragged it back and forth to college and home every weekend for 2 years.

Blessings,
Chris
tgiff.  frombolttobeauty.

2019 Quilters Meet and Greet

Hi. My name is Chris, and I Quilt at the Farm.  Actually, I do pretty much everything at the farm since I live on a dairy farm. I have been blogging about my life on the farm and family, travel and quilting since Sept 4, 2013, so tomorrow is my bloggerversary. I have been invited to take part in victoriana quilt designs  2019-online-quilters-meet-greet..

What can I say? I quilt. A lot. Almost every day. I love reproduction quilts and applique. Especially needle-turn hand applique because that is where I am in my happy place. I do machine applique also if I want to complete something fast. And write. I have published a book called Denine: One mother's journey with a profoundly handicapped child. You can read more about it on my website here.  I am in the process of writing 2 more books. I will be taking part in a virtual writing retreat this weekend after I judge canning at a local fair.

These are a few of the quilts I have been working on in the past few years. Most of them are quilted by machine. Some are patiently awaiting their turn. 

GORF 1 - Go Real Fast

Chester County Criswell Quilt
needle turn hand applique

GORF 2 - Go Real Fast

Simple Simon 

$10 Sampler 

Crazy Patch

Original Later Cake 

1857 Album Quilt
needle turn hand applique

Dear Daughter
needle turn hand applique

Double Irish Chain

Civil War Dear Jane

Beyond the Cherry Trees.
needle turn hand applique

Besides quilting and writing, I travel. You can read about some of my mission adventures here and here and here. I often take along some hand applique blocks because I can get a lot of work done one stitch at a time.

There is a grand prize draw. For more information check out this link victorianaquiltdesigns.

Blessings, 

Chris
needleandthreadnetwork.

Sept 2019 OMG Goal

The RSC colour for September is purple!!

This is what I have found already cut and sewn together of the 8 purple fabrics so this should be an easy goal for OMG this month.

And this is how 2 of the blocks will go together. I like that most of the prep work is already done. I can just enjoy sewing them all together. After this, I will have to cut squares and sew half-square triangles together but that is not too difficult.



Blessings,
Chris

linking with
one-monthly-goal-september.
scraphappy
quilting is more fun than housework.
monday-making.
moving-it-forward.
needleandthreadnetwork.
off-wall-friday.

To-Do Tuesday

I write to-do lists all the time. I don't always do everything on the list. This past week I was taking part in a Writing Week Challenge with christianbookacademy.com.  I managed to move forward in my writing enough that I plan to keep the momentum going. My list for this week includes:

1. Plan-It Day to organize my week
2. Complete ESTC lecture outlines
3. Write for 3 hours three times
4. Complete stitching leaves onto fourth BTCT border.
5. Fill 4 donate boxes and donate them. 

That should keep me busy. 

Blessings,

Chris

BTCT Borders

I kept my hands busy this summer stitching on the 4 borders for Beyond the Cherry Trees. 

With no quilting deadlines looming, I just stitched away enjoying every moment.

First thing was to tape all the pattern pieces together. 

There are 9 pages for each of the 4 borders. 

I had cut the border strips way back at the beginning to

make sure I had enough fabric for all 4 of them. 

Next was to cut enough bias strips for the wavy vines. 

Then run them all through the bias maker. 

I had decided to make them 1/2 inch wide. 

I sort of over estimated how much I would need and made almost double. 

I could use the leftovers to do a single bias binding. 

While all the pattern pieces were on the 8 foot table,

I positioned then glue basted the stems. 

Good thing that each of the borders has a different curve. 

I used Roxanne's basting glue. 

Then Devan helped lay out the "pepperonis" to see how they would look.

I left extra fabric and the selvage on this bottom border 

so I would have something to pin to the quilting boards. 

The cherries are several sizes.

I am still not decided if I will just freehand them or use the Perfect Circles. 

It was so fun to stitch up the vines. No turning under the edges or removing pins. 

Just stitch until I needed to re-thread the needle. 

Next was to pin the leaves in position. 

I did this for all 4 borders.

I had cut out 2 sizes of leaves with the GO Baby

and the custom leaf dies I had made up just for such a project. 

I set a pace of 4 leaves per day to get them all done by the end of Aug. 

I left some extra bias vine at each of the ends 

so I will have something to join onto the other borders at the corners.   

I wanted to see how many more circles I still needed to cut out

so I put the borders up on the big design wall.

 First one

Then two.

 Then three. 

That is when I realized that I had put the bottom row on backwards. 

I will see how it all looks when they are all complete. 

It's a case of connecting the corners to eachother.

Devan put all the pepperonis on the borders on the wall. 

The boys had way too much fun taking the cherries off the wall 

then putting them back up again. 

It was fun hearing their conversation. 

I commented to 5 year old Jonathan that he was tall enough to reach

higher than his 6 year old cousin did when she put them up. 

So, little 3 year old David smiles and says, "I'm short enough to reach the floor."

I cut 70 more circles using the GO Baby of a lighter French General red. Then I took everything off the wall. It was time for the little girls to work on their I-Spy quilts.

Blessings, 

Chris

Linking with:
slow-sunday-stitching.

quilting is more fun than housework.
off-wall.
moving-it-forward.
design-wall-monday.
my quilt infatuation.
peacock party
finished or not finished friday.
from bolt to beauty.

New Project for RSC

I am back from my blogging break over the summer.

I was racking my brain trying to figure out if I had a ufo that would lend itself to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and I came up with this one. I wrote about it last year. You can read that here.

I started with the yellow because most of these blocks were already partly sewn together. It is a good thing because I would have had much difficulty trying to figure out how the pieces went together.
And, since pink was July's colour, I sewed these up next. They were also partly sewn together.
I am making 2 squares of each colour. The colours really are much brighter than they look in the pictures here.

The August colour was light blue. I just sewed together all the blue shades except midnight blue and black. They were way too dark to show up against that black theme fabric.

So far, I am happy with all these. I certainly hope September's colour will be purple because I have all the purple half square triangles already sewn together. This will be a busy month for us here at the Farm and we will be making a trip to the Big E in Springfield Massachusetts at the end of the month.

Twenty-eight down and only 72 more to go.

Blessings,
Chris
linking to: peacock party
finished-or-not-finished-friday.
moving-it-forward.