2018 Quilt Wrap Up

Here it is the last day of 2018.

I was thinking about the quilts I have finished this year.

I completed ten of them.

I also managed to meet some of my goals for 2018.

Most of my goals fell to the wayside. I'm OK with that.

I quilt for fun. I'm not worried about all the things I didn't accomplish on my list.

I'm excited for the things I learned and quilts that got done.

That's what counts.

I made collages of the finished quilts by size for a quilt parade.

They go from mini to full size.

Two mini quilts.

They are fun as always.

The one on the left is my favorite mini so far. 

Two table runners.

Baby gifts.

Technically the two on the right are doll quilts.

The pinwheel quilt is one of my favorite baby quilts.

Last but not least the full and twin sized quilts.

I finished the full sized blue jean quilt in January and we've used it all year long.

The twin quilt was my first weighted quilt.

That's not all that got done this year with quilts.

I have a few flimsy finishes as well.

A flimsy is a completed top that hasn't been quilted yet.

These should be celebrated too!

I finally finished this hexagon table runner top.

This is my oldest UFO (Unfinished Object).

I'm hoping to get it quilted this year.

This has been on the back burner for so long I almost forgot about this top.

It is probably the craziest one I've done but I love it!

It was part of a sew along I participated in the spring of this year.

It still needs batting and backing.

I have no ideas for the back yet.

I'm hopeful to get it quilted this year as well.

Last but not least is this crummy photo of part of the back of a quilt that's a gift.

I really don't want to spoil this one so I'm not showing the front.

I really like this one and it will be worth the wait.

It's currently on the hand quilting frame.

I'm hoping to have it done by May.

So that was my quilting adventure this year.

Except for the aforementioned three quilts,

I'm not really making many official goals for the coming year.

I'm keeping most of them to myself this time.

:)

Lil' Runner

 So I had this grand idea of making a little table runner and selling it.

I made it completely out of the stash and scraps I had on hand.

I didn't use a pattern and sort of threw things together.

It was quite simple to make.

It has two adorable snowmen on it.

Somehow I managed to quilt right through his eye... oops.

Cheerful little guy.

Simple holly fabric for the backing.

It came together so smoothly and quickly.

I only had one problem.

It appears to be wonky and won't lie flat.

I'm not exactly sure what caused it.

My suspicion is the fabric I used for the binding because it was fine before I added it.

So I'm keeping my little table runner.

That is fine with me.

I like the snowmen.

Finished project #26

12 1/4" x 23 1/4"

machine quilted

Million Little Pieces

It all started with a mouse.

A dead smelly mouse.

That's what prompted us to tear apart our walk-in closet.

The good news is that we found the offending deceased mouse and disposed of it.

Now that has lead to a deep cleaning of said smelly closet.

Upon this sidetracked adventure I decided to open my trunk.

It was a high school graduation present.

It's mostly full of my childhood things that were special to me.

There's a few other odd and end things that have made their way in there too.

I came across a small paper bag full of post cards.

Most of them were ones that I bought over the years.

A few of them, however, were from my dad and step mom.

Six post cards that lead to my heart melting into a million pieces.

My dad and Marilyn drove tandem for a while and they loved it.

I remembered getting these cards in the mail.

And the tears just flowed...

(Actually, the tears started on Thanksgiving and finding these sent me over the edge.

That's OK it's a good cry. I know it's temporary.)

Typically Papa and Marilyn were on the road for several weeks at a time.

Crisscrossing this great country of ours.

That thought wasn't lost on them.

They knew they were seeing many things most people don't get to see.

They loved seeing the different parts of the county.

Royals Stadium.

My dad was a Royals and Chiefs fan.

As a youth he spent many summers in Kansas City with his aunt.

He and I often commiserated on who had the worst team in baseball: Cubs or Royals.

Many years it was a toss up.

It was quite ironic that the Royals won the World Series the year he was killed.

Then the Cubs won the following year.

They loved sharing where they were.

Their job took them all over the place.

Six postcards. Six states.

Montana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, California.

Post cards.. before the days of email and cell phones.

They told of the weather. One even mentions 7 tornadoes!

They told what they were hauling (I almost always asked).

They hauled everything you can imagine.

One load was candy and another load was 3,500 sweet heart cups.

They hauled everything from ultra fancy toilets to stuffed animals to filter parts to food.

It was always fun to find out what they were hauling.

Aggravating Whoops

This is part of a quilt backing I'm piecing for yet another project.

Everything was going great until I started measuring for the next step.

That's what I get for admiring my nice straight seams and the fast progress I was making.

You know, pride before a fall.

The measuring didn't show any problems in length. Good for me!

I discovered something wrong with a piece of sashing. Bad for me.

That sashing happened to be a pieced shashing... and it's seam was facing the wrong side up.

Grrr.

Not only was it wrong side up but it was in the middle of this large section.

That meant I had to rip out four long seams to fix it.

Not a thrilling moment.

I'm still baffled as to how I managed to miss seeing it before this point!

Quite aggravating.

A close up of the offending seam.

It was a pretty looking seam, except for the fact you could see it from the front!

One of the boys said to leave it there.

I just couldn't do that. It would get caught on things.

So I grabbed a seam ripper and started ripping.

After a few tries I got pretty good at ripping several inches at a time in one motion.

It's more like unzipping a seam.

I didn't even poke any holes in my fabric!

It took a few hours but I had everything sewn back together like before...

only with all the fabric facing the right way!

I'm really hoping to have this backing done soon.

I need to get this project on the quilting frame ASAP.

Twenty Five!!!!

I have officially finished my twenty-fifth quilt!

I finished it last week before I got sick but didn't take pictures until recently.

I loved working on this baby quilt which will be donated.

It was quick, easy, and very thrifty.

I may have spent a whopping $5 on all of the materials.

This was the first time I had ever made pinwheels.

I learned a new-to-me technique for making the pinwheel parts.

It looked easy so I gave it a shot. I will most definitely be making more.
They were so much fun!

The color is off but I wanted a close up of one of the pinwheels.
I was so happy with how they turned out.
Almost all of them had great points!

This photo makes me chuckle.

I pieced the back with two different fabrics.

I attempted to center the seam as best as I could.

It's not as easy to do as it sounds.

The back is upside down, covered with batting, and then covered with the top.

That makes it quite difficult to see the back when you baste the quilt together.

Even with the quilt basted fairly well, it can still shift some while its being quilted.

It wasn't until I was halfway done with the quilting that I realized the seam was exactly centered.

Sometimes I surprise even myself.

 The back shows the quilting quite nicely.
Very geometric.

Purple Pinwheel Quilt
39" x 39"
machine pieced and quilted
low loft Poly-Fil polyester batting

Miscellaneous Monday

In no particular order, here's a few random photos.

These two were playing keep away with a back scratcher.

Connor felt the need to put on a few hats.

It was so he could look like that dude on Space Balls with the helmet around his Afro.

I'm not making this stuff up.

He said that was the reason for the excessive amounts of stocking caps.

It was quite funny.

That's Connor in a nutshell.

Never a dull moment. Ever.

Sorry, but you can't escape a post without something quilty.

If all goes well, I'll be quilting this today.

Pepper really wanted someone to come out and play.

That poor deflated ball is her favorite ball.

She has a few others but apparently they're not as good as this one.

Gigantic chocolate chip cookie.

No explanation needed.

We (I mean Dwayne and myself) enjoyed a nice fire yesterday afternoon.

It was 38 outside.

I wore my Carhartts.

We burned up the last of our firewood for the season.

And sadly, we were out of hot chocolate.

Yesterday we moved a few ducks in with the chickens.

The chickens were not thrilled... which is fine because I don't care.

The ducks are not fond of any change whatsoever.

(They were scared of the blue heated bucket when I first brought it out this season. They drank out of it last year but have forgotten.)

It will take a few days for them to get used to the new routine.

They're such silly creatures.

Why the move?

Well, we think there were too many in the other coop.

We began to have problems with the duck bedding.

So we thought we'd try fewer ducks in that coop.

As soon as I opened the window to take the previous picture, there was a stampede for peas.

They were sleeping in the front yard and I tried to open the widow quietly.

I was spotted but I remained very still hoping they wouldn't come running.

Didn't work.

So I fed them peas like a good duck owner.

By the way, we've trained the ducks to come when they hear the chuck wagon dinner bell.

I didn't even have to call them last time. They came running all on their own.

It's so cool!

One of these days we'll get it on video.

Yes, it looks like we segregated our ducks by color.

This is just a coincidence.

The first flock of runners we had were all fawn and white.

The second bunch were all dark colors.

They bonded with the groups they started with.

The drakes each have a "harem" aligned accordingly.

Although they all miss each other we figured that was the best way to divide the group.

We'll see how it goes. It may not solve our bedding problems but it's worth a try.

500

I noticed the post count the other day and realized that 500 was approaching.

That's really hard to believe.
We still plan on keeping the blog.
It is hard sometimes to come up with a post that's not quilting.
Several times I have thought about starting a quilting blog.
My thoughts always end up with no.
So y'all are stuck with the overload of quilting stuff.
I can't help it and it's easy to share!
Aren't y'all lucky?!

With the boys being older and in public school, it seems harder to put interesting posts here.
They are both continuing to do really well in school.
We're proud of their achievements thus far.
Connor has his first robotics meet coming up in January.
It should be interesting.

We live a simple life and we're OK with that.
We prefer simple.

Oh look, it's a bean field. Yippy. Actually there were four different crops on our road this year.
Soy beans, corn, mint, and sorghum.
I love smelling the mint fields.
I wish I had taken a picture of the sorghum field across from the house.
The heads turned a beautiful dark amber color as harvest approached.
It was nice to have something different to look at.

Although I personally love the mountains of Tennessee more than the fields of Indiana.

I don't want to sound ungrateful for where we live.
Indiana has its beauty too.
Look at that spectacular sunrise!

Irony Things

You may remember that we acquired several pieces of cast iron during our vacation this summer.

If not, you can read about it here.

Some of them were in desperate need of deep cleaning and seasoning.

The little corn bread pan I did right away as it was in good condition.

The two big pieces, however, would require several days of elbow grease.

I decided to wait until fall when the outside temperatures would be

more conducive to several hours of oven usage.

This pan was quite gross. I knew it could be cleaned because I've done it before.

I had one once that was so bad it stunk up house for several days!

Thankfully this one wasn't smelly, just icky.

I alternated from boiling water in it to scrubbing it with rock salt.

Boil, cool, dry, scrub, dry, repeat.

I eventually got some steel wool.

It took a couple of days but I got it clean. :)

This is how it came out after only two seasoning sessions in the oven.

All ready to use!

We could not wait to use this one.

It's probably one of our favorites.

I can fix a lot of hash browns at once!

This one required a lot of scrubbing too but not quite as much as the deep one.

We use this frequently as well.

Now we have two double burner griddles.

:)

I finally tried cookie dough in the skillets.

 They turned out really well.

We did let them cool extra long so they would come out clean.

We cut the big ones like a pizza.

Dwayne promptly nicknamed them pazookies.

Whoops

Just for fun I'm starting a "whoops" label on the blog.

Let's face it, we all make mistakes.

It's good to laugh and learn from them.

So for the inaugural post I'm sharing this whoops.

Now at first you may be wondering what's wrong...other than the lighting of the photo.

I spent an afternoon laying out 42 black and white blocks.

I went to move one of them and discovered the mistake.

All four corners of each block should match.

I accidentally sewed wrong halves together.

Whoops.

Thankfully the white fabrics are busy enough it's hard to spot.

It drove me crazy at first and I thought about fixing it.

However, the idea of ripping out seams changed my mind.

It's not as if a quarter of the block was turned. That would be a different story.

So I chose to leave it.

You have to look hard to find it.

It's not a glaring mistake.

It's more of a hidden treasure.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

:)

There are stories in the quilting world about the Amish adding a mistake on purpose.

I have never researched that but it is an interesting thought.

Quilt Quack 13

It's time for a Quilt Quack Chronicle!

This is the back of my hand sewn hexie table runner.

You see the circle in the middle?

It's a template made out of freezer paper.

The little hole is to help make it easier to remove the papers.

I'm glad I read that tip just as I started this project.

Sorry about the bad photo.. but you can see how I removed my papers.

I poked each paper with an orange peeler.

It worked really well.

The pile of papers that were removed from the perimeter.

I had already removed the middle ones before I started attaching the border.

Now my hexie table runner top is done.

Woohoo!!!

It took me roughly two years to hand sew this.

I should say I started it two years ago.
It took so long because I didn't work on it all the time.

A little here and little there.

I really enjoyed this project.

I find it relaxing. I love that it's portable too.

I intend on starting another hand project just as soon as I pick a new one!

For now this project is going in the "to be quilted" pile.
I've got another project that's in line to be quilted first.

:)

__________________________________________________________

On to the ducks... actually it's more about the chickens this time.

I did throw in a couple of duck pictures because it is a "Quilt Quack" post after all.

We finally got around to adding a second run to our yard.

We needed a second one for several reasons.

One of them was being able to confine the chickens in their own pen when needed.

The two runs are next to each other along the north side of our property.

We're excited to have more options for our animals.

I'm mostly excited that I can keep them off my porch!

I despise the chicken bombs. 

They have a bigger pen than the ducks.

We may switch them someday in the future.

The chickens aren't too happy about the new arrangement.

They pace the fence and run to the gate if someone shows up.

The white one will try to run past you to get free.

I did't have the gate secured enough the first day and five of them got out.

It's been fixed and they haven't been out since.

Eventually they will get over it.

I'm also hoping the egg production will increase.

We seem to have several free-loaders!

This is a rare find in the duck coop.

They are very consistent in laying by 8 AM.

Like clockwork. That's why we don't let them out until after 8.

However, they are not so consistent in a nice neat nest. That's a chicken thing.

Ducks are very messy.

We get about 8 duck eggs a day.

We have 11 hens but not all of them lay every day.

This is how we typically find duck eggs.

Usually only part of an egg is showing and you have to dig to get the eggs.

Sometimes you can't even see the eggs at all until you start digging.

They are almost always buried. At least they put their eggs in the corners of the coop!

Then there's the occasional "oops" egg laid somewhere in the yard.

It's like an egg hunt every day.

I'm not so sure what is so good that they all forage in the same spot.

They have been doing this frequently in various areas of the yard.

I'll look out and they're doing this.

Usually they're scattered while they forage.