Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt

I'm slightly insane in that I've started another quilt project.

Technically I started this back in November just after I finished sewing the table runner.

I love hand piecing hexagons. (Some day I'll branch out to other shapes.)

They make good take-along projects.

Perfect for the spare time I have after work before we leave the school.

Project box all labeled and filled with stuff for my quilt.

I'm thinking of a grandmother's flower garden quilt.

I quickly made a mock up on the computer.

My goal is lap sized.

I decided to use the large stash of cut squares I found at the thrift store.

I'm making them in small bunches at a time.

If I stick to my original mock up, I'll need 100 flowers.

That's 700 hexagons in flowers alone!

This was the first flower I made.

Only 99 more to go.

It wasn't until after I made several flowers that I realized I should be quilting my table runner.

So I've reluctantly put these aside until the Confetti Runner is quilted.

But once it's done...

:)

We Have Reached Ludicrous Temperatures

I'm so late with this post.

Oh well.

These are a few pictures from the days when we had temps in the -20's.

Wind chills were in the -30's or colder.

Those are ludicrous temperatures.

It was so cold we decided to house the ducks in the basement for a few days.

Not ideal but it kept them from freezing to death.

We got a large tarp and surrounded it with a make-shift fence.

AKA one hog panel, an old table top, and a couple of boxes.

Not pretty but it worked.

All went well the first night.

It was funny to hear them quacking all the time...

including throughout the night.

Thankfully, it didn't keep us awake.

Of course our power went out the morning it was supposed to start getting super cold.

Without power the chickens had no heat lamp.

So they were brought inside as well.

The chickens weren't so thrilled.

At least they didn't jump the fence!

We had Pepper inside too... so that meant we had every animal we own in our basement!

Pepper hates being inside.

She would sit at the top of our basement steps and whine through the door.

She was very happy when we set her free!

This was from one of our attempts at going to school.

They cancelled school when we got to the end of our road.

It was bad that morning.

I'm hoping were past the worst part of winter.

There's always a snow/ice event the last part of February to first part of March.

I know we're not out of the woods yet.

However, each day is one day closer to spring!

Ready, Set, Go!

I finished this table runner top back in October.

Then five days later I started another hexagon quilt.

Then the table runner sat and waited.

Then I started working.

Then I thought perhaps I should finish the table runner first before continuing the new hexagon quilt.

(Then I also thought I should make a post about the new hexagon quilt too!)

So I started to make the parts for a quilt sandwich.
Because I'm frugal I made some franken-batting.

It took 14 pieces to get the size I needed.

I have bigger scrap pieces but didn't want to waste them on a table runner.

A little basting prep on my sewing table.

Lots of pins later I had it basted.

I plan on taking this with me to school.

Thread basting tends to get caught on stuff so I decided to pin baste instead.

I also taped the raw edges to prevent the fabric from fraying.

I'm hoping all this prep will make it mobile friendly.

I have two hours from the time I'm done working until Dwayne is done.

I do read but it also makes me sleepy so I need something else to do.

Hand quilting to the rescue!

I have a quilting plan but have no idea how long it will take me to finish.

I'm not planning on marking my quilting lines this time.

I plan on free hand quilting.

Hope it goes well!

On a side note, I had a fight with my large quilting frame.

I ended up switching frames.

I also ended up with several splinters in the process. :(

Hopefully with the quilt in the other frame I won't have any more issues.

I still have a goal of finishing the full size quilt by the end of May.

We'll see.