Stitchers Garden

I've been taking a really fun quilt class to make a quilt that uses lots of different techniques. The name of the quilt is Stitchers Garden and I'm almost finished making the blocks. 

Jack Frost is here!

Back again :-)
It's almost Christmas! I'm working on an inventory of my projects. Some of them are started and some of them are still in the planning stage. I think I must have a total of about 50 projects!
I took one out and started working on it today and it's almost finished. It's a table runner with Santa Claus appliqued on it. The perfect project for this time of year :-)

It's so cold outside! We have about two inches of ice/snow still on the ground from the storms we had over the last couiple of days. I don't know how our chickens survive, but they seem to do just fine. I did notice that they don't want to come out of the hen house tho. They peek their heads out to check out the weather and quickly return to their roost. They are still laying lots of eggs for me. We collected 28 eggs today.

Back again :-)

Okay, it's been about two years since I've updated my blog! we have been busier than ever here on out little farm. We are working on our vegetable garden. The weather hasn't been good for gardens this spring. The temps have been up and down and the last frost was probably about three weeks ago.
My asparagus bed is producing more asparagus than we can keep up with, but I need to replant the seeds for many of the other vegetables. Unfortunately, mother nature decided to freeze and wash away the seeds we had planted a few weeks ago.  
I'm getting pretty impatient for homegrown veggies so my husband and I went to the farmers market in OKC today. We bought some beautiful tomatoes and some basil cheddar cheese along with a few other things. The tomatoes are now in the oven, topped with the cheese, heating up for dinner.
Happy gardening!!!

Over the river and thru the woods...

Okay, so I won't really be going thru the woods. But I will be crossing several rivers. I'm leaving Friday morning to go see my grandmother in California. Her health is bad and I want to see her, so my daughter and I decided to drive from Oklahoma to California to go see her.
My grandmother is the person who inspired me to make quilts. She made may quilts for all of us family members but now I make quilts for her. I'm going to take her another quilt when I visit her. I know she doesn't need any more quilts, but I make her a new quilt every year anyway.

Garden Time!!!

David is outside, tilling up the garden area. We went thru the seeds and decided what we want to grow this year. We were planning to make a very small garden, but after going thru the seeds, we decided to make it bigger. We haven't grown a garden in two or three years so we are really looking forward to the garden this year :-)

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!!

Today is our anniversary! David and I have been married for 27 years :-)
We went to visit family in Texas this week. It was so much fun to see everyone! I helped Tia Cory with her quilt and with her table cloths and napkins for her 50th wedding anniversary that's comming up in September. We also visited the wall that is being put up between Mexico and the USA. I just don't see that working out very well. The drug runners have already figured out ways to get thru anyway.
Unfortunately, we had to come home a bit early because my house sitter/pet sitter found one of my sugar gliders in bad shape. Poppet died before she could make it to the vet :-( I really HATE that part of pet ownership!!!
Saturday is National Quilting Day, but I might not be doing much quilting. I was chopping vegetables for dinner this evening and I somehow managed to chop into my left thumb. I thought my husband's face got really red when he realized what I did. He looked so upset. It's not so bad, I decided to just put some triple antibiotic ointment on it and wrap it with a band aid. David gave it a kiss and it's all better.

The cat is out of the bag

I saw a bag like this one at a quilt retreat earlier this month. I thought it was so cute, I had to make one. The cat was NOT amused!

All better

I took out the stitching where the puckers were on the back of the quilt. I fixed the problem and restitched the parts I had to take out. I'm still not done with the quilt, but hopefuly I will be able to finish it Monday :-)

Today I made a big pouch for my sugar gliders. One of my cages has a family of five gliders and they all insist on sleeping together in the same pouch. They were pretty crowded, so I made them a bigger pouch today.
I also helped a friend with her kitchen towels and a purse. The towels match an apron that she made :-) Next, she will make a matching pot holder.

UGHH!!!

I'm so fustrated!!! I just noticed that I have puckers in the back of the quilt that I am working on! Oh why didn't I check the back before I was 1/4 of the way thru the quilt?!! Now I have to rip a bunch of my quilting back out and redo it. Ughhh!
I'm supposed to get my tax paperwork ready for the tax lady this evening! I don't have time for this!

I'm Back

Okay, so I see my friend Vickie (Stitches) has decided to get going on her blog again, so I guess I should update mine too.

The barn we started to build in July 2009 is done. My husband wants to add a few things to it eventually (a porch and a loft), but he already has it stuffed with his tools and all the other things that were in the garage.

The garage has been painted and the floors stained and I have all of my sewing, quilting and long arm supplies in there. It's now my quilting studio :-)

I have a friend who is looking into a cruise for quilters. The cruise is in February of 2012 and it sounds like a lot of fun. There will be quilting classes on the cruise. I really want to go, but I'm not sure I can afford it. I have a year to try to save up the money tho, so we'll see how it goes.

I'm going on a retreat March 3rd which should be a lot of fun. I have a piece of challange fabric that I am supposed to use in a project. I started on my project last week and should have it done in time for the retreat :-) I am providing the challange fabric for this year so I chose a deep green oriental print. It's a beautiful fabric and I already have my project figured out.

Okay, enough for today. I need to get to work on a quilt that I'm supposed to be custom quilting. It's a wonderful old hand pieced quilt in the indian hatchet (apple core) pattern. I'm a bit nercous about this quilt because the fabrics are so delicate. I'm just stitching a 1/4 inch outine on the inside of each peice. the fabrics in this quilt are so old and delicate that I'm afraid that if I try to add too much quilting to it, the fabrics might tear!

planning a quilting studio

On Tuesday, our quilt guild had our annual Christmas in July party. It was a lot of fun! We did a dirty Santa gift exchange and I ended up with a snowman wall hanging pattern and fabric. I really like snowmen and I'm looking forward to making it.
Yesterday and today, my husband, David, and I shopped for building materials so he can make a barn. He saw one he liked at Home Depot but it wasn't as big as he wants it to be, so he decided to make his own. We bought all the supplies to make the floor and when he finished that we will go back and buy the supplies to make the walls. David wanted to buy all the supplies before starting to make it, but we just dont have enough space to store all the supplies.
The reason I am so excited about it is that I will be able to take over the garage after the barn is done. David will move all his tools into his new barn and we will fix up the garage to be my new quilting studio! I know this is going to take a loooong time to finish, but I can start planning my new quilting studio. I'm going have sweet dreams of my new quilting studio tonight :-)

Jackpot!

Yesterday my husband and I went to Sam's Club. I saw the mats that my friend Tina had told me about and I bought two packs. They sure are a lot easier on my feet when I'm standing at my longarm machine, quilting away.
I also bought five reading books. Summer Hill Secrets 1 and Summer Hill Secrets 2 are by Beverly Lewis. My friend Vickie reads books by this author and she says they are really good.
The other three books I bought are Where the River Ends, by Charles Martin and A Thread of Truth, by Marie Bostwick and Rain Song, by Alice J Wisler. That should keep me entertained for a while :-)
I saw another bunny this evening. He was hiding between the burn barrels in our back yard. I knew we had another bunny because I saw the "evidence" he left behind. We also have lots of wild birds. They have been going thru a lot of birdseed! I think we will need to buy a larger bag of seed next time.
We feed our hummingbirds too. They go thru the hummingbird food very quickly, but they are so cute to watch.
I don't think my husband likes the local deer so much tho. They have been eating his watermelon before it's even ripe!

Fabric covered boxes

Today I went to the Chickasha Quilt Guild with some friends. We covered shoe boxes with fabric. It was a lot of fun to hang out with friends and the boxes turned out really cute. I need to embellish mine and then I think I'll make another one for my daughter.
My husband retired from the Air Force and now I have to be more careful about spending so much on fabrics. This is a real bummer. I'm pretty spoiled and not used to watching the budget so closely. I've been doing pretty good so far, but this is going to take some time to get use to. I have lots of UFO's and quilt kits that I can work on, so I will still have lots to do.
My cat has been a bad boy lately. We have seen him keeping a close eye on the area in our back yard where some bunnies live. A few days ago he caught and ate one of them. The worst part of it was that he dragged the poor bunny into my kitchen to feast on it!
I have a new quilt project to work on. I agreed to piece a log cabin quilt for the Newcastle Nighttime Needlers Quilt Guild. This will be our raffle quilt. We will be using some of the money from the raffle quilt to help pay for the expenses for our quilt guilds quilting 2010 retreat.

Visit from my parents

My parents were here for a little over two weeks. They just left yesterday. It was great to have them here and sad when they left.
While they were here, my daughter tried to ride one of her horses bareback. He was so scared! After JoAnna got on him, he turned and ran bucking, up a hill. JoAnna had an unplanned dismount and was knocked out for about two minutes. We took her in to an emergency room and they did a CT scan and checker her out. She had a concussion that resulted in a bit of amnesia, but no broken bones. The Dr. said she could go home, but we had to wake her up every few hours to check on her thru the night. She vomited a few times the following morning, but when I called the emergency room, the nurse didn't sound like it was a big concern.
JoAnna was not wearing a helmet and she still won't wear one. She is 21 years old, so I don't give her a hard time about it. I understand that accidents will happen and I don't see any good coming from nagging her about it.
JoAnna turned 21 on May 23rd so I finally quilted her T-Shirt quilt for her. We also bought her a new queen size bed. When did beds get to be so expensive!?
My mom wanted to go to AR to do some genealogy research, so I drove her around AR for four days. She didn't find much of what she was looking for, but we had fun anyway. We have found that a lot of the records (birth, death, marriage, etc.) were burned in AR. I guess they just didn't see any reason to keep them. It makes research really hard.
Some of the "towns" that we visited were pretty much dried up. Auvergne consisted of about a half dozen houses along a single road. And the town of Cotton Plant was mostly boarded up. We also visited Searcy, Little Rock, Augusta and a few other towns in NE Arkansas.
While we were at the county courthouse in Augusta, I saw a tiled floor that I thought would make an awesome quilt pattern so I took a few pictures.
My mom's birthday was on May 16th so I made her two quilted jackets. She chose the fabrics and I put them together and quilted them. It's a bit too warm for wearing jackets right now, so she will have to wait for fall to enjoy using them.
She also decided that she liked a quilt top that I had made so I put it on my longarm and I'm working on quilting it for her. It's the turquoise and black quilt that's listed on my quilting projects list on the right side of this page. After I finish the quilt for my mom, (probably this evening) I will get back to work on customers' quilts.

Retreat continued.....

Here is a picture of my mystery quilt. I managed to finish it in spite of the gremlins who kept messing with my machine and hiding things from me. Now the quilt top is in my pile of tops waiting to be quilted.


I was given a prize because I was the first one to finish my quilt top. Here is my cute little cupcake pincushion.


When I got home from the retreat, Mr.Frogg started complaining about how cold he was without a quilt of his own. I went right to work making him a quilt. I used embroidered blocks of his family members so he would sleep well, knowing his family was surrounding him with hugs.

Mr. Frogg

The quilt retreat was so much fun! When I first arrived, I went into the room that I would be staying in to drop off my bag of clothes. I was very suprised to find this handsome young gentleman laying on my bed. waiting for me. He introduced himself as Mr. Frogg and he told me he wanted me to make him a quilt.














My awesome friend (and roommate) Gale, had escorted Mr.Frogg to my bed.














Here is a picture of Gale's feet. She makes the cutest socks!

RETREAT!

The quilt guild is having a retreat next weekend! We will be at the retreat April 24 -26. I think I'm all ready for it. Bee Sew Inn was having a sale so my friend Carol and I went shopping yesterday. I bought some stabilizer and thread and then Carol reminded me that I needed to buy a comfortable chair for the retreat. We went over to Office Depot and I bought a very comfy chair. I think I have everything I need for the retreat now... except for maybe a new pair of pajamas. Hopefully I can find the time to run out and buy some before Friday. If not, I suppose I can just wear my old ones. One of my friends who is also going on the retreat, is afraid that we will put her bra in the freezer while she sleeps :-) She has never been on a quilt retreat before so I think she's a little nervous about it.
The place where we are having our retreat doesn't get cell phone service (Yeah!) so we will have the whole weekend with no kids or husbands interrupting our extremely important and very serious work.

Plans for today

Today I am going with my husband to a pottery class. He wants a pottery wheel and I thought it would be a good idea to take a pottery class first. He did take a pottery class in High School, but that was about 30 years ago.
The class meets on four Saturdays. I thought the class was an all-day class, but I checked and it only lasts 2.5 hrs. That means I will still have time to do some quilting today :-)

New Blog

I'm starting a brand new blog so I can escape the spammers at the other blog site. It will probably take me a few days to get this blog going, so please be patient. I'll post the jacket tutorial on this blog when I'm ready, instead of posting it on the old blog.
I just received an order from Lakeside.com. It's my laptop bag! I couldn't find one that my laptop would fit into until a friend told me about this one. I ordered three of the laptop bags because two of my friends wanted one each and it saved us some money on shipping to order them all together. So, Carol and Vickie, I will bring your laptop bags to the guild meeting on Tuesday.