While the poem was written by a Canadian doctor to honor a friend and fellow soldier at his funeral. My poppies started to open this morning and the poem seemed so appropriate.
As we prepare for time with family and friends take a moment to remember those that gave their lives for our nation.
May is flying by! I looked at the calendar and realized this morning it was the 26th already, and I still have 2 more RSC blocks to do! I do have my fabrics for both blocks chosen.
The 4 on the bottom are the one I cut up from my stash to use. The 5 on top I am auditioning for the twisted blossom. The fabric for the Navajo block was a simple choice.
I also found another quilt start in the MIL's boxes. There are 36 strips of 6 blocks each in 6 different layouts all together, at least that is what I have found. I need to finish going through those two last totes and get them packed up and put away for now at least, maybe I will find some more.
Back in November I shared the blocks that I received from the guild for the Bag Lady group.
To me 9 is a weird number. I worked on a layout and decided I needed 4 more (yeah like 13 isn't a weird number too!)
I finally got brave and after buying 4 different blues to use as sashing and cornerstones started working on finishing up the quilt top. The fabrics are all Moda Grunge and I purchased them in March when it was the Basic of the Month from Fat Quarter Shop. Yep 1 yard of each- the color names were Cobalt, Sky, Picnic and Sea.
I kept auditioning with my other fabrics and finally chose one.
And started sewing cornerstones,
and sashing.
Once I started sewing, of course I waffled and decided I didn't like my original plan so I added a few more blocks, then realized that I did not have enough of the blue, nor did I know which color blue I used since the color numbers are not marked in the selvedge. I ordered Sea and it was correct! I managed to get one row done so far.
Of course when I ordered I had to check out the basic of the month at Fat Quarter Shop and it was mini pearl bracelets so I picked up some!
Yellow, red and bright pink!
It has been a busy morning for Finn and I. We went to the car dealership, the car has a wheel hub going out, but of course they say there is nothing wrong. We then went to the grocery store, and were home by 9 am. A load of soil was brought in, and it isn't even noon yet! Maybe since Finn is occupied I can get some more sewing accomplished or something accomplished! Dishes, laundry, find my remote for the garage so I can vacuum my car out......
The weather is getting warmer, which means much more outside time for the minions and I. To ramp up for our summer fun DH and I have been busy.
See our rope swing? It is attached to a branch about 30 feet in the air.
Luckily we could borrow a truck because we feared we could have made a video of stupid redneck tricks with our first attempt with a tractor and extension ladder.
Can you tell it is loved by everyone?
We were also fortunate enough to be the recipients of a play fort from one of DH coworkers, the only condition? Come and get it.
DH and I worked on getting it placed in the just the right spot most of the day Saturday.
We married it to our original play fort with the two slides. We used the tunnel which at one time attached to a climbing wall/ladder from the newly acquired play structure. We will soon have 3 slides, 3 big swings, a baby swing, trapeze, climbing wall, teeter totter, and a tandem swing. That does not include the super cool rope swing!
Also the new little girls needed to move to their new home.
We got this little playhouse for free, it was getting dumped in the garbage pit at DH work. We cleaned it out, scrubbed it out, ran some electric and put bedding down. Frankly it was time, the little ladies were getting smelly. It is amazing how quickly they went from this.
To this.
See those feathers, even tail feathers.
Sunday morning I went in to check on them, and we seem to have become a wasp/yellow jacket house overnight. Poor little things were all crowded into 1 foot square area staying away from the monsters. We scooped them back out and back into the farmhouse they went. DH sprayed all the cracks and crevices to get rid of the buzzy monsters. We will have to remove all the bedding and scrub down the insides to get all the poison out of the building again.
The few moments I get I weed flower beds a bit. We haven't had a chance to plant our garden yet, but my porch plants are looking good.
I bought 2 tomatoes. One grape tomato and one slicing tomato. The grape tomato plant is on the porch, and look I have blossoms! OK the tomato plant has blossoms.
I put a couple of cabbage seeds in a whiskey barrel and I have some sprouts, and a lot of weeds coming up too. I also have a couple of kinds of lettuce, and romaine coming up in another planter near the porch.
I will be able to make some more chive blossom vinegar. Hope I can get at least a quart.
I will have a lot of strawberries, the plants were loaded with blossoms, and even the wild strawberries in the field are loaded. DH was forbidden from mowing the field at least that area. I get 1 acre which is my bird/bee/butterfly sanctuary/habitat.
We have also been wrangling these little ones. We try to keep them from attempting to cross our road to the "other pond", but the ducks and geese like to go between the ponds, which results in squished fowl and I am not a fan of cleaning them up.
I have a couple of hours free this morning before Finn will want to venture outside so I better shake a tail feather so I can get a little sewing done.
I have been humming right along, well kind of sort of.....OK Maybe not really humming, maybe slogging, trudging, dragging my feet. But I am making progress. S- L- O -W- L -Y!
I did get my bag lady block done for the month right away so I won't be stressed the day or two before quilt guild meeting.
I thought there was an interesting selection of fabrics in this bag to use. Love the soft pink/green fabric, but not a fan of the lavender with the pink, fuchsia, and green dots. The instructions in the bag requested that the pink/green be used as the background though.
I also did a quick smash and grab through my stash and found the fabrics for the friendship block.
The guild fabrics were the black and whites we were supposed to add purple, blue or aqua. I think my choices were alright, and I used some fabrics from a fat quarter bundle that I won in a blog hop a couple of years ago. I love the Island Batiks!
I also managed to get these little babies all trimmed up, resewn, and ironed, only to find that I have weird numbers of everything.
Before trimming....you can see that the block seems to be totally random.
Some I only have one or two (like the periwinkle flower on the lower right row, and the paisley 2nd in from the left on the top row), and others I have 15-20, yet I only have enough blades to make 6 Dresdens. I already decided that I am only going to make 5, have an idea what I am going to mount it on for the background. Now the next question, should I see if I can match something from my stash and make a few more blades to add to the mix? After digging through the 1 1/2 totes of fabric I have left from the MIL hoard stash there is nothing that matches these, other than the yellow ditzy daisy on the far left bottom row and I have more than enough of those!
I did find these two in the totes. But when I put them near the others I don't think they look quite right for a couple of reasons.
I think the scale on the bottom print is too small, whereas the upper print the flower scale is similar.
Yet I think because the majority of the fabrics have a white, or cream background that it doesn't really go either. But then maybe I should take the psychedelic blue/pink/green out also. I think I will sleep on it and go from there.
I am dragging my feet as always when it comes to getting projects done that I have basically designed, whether it is the layout, or the quilt. Especially when I am melding different designs together. Today I decided I just need to jump in and work on it. I came up with a design, then drew it out, then started cutting.
And sewing.
Tomorrow will be much more cutting. Maybe I will have more to show too!
I finished up the May pieced In Our Garden block a day after it was published.
Next I prepped the Heat and Bond lite for the applique and set them aside. I finally took some time to fuse them last week, and had a couple of hours to sew them Sunday evening.
Still digging through my Riley Blake hoard stash, but did pull my favorite batik out for the iris, and a fun blue for the water in the bird bath. I was also way to lazy to try to do little tiny black applique circles, so I cheated and did little tiny buttons instead for the eyes.
Since I was working the applique' I decided to also pull out April's bonus pattern provided by Amy at Sew Incredibly Crazy, and get it arranged and sewn.
I am really enjoying the patterns in this blog hop!
Do you ever sew, sew, and sew, but really don't have much to show for what you have been doing? My last couple of weeks have seemed that way.
I managed to get Allietare, and Farmer's Wife all sewn together. Now it is time for borders!
I worked on the Saw tooth square block, and got it finished for the May RSC color which is green.
I also completed the Crown and Star block for May done.
I need to work on finishing some quilts for the guild show in October, and the guild challenge....but then I got distracted.
Rebecca at Quilting Everyday showed a BOM that she had discovered called Westering Women from Barbara Brackman's blog Civil War Quilts. Along with a block each month she provides a short history lesson about the great westward migration in the United States during the 1800's. Growing up on the west coast at the end of the Oregon Trail that is the first history we learned in school, and even though it was over 150 years ago there are still places where you can see wheel ruts and tree scars from wagons.
Have you ever purchased a set of fabric but never found the "perfect project" to use it in? I had a set of fabrics which I had purchase several years ago. I think the line was called Rhubarb and Ginger by Blackbird Designs for Moda.
I think I need to add some solids, but I have quite the grouping of prints.
January's block is called Independence Square. I am 3 blocks behind, but I had to join because I think this will be the perfect fabric to use for this project.
I know I don't have much sew to show, but it isn't like I haven't been doing anything at all.
DH and I removed all the Christmas Decorations from the tree in the yard....by lifting him up in the bucket of the tractor.
I planted boysenberries, garlic, a few flowers, lettuce, cabbage, repotted some of my tomatoes and have been trying to harden them off so they can be outside when it stops getting cold (they are living in the garage and coming out during the day in a wagon). I still have a bunch in the sun room as well as pumpkins. The tomatoes I may have to plant into larger pots. I also prepared some pots and containers for flowers on the porch, and lots of weeding. I also have a fuzzy group to watch that are occupying the sun room.
I remember the first time I talked about getting chicks, DH forbade me from bringing them into the house....he was not going to have farm animals in the house! They are living on the sun porch for a few days until their new house is
prepared with electricity, and it warms up a wee bit outside they are only a couple of days old, and they are so small they cannot reach their feeder with the top on it. Now the sleep in it, who would have thought that your food tray was a comfy place to sleep?
