A Bit of Work From the Sewing Room

The rains have made such a difference in this August and the August of 2012; the pond is full, the grass is thick, and the cows are fat.  We're starting on the final hay work.  We know nothing of a vacation, other than it meaning a couple of weeks when there are no chickens to be constantly on our minds.

 

There has been a bit of work going on in the sewing room: doll dresses, baby bibs, aprons, and doll quilt tops.  This is one of those quilt tops, in simple pinwheels, made from Kathleen Tracy's book, American Doll Quilts.  I love the softness of the colors in this top.

I always have trouble with half square triangles, so a few years ago I purchased a pattern for paper piecing them.

The papers can be cut for the number of HSTs you will be making of each color.  In my case I needed four HSTs.  With right sides together, the print and the white are placed beneath the pattern,

then stitched on the dotted lines and cut apart on the solid lines, resulting in perfect HSTs.

I cut off the little "dog ears"

which my daughter suggested I leave for the Borrowers.  :-)  They can pick up threads from the floor and maybe find a very small needle to sew them into HSTs.

Have a good day!

Charlotte

The Lockhorns

Have a good evening!

Charlotte

August Eighth on the Farm

Thunder rumbles and lightening flashes, rain softly treading on the roof ~ the sights and sounds I awoke to this morning.  I didn't want to get out of bed, but I knew the farmer had been up and down, in and out, a good part of the night setting up the chicken houses for catch time today.  He needed a good breakfast before the catching crews got here.

It's been a rough week for chickens, and the growers.  Temperatures in the 90s aren't so bad until one factors in the humidity.  When there is so much moisture in the air the cool cells don't work as well as they do when the air is just hot and dry.  They work much the same way as the old time window air conditioning units: water flows across pads and up to twelve big fans per house pull air through, and as the water evaporates the air cools.

On top of the heat factor, we got a load of bad feed which sent two houses into a tizzy.  It's frustrating to put almost seven weeks of work, seven days a week, have a good chicken, and then something out of our control happens.  But after forty one years at this work, we've come to expect the unexpected.  While there are chickens in the houses, they are never far from our thinking, even at night, and it takes a few days after they're gone to remember we don't need to listen for fans or make sure the water is still flowing, or that we can rest our minds for a couple of weeks.

But there's always a little brightness to cheer up the day; one sweet zinnia has responded to the rain, in the midst of tattered iris and day lily fronds and the yard needs to be mowed again this week.  Maybe the drought of 2013 is over; maybe during the two weeks without chickens I can finish cleaning out the flowers beds and hope for a lot of zinnias in 2014.

Charlotte

Hope you have a pleasant weekend!

August Apron

The August apron gives good coverage as a full apron.  It is made from a beautiful blue cotton print purchased from Connecting Threads.

There are two big, spacious pockets, and it ties at the neck and waistline.

The apron was made by the Simplicity pattern, number 3949. 

My precious second granddaughter modeled the apron for me; she didn't want to show her pretty face.

Charlotte