Partly Cloudy....

 

Look at that beautiful, bright, blue sky behind the quilt. 

Now that's blue!

And it's cold too.

Four below zero this morning and a high of 21 today.

Brrrrr!

 

 

 

 

Partly Cloudy is the name of my newest quilt creation.

I found this quilt design & pattern on

BlockM Quilts.

Daniela graciously shares her pattern for free.
My quilt turned out to be 74x57".
I had to do a little trimming and editing along the way.

 

I made this quilt for my nephew & his fiancé's wedding.

We will be driving to Wichita soon to take part in the celebration.

I chose the name Partly Cloudy because even though a wedding is one of the

Brightest Days of Life

marriage comes with many cloudy skies, rain, snow, sleet, heat waves, winds

 and all of the other things we must weather as a couple.

My prayer is that they will know the comfort of being

wrapped in the arms of God through it all.

And I hope the quilt will remind them of that.

............................................................................

 

Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
            Stormy wind, fulfilling His word.

Psalm 148:8

Spiderwebs and Stars, a quilt

A couple of Littles helped me show off the latest baby quilt I finished for our 10 month old granddaughter.  I joked around that I hoped I would complete it before her first birthday and I made it!  This was a string quilt called Spider Web made from bits and pieces from my scrap bag.  I got the pattern idea here  where there's a pretty good tutorial. Each scrap of fabric holds a tiny memory from all of us -- old shirts, handmade skirts and dresses, blankets and aprons. There are so many fun prints in this quilt that it could be considered an "I Spy Quilt" too.  I hope she enjoys many hours with it --  making it into a super hero cape or a tent or just a cuddly place to nap.  God bless you little Hunny Bunny.

My Own Crib Quilt...

My Own Crib Quilt 

is done.

I think every Grandma should have a quilt 

for when her grandbabies come to visit.

 It measures:  54" x 47"

I stitched-in-the-ditch around each square

and then quilted diagonal lines across each block.

The backing is Fresh Air by American Jane Patterns

Sandy Klop for Moda  

It's a teeny tiny check that's so soft.

Now I'm all about cutting wool squares.

Nothing easy about cutting up suit coats.  Blah.

BUT

I'm going to make a pair of wool baby pants out of a sweater.

Like these.

It'll be a fun experiment.

"Lily" likes to play outside with her sisters, 

but she's not walking quite yet and it's still snowy.

Her pants ride up and her poor chubby ankles get cold.

The wool pants with cuffs at the ankle would keep her warm and dry, I think.

The sun is shining and it's up above the freezing mark.

I took a walk to the mail box this afternoon.

Nice. 

I got myself a new book.  A quilting book.

By The Block

by Siobhan Rogers

I bought it mainly for this quilt, 

 

(source)

 

but there are lots of other quilts I like too.

Fun ideas.

I'm excited about it.

Have a happy day!

Sheeps, Kids, and Wools...

Do you see Baa Baa, the lone black sheep?

If you look closely, you can see blue lips on the ewe to the left of Baa Baa.

The kids noticed it right away.  They wanted to know why blue lips?

I told them it was from eating blue snow cones!

Almost!

Really, it's comes from licking cobalt salt blocks.  

Ruminant animals need salt to digest vitamins found in their feed and turn it into energy.

Pretty cute aren't they?

 Nibble, nibble.

 Making sheep scatter!

Because it's fun!

 Pushing sheep just because they are there.  

And because they are fluffy.

Would ya look at that wool?

Soon we'll be shearing.

 Nibble, nibble.

Papa helping the kids feed the sheep by hand.

..................................................

LATELY....

I've been inside working on a couple flannel quilts for the church and one for JJo's friend who will be having her first baby soon.  JJo did the quilt top and I finished it up.  Currently I'm working on "My Own Baby Quilt," -- the scrappy one.  Remember it?   I've begun the machine quilting part now and it's going pretty well.  I'm using a walking foot (on my new Bernina) and it works great. 

(Wool garments I found and a pair of baby moccasins) 

A dear friend gave me a special gift of an online class from Craftsy.  (BTW, their classes are on sale right now and so many choices!)  I'm so excited! I'm taking an embroidery and wool applique class which will surely challenge me, but before I can begin I have to find some woven wool fabrics to work with.  Today I spent a little time at the thrift store in town to see what I could find for wool garments that I can cut up and use in my projects. It's interesting to me that to buy new wool fabric by the yard or by the square, it is CRAZY expensive.  Like $24+ per yard.  But I can go to the thrift store and they do not price wool items differently than they do any other clothing items.   Besides the class project, I have an idea to make a wool blanket in "quilt fashion" kind of like this and this and this.  I'm especially fond of the first blanket with the soft pastel colors and the calico binding.  What do you think?

Pinterest Link

The weather is going to change from mild winter in the 30s

to cold, Arctic winter sinking to sub-zero temps at night and teens in the daytime.

Brrrrrrrr!  Rrrrrrr!  Rrrrrrr!

Bank up the fire and put on the kettle!

I hope you're warm wherever you are.

Bear plays bass...

 Bear plays bass

Owl snares the drum

Three little bunnies each play some

Tambourine rattles

Accordion squeeze

Clarinet tweets joyfully!

A sweet li'l baby has arrived,

his parents sing for joy!

He's a December gift,

a bouncing baby boy!

(a patchwork pillow for a friend's baby boy)

pattern ideas here

Emmy's Wing-It Quilt...

 (lots of gray November days make my photos a wee bit dull)

Emmy's Wing-It Quilt is here!

(I feel like I just birthed something.)

Hubs bought me a new sewing machine,
the first new one in 30+ years since my Viking.
It's a Bernina.
It's wonderful. 

And I'm having fun learning and exploring all it can do.

Our newest grandbaby was born in September and as is my tradition, I wanted to make a quilt to celebrate her birth.  Her mommy asked if I could make this particular quilt pattern "Interwoven"

 in Moda's *Just Wing It* fabrics.

Finding the Just Wing It was a little tricky since it is now OOP, but there were a few Etsy sellers that still had charm packs and yardage left for me. 

I didn't bind this quilt in the traditional manner.

Instead I made a quilt with no binding according to this tutorial. 

I like the clean, modern look of it.

I did some free-motion machine quilting in loop-d-loops.  

I have done a very little free-motion quilting, and I am still a novice at it.

But I figure if I don't try, I won't get better.

Emmy won't mind my imperfection.

Happy little things...

 

The scrappy string baby quilt is getting closer to being complete.   

I sewed the white border on to corral the organized chaos.

This afternoon I sewed more multi-colored strips together

 and cut them into 2.5" strips that I'll stitch

for a border around the white border.

Just a little more edgy chaos.

Why do I love this?

I don't know.

But I do.

A bit of egg-citement!

The pullet hens are laying!

The middle eggs are hen's eggs

and the circle of eggs are pullet eggs.

(designed by Hubby!)

My new homemade fall wreath
made of prairie grasses, milkweed, and sumac berries.

And one more little thing...
the last roses of summer.

Happy little things!

Doll quilt...

More scrappy quilty stuff.

A doll quilt....with legs.

The neighbor girls helped me choose the scraps 

for a doll quilt.

 

The girls made their own quilts.

They glued fabric scraps to card stock.

 

Scrappy little beginning...

I have a new craze.  String quilting.  Bits and pieces of scrappy strips are called strings, and they are sewn down, one upon another, to a muslin square or paper square.  It's addicting!   Nothing has to be perfect with string quilting -- which is my kind of quilting from time to time.  I like that I'm using up a gob of scraps.  I was beginning to wonder if I'd live with a huge bag of scraps for my whole life and then pass it down to my children who would think I was some kind of hoarder-packrat person.  But no!  My scrap collection is going to good use instead. Repurposed, so to speak. Some of the scrippy-scraps are from past baby quilts, dresses, totes, bibs, shirts and who-knows-what.  So there are memories built into each quilt. 

I promised myself I could start my day with an hour of sewing and then I would go on with the  *work* part of my day.  Most of the time, I put my sewing very last after all the work-y tasks are done. It was such a treat to put sewing first today!  String quilting is so addicting that  I went over my alloted time by fifteen minutes because I just HAD to finish the block I was working on.  (naughty me)  I got three squares done in my hour and just made one more this afternoon so I'd have a complete square (made of 4 squares).  Fun!  This quilt is going to be my own. Yes, my own baby quilt for the crib that is in my sewing room where my sweet grandbabies sleep when they stay with us.  I'm so excited to have my very own baby quilt once again.  ~smile~

If you want to watch a really good video on how to make string quilts, click HERE.  And be prepared to want to do nothing else for hours on end! 

Circle Swing (a quilt)...

 

Swinging on the Circle Swing brings lots of fun and giggles, free-flight and height.  Our grandkids love it and beg for a push.  So in honor of that round-ish, wooden rope swing that hangs from the Willow, I dub our 7th grandchild's quilt, Circle Swing!  It's whimsical, it is free-style, it's swirly, it's light and airy.  I wish our little Lyla sweet dreams and super-hero flight under it's cover.

Snowballs....

 

 

 

Not snow snowballs.  

Quilty fabric snowballs!

I've started a new quilt for the newest grandbaby.

Lyla gets a snowball quilt.

Here's the idea.

Here's a pattern.

I started with a 5" charm pack of Moda's LOL

and will use one or more of the LOL fabrics for the back.

The white space is off-white with tiny white stars.
It's hard to see in the pics, but you can if you enlarge them.

I'm trying to decide if I should have some white space
--with the tiny star fabric--

 between the snowballs (like this)

 or leave them close together (like this).

Which do you like?

Since these are small 5" unfinished blocks, 

they will shrink to 4.5" finished blocks within the quilt.

I only had 42 LOL blocks and needed more so

I added some coordinating fabrics from my own stash

to infuse into the LOL blocks. 

It's an evolving process.

I'm having fun!

Forever in blue jeans....

I've decided it's time.....

 ...to cut up blue jeans.  My mother-in-law used to say she "turned jeans out to pasture" when they were worn out enough to start cutting them up. You cannot imagine how many, many pair of jeans I have stashed for use in mending and for jean quilts.  I've made all of my kids blue jean quilts from our family castaways, and now I feel it's time to get cutting again and start making more quilts.  My main goal is to get squares cut in various sizes.  That task alone takes lots of time when you consider that you must take off all the seams and hems before you can even begin to measure and cut.  I figure if that part is done, the sewing will come easy. So far I've cut 6" and 7" squares and 8x5" rectangles, all with hopes of sewing them together into quilts.  While I've got the bug, I'm just doing it!  I
think picnic sized quilts would be the best since denim quilts are SO heavy and hard to handle on a sewing machine when they get very big.

 

(I couldn't resist adding this label from the pocket of a pair of old Levis)

Do you remember the days of the Shrink-to-fit, button-fly, 501 Levis?  I think they still make them, but those were the very best jeans back in the day.  If you had a pair that made it to nearly faded-white, you really had something.  Those jeans wore like iron.  Nowadays we are lucky if we can get a pair of jeans to last 6 months with hard wear.  And what's with the pockets in women's jeans?  You can't even fit a tube of chapstick in them let alone a pocket knife!  Now take a look at this Levis pocket label -- it's big enough to write a whole paragraph on it and add some swanky emblems and such.  Those were some real pockets.  And who doesn't love the Levis back pocket with the little red tab peeking out?

This past week I assembled a few of my squares into a small quilt -- baby sized.  I've decided I'll  leave it unfinished for now until I decide who to give it to.  It might be for one of my grandkids, but it might be for someone else.  I think it will be nice to have a few of these in my gift stash when a baby comes along or when someone needs a heavy lap quilt or picnic quilt, and then I can add the backing and the binding to match the person. 

Here are three of the five jeans quilts I made years ago.  Here and here and here.  My kids love them!

Wiggly line quilting...

Because you asked, I have a close-up picture here of the wiggly line quilting I did on the Little Boy Blue Quilt.  Nothing special.  Totally free-style.  Just three wiggles going straight through the blocks one way and one wiggle going through each block the other way.  You can see it best through the darker block on the left. Here's a link to the wiggle idea. and another LINK to Christina's many other good, simple quilting ideas from her blog, A Few Scraps.  Thanks for the quilty-love you so generously gave me.

Li'l Boy Blue's quilt...

Little Boy Blue come blow your horn

The sheep's in the meadow

The cow's in the corn.

Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?

He's under the haystack fast asleep.

~Mother Goose

Another quilt is done. 

It's for Li'l Boy Blue, our new grandboy.

The fabrics are Les Amis by Patty Sloniger

I did a simple wiggly line free-motion quilt design.

What I've been doing....

Be Careful....

We're still out in the fields making hay while the sun shines, and boy, does it shine!  Our temps are climbing into the 90s and 100s which makes for good hay-drying weather.  Sometimes the men have to bale at night so the moisture content of the hay is just right.

 This is an old John Deere 2520 which was purchased brand new back in the 1970s before I arrive here on the ranch.  It's old, but it runs like a charm.

 A view over the top of the tractor.

 An here's a view from behind me.  The rake wheels spin the hay into the center where the hay can dry and it makes a nice windrow for the baler to go over.  So far, we've made about 2014 big round bales, and there are more to be made.  See the rake in action HERE.

Front of my latest baby quilt.

I've finally finished Rootie-Tootie's baby quilt.  She's only just turned 7 months old so she's crawling off her blankies already, but hopefully she'll still enjoy her own especial blankie from her Gram.

Here's the back with an R and a few posies in the corners.

There are other things that I've been up to, but these are the latest projects.

Look what my Sweetie gave me this morning.  

I woke up to this song and these fresh-picked, happy sunflowers!
Do you know the song?

Start where you are...

(Source) 
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." ~ Arthur Ashe
 (Don't you love this quote?  I'm writing it down.)

It's the fourth day of the new year.  I know this because I've got the calendar from the butcher shop covering up my beautiful 2012 Marjolein Bastin calendar.  The new calendar I ordered from Amazon is not here yet, so I'm improvising.  For now, the pages are blank minus a couple grandma days.  I rather like the feeling of blank space.  It's freeing, refreshing, and full of possibilities.

I'm not a resolution person.  I'm not a theme person or one who chooses a word for the year.  I wish I was, but that's just not me, really.  I do have some thoughts about what I'd like to do in the year to come.  I read the Susan Branch post, The Care and Feeding of Dreams, and I realize that I like her approach to living life fully whether that means treating yourself to the occasional bubble bath & book, breakfast in bed, daily walks, or by setting Big Dream Goals like writing a book, one little page at a time.   As a fifty year-old lady with grown children and four grandchildren, it has become easy to leave dreams behind and focus mainly on "the here and now."  For me, the here and now is very important, but having a few dreams to feed keeps the soul awake and energized and gives me something creative to look forward to.

I haven't officially written down any of my projects or any of my dreams either, but I'm thinking about lots of things.  Since October, Hubby and I have been eating better and we've both dropped quite a bit of weight.  We feel good and more ambitious and fit, even though we both have 50 year- old ranch-worn bodies that will never look like they once did at 30 years old.  Still, we are planning to press on with a lifestyle of healthy eating.  I've been researching Clean Eating which includes, in a nutshell, eating a variety of whole foods and eliminating most processed foods.  This is mainly what we've evolved into.  If you are what you eat, then we've gone from Mr. Pop & Candy and Mrs. Chip & Dip and transformed into Mr. Steak & Salad and Mrs.Veggie Omlet.  Food tastes better to us now, and our tastes in food have changed dramatically.  I'm looking at sourdough recipes and experimenting with those.  The summer garden will be fun as always.  I'm anticipating new ways to feed the dream of healthy bodies with new whole food recipes this year.  Check out these "clean" Budget Recipes.

Our newest grandbaby, Ruth., is such a good one!  She's nursing and pooping and sleeping just like newborns are supposed to do, and she's such a pretty lil thing.  I was at her house yesterday, and I got to talk to her and tell her how wonderful she is.  She was wide-eyed and alert as she tried to focus on her granny's voice and face.  Her big sister and I had lots of fun looking at the new Eye Spy book and singing songs before nap time.  The neighbor grandgirls spent the night with us a couple days ago and even though they were just recovering from a nasty cold/flu bug, we had a good time dancing to Elizabeth Mitchell songs and  singing Car Car, You are My Sunshine, and Little Sack of Sugar.  What I love about having my grandchildren nearby is that one of my biggest dreams of being a Grandma has come true, and the best part is that we are so close.  I feed the Grandma Dream often and much.

(Source)

I want to make a baby quilt for Ruth, and so I'm looking around for just the right quilt pattern with lots of color and interest for her.  Miss Bee had her baby quilt out when I was there and we had such fun pointing out all the butterflies, bees, circles and flowers that make up her own bright blankie.  I saw the niftiest idea for an Eye Spy Quilt where you fussy-cut some of the blocks or pieces to include images like dogs, bunnies, flowers and such things that would catch the eye.  I like that.

Because I really love to embroider, I'm planning to always have a project going, even if it is just tea towels.  This Christmas it was nice to have a stash of handmade tea towels at-the-ready to give as gifts, and I want to continue keeping a stash for gift-giving anytime.  I always feel like I give a little piece of myself when I give a handmade embroidery.  The time and joy I put into it is part of the gift.  Oh, that reminds me of the funniest little sew-on labels that I thought would be fun to sew on handmade gifts.  The one I especially like says:  THIS TOOK FOREVER.  How's that for funny and true?

Blogging will stay on my list of things I want to do.  I enjoy having a journal of my days, and I like having a place to share ideas and things that I like to do....like ranching.  We will be moving into Lambing Season very soon.  February 10th or so will be the starting date for new lambs to arrive, but before that we will get the sheep sheared and the shed set up for the big event.  It is the Kick-Off Event for the year because right after that, there are heifers to calve and then the cows, and the year is on a big roll because there's no stopping the rest of the events that follow.  That's the thing I love about ranching -- there's always something new coming up.  It's mostly the same stuff, but it's never dull.  There is a steady rhythm to it and yet there is anticipation and excitement.

I think I need to find a pretty notebook so that I can start writing down a few thoughts and ideas, some dreams and projects, and maybe add some encouraging words and pictures.  It's good place for me to start -- having a spot to at least write things down and begin.  I hope your year is beginning well, young as it is.