Merry Christmas

It's a little late in the day but here goes:

Our kids & grand-kids were here for Christmas dinner & gifts. Our 4 yr. old granddaughter gives the most delightful squeal when she unwraps something she was really wanting.  Her brother had a dinosaur Christmas...he added several to his growing collection. I'm glad the one I got for him went home with him....cool, but oh so noisy. It's always great to have everyone here, but the time goes so fast.

Off The Frame

Here's a picture of the latest quilt to come off the frame. I just love the colors in this one.

This morning I got the next top, backing & batting ready to load. I should have some time to work on it in the coming days. There's always a lot to do before Christmas, but decorations are up, food is pretty well organized, presents are wrapped & under the tree....that pretty much leaves cleaning & I get real tired of that so it will be nice to have a quilt to work on. Once it's loaded the repetitiveness of quilting is relaxing....as long as the machine behaves. I think I need to get a new tension spring and anti-backlash spring. Sometimes the machine gets kind of cranky and pulls the top thread slightly through to the back leaving tiny little loopies...not always, just sometimes. I keep cranking the top tension tighter, but I think the tension spring is just tired.....kind of like me at times.  :)

It's Such A Beautiful Day For......

Thanksgiving! Just one more thing to be thankful for.

Happy??? Merry???

Or maybe I should say "Merry Christmas" since it's snowing out. Crazy! It's supposed to be nearly 60 degrees for a high tomorrow. Just your standard Nebraska weather, I guess.

Today I'm canning Butternut squash. There was a bumper crop this year. I'm quitting with 14 quarts since that's all the wide-mouth jars I have empty and I don't want to buy any more. This year I'm trying the official, approved method of peeling & dicing into 3/4 to 1 inch pieces, covering with water and pressure canning. Before I always cut the squash in half length-wise, took out the seeds, baked them, scooped out the squash & mashed it. It went into pint jars and got pressure canned. We'll see which we like best.....the approved way or the old, unapproved way. I always figured the old way was safe enough with getting pressure canned at 10 lbs. for 90 minutes.....but hey, what do I know? I've only been doing this for years and years.

What Keeps Me Busy

Pictures of Praying Mantis have been popular in late Summer/Early Fall this year. Here's mine:

Looking back I see that it's been about three months since I posted. Sure doesn't seem that long. Here's a few things that have kept me busy:

Lots of tomatoes and tomato/veggie juice canned this year. Also green beans (I thought they would never end. Finally I just QUIT.) Lots of sweet corn frozen. Will still be canning some butternut squash. Tons of carrots that I'm not sure what I'll do with,,,,hubby got a little over-zealous with his planting. On the whole, the garden did very well. Not much for fruit this year...to be expected when the trees are all blooming and you get 9" of snow on the first of May.  Also working on photo books for the kids for Christmas. Now, there's a project I should have started on Dec. 26th last year! Spending hours on finding, sorting, scanning, editing....and haven't even started putting them into order in the photo book program.

Right now all I want is some beautiful, warm, sunny Fall days. Seems like all we can get is clouds and rain.

Sharing

I was feeling ambitious the last couple of weeks to I have a few pictures to share tonight.

These are Quilt Club Projects....finished at last!

This is the Boxy Star pattern designed by Bonnie Hunter. It will be donated to Quilts of Valor.

And last, but not least, this is Delectable Mountains pattern. Or, if you are a Bonnie Hunter fan, it's Scrappy Mountain Majesties.  This one I'm keeping!

Independence Day

In honor of the 4th of July I made my first batch of potato salad and grilled pork chops for the summer. Hubby's complaint? Nobody ever puts enough chopped sweet pickle in the potato salad. (I put in all that were left in the jar!) Pork chops were yummy, but I was disappointed in the cantaloupe. Looked good, but very little flavor and hard. I knew when I bought it that it probably wasn't ripe....stem end was green....but I was craving it. Guess I'll just wait until the ones in the garden get ripe. They're just blooming so it will be a while.

Also in honor of the 4th I'm working on getting a Quilt of Valor ready for the machine & hope to get it loaded yet today. Finished binding another quilt yesterday and have another one with the blocks sewed into rows, just need to lay it all out again and start sewing the rows together. There's another finished top waiting in the wings along with three from a family member waiting to be quilted. I needed to get a sample made for the project for our quilt group meeting next week so I also cut a bunch more for a project to work on at our August retreat. Almost all out of strips left over from two baby quilts I made four years ago. I'm in the zone!!! :)

Last night we sat outside and watched fireworks for a while. Kind of like Big Bang Boom without the crowds. There was even a drone flying around, probably videoing the fireworks. I thought I could hear one and then the hubby spotted the little red light zipping around....had to be a drone or a foo-fighter. :)  The lightning bugs were putting on a pretty good display too! Ah, summer!!

It's Easter!

The eggs are boiled for the deviled eggs, dessert is made, grand-kids' Easter treats are ready....guess I'm about ready for Easter. We will be going to our daughter's house for Easter supper.  When the family grows and various in-laws become part of the mix we adjust. Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

New Projects

There's not a whole lot going on here since my last post. Last weekend I thought I'd quickly cut out a couple of QOV quilts. Everything always takes longer than expected, but finally got them cut out and the blocks for one are sewed.

I really like those little plastic clippy things for holding parts of blocks together. Draws less blood than working with pins. LOL

I have some quilts I need to get quilted so don't know how much progress I'll make on these for a while. Speaking of that, I should get a set of Red Snappers for loading quilts....less bloodshed, you know? LOL

Hope you all had a fun St. Pat's and didn't get pinched.

Latest Finish

This is a vintage top I bought in the Vendor's Mall at the first QuiltNebraska I went to. I had every intention of hand quilting it, but life was busy and it got tucked away for a number of years....15?  20?....not really sure. Finally I accepted that hand quilting wasn't going to happen so it got machine quilted in the Baptist Fan pattern. Of the patterns I have that one seemed most appropriate for the age of the quilt...which I'm not sure of at all. Some fabrics could be 20s & 30s, some look like they could be from an earlier time period.  I don't know what this quilt pattern is called either.

This weekend I'm working on cutting out a couple of Quilts of Valor quilts. If I get them kitted up then I can just sew and sew when I feel like it.

Just A Nice Sunday

I stayed up way too late reading last night,,,,2:45am!....so slept in a bit this morning. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Nebraska!

The hubby went ice fishing again! today so it's very peaceful here.

After having leftover lasagne (Yum) for lunch I settled down to watch Bonnie Hunter's Quilt-Cam while I sewed on blocks for Spoolin' Around.

Just the sort of Sunday I like.

Top #2.....

FINISHED!!!!.......   Delectable Mountains

It was a good sewing day. The snow must have energized me! :)  Somehow this top seems bigger than the pattern. I'll have to measure, but really, does it matter?  The purple border is crazy, I've never put a purple border on a quilt before, but out of the "maybe" fabrics that I had enough of this is the only one that really looked right. And isn't using what you have the purpose of the "scrappy" style?  Lord knows I have enough fabric to use up!

I also worked on blocks for another quilt today. Sewed the block quarters into block halves. There are lots of seams so there are MANY quarter-inch seams to press open. I know I said I was going to start a new project when I had two tops finished, but maybe I'll work on those blocks for a while....I seem to be on a roll.

One Down....And One To Go

It's a top.....!!!!!!   Pfefferneuse.

Now to move on to the next one......Remember....I've promised myself to get two projects to the top stage before I start anything new.

The next one in line is a scrappy Delectable Mountains that I started on at last August's quilt club retreat.

After that I want to start cutting out Allietare.....the 2015 Quiltville mystery quilt....the fabrics have been chosen since last May.  And maybe start working on a couple of QOV quilts to send off before the end of the year.

Just call me optimistic!!!

All Laid Out...

...And ready to sew. I have a bad habit of sewing tops together, quilting & binding them before I see that part of a block or border is turned a quarter turn the wrong way. I always notice it first in a picture, so this time I laid it all out, carefully looked at it, compared it to the pattern and then stood on a stool and took a picture. Hopefully I can sew it together without turning anything wrong...I hate ripping.

If you see something turned wrong please give me a shout out. It looks OK to me but.....

Sparkly

Yesterday was our share of the big ice storm...Winter Storm Jupiter. This morning I took a few pictures of the sparkly world outside. The pictures don't do justice to the beauty, but it was the best I could do without actually going out on the ice.

Nice to look at from INSIDE the house!

And this is my first quilt finish of the new year. I can't even remember how long ago it was pieced so it's been a UFO for quite a while. And yes, I know it has a boo-boo, I didn't even notice it until I looked at the picture. Yes, it bugs me. And yes, it's going to stay that way. I don't take things apart once they've been quilted and bound to fix mistakes. It doesn't affect how it keeps someone warm.