About Me

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I live in Mid Missouri on a farm with my husband and daughter.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Morning on the Farm

 My morning started with the arrival of 1157 little pigs!  Yes, I know there are 1157 because I counted them and helped sort them into pens of 20.  

Actually this post is really about this quilt which I am calling Morning on the Farm.


This is done in a Circle of Nines setting.  You can see there are nine big blocks.  Actually it is a setting within a setting as there are nine panel blocks in each of the big blocks.  

Almost 2 years ago in June, the hubs and I took a vacation to Mississippi.  We stopped in Paducah, KY and I gave him directions to Hancocks of Paducah (he had never seen such a large fabric store - until we stopped at Marshall Dry Goods in Arkansas on the way back).  I told him not to let me buy any more panels because I had so many at home already.  While I was pushing my shopping cart with bolts of fabric in it he came up to me and pointed one out and said, "Isn't that a panel?"  My response was yes, it was a panel that I already had and I was just using that bolt to match other fabrics.  

Fast forward to almost 2 years later and I have finished the last panel in my stash!!!!!  This one was huge.  I'm pretty sure I only ordered a yard and they wanted to finish the bolt and sent me at least 2 yards.  There were 120 of the little panel blocks.  At one time, I thought to maybe just use the whole panel on the back of a quilt and be done with it, but then I discovered the circle of nines setting.  

I did custom quilting on it.  There are eggs in the border, half sunflowers in the setting rectangles, roosters in the corners, and chicken wire over the main blocks - to keep the animals from getting loose of course!


This only used 81 of the panel blocks, so I used 36 in a mondo bag and the last 3 were made into a little wall hanging for my kitchen.


Ok, here's a photo WITHOUT a cat in it!


And here are a few of the panel projects that I have worked on in the past...........
















And guess what?!  There are no more panels in the stash!!!!!  

Guess we'll have to go shopping!

Christi

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Where did February go?

 I can't believe we are at the end of the month!  Well, I guess we'll get our Bonus Day tomorrow.  I do have a couple of UFO finishes to share.


This little table topper was made from leftover squares I had from a Christmas quilt.  There were 84 squares left and I used ALL of them.  The squares finish at 1 inch.  I quilted it on my domestic machine.  


And I finished this Christmas quilt.  The pattern is called Dauphin Island.  It goes together fast and had been hanging out in the TBQ closet for awhile, but now it's complete!  I showed both of them at the quilt guild meeting in February.  

We are starting a Block Lotto in guild this year.  Every month, there will be a certain block assigned and you can make as many as you want.  You bring them to the next meeting and your name goes in a drawing for each block you made.  One person will be drawn and receive all the blocks to make into a quilt!  This was the first block.  It will finish at 9".  


I have actually made 10 blocks, five with the green and creams like the one above and 5 with them in the alternate positions.  I'll be entered 10 times!  It should be fun to see all the blocks!

Esme found all this block sewing exhausting............


Last week was extremely busy.  Nine of my sixteen piano students had conflicts and we had to reschedule lessons, and the hubster took me to Margaritaville Resort for the Missouri Pork Expo.  We attended the banquet and fundraising auction.  This was the dessert.  I love chocolate, but this was so rich that I couldn't eat anywhere near all of it.

 

We did a little exploring around Lake of the Ozarks while we were there.  We even went to a quilt shop, but I only bought some more soft and stable to put on the back of my embroidery blocks.

I have a couple more things quilted and will post about them as soon as I get the binding done.  I did get Star Trails to the flimsy stage.  It was kind of a pain, but I really like this quilt.  I'm already thinking about making it again in another colorway.


Well, that's a short catch up.  Hopefully it won't be quite so long in between posts next time!
Christi



Sunday, February 11, 2024

It has been eventful............

 It has been eventful recently and we're waiting with anticipation of the Super Bowl in an hour or so.  Go Chiefs!  Even Willow is ready.

She got another bath at the self-grooming place in Sedalia and they were passing out Chiefs bandanas.  Of course she was much more excited about the McDonalds cheeseburger we picked up for her on the way home.

Also an event.......


David got a new truck.  It's so pretty and clean.  


I think he's enjoying it. 


He also got hearing aids and made a comment about the bells and whistles his truck had that he hadn't heard before.  Of course, now I have to be careful because he can hear what I say and I've been used to him not being able to do that!


And the pig weathervane has been attached to the top of the garage.  AND, we found out who left it on our porch!  Some friends from our old church had it.  He had worked at Tyson Foods and it had been out there (long time ago).  They were cleaning out and decided it needed a new home!

And something we don't have photos of..............
The person living in the apartment next to Sarah discharged a firearm at 11:45 pm on Jan. 31st.  Sarah was asleep, but it woke her up.  She didn't know what it was, but was checking to see what her cat had knocked over and didn't find anything.  In the morning, she found lots of damage to the walls in her bathroom and spare bedroom.  So, she spent the day talking to the police, apartment personnel, etc.  The bullet had entered the spare bedroom, exited the opposite wall into her bathroom, scraped the ceiling, and lodged in the wall above the shower.  All damage has been repaired, the person evicted, taken into police custody and the gun confiscated.  

In the midst of all that chaos, Sarah got a new project at work and will be traveling about 75% of the time.  It will be a change for her.  But she'll be building up frequent flier miles and hotel points!

And in the sewing room..........


A little heart patch was added on both sides of the quilt to cover up the holes from quilting.
Each time it's washed, the fringe will fray and curl a little more.


I dug through the stash and came up with some fun fabrics to make pillowcases out of.


And I dug out another UFO and got it sewn together.  I had to cut some borders for it and had to watch that I was only cutting fabric, not fur!


But now this little table topper is ready for quilting.  I had these little squares left from a quilt and thought it would be fun to use them in a project rather than just toss them in with the other scraps.


Well, I best sign off so that I can get ready for the Super Bowl.  Let's go Chiefs!
Christi



 


Monday, January 29, 2024

Updates - The Good and The Bad

 In looking back at last Monday's post, I was having such a good day.  We were have an ice storm, so no piano lessons, and a whole day in the sewing room!  I had a baby quilt loaded to quilt and something went wrong with the design............my circles were definitely not circles.  It was decided that the best thing to do was unload it and pick out just over a row of quilting - at least it was a baby quilt size!  So the afternoon was spent updating my tablet.  Windows took a few hours to update, and then I had to do the update to my quilting program and go through all the setup steps on that again.  That took the whole afternoon.  At least while I was waiting for it to update, I worked on a long overdue project and covered a cushion for my piano bench.  I had purchased the foam for this project and then had stored it in the closet for almost 2 years.  After all the updates, I loaded a couple of pieces of fabric and just quilted all evening making sure everything was ok.  It was!

So then I loaded Harriett's Braid............


I figured that if there were mistakes, they would be less likely to show in this one.  It turned out beautifully.  And here is the quilting on the back............you may have to zoom in more to see it.


I finished the binding during the Chief's win last night.  I also finished the binding on the baby quilt, but am going to add something to it before posting a photo.  When I reloaded it (after a few days of picking out stitches) and quilted it, I was almost finished at the bottom when something snagged which tore a whole in both the top and the back.  I've thought of a way to cover that so will post pics when it's done.

My other big quilting projects for the week were 16 table runners for my mom.  I requested that she use one big piece of backing so that I would only have to load it one time.  


It made quite the roll on the longarm.  I was cleaning out closets and found this tube and just rolled them off the longarm onto it.  I used a different design on each one, so it was fun to try different things.  Mom has a lot of binding ahead of her.

I'm still plugging away at the Bonnie Hunter mystery - Indigo Way..........


Esme was helping me count blocks to see if I was anywhere close to done.  All of the counting wore her out..............



But, after counting and sewing the ones that were cut, there were enough of each kind of block to lay it out on the floor in Sarah's room.  There's a lot to this layout and it will take awhile to sew together, so I closed the door to avoid any block surfing by the cats.  They are pretty put out by this development.


Esme did hang out on the back of the couch while I was binding last night.............


I just flipped my phone up a couple of times to get her picture.
It's a rough job, but someone has to supervise!

Well it took all day to get this post done plus 3 loads of laundry, bathroom cleaning, kitchen floor sweeping, six piano lessons and a trip to town.  

Christi


Monday, January 22, 2024

Good Things!

Remember watching Martha Stewart (prior to her legal issues) and hearing her say, "It's a Good Thing" while sharing some amazing thing we too could do?  Well, this post is full of Good Things.

1.  We got a package from Ukraine!  It was such a surprise.  We haven't mailed anything to Yuliya since the Russian invasion, so it was wonderful to get something from her.  


This means we can send her something for her birthday in March!  I have a quilt ready that I had made for her during the first part of the invasion.  We are working collecting a few more additions to the box so that we will have it ready to mail at the beginning of February.  We also skyped with her so she could translate some things for us and we could thank her for the gifts.  The chocolate is delicious!

2.  We finally got our beef from the locker and got it all distributed to everyone.  This entailed a trip to Hamilton to meet my parents.  I got to check out the new Santa store...........





And I also purchased this really fun Scooby Doo Valentine fabric to make a pillowcase for Sarah.  


3.  I made pulled pork nachos!  My own creation............I did the pulled pork in my instapot and it was delicious.



4.  The Chiefs won last night!  It was hard to watch, so I had to work on my birthday puzzle.  It was too dangerous to have a needle in my hand to do handwork...........the danger of blood, you know.


The puzzle was completed before the game was.

5.  And speaking of handwork, I now have 5 of the 12 blocks for the Mr. Snow sew-along completed.  


6.  Valentine's Day decorations are out..............even the furry ones!



Hope your day is filled with Good Things!

Christi