Long Labor Day Weekend!

We left bright and early on Saturday for Bethany for a family reunion of sorts.  I took this photo since we traveled in the truck and I thought it was sort of like the Clampetts go to Bethany!  

We surprised my dad with a new windmill for the farm.  David salvaged and repaired the top from his old windmill and constructed a new base.  It looked very pretty spinning in the breeze all weekend. 

We also took some apples to contribute the the cider making project.  It was early so the apples weren't overly juicy yet, but we did get 9 half gallon jugs.

When we returned home, Willow wanted us to know that it was time to start harvest.

Grandma Barber had made her some frozen treat jars.  

She spent quite a lot of time licking out her treat.  

And Sarah's cat adoption saga continues.  She has now given up on the St. Louis area and sent me to the shelter in Marshall last Friday.  She fell in love with this picture of Snickerdoodle.  We are hoping that Snickerdoodle will pass her feline disease tests and get her surgery and vaccinations this week so that she can officially become Sarah's roommate this weekend.

And David made me a rolling stand for quilt batting.  I had seen these at the retreat I attended and took photos to show him.  His response - "But you always roll yours out on the floor and crawl around to measure and cut it!"  My response - "Wouldn't it be nice to NOT crawl around on the floor?"

And then, my prayers were answered at the church garage sale last week.  I purchased a really old but very sturdy (not like the ones they make these days) office chair for ONE DOLLAR!  I proudly brought my purchase home to him for the project.  What a bargain!  Quilters never pass up a bargain like that!  

 A farmer, on the other hand, then goes out and spends $50 on stuff to make the stand.  So, my bargain is not quite so much of a bargain anymore, but I love it.  I have it stored in Sarah's closet, right close to my sewing room.  And, all of the animals you see in the first photo have promised not to play with the batting..........and I can close the door to the closet to keep Cici and Esme from playing with it.  

Christi

It's Fall Y'all!

 Well, it may not technically be fall yet, but it's September and we are moving into my favorite seasons of the year.  In preparation, I have worked on a few fall projects.

Should he look left?

or right?

We finally settled on left.  Mr. Bat is all quilted and finished now.  It turned out pretty cute.  The most amazing thing is that when this table runner is on the table, the cats won't sit up there.  Apparently the eyes are watching them!  This table runner took only about 2 hours to cut and sew.  Of course, it also yielded some leftover half square triangles........fall pillow!

A trip to Sedalia last night allowed time for a stop at Hobby Lobby before supper.  I hadn't been in there in FOREVER!  I slowly surveyed the fall decor aisles.  Black and White check seemed to be the big thing, even for fall decs.

This morning, I moved from craft stash to craft stash gathering a weird array of supplies.

And I "grew" this pumpkin.

Of course, the pumpkin needed some friends.  So now I have a patch!

I figure next week will be the start of getting out more fall decor. 

Christi

Quilting........

The above photo is my guild's opportunity quilt for this year.  It is a really large quilt and gorgeous.  I have tickets if anyone needs them.

Sew Sweet Quilt Shop has been doing another quilt-along.  This one is called Pixel Chain.  It uses 2.5" strips, so is perfect for a jelly roll and some background fabric.  I decided to use strips I already had cut in my stash bin, so focused on blues, greens, and those in between blue and green.  What does it say that I didn't have to cut any strips from yardage?

The blocks are simple enough to make, but I don't seem to be progressing very quickly on it.

I did finish the 2 quilts I made with the denim my sister-in-law gave me.  I added some homespuns to these quilts and quilted around the pockets so that you can still store stuff in your pockets!  The one above is a throw size and the bottom one is sized for the bed in their horse trailer.

I also finished quilting my challenge project.  I think it turned out ok.  Not too sure what I'm going to do with it.

This was the barricade I made to keep Esme out of the longarm area overnight when I was quilting.  It worked, so I may try this again.

 

The garden is winding down.  We have dug the potatoes - didn't get as many as we planted.  We have harvested several spaghetti squash.  The only things still growing are the cantelope and tomatoes.  I have made several batches of pasta sauce, one of pizza sauce, and one of smoky salsa.  Please ignore the weeds in the photo.

And the update on Sarah's cat search is that she is still searching.  The first shelter she visited had several but most were positive for feline leukemia.  So today she is reaching out to another organization to get an appointment to look.  She told me that in her online search, she has 50 kittens tagged in her favorites.  I hope she can settle on just ONE!

I need to get moving on to something today.  My housecleaning chore is vacuuming, but since Cici is currently snoring in the window seat and I don't want to disturb her, I'll probably put that off for awhile.

Christi

Birthdays!

It's hard to believe my baby turned 25 at the beginning of the month!  (Note the 25-year-old is wearing her favorite Minions t-shirt!)

She was such a cutie!

My parents and I went to St. Louis for her birthday weekend.  (David had to stay home with all those cute little pigs!)  We visited the Prologue Room at Boeing.  Of course, she was enamored of all the things there.  

And we went to the aquarium at Union Station.  This was my favorite.  I was so engrossed, I only took this one photograph!  I would highly recommend it though.  We also ate at her favorite Mexican place, El Burro Loco, and we did Caines Chicken strips which Mom and Dad had not had before.  

And Willow turned 2 on July 28th!  She thought that meant she would get her driver's license.

She did get to go for a ride to Dairy Queen where she got her own Pup Cup of ice cream!

And just to prove that she will never get too big, she managed to squeeze into the recliner with David to watch a movie, PG of course, since she's only 2!

 Christi

Welcome back to the Blog!

Welcome back!  I KNOW, it's been a long time, over a month, since I've blogged.  That doesn't mean I wasn't blogging, it was just all talking in my head and never made it to the keyboard.  There's much to catch up on, so this may take a few posts to get it all done.  Let's do the tough stuff first.  We got the emergency phone call from Sarah on Aug. 20th that her cat was experiencing kidney failure and there was nothing to do for her.  We made the quick trip to St. Louis to be with Sarah when they put Dory to sleep.  Turns out she only had one kidney and it had failed.  I tried to find some pictures of Dory to share.  You can see she was a good companion cat, spent LOTS of time sleeping,.......

It's hard to tell here, but I'm pretty sure she's still sleeping, just sitting more upright doing it.  

 Dory had been Sarah's companion cat for 3 years, finishing college with her, surviving Covid, and becoming a City Cat when Sarah transitioned to St. Louis.

Sarah spent last week with us, working from Marshall, before returning to her apartment this past weekend.  We got to hear her arguing with people from India about the project she was working on.  It was pretty impressive how she held her ground and proved she was correct.  I know Sarah is looking for another cat.  Can you believe we didn't have any cats on the farm for her?  (Willow!).  She has been looking at a rescue shelter in St. Louis.  (Her father can't believe anyone would BUY a cat!)  I'm actually expecting a call today telling me she has adopted.  It is HALF-PRICE cat adoption day!  CLEARANCE KITTY!  It will come already "fixed", vaccinated, microchipped, and tested for feline diseases, so it's really a bargain.  I just hope she finds what she is looking for.  

In other animal related news................  the next group of babies arrived at the beginning of the month.  2700 of the cutest little pigs have found their home at Bentley Farms.

You're looking at a lot of bacon and pork chops!  Well, at least they will grow to be a lot of bacon and pork chops.

I had the wonderful "opportunity" to help with the weighing and tagging of the 1200 in the research barn.  The hubster had ordered the special (expensive) tags back in January and finally received them a couple of days before the pigs arrived at the beginning of August.  They usually come bagged and in numerical order for pens of 20 (10 boys, 10 girls), but this time, when he opened the box, he held up bags of 250 loose tags.

So, we spent a couple of "date nights" putting them in numerical order and bagging them ourselves........and yes, I am out of little ziplock bags!  We've only done about half of the order, so will have some more "date nights" after the first of the year to get the tags ready for the pigs that will arrive in January.

We took Willow to the dog plunge at the Marshall Parks Pool.  She had a good time.  There were lots of other dogs, especially Golden Retrievers, there.  She wasn't too sure about all the other dogs.  

She tried to catch the splashes David made for her.

And we had to explain that you go DOWN the slide.  She did go down it a couple of times.  David also coaxed her into just jumping in the deep end a few times as well.

And Esme is relaxing again.  She had a hard week with Sarah here.  She got lots of extra loving, holding, squeezing, and tormenting.  Our cats are not used to so much love.  Love has it's limits!

Christi

Some progress

 My binding companion was a ready helper Sunday afternoon as we worked our way around another quilt. 

I was able to get the binding on this quilt.  The pattern was from a Missouri Star Triple Play video and it was called Mountain Magic.  They were showing different ways to use the equilateral triangle, and I just had to try this one.  You take a panel and cut triangles from it and then from your accent fabrics.  I had never done anything with an equilateral triangle.  It went together pretty easily.  

Then it hung in the closet for awhile while I contemplated the quilting.  I was going to try some sort of custom design for triangles, but everything I came up with was too curly or girly for this outdoorsy panel.  I finally settled on an edge to edge pattern called West Winds.  I think it gives it a nice motion and I'm really happy with it.  I've been trying more custom quilting especially after a member at our last guild meeting basically said that she didn't think it was really quilting if the quilting wasn't specific to each block of fabric in the quilt.......meaning she didn't like edge to edge quilting.  I think there is room for all styles and certain quilts lend themselves to one or the other.  This one was just meant to be West Winds all over it.

The backing featured a fabric that looked like the grasses you would find in the woods like the panel.  It was a really nice quality fabric.  I have no idea what I will do with the scrap that is left.  Also, still thinking about a name for this quilt.

The big news is IT RAINED!!!!!  Willow was so hoping for enough rain to make some mud to play in, but that hasn't happened..........yet!  You can see she's waiting patiently for this to happen.  We also picked about 3 gallon of blackberries when I got home from work yesterday.  David fixed some delicious steaks on the grill and sweet corn to go with the potatoes I had in the oven while I washed and bagged blackberries for the freezer.  

Managed to get all the laundry done except for a load of towels in the dryer this morning before work, which leaves baking some cookies on the agenda for this evening and working on a quilt binding, of course!

Christi

Back to Quilting

 Well, it's time to catch up on some things happening in the sewing room.    I had noticed Esme standing on the floor trying to peer out this second story window, so when I mentioned it to the hubby, he devised this nice cat resting shelf for the window.  It's right behind my cutting table, so she can stay close if she wants to.  It's covered with a piece of flannel fabric.  So far, she hasn't spent much time there, but I have a feeling that may change when it cools off and it's not so hot being next to the window.  The hubster also installed a new light over my long arm machine.  That has made it much brighter.............sorry, no photos.  It's just a basic light but it makes a difference!

So I have spent some time quilting for MYSELF!  I actually finished piecing this one, cut a batting and backing, and took it straight to the long arm.  This is on my UFO list, so it will be nice to show it and get it scratched off.  It was Bonnie Hunter's leader/ender challenge from last year.  

It's made totally from scraps and I set it together with blue cornerstones and binding, so used this cute blue polka dot for the back.  It was quilted in an all over pattern called West Winds.  I'm really happy with it.

I also quilted this Moda Love Layer Cake quilt that was made from a layer cake that I won from Sew Sweet quilt shop.  I did custom quilting on this one.  

This is not my usual color profile, but I did find some backing to go with it.  I really like this one as well.

I took the leftovers from the same layer cake and made this smaller version of the same pattern.  It will make a nice baby quilt.  I did custom quilting on it as well.  I actually quilted it before the large version to practice some designs.  

It has a different backing, but the quilts share the same binding.  I was excited to use up all but 2 half square triangles from the layer cake and all but a short strip of the fabric used for binding.  I do have some of each backing piece left.

I have also quilted 2 other quilts, but don't have the bindings on them yet.  My binding helper is telling me I better get to work and get those 2 finished as well.

I picked up a new table runner pattern at Sew Sweet and worked on piecing it yesterday.  I just love a cat in a bow tie!

Esme was not as impressed with the bow tie kitties.

Well, I better get back to the binding!

Christi