Sewing With My Scissors On

As a huge Bonnie K. Hunter fan, I have truly embraced working with leaders and enders as I do my piecing. It means that I send through an ender to push my block unit out onto the other side of my sewing machine, where it is ready to be clipped free to sew upon it again.

As I work the Sister's Choice blocks, I find myself NOT bothering to set down my scissors in between passes. It was hard to photograph this but here is work being pushed through while the scissors were still in position on my right hand.

I know that it looks awkward but it really works for me. It sure does make this 62 year old quilter feel like a very naughty first grader to have those scissors held wide open as I use my fingertips to flip pieces into position and to push them under the needle. Saves lots of time! Do any of you guys do this, too?

Over the weekend, I stopped off at the local feed store where I buy my wild bird seed.

Christine and Buzzie run Valley Dam Feed in Barnstead, New Hampshire, just off Route 28. About a month earlier, I had called Christine to order some replacement chicks for my dear neighbor friends, Alfred and Ilse.

There are 6 New Hampshire Reds who will lay brown eggs, and 6 Americanas, who will lay fancy colored eggs such as green and blue. I had a flock of laying hens here myself for 10 years, but I got sick of winter chores with them, so I do not keep them since that weasel or raccoon cleaned me out. Never did figure out which it was, but no matter, it was the last straw for me!
Ilse is only 80, so she has more patience than I do. Alfred, at 86, had a senior moment and left their henhouse door open one night last month. Yep, you guessed it! Probably the same damn weasel. All their hens were slaughtered and only the rooster survived. So now, with these baby chicks, they are back in business. The little ones sure are cute!

Waxing Philosophic

Doing my piecing teaches me both patience and self-discipline. I do one step at a time and often, it is very repetitive. I like that.
It isn't boring, because it can be very freeing to allow my mind to wander while I am sewing little pretty bits of colored cloth together. When I was younger than 62, I needed projects that were finished instantly so that I could feel the rush of success very soon, like within a day or two. Now I work on projects that take me months to complete and I must defer that final gratification.
Now I set small, reasonable goals for the day so that I can feel great about small increments of success. I'll tell myself to just make two blocks for today and be pleased with that.
Sometimes when folks have visited my blog, they comment on how busy and productive I am. That feels a little strange to me, because although I value their compliments, I feel like a slacker sometimes. It takes me some inner strength to put away that kind of negative self-talk and be very happy with whatever I DID get done that day.
Here are yesterday's Civil War reproduction Sister's Choice blocks:

I hope that they are as fun to view as they were to make!

Too Hot, Too Soon!

This week continues to be a rollercoaster ride of temperatures. Monday it was 90, Tuesday it was 70, and today was a more seasonable 65. Felix has been too busy to get to spraying the orchards of our hobby farm and everything was popping open today. Yet there is a possible frost tonight! Yikes!

Here is what it looked like today:

 Raven is already scratching and I found a dog tick on ME! EWWWWW!!! We keep a "Tick Jar" which is a small glass jar with a little kerosine in it and drop any tick we find into the jar with tweezers. Ugh, they are so horrid.

 These are the new Juanita variety of daffodils that just got planted last fall. Their trumpets are supposed to be bright orange but they grew to be a little washed out, colorwise. I still love them and don't mean to complain, it's just that mine never look as nice as the ones in the Breck's catalogue. LOL!

These are all Rose Nectarines in full blossom. If they are frostbitten there will be no fruit at all this year.

When I was at the Walmart pharmacy, I spotted this bargain 100% cotton quilting fabric in the remnant bin that was almost 3 yards!

I am thinking about using it on the Scrappy Houses sashing. It's kind of a go-with-everything dark neutral. I have an ancient Cranston VIP that is a nice deep green that would work too. Not sure yet!

Landlubber's Paradise

Today was such a perfect Spring day that it was hard to think about it being the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. I watched one of the miriad TV shows about it and felt glad that I was safe on dry land. I wandered the farm with the camera and had an inner squeal of delight at each of the daffodils that are blooming!

It seemed criminal to be indoors at all with the 60 degree temperatures and really no bugs yet. But my piecing was calling to me. Here are the next batch of Sister's Choice blocks done yesterday and today.

I also called my dear friend, Wanda, in Florida, who is still quilting after having suffered two major strokes and has lost the use of the left side of her body. She makes string quilts with the help of her husband who ties them. She admitted to me that cutting strips is very difficult for her.
I think that cutting strips is great fun, so I spent an hour digging through bags of scraps that had come from my guild's auction night and cut about a peck-sized basket of mixed strings for Wanda. I even got them all packaged up and labeled and was ready to go right down to the post office to mail them out immediately. Then I experienced a "duh" moment to realize that it was already afternoon on a Saturday! So they will hafta wait until Monday morning.

Tonight is the Gilmanton Community Church Italian Supper and I hope to get there in time to feast upon somebody's homemade lasagna! But I will leave you with one last flower shot. Enjoy!

The Every Kind of Weather Day!

"If you don't like New England's weather, wait a minute", goes the old saw. Well today that was so true! Mild sunshine, soft breezes, huge clouds, quick showers, even a brief burst of pea-sized hail were all experienced today.

Those are some pictures of the hail on the deck.
Last night I had a lovely time at my guild meeting and showed Windmills to a nice round of applause. I really enjoy that positive feedback. Only a quilter can appreciate another quilter! So when my guild shows approval, it really means something.
On the way to the meeting, I had stopped off at Walmart for a couple of things and was excited to see that they had already put out some annuals. My marigold seeds never germinated this spring, so I bought a couple of six packs and a dusty miller. They just look so cheery! I even bought one to put into the guild's door prize raffle just for fun.

At $1.78 for a six pack, who could resist spreading some joy? I will need to watch the nightly forecasts for the next six weeks to be sure we do not have a killer frost. It is not until Memorial Day that the danger is past.

I also fielded a couple of easy dog calls as the Animal Control Officer. When it is Spring, all the village family dogs all seem to decide to go out for a romp in the woods to find the decomposing remains of whatever died over the winter and is now thawed out and stinking. So Felix & I become the clearing house for the lost or found hounds.

But the most fun I had today was poking along on some more Sister's Choice blocks. I got four done and pressed today. There are 19 that were done from way back whenever, so that's 23 made out of the 30 that I need.

It felt good to go back to working on something that needs finishing because it let me pretend that I have some self-discipline. LOL!

Finishing Up a Flimsey

Everybody in the quilt world knows that a flimsey is another name for an unquilted pieced quilt top. When I finish one, I can't wait to brag about it here on my blog because for me it is a milestone. I love to share the fun with you and hear your comments.
This one is the Civil War "Windmills of Your Mind" top. Since you have seen it last is has grown to a large couch potato throw at 64"X75". Here is just the flying geese on with that crazy 3/4" coping red strip:

I put on a matching coping strip onto the outside edge of the flying geese, but alas, when I tried to spread it out on the driveway to photograph it the wind was a gale!
I learned that it takes just as much time and effort to put on a little skinny border as is does to do a regular sized one. Here is a picture taken indoors to show the second red strip.

Then I put on a big bold indigo blue border today and I'm loving how it looks!

I had to snap this quickly because it is windy again today. Doesn't it look almost like an oriental rug?

Raven wishes that Matthew was home from college to throw the tennis ball in the back yard. Oh well, chasing squirrels will have to do! LOL!

Doing What Works

The fancy-dancy library book on pieced borders that I borrowed from the guild was no help at all! The formula did not make sense and the wording was so poorly written that both Felix and I were hopelessly confused by it all.
What worked for us was plain old graph paper and just a wee bit of easing of the flying geese into the red coping strip. Here it is all sewn onto the windmills quilt top center. I am so happy with how it looks!

I was careful with my choice of colors of Civil War reproduction fabrics. I only allowed reds, blues, and browns with any type of Civil War shirtings and some tea-stained (by me) muslin. Slowly, I am learning to not try to put everything, colorwise, into one quilt top. I guess that means that I like scrappy, but controlled scrappy!

My best fan might be Raven. She loves my quilts no matter what I do for colors. LOL!

You can see how hard life is for Raven, and there is just a bit of Matthew's arm poking out from under the covers, there, too!

Happy Easter!

We are celebrating Easter at home with kielbasa and holiday white borscht filled with hard-cooked eggs and horseradish as a side condiment so that you may add it to taste. It is a Polish Easter tradition from Felix's family and we both love it. We were also gifted a huge honey ham for which we are most grateful.

I am especially grateful for our blessings this Easter because I now have lights back on in the sewing area and nobody was electrocuted doing the repairs! Yippee!

 I worked yesterday to cut the red stripe fabric from Moda's Collections for a cause into 1 1/4" coping strips and sewed them onto the Windmills of Your Mind quilt center. Once I got the red strips on, I was able to begin playing with the flying geese borders. Here you can see the right side flying geese border that has been sewn on already, and the top part is laid out getting ready to sew.

The upper-most top right geese are a pair that will be sewn at right angles to make the geese turn the corner so that they will fly in a circle around the quilt top. I think that I will add another 1 1/4" coping strip to the other outside of the geese for balance. I love the way this is progressing!

Sewing In The Dark

Dear me, to be without my hobby since Saturday is driving me crazy!
Today I decided to sew in the dark with just my Blue Max light fixture over my trusty machine with darkness all around me. Once I got over the creepiness of it all, I actually sewed 10 blocks together for Blue Ridge Beauty.

Since the iron and the Ott light that is over it still work, I was able to press them, too. But doing loads of laundry by flashlight sure was the pits! It beats loading everything into my car to drive to a laundromat, but not by much!
What's truly funny is that when I asked Felix to take my picture is that we both got a laugh out of the fact that the camera's flash filled in all the darkness and makes it look as if the overhead lights were still working! Believe me, they are not!

 You can just make out my black and white copy "cheat sheet" pinned up on the wall so that I don't sew the four patches and half square triangles together incorrectly. Oh boy, it pays to check every time! But I have learned to feed the two pairs of units in order so that they are webbed together as they exit from the other side of the machine. Then the two halves are ready to sew to each other and joined by the chain piecing threads.

After the morning sewing session, I got encouraged and did ten more in the afternoon.
Here is what kept Felix busy as he struggles with our taxes. He was able to finish them up this afternoon.

Hooray! My hero! And we do not owe money to the federal government, so double hooray!!!

Queen Bonnie!

Congratulations to Bonnie K. Hunter for sweeping all the catagories of the 2012 Golden Quilter's Awards on SewCalGal's blog! http://www.sewcalgal.blogspot.com/2012/04/2012-golden-quilter-awards-ceremony.html
Bonnie you work so hard to promote patchwork quilting designs and quilts that are accessable to all who will work to make them.

Bonnie won:

1. Best Designer

2. Best Author

3. Best Teacher/Instructor

AND,  best of all,

4. The Golden Quilter Award  for Lifetime Achievement, the most influential person !!!!

 YEAY, Bonnie!!!! You deserve this praise from the peers of your industry.

The Dark Ages

No April Fool's Day joke here. I have no electric lights downstairs in my Quilting Cave!!!!! Felix was down there trying to repair a broken light switch on the far side of our cellar and something went wrong and it shorted everything out. He's made two or three trips to the hardware store to buy new circuit breakers to install. But our house was built in 1978, so it is challenging to buy the right stuff.

Today he took a day off from working on that to try to do our taxes, but it took all morning to clear enough of a spot on the dining room table to even look at the tax papers. He said he made some progress on it. So I'm going through patchwork quilting withdrawl. I can prewash fabrics in my bathroom sink and hang them out on the clothesline for now. Sigh.

The winds are very gusty at almost 45 miles per hour. Sure hope these don't blow right off the line!