August 2010

I appliquéd this Christmas quilt last year – I put it on the quilting frame last November and I feel like I have barely worked on it since.  Here and there, 30 minutes here, 15 minutes there – 90 hours later and 10 months later I finally see the last border as I gave the quilting frame a roll down this evening!  The end is in sight thank goodness.  I really want to put it out for Christmas this year as a nice decoration.

This is what is left to finish:

An angle of the whole width and length left to do:

For those that do not know the quilt pattern is called “Christmas Memories” and it is from Apple Blossom Quilts by Connie Sue Haidle  follow the links on the blue highlighted words for information on it if you are interested.

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When we got home last week after being gone for 7 weeks we of course no longer had all the birds hanging around that we normally do at this time of year.  I always put food out for them and of course none had been out for a long time.  I got busy and filled the bird feeder.  Boy it looks like winter out there with all that dried grass.

Soon a nuthatch came to visit and about 4 more in the tree as well although they have not eaten much seed – maybe a lot of dried up seeds out there from all the dried flowers and such?

I have hung up the hummingbird feeder and have a pair of hummingbirds coming and going. I couldn’t get a close up though of the hummingbirds feeding without the photo coming in blurry.

I got some flowers to pot and the butterflies are coming back (not in this photo though – didn’t have the camera with me at the right time).

I have watered plants off and on all week and I have some coming back and the ground cover is perking up in places.  Now if we could just get some rain things would start looking like it was back to normal.  I’m not sure when it rained here last.

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Well this morning I finally finished the August Star Crazy Blocks.  These little blocks really shouldn’t have taken the 3 days that it took me but my sewing skills kept running into problems and I had other things to do!  I’m so glad to have this months blocks done because the September blocks instructions come out in just a couple days.  I have been trying to stay caught up on these and not fall behind.

3 different kinds of stars and 3 of each –

Besides the stars this week in the evening I have been working on my quilt that I had brought along on our travels to quilt and then didn’t work on it.  It is coming along nicely.

The quilting so far.  What I do with the quilts lines is as I get some quilting done I use a little water to “erase” the lines – I do not do the whole thing I have quilted so that the blue lines that I still need are still there – I will wet up to about 2 inches away from the areas that need quilting still.  I do not recommend you doing this if you have never used the blue pen before.  You have not be careful to not use too much water.  I just do it if I want to really see what the quilting is actually looking like without the blue lines to interfere with it.  (the quilt will still need to be washed several times to get all the blue out as I did not use a lot of water, just kind of dabbed at it with a wet cloth.)

The whole quilt – well actually you can see the strip border on it as I have it folded in to prevent raveling.  As I get to the border I will unpin it. I didn’t straighten it out completely on the floor – it is not bunched up like that but does lay flat.

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Finally got around to taking a photo of my July Stars – all pressed and squared up as well as they can be. I always find that I am a little off no matter how careful I am.

My yellow on the large block is a little light I think but with the print that is in it maybe it will work out ok.  I will decide later when it is time to put the top together.  There have been several over the months that I wasn’t sure about and decided awhile back to decide when I put it on the design wall – you can never tell sometimes with scrap quilts when you lay it all out it looks just fine.

I have been working on the August blocks off and on since yesterday but things have not been going well.  I have not gotten back into my “sewing groove” if you know what I mean.  I will get part way through and run out of bobbin, then the thread acts up and I need to rethread the machine – then I will notice I cut something a little off and need to replace – I have 3 more stars to make and 4 half square triangles for the border.  No Irish Chain blocks this month – I haven’t looked ahead to see if I make some of those for September – it will be a surprise I guess.

Today got rather warm after a couple cool nights and yesterday was nice and only in the mid 80’s out here.  Today was in the low 90’s and humid enough to feel uncomfortable after awhile on the porch.  I was out there for awhile reading a book I picked up at Barnes and Noble when we were traveling and had never gotten around to reading it. It is called “Die For You” by Lisa Unger.  I don’t believe I have ever read her books and I really like this one.  I think I will be writing her name down in my notebook and look for her others at the library soon.  ( I write down names of authors on a tiny notebook I keep in my purse as I am always forgetting the names when I go to the library to look)

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Finally today I got back to on getting some piecing done.  I got my July blocks for the Star Crazy BOM squared up and pressed and I am now working on my August blocks.  Two down and 7 more to go.  I will try to do a photo tomorrow.  Might be Saturday or Sunday – I would like to get them all finished and then do a photo of the two months together.

Good news on my little hydrangea’s – all 6 or is it 7 plants – have little new leaf buds growing – all of the dead stuff has fallen off.  I’m really surprised to see new leaf buds already – I have watered the plants almost every day since we got home – maybe we got home soon enough to save them?  I’ll take a photo of them tomorrow also.

This morning though was a bad start to sewing.  I felt like I had forgotten how to sew at the sewing machine.  Do you ever feel like that after you are away from your machine for awhile?  Nothing was going right.  I started and about 20 minutes later I tossed everything down and said to heck with it I will try later.  I have finally finished two stars this evening and maybe tomorrow will go better – hope so!

Thanks for all the advice on EQ7 – yes I am getting it although I most likely will wait until it is a little closer to my birthday before I order it so it will be for my birthday   And yes I will use my discount from American Quilters Society.  It is the lowest price I have found.

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Thanks all for the opinions on EQ7.  I have a birthday coming up at the end of September and it has been my tradition for many years to pick out my own present   I have heard a lot of good stuff about this program and I think it is time for me to move into the modern times of quilt design and have the computer program LOL,  it will take some learning on my part but from the video clips I have seen on the EQ site I think I will be giving it another shot.  I will be ordering it soon I’m sure.

On the quilting front since we got home (Saturday afternoon) I have not accomplished a lot LOL – I have been too busy watering plants and getting organized again.  Today I wasn’t even home – I had my check up in Little Rock, went shopping, lunch out with our daughter who lives in North Little Rock – we met at Chili’s on her lunch hour – had a nice visit and got caught up and then we dropped by their house to get our house plants and two hanging baskets of ferns that she and her hubby (who was home sick) were taking care of for us.  Home in time for supper.

I do have my July Star Crazy blocks pressed and squared up and I have the August patterns printed out and need to get busy on them as here it is almost September already – I really need to get busy.  I have not touched the Bow Tie quilt pieces since June and need to get back to that one also.  Too many projects!!  I have gotten a little quilting done on the Christmas Quilt and on the smaller quilt from the Fat Cat Patterns page -  LOL – I don’t even remember what I decided to call that one – I will need to go back in my blog pages and see if I said. And I completed forgot til just now that the triangles still need to be made for Dear Jane #2.  I need help!!

I think once I get caught up on some of these I need to try just working on two at a time again – one on the frame to be quilted and one to be pieced or applique.  I do not like having UFO’s – it takes too much time to get them all finished.  It will take me several years at this rate to get caught up.

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Quite a few years ago I tried EQ5 – new to me at the time — I am not good with computer programs – I have to use over and over again to learn and remember all there is to working them.  I have been against quilting programs since as I never caught on to it well.  I have been looking at so many blogs though where people are using EQ7 and have nothing but compliments and rave reviews for it.

If you used the old EQ programs did you find EQ7 easier to use or harder?  Do you like it and do you feel it is easy for a person who is not computer program savvy to use?

More and more I wish to design my own quilt patterns for me to use and possibly also design some wall hangings from vacation photos – if you use that part of the EQ7 program do you like it?

All opinions are welcome!

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I wondered as we were driving home what my yard and plants would look like after being left on their own for 7 weeks with the hot, hot temperatures Arkansas was experiencing while we were gone enjoying ourselves in the mountains and the cool 70 degree temperatures that we experienced almost the entire time we were gone.

I should have taken a before an after picture of my big blue hydrangea bush that I have had for almost 20 years.  I really didn’t know if it would revive itself – but it is!!  When we got home the entire bush was totally limp – the leaves all facing downward and a very light color – this is after I left the hose running on it twice at about 30 minutes each to drench the area with water.  It will survive

Back in early April after a 3 week delay I had 10 tiny scarlet maple trees that I planted.  They should have went in the ground in March but they lost my order.  I went ahead and planted them and wondered if they would still be alive – I really didn’t think any of them would be alive – surprisingly 3 of the 10 are alive.  This one is in the sun, the other two are part shade. Didn’t grow! but still alive.

The monkey grass and the hostas are still alive but I cut the two cinnamon ferns down to nothing and I’m watering – maybe they will come back, if not this fall maybe I will be surprised in the spring.  I hope so they were both about 3 feet tall and about 2 feet wide at least.

Well we can all see how this garden did!  I wonder if anything will come back.  I do not intend to start pulling anything up and replanting this fall – I really want to see if the plants just went dormant and will come back in the spring.  I will decide then what to do about it.

The dogwood tree – lower leaves are all dried up but the upper leaves are fine.  We watered this area two times since we got home 48 hours ago.  As you can see what passes for a grassy lawn is dried up brown – it is more weeds than grass – we would have to sod the whole place to have decent grass with as rocky as our soil is.

This tree looks dead – that is ok, I didn’t want it anyway – there is a redbud growing someplace in that area and I want that one instead.

This garden – well what can I say – as soon as I can I will get started deadheading these Black Eyed Susan’s and scattered the heads where they can seed and make me some new plants!  I will give this area some water and see what happens.  The tall lilies flowered before we left so they are doing their normal thing and starting to dry up.

We have been home 48 hours and I feel like I will never get caught up.  We ran into the mailman when we were grocery shopping after we got home and he said he would bring the box of mail collected up while we were gone to save a trip to the post office – nice man!  But it took me almost 2 hours to go through all the mail today – of course after I organized things into stacks the largest was the mail order catalogs that I normally throw away anyhow! the next size was the credit card offers that need to be shredded.  All but one of our bills can be done on line so not much in that stack!  (and I actually called and got the total for that bill over the phone so didn’t need these bills – they will get shredded too)

I have all of my quilting things put back where they belong and did a little stitching on the last appliqué block that I never finished on the road. I also got the quilt out that I had brought along to quilt and never did – I worked on it yesterday afternoon while hibernating in front of the tv while it was 96 outside.

I need to press and square up the July stars that I hand pieced on the road for the Star Crazy BOM – and I printed out the instructions for the August BOM pieces.

All in all I have gotten some done since we got home but I think I will be watering plants all week – good news is that by Wednesday it should be back in the 80’s and get this – maybe high 50’s at night! sounds like maybe the heat wave broke just as we were getting home – hope so!!

EDITED:  Several have asked what kind of pen do I use to mark the blue lines – this one is Mark-B-Gone, I have used other brands and find that in my opinion all blue wash out pens work about the same, I have used several kinds.  I never have a problem with wash out – use plenty of water and wash two times if needed – put no heat near it until the blue is washed out.

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It has been awhile since Mike worked up the map of our trip but last night he did so here it is:

All of the “pins” indicate places that we camped at.  We left home on July 2nd and got I back yesterday August 21.  I’m not sure how many miles we put on the camper and then on the car also.  We really noticed much better gas and diesel mileage in the north and the west then we get here at home which was strange.  Our Honda car at home normally gets about 22 miles to the gallon – it is six years old and over 125,000 on it.  I assumed the mileage was not as good as it used to be because it was getting old – in the north and west however it was ranging between 28 and 31 miles per gallon.  The motor home which is diesel engine in averaged between 12 and 18 I believe that is towing the Honda. 

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