I know I have a lot of sewing things packed to work on the next two months but the Star Crazy BOM instructions for the July assignment came out today and I thought I would cut and get things ready to work on. If I get around to them on the road I will hand piece. If I don’t get around to them they will be already to work on when I get home. I have them in a ziplock bag complete with instructions – they take up such a tiny bit of room 
see doesn't take up much room at all - I will lay them flat under my jeans
the 5th triangle - started last night and finished this morning on one of the many breaks I have taken. Amazing how much stuff I can fit in that small refrigerator! Also getting the last of the laundry done.
From the comments on trash that you all left I can see all agree that people need to be neater about litter. I wonder how much trash along the road I will see this year – if I see some interesting stuff I might just post again about it!! Where is the cleanest state I wonder?
I will be blogging as I can along the road and reading as many blogs as I normally do if I have good connections. Time to time more days than normal will go between blog posts but I will post as I can and put photos of where we are and what we see along with my quilting projects so you all can see if I am getting anything done
Such a busy day. I did get one more triangle finished this morning so will post that first – this is the 3rd of the 52 needed – I think I said I needed 48 the other day – wrong – 13 on each side, 4 sides makes 52. Long way to go. I have been quilting on the Christmas quilt too every evening and short spells in the day and although it is half finished there is a lot of quilting to do still.
3rd triangle
I love homemade granola for breakfast cereal. I know that I am not eating a ton of sugar first thing in the morning by eating my kind and not the store kind which quite often does have a lot of sugar in it. Sometimes I put dried fruit in it but most times I do not put dried fruit in it but add frozen berries to it instead along with the milk. I found this recipe quite a few years ago and I have cut the recipe in half.
Home Made Granola
5 cups of quick oats (recipe calls for quick oats but quite often I use whatever I have on hand which is usually not the quick oats most times steel cut and it turns out the same) (EDITED: I didn’t mean steel cut oats – I meant Old Fashioned - sorry)
1/3 cup oil – I use canola
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup ground flax seed (optional – high in omega 3)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup chopped almonds
if you add fruit like raisins or other dried fruit add what you want the recipe calls for about 1 to 2 cups (add the dried fruit after the baking process or they will get too tough)
optional: I have added 1/3 cup of coconut and that is good too
Put all in your mixer and mix for about 3 to 5 minutes until all is well coated with the oil and honey. Put in a high sided baking pan. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes – stir mixture about and bake for another 12 to 15 minutes until it s lightly browned. Let it cool completely and put in a large ziplock bag or a tightly covered container. With the nuts and fruit the mixture makes about 6 or 7 cups. Serving size is up to you – I use about a 1/2 cup with milk and fruit. (it is filling)
I love this stuff and eat it more for breakfast than any other breakfast food and rarely buy the sugary cereal from the store. I do miss this when we travel. I make a bag of it before we leave but I don't bother to make several bags as it will kind of go stale after awhile. When this runs out I will be looking for it in the health food isle as it is better (I think) than the cereal isle foods - less sugar) - but not as good as homemade.
It looks like our weather might finally be turning a little and we will be having cooler nights for the rest of the week. This will come in very handy for us while packing the camper and cleaning up the yard and the house before we go. The entire yard needs to be cut and that is best in the morning to do. I am having to water plants this evening. It has been so hot and I have not been paying attention to the plants. I noticed today that the bed the furthest from the house is drooping badly so I have put the water on it this evening and will let it go for several hours. Hopefully that will perk it up some. Maybe the hottest spell this summer has already happened? and from now on it won’t be so bad and we will get rain too? one can hope!
I have all of my quilting things packed for the road – the only project that I am working on this week is hand quilting the Christmas quilt. I really do not have anything else handy to work on. I just did not feel like quilting this afternoon and felt more like piecing. I thought what the heck why not get started on the triangles, after all I know I will not want to quilt all week. First I cut out the 56 needed plain triangles from the butter cream batik fabric and got done with that. It was so hot outside and I didn’t feel like being out there so I thought why not start piecing the triangles. I got done with two of them! (48 needed)
here are two - I believe this is the left side from the bottom of the border row. I have them just sitting on my table with the plain triangles next to them so you can see how it will look. The red batik will be the red scallops.
The triangle are 8 inches tall at the center point by 5 inches wide (with seam allowance) at the bottom and about a half inch wide at the top of them.
I would have worked on my Star Crazy quilt but I am caught up on that. Instructions for July doesn’t come out until the 1st of the month. We had planned to leave on the 1st but now have decided on the 2nd due to needing reservations as it will be so close to 4th of July. Would rather have the reservations and know we will not have to look hard for a place to camp the first night. We picked out a place in Missouri for the first night and then we have 2 nights in Southeastern Nebraska for over the weekend.
I have not decided what to do next on the Little Brown Bird quilt of which I really need to stop referring to it as that because I have decided to use only 4 blocks from that quilt and design something totally different – so right now I guess it will be “the quilt with no name” (sounds like a Clint Eastwood western movie!). I will let you all know when I decide what to do with it.
I am doing well with getting all my quilts towards the finished point for what I started with this year. At the end of the year I will have to look through all and go through my list and see what I finished/started. I do not think I will finish the Dear Jane quilt this year but you can never tell maybe I will. It just depends on all of these other things and if I loose interest once again, but by taking the 2 months travel time off from it maybe that will renew interest in it this fall.
Well here are the 13 rows all put together. You most likely won’t be seeing this one again for awhile. I really and truly am taking a break from this one now for the rest of the summer and will try to get started on the borders and corners this fall.
276 hours of work in this hand pieced wonder so far. I estimate about another 100 or close to that to do the border and corners. And no I really do not plan to make another one - I think 2 is enough. It will be time to try other challenges after this one is done.
I took the Baltimore Bliss quilt out the other day to start looking it over a bit. A couple weeks ago I had drawn some feathered wreaths on the two plain blocks and some feathers in the half square triangle and corner areas. When looking it all over though I found that my border just wasn’t laying flat enough. When I put it on I had noticed a little stretch here in there but thought it was going to be ok when it was quilting. When I got it out yesterday though to start drawing a quilting grid on it I decided it wasn’t good enough – not flat enough and it would be hard to quilt it out well. I got out the trusty seam ripper and took all four borders off (plain borders) and now today it is back to the thinking on what to do with it to finish it off. With the borders off it lays flat so the problem was when I put the borders on it. I’m sure I will solve the problem and really want to get it done today if I can. I still have the same fabric so not a problem there. The fault (besides me) is that the fabric has just a little stretch to it and the quilt is set on point so there are half square triangles on the edges. I need to be more careful.
I’ll show a photo tomorrow or next of the completed top.
Continue reading about Dear Jane “Insanity Revisited” 13 rows
Yesterday was one of those days when I just wasn’t outside very much. I was going to cut the grass in the morning and then it started to rain just as I was getting started. It didn’t rain a lot and not for long but I took it for one of those signals that say just forget it and work on your sewing instead
What it really was I think is that I was so close to getting these 169 – 4 1/2 inch blocks finished that I just wanted to get them finished – so off and on all day that is what I did -
Row 13, Block 11 - this block was supposed to be pieced with 31 pieces, I just didn't feel like it and I appliqued the diamond shapes on it instead. It is not perfect but who cares!
Really Jane saved some of the easiest blocks for last! This is Row 13 Block 12 and it went together in a flash.
Row 13, Block 13 - again this piece too was shown pieced - in quarters with curved piecing with what would have been 12 pieces with more bulk of seams. Instead I appliqued the cream piece to the red - so much easier and now all the blocks are finished
Now that the blocks are finished I need to sew row 13 to the body of the quilt and then I will show a photo tomorrow of all 13 rows sewed together. I got done with the blocks around 5 PM so I had time to quilt a little in the evening. I was close to the half way point on the Christmas Quilt and got there last night:
If you want to get technical I need to be half way up that center block to be half done with the quilting on this quilt - that gives me two more inches straight across - I'm just saying I am half way done now. I have put in 53 hours of quilting so far - it should not have taken me a half of a year to accomplish this!
In my defense I have gotten done with so many other projects this one just got neglected. I quilted two table toppers, a baby quilt, and a couch size quilt. I made a queen size quilt top, and started another (the Bow Tie), paper pieced several more 6 inch pineapple square blocks, made one Red & Green Applique block, made one more Little Brown Bird block and I finished I’m not sure how many “Insanity Revisited” Dear Jane blocks since the beginning of the year — I guess that explains why the Christmas quilt was neglected I feel that I have forgotten a project or two – I might need to get my list out. EDITED: I forgot to list my Star Crazy BOM – six months done.
The Dear Jane “Insanity Revisited” quilt top will now be put aside until the fall and I will work on the triangles for the border then.
What a pain that experiment was. I put them in the dehydrator at 8 in the morning and last night at 11 I finally called it quits and shut it off. Some were dry, some weren’t. It was too hard to go through them picking out the dried from the juicy so they are laying in the freezer on trays and I will bag them all and store in the freezer. According to my book you are to blanch your berries before you put them in the dehydrator to split the skins and get the waxy shine off of the berries which prevents them from drying well. Because of that process the berries are too hot to handle very well for spreading out on the dryer racks. I rinsed them in cold water but it didn’t help much. The blanching makes them soft – hence harder to handle. But drying did reduce the size of the berries and I will still use them, just that they will be a mixture – but putting them in muffins and whatever I don’t think it will matter all that much.
this is about half of the berries in their dried/not so dried life -- some look like raisins and some don't next I will try apples - should be easier to handle!
the hydrangea bush that is producing several colors of flowers this year - really makes it interesting. Hard to see the colors on it in the photo but the flowers on the right side are the ones that have more lilac color in them - the lilies underneath will need to be moved as there being completely overshadowed by the bush now - it wasn't like that several years ago.
one the easiest Dear Jane blocks -- Row 13, Block 10. I am prepping block 11 this morning 3 left to make!
I wide variety of things today – first the Dear Jane blocks for “Insanity Revisited”
Row 13, Block 8 why can I never get the lighting right LOL
Row 13, Block 9 made this one today the other one last night. Next one is so easy I just might make it tonight - a simple 9 patch - what was Jane thinking - maybe she got tired of the hard ones after all these many blocks that came before it?
From my nice big blue hydrangea bush - but they are forgetting they are supposed to be blue - the soil conditions have changed I do believe - last year I had a couple lilac color flowers on it, this year a couple more of a pink tone and about 1/3 of the flowers are lilac color - I love the mixture all coming off of the same bush!
a close up
Now on to the blueberries. First thing – well almost first thing this morning I got the blueberries ready for the dehydrator and they have been in it ever since. The book says 10 to 18 hours and it has been 12 hours and they are still going. I have a feeling I might be up late tonight. I do not want to go to bed with them still drying as I do not want them to be hard as rock when I wake up in the morning – hopefully they will be done in a couple more hours? I was hoping it wouldn’t take that long!!
my dehydrator - 4 shelves and they are all full
what the shelves look like full
cheesecake - I cheated instead of completely making it from scratch, I had pie crust in the freezer left over from what I bought for Thanksgiving and thought I better use one of them, a refrigerator carton of cheesecake filling - but the blueberry topping is homemade!
Blueberry muffins -- I have been busy the last couple of days
I do have one more block prepped and ready to go but today was taken up with other things. Blueberry picking first thing this morning. I met CJ at 7 and we headed out to my brother’s farm. We had a great day for berry picking. Neither of us had “fixed” ourselves up we assumed we would be hot and sweaty with hats and bug spray. We were pleasantly surprised when the weather stayed at a comfortable 70 (?) and very cloudy. Here are photos of the farm – caught CJ in a couple ( but not close ups – not when we aren’t fixed up )
part of the blueberry farm, that is CJ walking up to the shed
another part of the farm - those are rows of blueberries. I should have taken a close up of the berries but didn't think to do so - lots of ripe ones out there.
and more blueberries - I have no idea how many rows and plants he has - I will need to ask him sometime. Doesn't he have a pretty view
My brother Jeff and his daughter Lily busy at work. Lily helps out every summer and does a good job. Back of CJ.
a gallon of fresh clean blueberries - and they are all mine! (Mike doesn't eat many of them)
Instead of starting the dehydrator with blueberries today seeing as it stayed nice out I was working outside instead. The berries are washed and I will start that process tomorrow. Also the plan is to make fresh muffins and a cheesecake with blueberry topping.
Tonight I will get back to work on a Dear Jane Block – number 8 I believe it is I prepped it last night so it is ready for stitching. Last night I got to work looking through the Red and Green Applique blocks and picked out two that I will start prep work on. I have the patterns traced out on to freezer paper and will need to get those pieces cut out and then I will glue baste the design down so I will not need to bring the overlay with me on the trip – just no room for something like that. After I get these two blocks glue basted down I will look and see if I want to do another 2 blocks to bring also – sometimes they really go quickly. I still need to draw the quilting lines on the small quilt I plan to quilt on the road also. Too busy!
Continue reading about No Blocks Today – Blueberries instead!
I am moving right along on track with the “Insanity Revisited” blocks – actually ahead of my plan. I did one yesterday that I didn’t blog about and one today.
row 13 block 6 - this is the correct color for the butter cream background, the next photo it came out way too light
Row 13, Block 7. I reverse appliqued this block and even though the tiny inside points aren't done super neat I am satisfied.
6 more blocks to go!! I’m excited to be at this point – several of the upcoming blocks are difficult and some are so easy they will be done in a flash – it will be nice to move on to the border this fall and so nice to take the rest of the summer off of this quilt!!
I have been looking through my Red and Green Traditional Applique (1800’s style) book of which I have only made one block so far. I had thought to prep the largest of the blocks – the center block 32″ x 32″ to take along this summer on the trip but after putting the pattern together I decided it will be better to do this one at home where I will have more room to lay it out — lots’ of pieces – need I say more? Instead I will look through the book once again and prep 2 to 4 of the smaller blocks (16″ I think ) to take along and see how far I get.
I have spent the last couple days reading off and on and I know I do not do a book review often but thought I would for this book –
I normally like Dana Stabenow's series of "Kate Shugak" Alaska books but this one did not grab me into to the story as they normally do. It didn't seem to have any good "action" although maybe that is not the right word. I usually find it a fast interesting read - but this time I hate to say it I thought it was boring. This is not one that I would bother to read again. It didn't hold my attention.
Tomorrow I will try to remember to take my camera with me. I am going blueberry picking at my brother Jeff’s farm and taking CJ (Created by CJ) along with me. I want to get a couple photos of his blueberry farm to post on here for my aunt to see. Auntie lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin and reads my blog I thought she would like to see the farm and maybe some of the rest of you do too? We will leave by 7 — it takes about a half an hour to get there – trying to beat the heat!! It has been sweltering hot lately.
I bought a food dehydrator and plan on drying most of the blueberries this time – the book says 10 to 18 hours to dry – anyone know a more accurate time – I hate to have to keep checking but I think after 8 hours I will start peeking and see what they look and feel like.
During the day today I got started on the 4th block of row 13 and finished it this evening at quilt group. We had a lot of fun visiting. So nice to see my friend Regina (no blog) there – I talk to her a lot but don’t see her as often as I used to. She is working on her Dear Jane also. CJ from “From my Studio-Created by CJ” was there too, a more recent friend. I saw quite a few people that I don’t see often. Stayed longer than I have sometimes and had a blast talking to all and seeing their projects.
Row 13, Block 4
The same block with a dime sitting on one of the cream color squares so you can see the size of it. CJ said I needed to do that to show you the actual size. She has been watching the progress but had not seen it in person and hadn't realized the pieces were quite so small. I hadn't thought of that as of course pictures of quilts and blocks always seem a little larger than what they actually are.
Earlier today we had a visitor on the deck – a little bit of a climb for this little critter and he stayed for some time.
This little box turtle has been making himself (her?) to home lately. When I am sitting outside for the past week or two I would be hearing a rustle noise in the plants and finally got up one day to investigate what it was - with a long stick in hand in case it was a snake but it was a turtle - today he came up to the deck - by way of the plants I'm sure as the lowest part of the deck facing the driveway is at least 6 to 8 inches off ground.
a close up
I took some pictures of quilts tonight but forgot to ask if it was ok to post the photo’s here – I will check and see if they say ok and post them later. CJ brought a quilt to show and it is on her blog from Wednesday – click on the link at the top and it will take you to it.
