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 had wanted to open my windows today for fresh air but CJ (lives nearby) from “From My Studio – Created by CJ” has warned me she did and now has pollen all over her house so I will heed the warning and keep my windows closed – yuk pollen –when will it go away? I am getting caught up on laundry and feeling kind of crappy today. Mike got a cold half way through the week and I do believe he has given it to me as I feel really “off” and have since yesterday afternoon.
A few more photos from Paducah on Saturday in between rain storms. We spent the afternoon in the town so we wouldn’t be in the camper in case of tornadoes – luckily it was just rain and no branches down in the campground.
The skies near Paducah on Saturday. We had rain off and on but the really bad storms missed the area.
the big white temporary "tent" like building in the storm. It kind of blends right in with the sky. I heard that there are people interested in building two hotels on either end of the convention center so maybe in a couple years something will be here to replace this.
A historical museum in the historic area of the town, we spent time here passing off one storm in the dry inside. A very interesting array of items here.
the baby quilt in progress - I did not get as much done as I had planned to - it will get done though in the next couple weeks I hope. About 3/4's finished? The top 1/4 has to be quilted still besides the little bits on the side where the hoop is. My backing fabric wasn't quite wide enough and I didn't feel like sewing another strip onto one edge what I plan to do is I am quilting to about 2 inches of the long sides and then I will trim the edges, add the binding and then if any little bits need some quilting on the end of the lines I will add it then.
A new block for the Little Brown Bird quilt. Flowers will be scattered over this block like they were on the first block for this quilt that I had made some months back. I have some uneven places here and there - how did that happen? I didn't cut carefully enough I guess - no matter the flowers will conveniently take care of the bad spots. I need to do a bit of needle turn still on this one and will get back to it next week maybe - I want to get the baby quilt finished first.
I got one Dear Jane block finished also but forgot to take a photo so I will do that tomorrow.
The bag I sent for to store my featherweight in when I am not using it is larger than I thought it was! I checked the measurements – but oh well – extra room in the bag for supplies but that will make it too heavy for my weak elbows to carry. But not a problem, quite a few years back I had gotten a collapsible wheel carrier for a different sewing bag set up that I had. It had been put away in the closet but I found it, dusted it off and it is back in use! Good thing I tend to hold onto things for awhile.
the bag on it's little wheel cart. The little stand goes up when not in use. The black straps are elastic and pull over the bag to hold onto the cart.
The bag has three outside pockets – plenty of room for cords and extension cord too. Inside the top of the bag are two zipper pockets. I have left the machine threaded right now to remind myself how to thread properly until I know for sure I won’t forget!! That happens when you do not use a machine everyday.
If it looks like it will be too loose (no strap to hold in place) I will get a couple pieces of foam and cut to fit along the sides to hold it tight in the bag. Mainly though this is a place to store it and for taking to a sewing night now and then. The insert and the stack of books for the table level are stored in the bag for now too so I won't loose track of them.
Sugar and Spice in progress. This one won't take real long to quilt it is about 43" x 49" I think. I am doing a simple cross hatch and outline around the flowers.
a close up
And what have I been doing today? Me and my John Deere have been busy cutting and mulching! I do not mind cutting grass and over the years I have been the one to do it most of the time because of the long hours Mike always worked. I get some good thinking done on my John Deere Now of course if I had a push mower I sure as heck wouldn't be doing it!!
I have the cushions out for the warm weather and have already made use out of the this area and the porch - what a nice relaxing area (until the loud traffic goes by - at least that is not continuous out here)
First of all Happy Easter to everyone. We do not have any children here to do Easter things with but I did put one edible decoration on the table and we are munching off and on – candy doesn’t last long around here so I don’t buy a lot. It briefly got up to 76 degrees then some clouds and wind came in and dropped it 71. Here are some photos of our spring.
Flowers for Easter and some candy! A three tier candy dish and since I took this photo candy has been eaten and it is now a 2 tier dish!
The small red bud tree. This tree grew from seed. We have a larger red bud tree a distance away from this one about half of that tree has died though and doesn't look as well as this small tree does. It started to grow about 4 or 5 years ago.
The small dogwood tree we didn't plant this one either - well I should correct that we did plant this one but we dug it up from the woods when it was about a foot tall. We use to have several dogwood trees in the woods that have since died. We noticed this small one growing beside them and wanted one closer to the house so we dug it up about 10 years ago when it was barely a twig and here it is now.
Awhile back Jackie from Canton Village Quiltworks had a giveaway of two of Karen Griska's book "Quilts from the Selvage Edge" I won one of them!!
Jackie let Karen know who won the books and she autographed the books and sent them out. I like how she autographed mine - coincidence of names - Karen G. to Karen G. how cute is that!
Seeing as I now have a book on how to make quilts from the Selvage Edge - I guess I better start to save my selvages. Here I have three to start with. One day I will have to start going through my fabric to cut off the edges. If anyone wants to donate to the cause if you are not going to use your edges - send them to me!! they need to be about 1 1/2 inches wide.
When I started this baby quilt yesterday I did not think I would have the machine work done already today, but miracles happen when the first day of spring is cold and rainy! Yes I was in the house just about all day. We have not gotten any snow as of yet and it really looks on the weather map that the snow will be north, west and south of us forming a kind of C shape around us with us in that open area. In the area of Arkansas that a lot of my family lives in the north area they are expecting 8 to 12 inches!!! Wow glad that is missing us here in the central part of the state.
Here is what I came up with for the patchwork – this is just something that I made up – no pattern available. I used the width of the charms and chopped it up adding the sections from my stash of the yellowish color for the applique areas. I think I had 4 or 5 charms leftover and 4 of those I had not intended to use as they didn’t quite go with the rest of stuff for some reason:
It measures something like 46 x 49 and I will add a small outer border around it - maybe in the yellowish shape that the applique pieces will be in. I think I have enough of it left - maybe a thin border of scallop edges or wavy edges? Something to think about while I do the applique. I wasn't going to sew it all together but do the applique work first but change my mind. I can roll or fold certain ways to get the work done.
Each of the pieces of creamy yellow fabric - 20 places I believe (it might look like more but some of them are actually light beige prints) will have an applique flower on it or some type of thing - like a heart maybe - something like that - these are some of the fabrics that I will use for flowers and greenery - there is more from the stash to look at but for now this is what I am starting with.
The give away winner will be announced Monday and the comments will be closed first thing on that morning when I get up. I can’t believe how many comments have come in. I have been trying to look at all the blogs and marking some to go back to look at again.
I am still waiting for my batting to arrive and trying to be patient so I am busily working on my little blocks for the “Insanity Revisited” last night and this morning I got this checkerboard block finished.
This is my preparation work. Kind of like a paint by number.
here are rows of little blocks sewed together. Then the strips are sewed together and the border in place.
The finish! 40 pieces in this 5 inch block (4 1/2 when finished in quilt). I do not know how fast this block can be made by machine. This one including the preparation work took me about 2 1/2 hours to make. Normally the blocks depending on how many pieces and level of difficulty take anywhere from about 40 minutes to 3 hours. I just noticed a couple threads sticking to the block - sorry I would have taken a better photo if I had noticed it.
Some of the scraps that are going into my March Star Crazy BOM blocks. I still need to go through my scraps to find more bits and pieces. I have some cut out and I'm sure tomorrow or the next day I will get to work.
This was yesterdays weather! The little boy has gotten out of his winter gear and into a tee-shirt - 72 degrees for a high yesterday. Today was cooler it only got up to 68 here and that was a very short while. Still all in all a very nice day although thunderstorms are going through part of the state, might miss us though.
Tomorrow I am going to be sewing at my friend Julie’s for part of the day. She is on the last blocks of row 10 for her Dear Jane. She is catching up to me rapidly!! She started to hand piece her Dear Jane like I do but then decided that she was never going to finish it if she did that so by row 5 or 6 I think it was she started to machine piece instead. We used to meet once a week but we have gotten out of the habit over the past year and now only meet about once a month. I need to look over my things and see what to bring to show her – we tend to have a little show and tell of quilting things even though it is not a big group meeting LOL -We quilters always tend to show off our things don’t we whether it is quilts, fabric or books and pattern. I will be working on another Dear Jane block or two so maybe more blocks to post tomorrow.
Yesterday seeing as I am still waiting patiently (almost) for my batting to arrive I worked up another little Dear Jane block for “Insanity Revisited”. I will get another one prepped today. After running in to the problem of two separate companies out of the batting I use and having to wait for them to send it I decided when I go to Paducah in April to make sure to stock up on several sizes of batting and bring them home and store them under the quilting frame. The packages will be out of my way and there when I need them. I love Quilters Dream 100% cotton batting – it is the only kind I use – I have experimented with numerous brands and just find I like that one the most.
The beginning of Row K (#11) this is block number 1.
Yesterday brought a visit from our daughter Melanie and her husband Ric. This was a visit that had not been planned far in advance but a delight. Melanie and I took a nice walk at the trails while her husband was visiting his mother – who luckily lives only 2 miles away from us which makes visiting easy for them – then we made supper and Ric came over to visit for awhile and eat then they went back to his mom’s house to visit there too. With Melanie’s hours at work not being very flexible we appreciate a visit when they can squeeze us in 
I don’t know how it works for most people but we have found it is easy for them to make a visit to both sides of the family easily because of how close we live to his mom.
It rained last night – we had not had much rain lately so seeing as it was not sever storms and it was at night it was welcome. My little garden plot is ready for planting.
My little plot next to the wood pile. There is a reason for this. I figured because I wanted to plant early - salad type of veggies that grow good at this time of year - but anyway because it is early I want to be able to protect from cold weather. So the plastic over the wood will be pulled over the garden instead and held down and the heat can stay in the area by the plants! Instant green house I still need to get some chicken wire to put a small fence around it too keep out the rabbits. Right now I plan on planted two kinds of lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, green peas and beets (not a salad veggies but I like them) all of these should be ready within one to two and half months which works out well seeing as we will be gone for a good chunk of summer. By putting plastic over it part of the time it should encourage them to grow faster (I hope). I would have liked to have tomato plants too but I don't feel I would have enough time to use them all and I hate to waste them.
a little wild area of plants. The little green that doesn't have flowers on it yet are lily's
The big tree in the center of the yard always gets these reddish buds all over it before the leaves come. They look pretty but sure do make a mess in another two weeks or so when they fall off the tree and the leaves grow. I have to blow them all off of the porch and the deck then, but they are pretty. The picture is not as clear as I hoped. In fact a lot of the photos I took this morning did not turn out and were out of focus. I'm still working on that.
I finished sewing the 10th row onto the body of the quilt and it is looking good I think! There are over 2,000 pieces in it at this point and around 250 hours of hand piecing I think – I have it written down. This second Dear Jane is actually being done faster than the first one was – I checked in my journal to see how long it had taken me on the first one at the end of 10 rows and it was about 50 hours longer — guess I am used to dealing with this bitty pieces.
Me with 10 rows of Dear Jane, "Insanity Revisited"
I think I mentioned to you all that I am a scrap quilter, well even though I have plenty of fabric for this quilt I can’t stop myself from saving my scraps. You see from the photo that some of the pieces are smaller than a quarter! I tend to save scraps and use them up for the tiny pieces as you will see from these photos.
Some of the pieces in this quilt are more the size of a dime than a quarter - but a quarter was what was handy.
a pile of scraps leftover that I couldn't use for this 1st block on row 11 - they were not needed or too small 
the scraps I did use plus a larger piece that was already cut and left over from previous blocks.
So as you can see if you save small pieces from your leftovers when you are making Dear Jane it is very likely that you can use them up, especially if you are doing a two color Dear Jane like this one is.
It was a wonderful day outside today – it got up to a big 68 degrees!!! I hadn’t planned on doing a garden this summer because we will be gone for part of it but then I thought well maybe a little bit that could be ready by the end of June? Mike tilled up a small piece of land for me down by the wood pile that is in the sun all the time. I need to rake it out a little this week and get it ready. Right now I have some seeds for carrots, beets, and sweet peas. I might get some leaf lettuce and radishes too. Maybe a tomato plant if it is really big and has blossoms on it already – not sure on that. We might be getting some rain this week, so my gardening plans might have to wait until next week if it gets muddy.
I did finish block 13 of row 10 for “Insanity Revisited” but I forgot to take a photo of it before attaching to the others in the row. I will take a photo when I get this row attached to the other 9. It is coming along nicely. I still have not received my batting, I sent an e mail to find out when I would get it and they had run out of the twin size also and was expecting it in any day and would ship it out to me as soon as they got it. Must be a lot of quilting going on for two places to be out of that size. At this rate it will be another week before I get it. Oh well, I have the instructions printed out for the Star Crazy March blocks so I guess I will work on those soon.
It got up to 61 degrees outside today. Went to the park to take a walk out in the sunshine. The park workers were doing a controlled burn in parts of the park and the area I was walking in I thought was going to be ok and it was for the most part but the very last part I had to go through smoke and now my allergies are driving me crazy! Smoke just really tends to get in my eyes and sinuses and takes awhile to clear out.
Lake Dardanelle with Mt. Nebo in the distance across the lake. On the top of Mt. Nebo is a state park - a very pretty park.
part of the nice scenery at the park today - what a sunny day
the final part of the walk today where I had to walk through the smoke! I really thought all the burning was at the far end of the park where I wasn't going to be walking. The smoke made it a bit hazy at the park but the sun still felt good.
before I left the house this squirrel was getting seed under the bird feeder. I usually just see gray squirrels so seeing this reddish one was a treat - he sure was braver than the gray squirrels and didn't run while I was approaching to get his photo. The squirrels and birds have really ruined this one end of the flower bed this winter. I will need to do a bit of digging here and re-plant a bit. It is a shallow bed but I made the mistake years ago of putting a peat moss mixture in this bed. I say a mistake because it is like one gigantic root ball now and it hard as rock. It is very hard to dig it and I will most likely have to just about chop it up with a pick axe to get it so I can dig it up a bit. I have been planning on remaking this flower bed for sometime now but dread attacking it because of how hard the soil is and how compacted it is.
It got up to 54 today the sun is shining and it looks like early spring is in the air. That doesn’t mean we won’t have cold days ahead but at the rate things are growing I know it won’t be far off. I spent the last hour outside cleaning out a flower bed of all the dried up leaves and pine needles that had collected up over winter. I found things growing!
This pink hydrangea that I planted last spring is coming back nicely, see all those leave buds!
I do believe these are hyacinths. I know I have some planted in that general area but I was disappointed in them last year as they didn't have good flowers on them. I will see what they do this year and if not many flowers again I will pull them out and re-plant
Tulip greenery - the problem with tulips is that around here you plant them in December and they are usually pretty the first year and then you get nothing but green after that and rarely flowers. If I remember right I have been told that our summers are too hot and the winters not cold enough for a long enough period - this winter was colder and longer than normal so I wonder if I will have flowers this year?
A little fern, these ferns are natural around here and grow every where it seems. I dug some up from down in the woods over the years and have stuck them in flower beds. They normally stay green all winter. This ground cover stays pretty green also and has purple flowers on it mainly in the early spring and I think again in the fall? I might be mistaken on that and only flowers once - either in the spring or the fall?
And the daffodils are all opening up now - this early variety that is. I have seen them around town and the line of them that we have scattered along the front of our property are all starting to bloom now. I will start to find others around the yard more and more as the warm weather stays with us.
Last night and this morning I worked on drawing the stencil design on the quilt top. I use a blue wash out marking pen that I did a blog post on a couple weeks or more about - "Mark-be-Gone". The top is now ready to quilt and I am just waiting on the batting to arrive. I sewed the backing together yesterday. I did not have a wide enough piece and had to sew several lenghts together. It was almost wide enough but missed by about 8 inches.
I have one more block to make for Row 10 on “Insanity Revisited” and then it will be time to sew that row on to the others. Then I will take a break from it once again and work on the March assignment for the “Star Crazy” quilt. I got all that printed out yesterday. I think I have pretty much decided that the “Little Brown Bird” quilt and the “Traditional Red and Green Applique” – each of which have only one block made will stay put aside for awhile while I get these smaller quilts quilted. Plenty of time to work on them later. It is more important to me to get caught up on quilt tops that need quilting. I don’t like having so many things waiting in line not finished. This time will give me time to put more thought into the “Little Brown Bird” I have decided there are many blocks in this quilt that I would rather not make and I am looking for blocks to substitute with. I have found several “lacy” type of blocks to reverse applique and entwine with flowers like the one block I already completed. I will most likely come up with a new name for the quilt because at this rate I don’t even know if there will be a bird in it!!
EDITED: at 9:17PM Odette from Chile left me a comment. I follow her blog although she hasn’t been an active blogger we exchange e mail now and then. The google translator doesn’t always do a good job but for any of you who occasionally go to her blog from mine I am happy to report that she and her family came through the earthquake well. I think she is a bit north of where the damage was and close to the border of Peru. I had e mailed her after the quake and was happy to hear from her, I had wondered of course if she was ok.
