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.
I continued to work on “Insanity Revisited” last night and then again today and I managed to get two more blocks done. One more block needed for row 10 and that row will be ready to attach to the others!
Block 11, Row 10 - another with ovals - this one was easier though!
Row 10 block 12. I am not aiming for perfection, little mistakes are seen throughout this quilt. I just want to finish it and I do not take things apart and fix if I notice something is not quite right unless it is really bad! A little bit of lint here and there - the whites spots will brush off. Also some of those specks might be from the glue stick - I glue basted the handle down before I appliqued it.
I have settled on this stencil for the 2 inch wide sashing. There are two designs on this stencil as you can see - I will be using the lower one for the 2 inch white sashing and I might use the other one for the black outer border. I am not sure yet. For the inside of the blocks I am thinking more of a geometric shape. I had thought a daisy but because of all the colors in this quilt it could be for a boy or girl and seeing as I do not have any plans right now for it I thought it would be better to have it for an either or. The ruler on the orange block is one that I am fooling around with to come up with a geometric shape - maybe a square in a square on point ending as a 8 point star maybe?
Several people asked where did I find this pattern “So Charming”. Here is the link to the pattern. The Twiddle Tail Store. Go to the bottom of the page and you will see the pattern there. This store is from Anina and her blog is here. There are several more patterns in her store that I would like — but I’m waiting for a little while for any shopping as you all know until Paducah quilt show is over
At least I will be back to these little blocks for awhile. I am waiting for some batting to arrive and when it does I will set about quilting another small quilt. This quilt is one that I did back when we were traveling in September to Colorado and all the wonderful mountains out there. I finished it when I was visiting our daughter at the end of September. It is all hand pieced and will be hand quilted whenever I get my batting.
"So Charming" I'm not sure how I will quilt it most likely a "daisy" type of flower in the centers of the bright blocks or a geometric design and then wavy lines or something like that in the white sashing areas. The white with black dots is the backing. I think I might use black thread on the white areas and white thread on the black areas. I'm not sure what on the color areas.
Row J (10) block 10 - let me tell you it is not fun trying to needle turn all these little ovals in place but I did it! I started yesterday and finished it watching the evening news. I this little block took close to 4 hours to do, one of the longer times. I still need to rub the white chalk lines off of the red.
I’m not sure how long I will need to wait for my batting. I had order two battings – twin size from a company I had not ordered from before. About two days later I got an e mail from them telling me they didn’t have the twin size but if I wanted queen size they could send that – if I didn’t want queen size did I want to wait until they ordered more. I sent back an e mail asking them how long I would need to wait for them to order it and for it to get to me – I never heard back from them!! Two days later I sent them another e mail and told them to cancel the order seeing as they had not responded to my question I thought they might not be a company I wanted to order from. I still have not heard from them – strange way to do business.
So I ordered from a company I have ordered from other times with good luck instead. But they are in New York – where they had that big snow storm – I wonder if my order will be delayed. I might send them an e mail and find out – but while I wait for it to arrive I will work on my little blocks and the quilting on the Christmas Quilt.
This was actually a quick and easy small scrappy top to make. I machine pieced the top last year and it got put aside forgotten for part of the year, then I was working on other things and never got around to quilting it. I pulled it out on February 19th and said ok – quilt it while the Olympics are on and don’t work on anything else until you are done with one thing! It worked – I finished it yesterday. It took 10 hours to piece and I don’t know how many hours to quilt – I worked on it 9 days, most likely about 2 hours a day so lets say 18 to 20 hours to hand quilt. I did not do an over abundance of quilting in it.
On the table - would you believe these flowers are from the bouquet I bought on the 15th! half of them are still there, I have had to cull out the bad ones over time, but so many are still here it is amazing - this was a cheap bouquet from Wal-Mart.
without the flower jug on it - in this photo the quilt border looks crooked - it isn't it just isn't spread out right
A close up of the 3 dimensional geese and the quilting - I haven't pressed the geese after I took it out of the wash and dry, I might do that although I'm sure after sitting out on the table for a couple days it will flatted out - if not they just look a little wavy - like they are flying you know!
another close up - this one is from the center.
I was surprised I had no bleeding on to the background fabric. The red in the triangle above is the one I had problems with in the red/green applique block last month. This is a small top – 38″ square and I used a large washer load and 2 color catchers – the color catchers were both pink when finished – no bleeding onto the background though so that was great. I had about 3 of this color red in there and some other dark reds as well.
Yes it is Girl Scout Cookie time!! Thin Mints are my favorites and when I stopped by the grocery store the other day a family was set up outside the store with their little girl and all her cookies. I couldn't pass them up - I got the cookies, ran back to the car to stick them in it and then did my shopping. Last year I thought I would grab the cookies on my way out and by then they had sold all the thin mints - I wasn't taking a chance on it this year
I tend to really gather items up in the sewing room. I told you all the other day I had picked up more of the cute storage boxes for fabric and odds and ends for the sewing room. I started to organize the other day and then got back to it yesterday. I used one of the boxes for scraps – I had several boxes that had been overflowing with scraps and I couldn’t get the lids to stay tight so I got that taken care of and the new box is only half full so more room there for more. I now have 8 boxes with scraps in them.
Next on the list was cleaning out the two drawers of my cutting table. What a mess! I tend to toss things in the drawers until it gets to the point that I can hardly get them open and can’t find anything unless I empty the drawers out. Two of my new boxes were assigned to this mess.
these are two boxes after they were loaded up with "usable junk"
the drawers after the "usable junk" was removed. Yes that is a chocolate tin in the drawer but it doesn't have chocolate in it anymore I use it to store used dull rotary blades. When it is full it will be taped shut and tossed. The gum container has used needles in it - same there when it gets full I tape it shut and toss it out.
this tall standing box with the little dividers in it use to have some of the "junk" in it and I had it laying the opposite way on a shelf - it took up usable space
I think this well be used eventually for hand dyed fabric, there are some fat eighths that I want, I think if I roll them up a certain way or fold them nicely they can be displaced in this decoratively and when I need them for applique I will easily be able to see the colors I want to use.
this is inside one of the boxes - all the marking tools and things to draw with, room for a lot more as you can see. No these really aren't junk and they will be used, but when it is all laying in a drawer you can't find anything and now at least it is labeled so I can take the box down and dig through to find what I need.
now this on the other hand is the box labeled odds and ends! and now you see what I mean when I say - is it junk or not. I have a feeling some of the items will eventually be used - but some of it - who knows, I will hang on to all of it right now - just in case at least now it is all in one place and again if I am looking for something that I really think I have and can't find - this is the box to look in.
How do you all decide when to toss something and what to keep? Some of these things I have had for absolutely ages. Yes the round white plastic thing with the metal screw in it – yes I need to keep that there are four of them and they belong to the sew-ezi table – something to do with using a different sewing machine maybe? I would have to look at the instructions which is in the storage case but I hadn’t room in it for these, well there is room but I thought they might fall out or something – I just know they shouldn’t be thrown away – just in case
I am almost done with the small “Devil’s Puzzle” top! yahoo!! I will be glad to have one done out of this stack of quilt tops to quilt. I am taking a break from drawing the design on the last border. I will start quilting on that tomorrow.
Some of you might read the blog called “Grandma’s Red Needle” – Astrid posted an interesting post about some fruit that is grown on the island of Mauritius where she lives. The island is located in the Indian Ocean about 560 miles off of the coast of Madagascar. The fruit is called Jackfruit and it is grown on a tree. Some of the weirdest fruit I have ever seen!! You should go to her blog and look at her photos. Very interesting I was amazed to see this is in the mulberry family of fruit . We have a mulberry tree and it and the fruit looks nothing like this tropical variety.
I find it very interesting to read blogs from other countries – it is so nice to see what quilters around the world work on and also to learn of their lives.
Today has been one of those days where there just isn’t much of anything to post. I drove to Little Rock this morning for short little visit to my specialist – I have no problems going on but because of medication that I take I have to be checked out every 3 to 6 months. My daughter was working today so I couldn’t visit with her so I went around to a few shops after the doctor visit was over – which went so fast this time and even the lab was not backed up and got in and out so fast it was amazing.
I just wasn’t in a shopping mood – most likely because as I mentioned I want to control my spending so I can let loose in mid April when I go to the quilt show I stopped in Hobby Lobby for a little bit to see if the bigger store had different items than our smaller store does here – it does found lots of things that were nice but I didn’t really need and no place to put them if I had bought them! From there I went to McAlister’s Deli for some lunch. I had not been there before and I loved it. I will have to stop there again another time. Wonderful sandwich – pastrami on rye with spicy mustard! Tasted wonderful. From there I went to a store called Garden Ridge. There are not a lot of these around, it is fairly new to Arkansas and the Little Rock store is the only one in the state. They have tons of inexpensive dishes, pots for plants, lawn cushions, some bedding and towels, a little bit of everything. At that store I did buy a new umbrella for the patio table seeing as they had so many to choose from. The one I had doesn’t tilt and I wanted one like that to block the late afternoon sun when it gets to be summer. They had some that tilted and in all kinds of colors and not very expensive – that was the only thing I bought all though there was tons of stuff I would have liked to have gotten – I was good and passed on all of them.
From there was just one more stop before home and that was Sam’s Club (like Costco) -a big warehouse box store. I like to stock up on the big bundles of things that we go through a lot, like popcorn, granola bars, laundry soap, and some food – like big packages of meat to put in the freezer.
And that was my day. I got home by mid afternoon and got started on the laundry and worked on my small quilt some. I am coming along really well on that small quilt. I am almost to the final border and I will get to that maybe tomorrow evening. Oh I did pick up a couple more of the cardboard decorative boxes (cheap) at Hobby Lobby that I use for my scraps but these are for various odds and ends in the sewing room. I cleaned out the two drawers in my cutting table this evening and have those boxes label so I know what various junk is in them and now my two drawers are nice and neat. I have one box left to put some of the scraps in seeing as I haven’t been able to close a couple of the boxes after the last time I rummaged through them. That can wait for tomorrow.
Would you believe we might get snow on Friday! spring where are you!! I thought that if I picked up the umbrella for the patio table maybe it would encourage spring to come along faster don’t know if that will work!
