We are back from seeing some sights in the DC area.
Now to clean off the sewing table and play; it seems like weeks since I've sewn anything.
Mother's Day
Remembering my mother today. I miss her every day.We are off to see a race and then a cello recital this afternoon. I hope you have a great Mother's Day.
For the Love of Orange
Yesterday we had a controlled burn in our native prairie fields.
Burn days are usually very enjoyable; we stand around watching the fire making sure it stays in it's boundaries. It is supposed to peter out when it comes to the green lawn areas and paths that are kept mowed. If all goes well, we don't actually do much work - yesterday was one of those days.
I did get a bit of sunburn yesterday so today I'm staying in and sewing some scrappy binding to the Tealorange quilt.
Plein Air
Miss P loves to draw. She has a few "how to draw" books that she has been studying and has gotten pretty good at drawing animals. The other day as we passed the neighbor's horses on our way home from school she had the idea that she could try drawing a horse by looking at an ACTUAL horse and not a drawing of a horse in a book like she has done before.
What a great idea!It was fun but she did say it was a little tricky because the horses kept moving.
Blue Garden Dress
Miss P has a new dress and she calls it her "Blue Garden Dress".
The fabric, from Jennifer's Happy Land line, was leftover from the backing of one of the quilts I made for her. Miss P loves the fabric so we zipped out a dress this week. She chose the pattern from my vintage collection.
She likes that it is pretty enough for "fancy" wear but also looks great with jeans. Since it was SNOWING yesterday and warm weather seems to be taking its time this year we need some dresses that look good paired with pants. Miss P doesn't like to have "freezy legs" on the playground at recess and I don't blame her. I love her practical style.It is also a great dress for playhouse time.
I used an old Simplicity 6764 pattern but instead of using a facing, I lined the bodice for a more "finished" inside.
I love that these old patterns never seem to go out of style.
Super Hero: Behind the Scenes Look at a Quilt Blogger's Son
He is my super hero.
His special skills involve being tall enough to hold
and help display quilts for photo sessions.
And being patient with the elements (strong winds, rain, snow etc.)
while I try to squeeze in multiple photo shoots
on brief and sometimes rare visits home.
It can be exhausting
and sometimes he thinks he's my butler.
What a ham.
What a ham.
He often has great artistic suggestions on how to show the quilts.
However, I think those ideas are just an excuse to use his super hero skills to go climbing in the rickety loft of the barn.
However, I think those ideas are just an excuse to use his super hero skills to go climbing in the rickety loft of the barn.
Here's a big thank you to M, my supermodel super hero.These photos are outtakes from the photo shoot for my Atomic Pinwheels pattern.
Well Worn
This postage stamp quilt is one of my favorite things at my mother-in-law's house. It was made by HER mother-in-law. I love all the different fabrics in it - lots of squares sewn together. It is a true scrap quilt made much like my first quilt but the squares are much smaller and it has seen so much use and love. I can imagine all of the time put into sewing those squares together and hand quilting - at a time when she was raising her own children, doing the gardening, canning and other housekeeping chores by hand. It is a utility quilt made for use. I love how the colors and fabric have softened over the years. It is super snuggly and still gets used. Miss P slept under it on our recent stay there.So. Much. Goodness. You can just feel the love passed from one generation to the next.
Wordless Wednesday
The Easter Rug
Last weekend Miss P and I decorated the house for Easter. It didn't take us long because we don't have very many decorations. Well, really we don't have that many clean horizontal surfaces places to put them.When we had finished putting things out Miss P was disapointed that we had finished so quickly. She also wanted the house to be more transformed like it is when we decorate for Christmas. We have loads of Christmas decorations but most of those go on the tree. Yes, we all miss the glow of the lit up tree.To help make things more festive, she has decided to make Easter decorations for her doll house. First up, an Easter rug. She looked through some of my books on making doll house things and my old copy of Pearl McGown's You Can Hook Rugs.
Today, I'll teach her how to do punch needle embroidery.
Tooth Fairy
Miss P lost her first tooth this week. She could hardly believe that she actually lost her tooth and was SOOOO excited for the tooth fairy to come.edit to add. She didn't lose her tooth after it came out of her mouth. She did put it under her pillow. The tooth fairy DID come. Sorry for any confusion in my excited posting above.
Excitement Mounts
Happy Holidays!
Getting Festive
We put up and decorated our tree two weeks ago but didn't find the icicles with the other tree decorations. P and I went through all the other boxes (there are many boxes) of decorations today and chose some things to put out other places around the house. We STILL have not found the icicles for the tree. I miss the way they twinkle with the air movement in the room.I wonder where we put that bag last winter when we packed all of the decorations away. It will probably turn up six months from now - like that Easter egg we found a few weeks ago....
Happy Thanksgiving
I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends and happy Thursday for the international folks!
After putting our turkey in the oven, we walked the fields and scouted out a tree for Christmas. Mr. B won't let us put up a tree until December first but at least we know which one it will be.This one wasn't quite big enough.
This one was too tall but the top section will work great.
I have a week to tidy and get ready for the tree and all the holiday decorations.I am thankful to have my family together for the holiday and that we can walk out the door to our field to choose our Christmas tree.
Happy Land
I've been in Happy Land this week. Thank you all for the birthday wishes. It is really nice that you take the time to leave me a note.
Birthday celebrations and sewing - some of my favorite things.Yesterday I finished up a commission quilt top out of Jennifer Paganelli's Happy Land fabric.
I used Thomas Knauers pattern that is great for mixing up a riot of fabrics like this. I love the mix of squares and rectangles.I'm still thinking about how to quilt it. Hmmm. I think it needs something curvy.
Birthday!
Today's my birthday! While I'm out celebrating, I'll leave you with this picture of me taken in 1970.
Have a great day!Please go say "Happy Birthday" to my birthday twin, Charlotte!
Sandhill Cranes
This week we went to the bird sanctuary near us and watched the Sandhill Cranes come in for the night. They spend the night in that wetland area you see in the first photo.
At first we saw a few small groups of cranes flying in. Then more and more larger groups and many groups at once. It was fun to hear them calling as they flew. The ones already on the ground in the wetland area would answer back.I'm posting these pictures at a larger size so that you can click on them and see some of the groups of cranes in the distance.
(in the photos above and below you can see about 6 groups of cranes in the distance, surrounding the sun below the cloud)
Note the groups in the distance below just over the trees.
So. many. cranes.
This sanctuary is one of a few places where the Sandhill Cranes congregate before heading south together in mid November. We feel lucky to have seen so many on one visit. There were thousands coming in while we were there. Certainly, it the most we have seen in one night. It was a beautiful evening for bird watching.
Flashback Skinny Tee
P is a skinny girl. Seven years old and all of 40 pounds. Usually when a shirt or top fits her in the shoulders it is way too short and doesn't even reach the top of her pants. Not a great look. So, she usually wears shirts that look a bit big on her.Enter Rae's Flashback Skinny Tee pattern. It seemed like this pattern was made for Miss P. I cleaned out my dresser on the weekend and found an old shirt of mine that P liked. We cut it down and made a great new shirt for her. This is the first shirt that has actually FIT her in years! She loves it.
The pattern is super easy and I was able to keep the existing sleeve hem and neck finish of the original shirt with careful placement of the pattern pieces.
She likes the top so much that she had to wear it for the rest of the day - which was spent threshing the black beans that we grew this year.A few weeks ago we pulled up all of the black bean plants and wrapped them in old sheets and put them on our upper porch to finish drying (we didn't want the beans to fall from the pods into the garden). Yesterday was the perfect crispy warm fall day for threshing.First we wrap a big bundle of plants in a tarp. Then, P's favorite part, we thwack it with a stick to pop the beans from their dry pods.
Then we pick out all of the plant parts making sure there are no beans left in the pods.
What is left on the tarp is a pile of black beans mixed with chaff.
On a breezy day we will pour this mix from bucket to bucket and let the wind carry away the chaff and we will be left with black beans to store for future meals.
Yesterday was a perfect fall day!I also found the perfect pattern for the top of P's Elf costume for Halloween! She'll be a skinny elf in a Skinny Tee!
Twenty Five Years
B and I took a little trip to celebrate our TWENTY FIFTH wedding anniversary!
We left our truck on the mainland and took our bikes on the ferry to Kelleys Island in Lake Erie.
The island is small and we were able to ride our bikes all around and see the sites.
The glacial grooves were pretty impressive.
Our second day we took the bikes on a ferry from Kelleys Island to Bass Island. It was a bit more tourist oriented than we usually like but we enjoyed having a picnic lunch down at the campground on the south shore. We even saw a bald eagle there.
These photos were taken by the light house on Bass Island.
It was nice to have a wee bit of time away from the routine of home - and thanks to the boys for watching miss P while we were away.Now it's time to get everyone ready for the start of schools on Tuesday.
Family Time
We've been trying to squeeze in a bit more family time before everyone heads back to school. Yesterday we went for an early morning boat trip and picnic. We must have gotten M up a bit too early.
We saw a number of Sandhill Cranes.
It was a lovely morning.
We have one more week before the school routine starts up again.I'll miss having everyone around but I'm kinda looking forward to a bit of uninterrupted time in the sewing room while miss P is at school. I have a lot of projects to work on.
New Quilt Designs
Miss P and I have been designing some quilts this summer. I can't share mine yet but she says I can share hers.She tells me that this one is to be done in reverse applique, you know, "when the back fabric peeks through".
This is her "bunny quilt"
This is an abstract design.
She whipped out a drawing before dinner the other night that I'm actually going to try to make.Fun times in the sewing room this summer.
