T Stands for Tuesday-Quilts and Sunrises

 Hi Everyone,  I can see this month is going by slow and then again also fast.

    It is still soooo dreary here with very little sun. With my husband's ptsd this is not good weather for him, and it's too cold for his outdoor projects-mostly trying to finish the dock project, and still needing to stay away from people.  He has been working on upgrading the very very bad electric here and making progress. A really big job-we knew the electric was in bad shape here when we bought this lake home-but when we bought it Hubs was feeling healthier and then the following spring he needed a heart valve transplant-it has been a very slow recovery for him.  We are always grateful for every day we have.

   I have been as you know engrossed in my quilting since early autumn. Most of you mixed media artists are probably tired of reading about it haha-hope not too bored 😀   I did get the quilt onto the frame over the weekend, it's a vintage Sears we picked up at a garage sale and Hubs swapped out the poles for a queen size quilt.   My mixed media journals have been calling me lately so that may be a nice break while I wait for supplies.

   I  ordered the perle cotton size 8 thread and I needed new needles-I have allot of needle choices but I don't have quite what I needed for this project, so I ordered a set designed by Sue Spargo on Etsy. She creates gorgeous wool appliqued quilts if you are not familiar.

Sunday I searched online for pattern ideas for big stitch quilting. I found out this is very popular right now, and it looks really nice. I probably won't be able to get perfectly even stitches any more, but I am going to give this a go. This is really a huge hand quilting project for me now so I will need to pace myself.  

    I saw allot of straight line ideas sashiko style which I liked but I don't want this to be heavily quilted-sometimes that takes away from the coziness of this type of quilt-flannels and wool.

    Then I remembered I had a few stencils I had made for other quilts when I first retired, and I made a few more from my yellowstone animal cookie cutter collection.  I now have a bison, wolf, bear, star, two oak leaves and some small oak leaves. I think I will give this idea a go They fit perfectly in the smaller blocks and may just do the sashiko style in the large 12 inch blocks  At least I now have the start of a plan  Hoping it won't take super long to get my threads and needles in the mail.

   We enjoyed a lovely sunrise over the lake

  

   T for Tuesdays are when we gather together for T over at our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth and share a post with a drink related photo.  I have a couple to share.

   I have been enjoying cups of my decaf coffee with whipped cream in the mornings. I like using the whipped cream as it stays fresh in the frig longer-and I love how it melts into the hot coffee

and in the afternoons, I brought out another one of my single serve tea pots. I have a few of these made in Japan. I love them and haven't used them in awhile. I don't remember now which one is which and they are all different-I used one for black teas, one for green teas, and the third for white teas.

   Some of you may remember when I bought several teas from this company-these got buried in the cupboard and just got them out so I can see them.

The cup is a hand thrown pottery cup-perfect size for a cup of hot tea

and I will leave you with this Sunday morning's pretty sunrise

Happy T and new week to all my readers

Good Morning Saturday

Thursday and Friday I got my latest quilt layered-backing, wool batting, top and got it all basted with large stitches-I will be putting it on the hand quilt frame today

While ironing the backing I spotted this visitor

How is the weather where you are??  A tiny bit of snow, and cold here at the lake

T Stands for Tuesday

  Good morning friends,

      Just a note I took down my last post discussing censorship. I appreciate everyone's comments very much. It was good to discuss and not accuse and most of us did that-so thank you all.  

     Due to the massive censorship by big tech-including Google, I took down the post as a precaution so none of us would face any possible discrimination by them or feel concerned about expressing ourselves. 

   Tuesday's brings us to T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth, find link in my sidebar. Any one is welcome to join just share a drink related photo in your post.

       I did get the quilt pattern book in my mailbox Saturday. I was so happy I did the splurge and bought this-I feel it was worth the money. There were stories of pioneer women that I hadn't read about before, all the patterns for the appliques are at full size-loved that, and there are several more quilt patterns included besides the featured quilt. One being a fish quilt-I think I need to make that one for sure 😀

  I am thinking I want to make this a wool quilt. I still have Lots of felted down recycled wool clothing in my stash. Just need to go through it and see what colors and patterns I have. Especially for the appliques in wool as it will be easier and more fun for me to stitch instead of the needle turn with cotton-that's a bit more challenging for me.  So using wool appliques I will need heavier flannels for the blocks,which I would need to buy or I could make the blocks with wool as well and I should have plenty for that as well.  I could sew the blocks together crazy quilt method or with seams-will decide when I get into it. Before I get into this quilt-gathering the wools, I need to get my big woodland quilt layered with backing and batting, basted and ready to hand quilt. I am going to order perle cotton #8 and quilt with big stitches.

    I started doing that over the weekend, then I decided the backing-which is all one piece-needed to be washed, and then laying out the wool batting ugh it's been in the bag tightly rolled up and needs time to get flat. I did read that I can mist it lightly with water and then fluff in the dryer with no heat or a low setting. So will work on that this week.

  This latest quilt adventure actually started when I was looking for this book, that was written in 1947 as part of a trilogy. Hoping this book comes in today Most  of you know I love the time period era of the late 1700's to the  mid 1800's and would gladly time travel back if possible

   I didn't get any photos but one morning I got to view eagles-lots of them very exciting. I was looking out to see if the eagle pair was there and I got to see them circle and land together on the same branch. That was awesome-but then looking up I noticed several large birds flying around overhead-no not crows but at least 6 eagles--that made my day very exciting!!

Most days here are still very cold and dreary, but we did get a few hours of sunshine on Sunday

   I made me a cup of green tea a few afternoons last week.

and I made us a pot of homemade chicken soup one day. I used organic chicken bone broth, added lots of herbs and spices for soups, threw in handfuls of dehydrated soup mix veggies, jar of my home canned tomatoes, frozen mixed veggies, Bob's Red Mill flaked potatoes-to thicken, and a large can of white meat chicken just before serving-yum

    ( just noticed my handle on the pan looks awful-these are revere ware copper bottom pans made in the usa that are at least 50 years or older now and the handles have seen their prime-they don't scrub up to black any more.)

 The Canada geese have been "hanging" around on the lawn in front of the lake. One morning a crane (oops per David thank you blue heron) was sitting on the edge amongst them. I decided to carefully and quietly open the door to the deck and take photos. It was going pretty well til the crane saw me sqwaked loudly and flew off. Half the geese jumped in the lake and the others just looked around-what's going on haha

Happy T everyone

I Did Get The Quilt Top Finished & Outlander in my Mailbox Just now

   I finished it yesterday, and went through the back of this quilt cutting off long threads etc today. The seams need a bit of a steam, and sigh I have three seams to fix.

   I cut each square out with a rotary cutter, and that will usually leave a little cut in the fabric above it. I missed not seeing the cut on three pieces-once everything was pretty much together except for the rows.  So I added another piece of small fabric to the seam-the cut goes deep into the seam, and I have no more fabrics big enough to replace the blocks.  So I am going to go through my stash and see what fusibles I have to seal the cut area to the other piece of fabric.   This is a first so I guess my eyes are not catching everything now that I am over 70.

   I will tackle that tomorrow. This ended up much bigger than most of my quilts I make for us. Pretty much a queen minus a few inches and our bed is a full long. I do love the top finish, now to decide how I want to hand quilt this.

   First photo before I added the borders

I am pretty happy with the layout of these scrappy blocks. I did end up with tree blocks in a row, but didn't see a good swap.

    

These borders ended up being a two morning project. I had enough fabric to do this and didn't think it mattered to line up any pattern, so I tore the strips so they would be straight.  I sewed on two sides and could see this was not going to be pretty unless I followed the pattern that you see. The others had no berries in the print. So I took all that apart and had enough fabric to get all the berries in the strips

I am looking into #8 perle cotton to hand quilt larger stitches with. This is a flannel top and bottom with a wool batting.  Our small wal mart did not have this so I could see what it looks like.  Anyone familiar with this and think it would be ok to hand quilt with? thanks

  Back around Thanksgiving weekend I was looking at Outlander inspired jewelry on Etsy. I found a dragonfly bracelet I fell in love with it-the maker in Spain. For free shipping she said it would take up to two months to the US.  This week I started thinking about it and it arrived today. I love the simplicity of this piece, the dragonfly is a bit shiny for me, but I do love it.  

    I had a couple dollars coming in ebay bucks so I wanted to use them before I forgot to, and found an Outlander box calendar which I have never had before. Thought it would be nice in my craft room. Wow I just ordered this and it arrived in two days. I am still waiting for the quilt pattern I ordered and a book that is a bit overdo. our mail seems to get slowed down in different places-patience Kathy patience. 

  I see these photos shows my hand where I fell on concrete several years ago and dislodged the joint out of the socket under my thumb area above my wrist.-it gets a little worse every year, I try to stretch it out as I have noticed that my thumb area is now kind folding under my hand. At the time my doctor didn't recommend the surgery at my age. So glad I am right handed otherwise I would have a really difficult time doing things

T Stands for Tuesday Quilt Progress & Eagle Pair

     Hi Everyone,

Tuesdays we join in with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth with a drink related post. Anyone is invited to join just have a photo with a drink reference in your post. Link in my sidebar

  This morning I decided I wanted to work on getting more of the 4 patch quilt blocks finished  up and I ended up finishing the last dozen or so. These are more time consuming than they should be as I need allot of pins-so the flannels don't stretch or slip. and since these are simple blocks I want the points to match up for sure. Laying it out I found one that was off so I may take that one apart.

  First thing early this morning,  I started a pot of decaf coffee.

Out my craft room window we had several crow visitors. They were really large up close.

All finished

and the stack of the 12 inch blocks

I  scattered out all the blocks so I could see the choices better. This is a scrappy quilt-like putting a puzzle together These are quilt store flannels

This is one of the layouts

after I took these two photos-which helps me see pops of color-I did not like those plum squares all in a row-so I turned them-but didn't take another photo made a big difference and I moved around a couple greens that were together

all ready to sew up the 8 rows and then all the rows together. I also plan on adding some borders to use up all of the queen size wool batting-don't want to waste any of that.

  If you missed my weekend posts I shared the eagle family that came to visit. At least one of the adults is here for a visit every morning now. 

   Around 4 pm today-Monday-the pair came back, and they are sitting all cozy together. I am never fast enough to get a video when I hear them singing.  My photos are not the best-we don't use smart phones, and my digital camera is over 15 years old now-but it still works pretty good.

   Gorgeous sky behind the eagle pair  This is our second winter here, and we are realizing we see this pair the most during January up til the time she is nesting

     Happy T everyone. Are you already for New Year's Eve so we can say goodbye to 2020??   I have wild caught usa shrimp in my freezer so will be doing a shrimp boil for the two of us.

   Happy T everyone and Happy New Year

I am Looking for a Quilt Pattern Update-Found

   Update: thanks to your responses I found a copy. I was holding off on the one I found for $27.00 last night as the seller had 3 copies but this morning when a friend referred me to the site-she had just 2 copies left so I decided to get it. then a friend found  me a copy for $19.00 right after I bought the first one. That's ok shipping is free on the one I ordered and I finally have this pattern Thinking of making the appliques with wool

     (I don't feel so bad about missing the one for $19.00 as it added $6.00 in shipping)

Hi everyone, I thought I would put this out there in case anyone seeing this post, might have this paperback book with patterns for the quilt and no longer want it or would sell it??

Across the Wide Missouri by Edie Mcginnis and Jan Patek

This came out in 2010 and I always regretted not buying it back then Now it is difficult to find.

Twelve stories and blocks honor the courageous women who packed up their lives to head West. The featured quilt by Edie McGinnis and Jan Patek The Star's 2010 Block of the Month project is offered in two different colorways. Additional quick and easy projects also honor the pioneer spirit.

Thank you

T Stands for Tuesday & an Update-Gift Quilt-Gifted

    Happy T everyone, 

          Does it seem possible that we are closing in on the end of the month soon and the year as well? I think most will be happy to see 2020 gone but there is allot happening the first week in January so hold on to your seats.

       T is where we share a drink related photo in our post with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth Anyone is welcome to join

    This past week "our" eagle pair has been nearby almost every day and they stay a long time too at least half the day and then some days they return. We so enjoy their visits. This is their courting season so they are much more visible. Larry has seen the pair fly right past his window where his desk and computer are (facing the lake)  twice last week-always exciting.

and Sunday we finally had sunshine.

  I have been sewing the 4 patch blocks a few every other day, trying to limit my time at the sewing machine as I over did it a bit on the past 3 quilts. This one has allot more blocks to make.

  I made a batch of peanut brittle and gave it all away plus a big batch of soft chocolate chip cookies for one of our friends that comes up and helps Larry when he can. It's an hour drive for him but he loves peanut brittle so he drove up for a visit and his treats. He brought his daughter and a friend over so that's the only interaction we have had with people in a couple months now-except for me when I go grocery shopping every 2 weeks or so. When they left I put all the placemats into the hamper to be washed and sanitized the table.

   We are in a warm spell right now, cold in the mornings but has been warming up to the 50's f which is really nice.

   Where the moon is right now I have to go out onto the deck and look up towards the house-I can see it through allot of tree branches but sadly I can't see the planets which is bummer. I will watch it on the 21st online through the telescopes.

   Last time I was at the Amish store I spotted spices for steeping in cider, wine, and they suggested black tea. So I bought a container and steeped it with a green tea-very nice.

     This single serve teapot I found in my Mom's things several years ago now-so I had brought it home with me. I love the strainer insert.

and I have to blame this on Elizabeth-I bought eggnog last time I went grocery shopping. I Loveeee eggnog too but I have been staying away from buying it these past years do to the high carb content--but after seeing her post-yep I needed to splurge this Christmas Sooo good 😀

  Monday I am driving to the woods house-to check on the propane tank to see if I need to order some in before the next bitter cold front. So I called up our friend that I made the gift quilt for and she will meet me there. So excited to finally get this to her-she has no idea it's a quilt. 

Happy T everyone, and Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate

Monday Update: It was so wonderful to be able to visit with a friend again