rearranging....

so... I started to mix things up. Put the letters in the center, mix in some house blocks. 

And then the cat came along and ruined all my fun

I had to go do something else anyway. 

I’ll get back to this later. 

I just might have a plan....

These are all the flying geese blocks from the leftover triangles.

I gave it a try...sewing with Luke here. He couldn’t quite reach the chain if I kept pulling it towards me. He went back and forth between watching me and sitting down to watch Disney junior. I would just see the top of his head. He’s fast though. Once he stood up and I had let my guard down. He grabbed the chain and pulled. Yikes! Gentle! Gentle! I was able to pry it out of his fingers, and finish sewing them.

This morning I woke up thinking about this baby quilt. It took a bit of looking to find the letters I made last year at the quilt show. I had different ideas for them, none of them happening. Maybe they could be on the border of the mini house quilt. 

I don’t know. Maybe they are too chunky. I’m going to think on it. 

The temperature quilt...

This isn’t the temperature quilt, but I have 56 mini house blocks done. They need trimming. There are several triangles yet. I’m sewing flying geese with them. Not sure how it will all go together yet. Luke is here this week, while Zander is at his dads. Yesterday Luke got hold of my little plastic container that held all the dog ears from these blocks. They ended up all over the floor. We, or I should say, I cleaned that up. Luke watched. He seemed excited when I gave him the empty container to play with. 

I bought a bunch of solids. The white isn’t solid, it is just a nice size chunk I had here. It is the 30-34 degree color. Blues go cooler the warm colors are the warmer temperatures. This is the first six days of January. I wrote the names of the colors and temperature ranges. I don’t know if there is enough, that should make it easier to order more if I do run out. The months will be in columns. I was caught up in June.

Summer things...

 All is well here. I’m starting more quilts. Just what I need, more projects!

This Moonstruck pattern is from 1998 in American Patchwork and Quilting. 

There were many false starts and changes for who I would make this for. I finally have a plan!

 The center stars sections are done. I found my cow fabric when I wasn’t even looking for it. I’ll use it for the appliqué cow jumping over the moon.

These are called postage blocks. They require one solid and scrappy leftover 1 1/2 inch squares. It is an 8 inch block 

I recently found a ton of leftover triangles from a previous quilt. To make them bigger I paired them up. They are the roof part. There were lots of rectangles too. They don’t finish very big. I’m aiming for a baby quilt. My small log cabin blocks have grown. 

We are also getting our electricity poles and wires switched around. Instead of 4 poles, we are down to one. It feels so open and kinda weird. But we are liking it. 

summer catch up.....

My temperature quilt from 2016 and finished this year for the quilt show. I was picked for the featured quilter! Wow! What to bring? Mike Ellingsen makes a smile box slide show of all the quilts in the special exhibits. There are always a ton more quilts to see at the show!
I'll share the links.

smilebox of Wonderful watermelon fabric challenge

smilebox of my quilts

smilebox of Block Exchange and Navajo Code Talkers

During the show, I sat and made letters. I just about finished the whole alphabet. W is missing yet. I'm thinking an alphabet baby quilt right now.

I met my first blogging friend, in person, at the show! Carol came down from the cities to see the show.

Do we look nervous! We were! While we have communicated for years....we always had the computers between us!

Here is the link to her post about it.... giraffedreams.blogspotl

A HUGE part of the summer was taken up with babysitting Luke and once in awhile Zander came too. 

Luke

Zander

School starts this week. Back to work. What a drag.

It's finally spring!

I'm going to take some time this morning and post some pictures. I'll start with newest.

This is the first monkey. I will be making another one soon. I have it all cut out and ready to go. April here was still winter. It snowed a lot. Every week or so we had snow.
It looked like this quite often....

Every time it snowed we thought
THIS snow is the LAST snow
but NO!
And it did give me lots of opportunity to sew.
The grass is just starting to turn green and a few of the trees have buds.

Back to the monkeys....I wanted to make Zander one way last year and never got started. Then Luke was born in March. When the other grandma was here visiting, she kept calling the boys chunky monkey and hunky monkey. This was a sign that I needed to get started on the monkeys!

The quilt shop in Forest City is doing a 20 for 20 to celebrate 20 years in business.

Bring in unfinished projects to put on your list and get a 20% coupon when you finish. If you get 20 done, your name will go in a drawing at the end of the year.

I have a stack of 5 quilts that need binding. Most of them are pictured in older posts from last summer. I went to a storage crate and found tons of unfinished things or blocks that had no home yets

This was a kit. Finished and given away to a teacher at school.

Extra blocks from Block Lotto, done a long time ago and I decided it was enough for a baby quilt.

Finished and mailed off!

A collection of batik blocks turned into a table runner and given to a friend who is turning 60.

There were other smaller projects, but I gave them away so fast after getting them checked off my list that I never took any pictures.

The block exchange blocks this year.

Red White and Blue....

I'm using them as a border. Texas is going in the center.

I have no idea if there is pattern for this. I used a picture to create it.

The Navajo Code Talkers quilt. 

I am not sure how it got its name, as I didn't really see anything Navajo in it.

I didn't even like all the blocks from the pattern, so I changed some to my own blocks that are based on Indian symbols. And while looking for ideas, I found out it wasn't just the Navajo. There were many North American tribes doing the code talking.

Pretty cool.

All the blocks are done now. They make a pretty pile.

But I won't be sewing them together today....

It's really too nice outside to stay inside. We waited a long time for nice weather. So I want to go out and enjoy it!

One more thing....our new back door did its work and held out the cold. Some might say we jinxed it and we ended up with a longer winter. Maybe, I don't know!

long time gone progress...

It has been a long time since I worked on Long Time Gone! Busy with other stuff that sometimes was and sometimes wasn't quilting related. These were the last blocks I worked on before setting it all aside.

One thing I did was go through fabric and put smaller pieces into color piles. I love the way they look. They are getting used in Long Time Gone and then I have more plans for them. That will have to wait for now.

Group shot of what is sewn together.

I started with the blocks that have the smallest pieces. Working my way up to the bigger and easier blocks. This plan is working out so far.

The Goodwill truck was in town, a good time to clean out the basement. I cleaned out another closet with quilt things and reorganized all that. Outside I have been sanding or staining or painting.

The old back door. The whole thing was in horrible shape and ugly and the weather stripping was gone. It let in a nice cold breeze in the winter. But no more.

I love that new door. On one hand, I'm very curious about how well it will keep out the cold. On the other hand, I am in no hurry to find out. The last several weeks have been pleasant for summer. 

The two flower beds out front needed new frames. 

20 years ago this was a sand box that I stuck flowers in. If you got too close with the mower the boards would fall over.

So tractor joe and I went shopping for the new door and wood for the frames. I wanted a mowing strip so I wasn't scraping up against the wood. His plan was to make the frames, take off the old and lay out the new. 

"How are you going to get that big heavy frame over the windmill?"

He had a plan for that too.

You lift it up....

and over....

New frames in place! Now I need to weed. I always thought I would clean them up after new frames were put on. I just didn't know it would take most of the summer to get that done.

The grass was so dry when this picture was taken. We have had just enough rain again to green up the yard. We mowed last weekend for the first time in weeks. 

All my projects that are going to the Blue Earth Valley Quilters and Woodcarvers Expo are finished. We set up this Thursday for the weekend. Until then I am going to work on those little churn dash blocks. It calls for 20-something of them. 

Here I go.....