What's New

I've done a bit of embroidering lately, lots of colorful things.  I think I am just anxious for spring to come and bring some color back to the landscape.  Until then, I will go to my spools of thread for inspiration.

I made a floral banner for my kitchen and after that my machine said it was tired and it would like to be taken in for a tune-up now.  So we aren't working together this week.

Before that I embroidered a couple of my jackets.  I wonder if I will ever get to actually wear them....we still have fires going in the house today so no, not yet.  Too cold.

I was testing out applique on the embroidery machine and made a simple pillow for the couch.  I have to say, I do like those tranquil rooms with the soft, pale colors but when I create something for myself I always reach for the reds, blues and yellows....  Maybe I will grow out of it someday.

As for farm news, the baby goats have started arriving and they are as cute and funny as ever.  Elsa has been very good with them this year.  They bring out her mommy aspirations, I think.

  So hard to get a good picture!

I'm Still Here

Hello!

I'm still here.  Winter is dragging on and I can't really come up with much to say other than I have been sewing.  I have been doing a lot of sewing.   

In addition to countless Christmas gifts I produced here in my little sewing room, I have made two new queen sized quilts and quilted them, one for my youngest daughter for Christmas and one this month for my middle daughter for her birthday.

I have also machine quilted two other queen sized quilts since Christmas.  And several table runners and wall hangings. Just stitching and stitching!

Thought I might share some pictures of the things that have kept me busy.

 The quilt for my youngest daughter for Christmas.  Very girly colors.

I made this quilt for my daughter Emily in, gulp, about one week.  Cut, pieced, assembled, torn apart, reassembled, and quilted.  She's a student living alone and I wanted her to have a cozy bed.  Of course, during that week I wasn't the best cook but it worked out.  My 16 year old daughter is in a experimental cooking kind of mood.

I also bought new sheets and embroidered the pillowcases to go with the quilt.

I recently (on my birthday) bought a Viking Mega Quilter sewing machine on craigslist because I love my little Singer 160 and I have had fears about wearing it out with free motion work.  The excellent craigslist deal came with the Grace frame and the Cruise Control stitch regulator, but I don't know if I want it.  I am pretty comfortable doing machine quilting on a tabletop and I truly do not have a space for a 10 foot frame right now.  My husband and son saw the video of the mega quilter and frame and think it seems like the coolest thing but I don't know if it's for me.  Does anyone have advice?

I did bring the mega quilter home and practice right away on a little quilt made out of extra quilt blocks.  I do love the speed and smoothness of it.

Practice, practice...

I did this little quilt (featured here and at the top of this post) for my friend's birthday yesterday.

 

I have embroidered a few things and embellished a couple of pillowcases for myself recently.

One of the orange cats, Roxanne, likes to hang out in my sewing room and watch me sew.

I have been working on machine quilting the quilt that my daughter-in-law Ashley made, just trying out an all-over leafy design.

It seems like all I am doing is sewing, which is half true I suppose,  but this has been the first winter season where I have new machines to work with and a little bit more time.  For years I wanted to make things and quilt things, but the kids were younger, the farm was needier, the house was a never ending project in itself.  Now we aren't remodeling, building, fencing, or driving like we used to so I have found time to learn about and practice all of those things I always wanted to do.

And then there's youtube!  Sure there are millions of time-wasting videos out there, but there is so much free instruction there too!  How many times I watched free-motion feather quilting videos and then decided that I was ready to try it.  I tell ya, that's handy.

Of course, I have plenty of time wasted on pinterest too.  I have a ridiculous number of pins...oy!  But when I'm working on a project, I know right where to go for inspiration!

I will try to take time out from my stitching and keep up with the blogging as much as possible.  I'm sure with spring coming there will be more to photograph and chat about.  Baby goat season is just around the corner, for one thing...

Thanks for stopping by. :-) 

  

My Girl Can Bake

My daughter Maggie,16, is a good little cook and baker and just to let everyone know how proud I am of her I thought I'd show her loaves of bread that she baked yesterday.

She did it all on her own and they were delicious.  

Love that.

Christmas Crafting

I am taking a minute to share some of the things I've made in the past week or so, and I have so much more to do!  ...Gifts that I need to finish, for one thing.

This red "Noel" pillow is a simple thing, but everything that could go wrong while I embroidered it pretty much did go wrong, but I pressed on and saved it which I was very happy about.  My sewing-disaster-rescue-skills are improving!

I wanted to make a small tablecloth with poinsettias and I wanted something different from red or green. 

Some very exciting news for me was finding out once and for all that the new sewing machine does a wonderful job with free-motion machine quilting.  After stalling about trying it for over a month (out of fear), I finally sat down a tried it.  And I am so glad I did!  It sews wonderfully and seems very strong.  And the backside loopy problem that I had had previously while trying to free-motion quilt is gone!

I got a second machine this year because I was using the Futura so much with embroidery that I wasn't actually sewing very much anymore.  I wanted something to work with while I waited for lengthy embroidery designs to stitch out.  The price of this machine, the Singer 160th Anniversary Machine, had dropped so low that I just bit the bullet and got one before they were gone.  I love it and it doesn't hurt that it's pretty cute to look at too!

My little 2-day finished quilt.

I had heard about the quality of the waffle-weave dish towels at Walmart and how nice they were for embroidering so I bought a set and tried them out today.  I like them a lot.

I found some old cut up Christmas fabric squares that had been given to me and made a quilted table runner with some light embroidery on the edges.

I really should have stopped and taken a photo of this runner before I put it on my island I piled stuff on it.

And finishing out the week I will had my humble felt ornament that I made for the kitchen Christmas tree.  We were going for kitchen and food themes. 

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Was Lovely, Now On To Christmas!

 Time is flying by. Thanksgiving was last week and it felt like it came so quickly!

I made a banner for the archway between the dining and living room.  

I should have used the better camera to get a picture....but you get the idea.

I had a little display on the table for the holiday and I took pictures thinking it looked nice and lo and behold, I see that someone put their bottle cap on the pumpkin stem.  Nice.  Thanks guys!

I am in a Christmas-y mood so I have already packed away all of the Autumn decorations and gave the pumpkins to the goats.  And the pigs too.  They were grateful.

It is unusual for me to do any Christmas decorating before December at least, but I am throwing caution to the wind and going for it early.  We even hung the first of the exterior lights around the back door yesterday.  We broke with our usual tradition of starting the exterior light decorating on the coldest day in December.  My son remarked that it seemed so different to be out hanging lights without the usual numb fingers and frozen face.  Crazy!

 
 

Pet Cage Cover

On Sunday evening I worked on the new dog cage.  It will be in my daughter's room most of the time and that room is pink so I went through some pink scraps of fleece and cotton for the trim and made a cover and some bedding.

Handy hubby made a raised shelf inside the cage so that if either of our older dogs got off the bed and had any "accidents" it might not ruin the bedding.  They won't be closed in the cage except during the night when a little pad is laid down on the floor "just in case".  The pad goes over the little carpet scrap that you can see in the picture.

The dogs are known as the bops mostly.  They are always together and everyone says things like "did you guys put the bops out?" and things like that.  Most of the time, because they bark, and because they can't seem to get used to the big dogs coming in and out, even though they have all lived together for years... most of the time people are grumbling "ugh...those bops!"  Everyone except for Maggie, who dotes on them.  (Ask me if I would ever have chihauhaus again.  Ok, perhaps you shouldn't ask.)
 

The oldest one is male and he is pretty blind so I didn't feel quite so bad about the very girly bedding colors. ;-)   When we showed them the finished cage they just walked right in.  They seem to like it.

 I made everything with the idea that it can all be tossed into the washer and dryer.  I will probably make an extra pillow for them to sleep on, in case one is in the laundry when bedtime comes.

They seem to like their little private room and haven't complained at all.

Must Remember To...

A reminder for myself, mostly, as it is a challenge today...
but I will try my best.

Holidays Are Just Around the Corner!

I have a countdown widget on the home screen of my phone reminding me of the number of days until Thanksgiving and then, of course, Christmas.  I cannot believe it is only 18 days until Thanksgiving.

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday I made a little pillow for my sofa out of some of this wonderful linen-type fabric that I used to have a bunch of, but not so much anymore.  I don't know where I got it; probably a dollar-a-yard Walmart find.  But I used a bit for my Thanksgiving pillow with a design from Embroidery Library.

I also did a sewing-for-the-pets project today and I will get some photos of that up soon.
  

Rescued Kitty

Yesterday, on Halloween, we got a call from a neighbor asking if we could help rescue her cat.  Apparently, 3 days ago, some stray dogs had come through and chased her older cat and since that time the cat had been hiding out somewhere and they couldn't find her anywhere.  That was until yesterday, when an elderly neighbor heard the cat's sad meow in the distance.  When they looked they found her way up in a tree, out of reach for any of them.  They took a chance that one of my crazy-climbing-teens might be able to help.

The situation with the cat was even sadder when you factored in that we had had lousy, freezing rain mixed with snow weather after hurricane Sandy came through Michigan.  And windy!

And it gets even worse when you know that this particular cat had been found as a kitten years ago with both or her front legs broken and has had a life-long fear of jumping down.

So this poor creature had been up there freezing and wet and windblown for probably the last 3 days.  How sad is that!

The blue arrow points to the cat and the red arrow points to the maximum height of the ladder.

So we checked out the scene and realized it would be a job for our boy Peter, who was at work with handy hubby until 5 p.m.  We went home sad because we couldn't help yet and it was still raining.  She would have to wait a little longer.

But then 5 o'clock came and they went looking for the spot we said the they would find her and before we even could drive down to the tree, Peter had already climbed up and scooped her into his coat and climbed back down again.

 So the cat, Sweetie, is safely back home inside her warm house with her grateful family.

Yay!

Two Embroidered Pillows

My most recent stitching projects have been two pillows, one for the bed in the RV and one for the couch in our little library.

 For the library pillow I used some denim that I had started to use for a skirt but changed my mind (after I messed it up), and I trimmed it out with leftover quilt binding from the quilt in the photo.

"I read, therefore I am."

When I am not sewing I am usually baking!  Mostly breads and a few desserts here and there.

Hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween!

Another Small Autumn Quilt

I finished another small quilt in Autumn-ish colors.  Actually it will go very well in my kitchen at any time because I have plenty of black and gold and red.

I think I have plenty of fall colored fabrics.  I thought about doing another one but I really don't have any room for displaying it. 

This was the first time I have tried just quilting with the walking foot.  I liked how it worked out.  I will be trying that again. 

I was laying out the quilt and considering what color binding to use; I decided on the red.

I have wanted to make so many quilts over the years and it feels great to finally be getting some of them done.  I love the quilt inspiration I get from Pinterest and I love the youtube tutorials for the technical advice.

I am hoping be able to make some to give as gifts soon.

Embroidery for the Family

 The embroidery projects I have done this week have been pretty much just shirts.  I am learning a lot as I go.  

One of the boys brought me his flannel jacket saying that he has trouble keeping track of it because someone else is always taking it when they are doing farm chores so I personalized it for him.  (whether or not they care if his name is on the jacket when they take it...well I have my doubts)

This week we celebrated my oldest son's birthday so I made some detailed designs for him with is band's name.

And who can resist a Star Wars design....this photo was taken while working on a hoodie for my youngest son.

I have learned quite a bit from practicing on my family's clothing.  I'm better able to judge how long things will take and how to recover from mistakes or huge problems like the power outage yesterday that happened in the middle of a custom design that I was doing for someone else!  But with my techie son's help, we did figure it all out after the power came back on 7 hours later!

I have been doing some regular sewing too and it has been an exciting week for me in that department..which I will share more about later.

Beautiful Day for a Trip to the Orchard

We did end up making a trip to one of the local orchards yesterday.  There is a shortage of apples and we wanted to get there before the weekend as we were afraid they would sell out.

It was a good thing we went too, because almost all of the apples were gone and it was only Thursday.

The drive was perfect!  It was one of those perfect weather-sunny skies-golden leaves-driving with the windows down- kind of days.  There aren't too many of those and I am glad to have been out experiencing it.

As usual, I forgot the good camera, but the phone did alright. 

The little shop at the orchard was short on apples, but there is apparently a bumper crop of pumpkins and gourds which were on display.  So fall-y!

I love the apple shaped green gourds!

Some beautifully finished birdhouse gourds

Along the way we got stuck for a short time behind this guy, but we didn't mind as the weather was perfect and we appreciate the efforts of our local farmers.

The only thing I didn't photograph were the actual apples!  The older gentleman was so prompt in loading them into the car for me I didn't get a chance.  The only apples they had left were the Northern Spy variety, which is lucky for me because they are wonderful!  They're the best cooking apple.

I get a picture of something apple soon.  Maybe I will make a crisp today.  Or maybe a pie....