Giveaway winner!

Happy Thanksgiving! It's been a good day here. I have so much to be thankful for. 

I said that I would draw for the giveaway winner today. The pile of 1.5" squares made only 95 16 patches.  The funny part is that all of our guesses were way over! So the closest guesser was fmlady with 158.

I'd better keep this post short I'm still in the process of fixing Thanksgiving dinner. Have a great day everyone  

Vicky

Design wall Monday & the escape artist

We moved the cows down closer to the house this weekend. This is the first time that the baby calves have experienced an electric fence. The majority of the time they'll just touch it with their noses & that will cure them from messing with the fence. There are always one or two who are a little more curious and escape to the other side of the fence. Once they get over there they can't figure out how to get back to the other side where mom is.

We had an escapee this morning when I went out to check them. It took me a few minutes to get that silly calf back on the right side. I don't think it will be messing around with that fence again. 

On my sewing & design wall.  I am still working on sewing 1.5" squares into 16 patch blocks.  I've got a contest going to see how many 16 patches this stack of pieces will make. Check out my previous blog posts. 

I also got the first diamond hexie made. It's progressing, slowly. Hope y'all are doing well. More later on,

Vicky

The goodies for the giveaway!

Well I came up with a few things for the giveaway. Hopefully y'all will like them. The first item is a cute little bag with lots of pockets that I'm sure any quilter/crafter could find a use for. The second is a charm pack from Windham Fabrics called "Middleton Place". Lots of springy colors in the charm pack.  If you would like to win these please check out my previous post. I will draw for a winner next Thursday Nov 28. Hope y'all have a good day, more later on. 

Vicky

What's going on here at the farm

It's been busy the last week and a half. Constantly on the go. I'm hoping that today will be a little calmer. We have a new baby calf that we are bottle feeding twice a day. I take the mourning feeding & my kiddo does the evening feeding. He wants to do both but when the calf gets better at the bottle then he can. 

I am hoping that I will get some fabric/sewing time in today. I'm using a bunch of Christmas scraps for my next project. I've cut the fabric down to 1.5" strips (using the Accuquilt die cutter). I've sewn them together in sets of 2. Now I'm in the process of ironing all of the strips & cutting them into little bitty sets of 2. 

Hope y'all are doing well. It's a rainy day here in Kansas, so that means it's a great day to stay in & sew!!!! More later on,

Vicky

It's done!

I finished this beauty last night. I was doing a happy dance when that last border went on. All of the fabric came from the stash. You can't really tell that I used any of the batik strings though. The black/white pile umm stack has decreased in height! It is considerably smaller than what I usually make. My husband accuses me of having a depth perception problem: I don't realize how big my quilts are getting & they generally end up huge! So this quilt was a nice change of pace.  The borders were relaxing to piece. I just cut lots of black/white strips 6.5" wide & an assortment of lengths. I then sewed them together at random until they were the size I needed for a border. I'm really liking this technique. I've used it on one other quilt & it turned out great. You don't have to worry about pieces matching up on the corners & it is a great way to use up some of those larger pieces. 

I guess I should name this quilt but inspiration hasn't hit yet. If any of y'all have some ideas I am all ears. My next quilt lecture/trunk show is this Thursday & I will be taking this with me! I hope y'all have a great day. More later on,

Vicky

Frustrations with the design wall.

I've had this picture in my head of what I wanted this quilt to look like. I really like how the body of the quilt has turned out but now it's time for the borders. I had a large handful of 2" strip sets that I had leftover. I was going to put them around the quilt as my border. As I layed them out two things occurred: #1 I didn't have enough to go all the way around the quilt & #2 the 2" squares are too dark & completely take away from the body of the quilt. Oh what to do. So I vented my frustrations to two Quilty friends & with their help I think that there will be a solution. I'm going to do a simple border of the black/white scraps. Then bind it with a scrappy bright binding. Sometimes you just need to step back & ask for help. I'll try to post pics when I get it finished. Hope y'all gave a good day. 

Vicky

My design wall/floor Monday

We woke up this am to no electricity. Not really the way you want to start a Monday. My husband got up & started to light our Coleman lantern. Small problem though, we couldn't find the matches. I should probably buy another box. So my husband got creative. He got a lighter & lit a pencil on fire to stick up into the lantern to get it going. He was successful  in getting it lit once but then it went out. The next try he used a q-tip that worked. Sometimes I think I'm married to MacGyver.  I was pumped to sew via a treadle by lantern but the electricity eventually came back on. 

I didn't get a lot of machine sewing done this weekend but I did get a lot of hand sewing accomplished. I finished my first Christmas embroidery block, added more hexies & I'm working on some string blocks. 

I hope y'all are having a good Monday. Mine is getting better as the day goes on. More later on,

Vicky