Hexagon Flower Project

I threw these pieces in my sew-to-go bag.  I'm actually starting to run out of basket handles.  I'm working through the little learning curve on hand stitching hexagons together.  I decided not to go with a pattern and just keep stitching making random flowers and threesie buds.

I have stitched hexagons before.  Iit's like riding a bike.  I need to get back into the practice.

Slow Sunday Stitching -- Charm Baskets

At this rate, I estimate I will be done with baskets in two or three more weeks.  Stay tuned.

19 charm baskets completed this week.

208 baskets of 202 needed for the quilt are now complete.  My baskets are trimmed to 4.25" vs. the recommended 4.5" unfinished block due to wonkiness.  52.5" x 64.5" finished is the quilt pattern size. I'll be cutting the rest of the baskets pieces this week and then see what that makes before I decide on the larger than suggested quilt size.

 The quilt pattern is called Charm Basket by Laundry Basket Quilts.  It is an Edyta Sitar design. I also stitched circles on two Dicey blocks this week in blue (Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2025.)

I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching here.

 

I moved and split a lot of plants yesterday... buttercups, lupins, a poppy (fingers crossed the poppy isn't mad at me), rose campion, purple things that I don't know their name, foxglove, forget-me-nots and day Lillies.  It's raining this morning.  Perfect timing.  I tried to move things that I googled that "deer do not eat" to the exposed areas.  I then moved the lillies that they seem to LOVE to eat to the more protected area.  Hopefully the lillies do not attract them to the pole barn flowerbed where the deer have not seemed to dine yet.

Dicey Blocks in Yellow RSC25

 Here's three more Dicey blocks in yellow:

Welcome spring!  I'm ready to start working outside with my plants and such.  :)

You can read why I started this quilt here.

I'm linking up at Angela's blog, SoScrappy, for the RSC25 here.

Ohio Spring Break

 It's Spring Break this week.  I had big warm plans to get into the longarm room at the other house and clean, clean, clean.  Brrr.  I went up there one day and got chilled.  Oh well.  Time to do some prep. work.

I had fun fluffing through the neutral scrap bin and pulling out some pieces to run through the Accuquilt die to make blocks for my Dicey quilt.  Here's 14 blocks.  That should keep me busy for a while.  I'll also have to dig through the bright scraps to pull out pieces to cut and shape with my Applipop circles.

I did get outside a couple days this week when the sun was shining.  

The little green plants in this part of the ditch in our drive way are all transplanted Foxglove plants.  They were coming up like crazy near the pole barn in almost zero nutritious dirt for them.  It was sandy with rocks.  Ironically, the deer left tons of hoof prints in my dirt.  I threw a plant in random hoof prints and sprinkled a little dirt on them.  My Google search  for "Do deer eat Foxglove" said:

"No, deer are generally considered to avoid eating foxglove, as the plant is toxic and unpalatable to them. "

I guess we'll see if this above statement is true, because something is pulling the entire Foxglove plants out where they are growing near my ocean container shed and dropping them about three or feet from whre they were planted.  It's like something is spitting it out.  Maybe it is just the chickens scratching and weeding them for me...  Ha ha.

Hopefully this will be a good fit for this ditch/deer trail highway area.  I'm not sure what colors the Foxglove are.  I'm thinking pinks, pale yellows, and whites.  We'll see what also happens when Mr. Roundup Sprayer goes down the driveway attacking weeds that I can't mow in the ditch.

Regardless, I was outside two hours and seem to become chilled.  It was indoors to cut and sew and clean my desk area.

The little yellowish plants with the tips popping out of the ground on the top of the photo are red hot poker plants.  They seem to be not yummy to deer too.  We shall see.  The colors might nor might not blend together nicely.  Only a few of my red hot poker plants bloomed last year because I only got a few of the adult plants when my friend had me dig them away from her tomato plant.  They are red/yellow/orange on one plant.  

I also had the chance to clean out the chicken coop.  The ducks make a mess in the coop when I have to water them inside.  Now that it is warmer they will get outside every day and I can water them in the chicken yard.  Woohoo for non slippery wet chicken coop floors.

Our stick-picker-upper was happy to be busy.

My other big excitment during spring break was that on Monday I got a CPAP.  Yuck.  I'm not used to it. According to the app they had me install, I'm getting better sleep.  I do think my husband is getting better sleep because he said I don't snore all night.  I still need to get used to rolling around with the hose and such.  I also don't get up to go to the bathroom as many times during the night, so that's progress.  Glad I had the week to get adjusted before going back to school.  Lovely, huh?

I don't know what part of spring break was most fun... the photo above or filing our taxes.  LOL.

The Kid

Our son has been having fun "dating" his girlfriend.  They have been best of friends since they could crawl.  

We went to see her in a play.  She did a great job with her speaking part scene.

Her character was killed in the play.  She did a great job.

Of course our son is a pro at taking selfies on the timer...

His girlfriend was sick and could not go to the Night to Shine Dance.  He still looked shiny.

Bob Evans lunch.

Of course they always love selfies...

And when he's riding somewhere with me, that's a time for rest.  It wouldn't be a road trip without a photo of him sleeping in the passenger seat.  Ha ha.

Spring Flowers

 Here's a few pics of what's growing here in Ohio:

Poppy that came up from the original poppy plant is above.  My fancy chicken that lays beautiful blue eggs got into the protected fence area and decided to trim it way back to this.  Whew.  So glad some of it is left.  This is about as big as when it originally started.  It grew huge last year.

Below is the chunk of poppy starts I cut off of the huge plant around Thanksgiving.  Poppies don't seem to like to have their roots disturbed.  I took a chance to split them and it looks like it worked!  

The ducks are ready for a swim.  It was dry enough this week for all of the chickens to have a nice, social dust bath.  I wish I would have snuck up on all the chickens as they were getting a drink form the "pool" showing off their nice fluffy, healthy butt feathers.  Maybe next time...

Lambs ear is coming up nicely after being "groomed" by the chickens.  It seems that nature always just knows what is needed and what to do--except for when the deer trim my plants way too much.

My Rose Campion didn't do anything last year.  They were baby plants.  They survived the winter.  Hopefully they will bloom this year.  I hear that the deer don't seem to bother them.  If they grow nicely, I may move some of them to the orchard area where the deer graze almost everything else.

I thought for sure the daffodils would bloom by the first day of spring.  Here they are the day after.  I continue to dig the bulbs out of a bed that is in the shade.  I replanted these last fall.

I planted these in the ditch.  These came up.  The ones I planted closer to the deer trail did not make it.

Hoping my Accuquilt "grandma's flower" garden blooms.  I'm still practicing how to put together the basted hexagons.  I'm not there yet... Practice and patience are on order.

Completed Charm Baskets -- Slow Sunday Stitching

I'll be arranging the baskets just like the quilt pattern.  There will just be more of them to make a larger quilt.  They are in straight rows.  There is a blank half basket at the top of some of the rows to offset them.

18 baskets were added to the finished pile this week! I have another pile to trim for next week.

189 baskets of 202 needed for the quilt are now complete.  My baskets are trimmed to 4.25" vs. the recommended 4.5" unfinished block due to wonkiness.  52.5" x 64.5" finished is the quilt pattern size.  I'll be making the quilt slightly larger so that it is more usable for my family.  It will be a "living room" quilt. The quilt pattern is called Charm Basket by Laundry Basket Quilts.  It is an Edyta Sitar design.

 I'm linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching here.

Happy stitching!  It's getting exciting around here.