Hummingbird Feeder Sewing Project

I bought two hummingbird feeders at Where Ya Bin (a place that sells returned and odd lot Amazon and Target stuff.  Two for 25 cents was a good deal to me.  They came with suction cups that didn't stick to the windows.  Here's my prototype piece.  

Can you believe that I broke TWO hummingbird feeders (not these) yesterday?  One was glass and it broke in the sink.  The other was plastic and the top was super brittle.  These feeders were at least five years old.  It was time to swap them out with new ones.  I think I prefer glass ones.  We'll see what is on sale at our local farm stores at the end of the season.  That's a good time to get them for next year.

I'm not sure if hummingbirds like all that fabric hanging.  The elastic makes it easy to open the top to refill.  It was one of those corners that go on the sheets to keep them on the bed.

It's pretty simple.  I finished the seams so that it didn't fray--like that really matters.

This is what it looked like when I got it.  It does have a nice ant moat that gets filled with water so that ants don't get into the sugar water.

The cats really like to lay in my seedlings of coneflowers and bee balm.  I bought a pack with a variety of colors of each on Amazon.  I should have separated them better in the egg cartons when I planted them.  They seem to have a different germination period.  Oh well.  I have plenty more seeds.  The little plants seem to bounce back after the cats are done using it as a bed.

I planted the petunias in the flats last night right before the expected rain.  It did start to rain around 8:10 pm.  We really needed the rain here.  Finally got it!  I remember when I was a kid going to Amish country with my mom to pick out large flats with really nice flowers in them for about $8 a flat.  These half flats were $6.97 each ($14ish for what you see here.). Roll with the times I guess.  The marker in the flat just said petunia.  I hope they are the wave version, but it seemed that I had to dead head the blooms.  I planted them in my strawberry planter.  Hopefully they will flow down and give it some beautiful color.  Stay tuned.

Horsen Around Is Complete

Horsen Around is complete.  It measures about 45" x 56". 

The pattern is called Dinner Party.  I held on to these beautiful Horsen' Around fabrics that were given to me from Linda at Art in Search. until I found the right pattern to show off the fun prints.

My purple bellflowers were in full bloom.  I thought that was a great pic to show them off a little.

I found the paisley background print and the quilt backing in my stash.  I think they went with these fabrics great.  I still have several scraps of the Horsen Around prints left for another future project.

7 finishes this (Spring) quarter

Here's my Spring 2026 Ravelry UFO Club Projects:

1.  Bit Con quilt -- Needs more rows of strips sewn together -- size yet to be determined

2.  Rail Fence 3.5" RSC block -- 900 blocks needed/need arranged

3.  Piccadilly Circle -- Need a few more circle blocks

4.  Kite Girl --finished 5.28.26 -- 6th finish

5.  Folk Art Birds -- Need more birds and alternate blocks

6.  Hourglass Mini -- Needs a quilt back and then quilted

7.  Maroon Sampler -- Needs two more blocks

8.  Dicey -- Blocks need sewn together with sashing and cornerstones

9.  Fireflies Wall Hanging -- Blocks need appliqued

10.  Red/White basket crib quilt --finished 5.15.26 -- 5th finish

11.  D9P Red/White -- finished 5.11.26 -- 4th finish

12.  HST -- Needs more blocks made and sewn into rows

13.  Red/White House in Center baby quilt -- finished 5.2.26 -- 2nd finish

14.  Fish -- a 12-block RSC26 project

15. Scarborough Fair -- Needs more blocks made

16.  Random Blue Blocks -- Hand Quilting -- In the hoop

17.  Acorn Harvest -- Quilt top needs assembled

18.  Horsen Around Crib Quilt (Dinner Party pattern)-- finished 6.17.26 -- 7th finish

19.  Horsen Around Scrap Quilt -- needs blocks cut and sewn

20.  Pink Houses crib quilt -- Needs blocks made

21.  Lupine and Laughter (Bonnie Hunter 2025 mystery quilt) -- in the piecing process

22.  Christmas Memories 4-patches sewn, need more

23.  Dinner Party (school print blocks) blocks cut, needs blocks sewn

24.   Layer Cake Lattice -- pink blocks cut -- needs blocks sewn

25.  True Blue Sew Along (started 1/15/26) -- needs corners sewn to blocks

26.  Zip It Sew Along -- finished 5.1.26, 1st finish this quarter

27.  Classic Meets Modern QA from 2014 -- block complete, need sashing

28.  King Rosebud embroidery quilt --finished 5.5.26, 3rd finish this quarter

29.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #1 (pinwheels)

30.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #2 (squares)

31.  Kathleen Tracy Mini #2 (HST and a Square)

32.  Cheddar Jack crib quilt -- cat blocks are sewn, some 2.5" squares are sewn

You can find the 2026 Spring Ravelry UFO club here.

True Blue

I started this quilt during a quilt along in January, 2026.  It's called True Blue.  I made progress on it this week.

You can see the details for the True Blue quilt along at American Patchwork & Quilting site here.

Tulip Table Runner Flimsy Complete

Yeah!  I have something to put on the longarm.  

The pattern is Tulip Table Runner --a pattern by Amy Chappeli from Ameroonie Designs.

Can't wait to load this one.  I need a small project to test my theory on the stitch regulator issue.  I'll quilt circles on this one because it's small.  If I have stitch regulator issues like I anticipate, at least it is a smaller project and I will get through it vs. a queen-sized quilt.

Slow Sunday Stitching -- Dinner Party Binding

I'm working on the binding of my Dinner Party crib-sized quilt this week.  The majority of the fabrics were given to me from Linda at Art in Search..  The fabric line is called Horsen' Around.  

This is a fun one to bind as the quality fabrics are super soft.

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

 

This week was our son's 19th birthday.  Wow, how time flies.  We left him pick where he wanted to go and plan the road trip.  He picked a mini golf place that was one hour and 45 minutes away.

Here's a pic of my husband and I.  Man I need to start losing weight again.  It's been such a struggle.  I was a ketovore for about six years (2019-2025).  I just couldn't maintain it.  This is not he heaviest weight that I have been.  I joined Weight Watchers in February of this year.  I have GAINED 7 pounds since then!  I tried the "shots" for a year (last year).  I lost 19 pounds on that but gained it back when I joined WW.  Hopefully seeing this pic on my blog will jog my memory of what I need to do.  I'm lucky right now that my knees don't hurt like they use to and that I am still mobile.  I need to look at the positives.  I can work in my flowerbeds for hours at a time.  I'm slow, but I am way more mobile than my mom ever was.  Let's just call this my "before" picture.  I had a good hair day before this photo, but it got to hot before we took a pic.  LOL

Here's a pic of my husband and his sister.  She is such an awesome friend to me and the BEST AUNT our son could ever ask for.  She is his biggest cheerleader.

A good time was had by all.

On Friday when my husband was at work, Owen was treated to dinner and a movie with his friend.

Owen's friend's dad showed Owen how he uses AI to make a cool pic.  Yes, we saw Mandalorian (a Star Wars movie).  It was cute.

RSC26 -- Pink Tulips

I utilized my time this week to go back and catch up on a pink project I worked on earlier this year.

The pattern is Tulip Table Runner --a pattern by Amy Chappeli from Ameroonie Designs.

I pulled out the pastels from my Bit Con quilt (Bonnie Hunter pattern).  I got those sewn together.  

I cut all the rest of the pieces needed of the green stems and leaves and background fabric while at the shop with my truck last week. 

Several of you mentioned having trouble growing tulips due to the fact that animals would dig up the bulbs to eat them.  I had that problem in the past.  To resolve it I learned that when I planted the bulbs to dig out more and put a 10" square piece of wire mesh above it that had about 1" gaps in it.  The gaps let the tulip shoots grow up through it.  The rest of the mesh makes it to hard for the varmint to get to it and it moves on to eating another one of my delicious plants...

My strawberry planter is growing beautifully even with all the dry weather we have had.  Cucumbers are starting to climb around the pool ladder rungs in the back of the planter.

My tomatoes in the raised beds are not doing so great just yet.  I just got the hose out to them this week to make sure they get watered on a more regular basis.

My purple things (I think they are Bellflowers) are beautiful.  We had a very brief hard rain late last night.  They were knocked down a bit but stood back up after I took the photo.

I have been having trouble planting zucchini from seed ever since 2020.  Finally I got two plants to grow from the free seeds from the library in this old, cracked kettle.  This is the kettle that my grandparents used when we butchered and for making apple butter.  The weird cement face was part of an art pot that I bought in the gift shop in our county disabilities building.  It had a planter with it and when planted was supposed to resemble the plant being hair.  The terra cotta pot broke off the first week I had it planted.  I stuck it in this kettle for fun.  The large zucchini plant seems to be doubling by the day in the hot weather.

I finally planted my dried out marigold plants yesterday.  When I moved the graduation sign Candy the cat must have thought that would be a good way to still be in the shade.  I decided to allow the one volunteer tomato plant to continue to grow in this bed.  Usually this little bed is where I plant tomatoes.  This year the flowers growing around the edge came up again.  I didn't know that they were perennials.

I'm linking up at Angela's blog, SoScrappy, for the RSC26

Bit Con Mindless Strip Piecing

I sewed ALL the strips that was in the craft box into pieces to be cut for the Bit Con UFO that was sitting on the shelf.  I thought I would use it as a leader/ender project.  Look closely in the photo--yes, that IS an empty box!

Bit Con is a Bonnie Hunter pattern. I have no idea how many strips or yards of fabric scraps were used.  I do know that these fabrics mostly came out of the multi-colored bin.  I sort my scraps by color.  Stay tuned for tons and tons of cutting.