Pink Doll Quilt

This week I found this little pink doll quilt in the "to be quilted" bin.  I totally forgot about it.  I decided to load it diagonally on the longarm for a fun, "organic", straight line effect.

I am in a Facebook group called Kathleen Tracy Quilts.  This little quilt was a design in that group.  You can ask to join the private group here.

I set the locks on the carriage.  It took less than five minutes to quilt.  I purposely did not space the diagonal lines in any way for that "organic" look.  The lock on the carriage gave the piece nice, parrallel lines of quilting.  This will most likely end up on a table topper somewhere.  The dense quilting makes it nice and flat for that.  Stay tuned for a quick finish...

WIP Wednesday 6.29.22 -- The One With FOUR Finished Projects!

 Here's what happened this week:

This cute quilt belongs to a friend.  I longarm quilted the Jesters pattern on it for her.  It turned out lovely!  This quilt went on and off the frame so fast it was never added to my WIP list.

Iced Lollies crib quilt (designed by Latifah Saafir).  It was my one main goal (OMG) to finish this quilt in June.  It finishes at a cute 35.5" square.  I started this quilt 2.26.22.  Check off another item from my list.

This finished pillow case with a zipper is for my sister-in-law.  See the details here.

I just realized that this is the fourth project that was finished this week!  Last night I finished quilting a patchwork squares quilt that was made by a friend.  This quilt has a mattress pad in place of batting and turned out fine.  It was dark.  No closeline shot for this one.  Hopefully it will be returned to the owner today and another one will be picked up.

The navy blue blocks are finished for the Random Ohio Star (Bonnie Hunter design).

Definitely workedk through more blue scraps making all the HST for the Three, Six, Nine quilt.

My sister-in-law gave me some hens and chicks this week.  She has a really green thumb when it comes to flowers and plants.  I'm more of a gardening girl.  I did think that the plants that she gave me along with a few of my own look cute in this unused chicken feeder.

I'm linking up with Susan for Midweek Makers here.

41 Items remain on the WIP list.

My WIP number remains the same.  I actually forgot that I had a Kathleen Tracy doll quilt QA in the bin to quilt that I made from pink scraps in May or so.  41 items on my list is still MUCH better than the 90's it used to be a few years back.  I'm whittling away at this list for sure.

Pieces Need to be Cut & Sewn

 1.  Cheddar Jack cat pattern

 2.  Digging up Bones (Owen's dinosaur quilt)

 3.  HST Three, Six, Nine Quilt

 4.  Picadilly Circle

 5.  ...And Sew On BOM at Quiet Play (one block to go)

 6.  RSC16 Folk Art Birds

 7.  Random Ohio Stars -- started January, 2022

 8.  Leah Day Building Blocks QA

 9.  Dresser Scarf (My Grandma's WIP from the 1970's found 1/1/20

10.  Classic Meets Modern BOM

11.  Gypsy Wife QA started in August 2017

12.  Mod Mod QA (from Block Lotto, circles w/lines)

13.  Unity Quilt Along with Bonnie Hunter (started 4/1/2020)

14.  Rail Fence Blocks (started January 2021 as my leader/enders)

15.  Maroon Sampler Quilt--I found this on 2.6.21

16.  Kite Girl (RSC14)

17.  Amish Country BOM (from Lynn, Johnna's mom)

18.  Kathleen Tracy's 2019 Mystery Quilt Facebook QA started in March, 2019  

19.  2.5" Scraps from Dani -- making "cracker" blocks

20.  Waffle Blocks (August 2019 -- RSC19)

21.  Little Houses (2.5" blocks)

Blocks Still Need to be Made

 1.  Bluepatch Mystery Quilt

 2.  Finding Nemo Scrappy Trip quilt 

 3.  We Can Do It Skill Builder Sampler

 4.  Drunkard's Path Variation quilt

Blocks Are Made But Need to be Sewn Together (and/or Some Sashing)

 1.  Tula Pink's City Sampler 100 Modern Quilt Blocks 5/17/17 QA

 2.  Cruise blocks won from Libby

 3.  Cathy's CRAZY BY DESIGN Dot Dot Dash Bag, Won April, 2018

 4.  Split Stars (blocks won from the Block Lotto, October, 2012)

 5.  African Violet baby quilt (Block Lotto inspired)

 6.  Tall Fly (blocks won from Block Lotto)

 7.  Pre-printed cross stitch pillow sham (May 2018)

 8. Flower Baskets (blue and white with some applique) Block Lotto win 10/1/18

Quilt Back Needs to be Made (Tops are Done)

1.  Card Trick (pink and blue)

2.  Hunter Green Star Quilt

Ready to Longarm

1.  Bubble Gum Pink & Navy Quilt

2.  Plus Quilt (Be Positive) started in 2016; quilt top completed 1.1.22

3.  Rescue Quilt from my SIL (patchwork squares)

4.  Pumpkins & the Beanstalk (a 2nd quilt)

5.  GO! ABC Quilt started during the pink month of RSC21, January 2021

6.  Kathleen Tracy Doll QA

On the Frame -- Patchwork Quilt

 I loaded a friend's simple patchwork quilt onto the longarm frame.  The interesting twist about this quilt is that she gave me a gently used mattress pad to use as the quilt batting.  So far I've had no issues with it.

I am longarm quilting it with the Circle Lord Jesters design.

Here's a photo of the piece of mattress pad that I cut off of the end because it had curved corners.  It was just wide enough for the quilt (exept at the ends where the corners were curved.) That's cutting it close.

I also planted some hens and chicks that my sister-in-law gave to me on Sunday.  I think they are quite cute in this old chicken feeder that I'm not using.  Let4's see if I can keep them alive.  I may eventually have holes cut in the side.  We shall see.

Zipper Pillow Case

This is the first pillow case I ever made that had a zipper in it.  It was made for a special request from my awesome sister-in-law.  Now she can use her 14" x 18" special neck pillow and wash the case to her heart's desire.  She LOVES coffee.  I found this little piece in my stash and it was perfect for the project.

I had an idea in my head of how to do it, but with all the YouTube videos out there, why not give that a shot?  I used this Spoonflower video to make the pillow case.

But wait... there's more.  As I started watching the video I realized that I could not find my zipper foot as I rummaged through my assessories storage box.  Luckily there was this video by HeirloomCreations to not only show me how to use the zipper foot on my machine, but actually know what it looked like!  I thought I had the long, skinny zipper foot.  I was happy to find the zipper foot that came with my machine once I knew what it looked like.

Here's a better photo of it when we delivered it.  Our son and my SIL have a very special relationship.  Everyone should be so lucky to have that crazy aunt.

Isn't it fun to learn a new sewing skill?   Have a great Monday.  I'm linking up at Love Laugh Quit for Monday Making here.

Iced Lollies Complete

Here's the finished Iced Lollies crib quilt (designed by Latifah Saafir).  It was my one main goal (OMG) to finish this quilt in June.  It finishes at a cute 35.5" square.  I started this quilt 2.26.22.

I love the texture that the Jesters quilting pattern adds to this quilt.  Isn't this popsicle shape cute?

I longarm quilted it using the Circle Lord giant template board called Jesters.  I found a cute polar bear drinking cool drinks in lawn chairs print for the back.  It was also a great place to use the cute pink and blue striped scrap for binding.  Welcome summer!

I'm linking up at Elm Street Quilts June finishes party here.  Ironically the reason I made the Iced Lollies quilt is because I won a prize pack a while back as an OMG prize!  Full circle...

I'm also linking up for Oh Scrap!

I'm not sure if it met Squinty's approval.  He looked at me and just kept walking towards the food bowl.  Squinty is a cat that came here as a stray.  We can't touch him yet, but he is getting very, very close.

Scrappy Saturday -- RSC Blue

Can you believe it's time to put the blue scraps away?  Here's the Ohio Star blocks I made this morning.  These are for the quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter called Random Ohio Stars -- free pattern here.

Don't worry if they don't look perfect.  I don't press my blocks until I see where they are going to end up in the quilt.  Then I press the seams according to the direction that they need to go.

I'm linking up with Angela's blog, SoScrappy for the RSC22 (Rainbow Scrap Challenge.).  Go check out the fun!

Our son was at church camp this week.  It has been super quiet here.  I seriously miss him.  I hope he had so much fun.  Here's a pic of him with his cabin leader and the pastor of our church.  

I did make more progress in my garden.  It's starting to look good.  I'm happy that the squash and beans are appearing.  The tomatoes look happy, but I had to pull out the eggplant.  I didn't dust soon enough for bugs.  I replaced the eggplant area with Xenias.  It should be a bright, sunny spot in the garden.  The tiller stopped right there.  Hopefully I'll have more time this weekend to till the rest of the garden.  I hope to plant Stevia this year.  I also have a few other seeds from the library to start.

This is what it looked like just a short time time ago...  See, tons of improvement!

The melon patch is planted.  It will be an interresting planting experiment in this new area.

I planted some seeds that I found that I had purchased on eBay a year or two ago.  I have been wanting these "purple things" and "yellow things" for YEARS!  I believe they are called (purple) bell flower and (yellow) Primrose Missouri Oenothera.  That's what it said on the packages.  I also threw the free lupine seeds from the library along here.

It's just shady now.  Don't worry, the sun is coming.  It was nice to work in the shade for just a little while. Ironically my friend that gave me her garden tour yesterday gave me some of her purple primrose seeds from her garden.  I will be weeding the protected area in the fenced-in area to plant those later today.  I am all of a sudden totally motivated to get out there and weed that area so that I can plant her seeds!

Have a great weekend!

Baby Boy Patchwork Quilt

Yesterday I loaded and got to work on this patchwork quilt for a friend's grandson.  She made the quilt top.  I love seeing the different styles of how other sew.  Her blocks were very neatly sewn together with the seams pressed open and the seams were beautifully matched.

She got to see my mess of a quilting room and my bins of scraps.  She and her husband quickly picked the Circle Lord Jesters pattern to be quilted edge to edge on the quilt for their grandson.

She gave me a very nice, quality wide backed fabric for the backing.  She told me of a quilt store the next county over.  This 108" wide fabric was only $7 per yard!  It's gorgeous!

And just like that I finished the quilt AND delivered it to her today.

I felt bad that a corner of the quilt touched the floor and two of the squares got dusty dirt from the floor on it.  I tried to rub it out, but it seemed to make it worse.  I made sure I showed the owner.  After that I didn't want to chance getting it dirty any more and only took a photo of it on the table vs. the clothes line.

What a generous gift that she gave me.  She gave me a box of Maxi Lock thread!  I only had a few spools of neutrals left.  She also gave me some maroon and mustard color.  My favorite thing was that she gave me a tour of her flowers.  Wow, does she have a green thumb.  I was calling the flowers my usual names of purple things, red things, yellow things...  She is so knowledgeable of all the plants and what they like and need to grow.  She gave me some purple bellflower seeds and some lily seeds that were sprouting.  I even went outside this evening to weed an area inside my fence to plant them.  What a fun day with a visit!

Sunday Progress on Iced Lollies

I made a little more progress on Iced Lollies. The binding is made and attached. Now I’m pinning it to get it ready for stitching.  It's late (10pm ish). I'm watching the recording of one of my favorite shows.  I LOVE survival shows.  One of my classmates from school was on this season!  How cool is that.

Speaking of cool, Iced Lollies is designed by Latifah Saafir.  I tried to post this yesterday for my Sunday update.  For some reason I couldn't post from my phone and I was too comfy in my chair to get up and post it.  Maybe it just wanted to get linked up at Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt.

More Planting Progress

 It's hot -- 92 degrees is Ohio hot.  I still made progress on planting and gardening.  Below is an old kettle from my great grand parents.  It was used to make apple butter back in the day.  It now is retired from cooking due to a crack down the side, BUT it allows for draining and makes a great planter.  It has marigolds and volunteer cilantro in it this year.

I accidentally bought the above Christmas cactus above at a clearance price.  I thought they were the cactus that you would keep outdoors all the time.  Guess they are the kind that doesn't tolerate below 32 degrees.  I will have to bring them in for the winter.  I did find the pink watering can to replant them.

The little flowerbed in front of the house is holding two tomatoe plants -- one slicer and one sweet minis.  There's three sedum plants, spearmint, and lemon mint that I add to my teas.  There's one sad little pepper plant.  Yesterday I planted super tiny and cheap clearance begonias.  I see the cats have already started to dig them out and bat them around... woohoo... NOT.

See, newly batted plants out of the ground...

Here's Grey the Duck visiting the new coral bells planted on the side of the newly moved chicken coop.  These plants were a steal at 50 cents each.  I was definitely at the right time at the right place at that grocery store.  I still need to work on the back of the coop.  The bricks need to be removed, the piece of wood needs painted, and the dirt needs filled in.  It's too hot to shovel right now.  

Here's the coral bells that I purchased to replace the ones lost in the move.  These are caramel.  The ones in the above photo are fire, crimson, and something else...  The dead-looking stems between them is chocolate mint that I purchased on eBay.  They are not looking too good, but because the roots looked good when I planted them, I'm going to hold out hope.  They didn't seem to smell like chocolate at all.  We  shall see.  I kept it away from all the other mints.

Bring on the volunteer pumpkins!  All of the new few photos below are pumpkins that came up from the moving process.  All of them are NOT on our property, but I'm hoping the new neighbor doesn't mow down this far.  We shall see...  There will be no weeding for me -- just watching.

For the third day in a row I have been able to start my Mantis by myself.  This time it took a little over 30 pulls... but it got going and kept running fine.  It didn't seem bogged down this time.  Hopefully I have run most of the old gas out of it.  I tilled this new area to put the melon patch.  Hopefully it will get planted today.  I feel like I'm getting started with the planting so late in the year.  I still have hope for it to produce.  I had to wait because of all the moves.  I'm sure raccoons and groundhogs will be happy for the buffet.

On Tuesday I tilled and planted this little patch up in the big field.  I could watch the pool as I finished adding water so that it could make it up to the filter while I was on top of the hill.  Hopefully Xenia, sunflowers, and Mexican sunflowers will bloom here.  I'm not sure what "Mexican" sunflowers are, but the lady that I longarm quilt for often gave me a little jar of seeds.  Fingers crossed.  I did notice the crows were interested in the area after I was finished.

Yesterday we got to finally swim in the pool.  Believe it or not, the water is already clearing up.  We have well water.  It looks icky, but we really just need to use some Metal Free and it will be nice and clear.  There was a noticable improvement since the water is high enough to run the filter.

We finished the night at bowling league.  Normally he bowls three games.  With upcoming camp and baseball he pre-bowled two more weeks since they weren't that busy at the bowling alley.  We planned on bowling six games and then coming back sometime the following week.  Well, the coach suggested he just go ahead and bowl for THREE weeks last night.  That was a lot.  He was tired.  BUT he did it, AND he improved his average.  He averaged 131 -- his starting average just a few weeks ago was 110.

I'm hoping he will sleep in a little and I will get more gardening in while it is cool this morning.

WIP Wednesday 6.15.22

 Summer is in full swing here.  Some quilty stuff happened this week.  No big finishes, but a few things got closer.

I made a lot of HST for my Three, Six, Nine HST quilt.  Black, brown, dark and bright blue HST's are now complete.  I still need orange and purple HST sets.  I can start assembling the other rows as my leader/ender project.

I made binding yesterday for the Iced Lollies crib quilt.  Hopefully I will work on that again on Sunday.

It doesn't look like much, but two rows of the garden are planted.  Tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash are ready.  The big news is that my Mantis tiller can be started this year.  It takes about 20 pulls, but it starts slowly and then runs!  Woohoo!  I have since tilled these rows.  I'll have to put in the tomatoe cages this week.  The garden has been moved about 20 feet from where it used to be.  I'm working to remove roots and rocks and re-condition the soil.  I won't be adding new chicken manure until fall.

A little garden of vining plants is being planted here today.  I need to till and then plant.  Hopefully there is enough sun.  This will be a melon patch.  I took this photo from the same spot as the other garden photo.  It's not far from the other garden, but nothing has ever been planted in this spot.  Stay tuned for more updates.  Our local Marc's store had an end-of-year plant sale.  Oh the poor, young sales associate that was announding it to all the women my age outside.  Plants were approximately 90-95% off.  Beautiful hanging baskets were only $1.  I only got a few annuals and perrinials.  I need to make more places to plant them.  Stay tuned for more pics of plants and gardening.  It's going to be in the 90's here today.

Our son, Owen, turned 15 this weekend.  His big gift this year was a drum set.  This should provide HOURS of entertainment.  My husband said it would fit perfectly in the quilt room where the mini trampoline is.  I told him it works out better with the lighting in the garage.  LOL.

Here's a YouTube video if you would like to enjoy the full sound effect too.  LOL:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BXBs1lsWoME

Caution:  Our YouTube channel -- TheShahann -- is very raw.  There are NO professional videos.  Ha ha.

Some of the up-coming YouTube videos will feature us enjoying the new pool.  The old, smaller pool lasted about 10 years!  We definitely get out use out of it.  We bought this one at the end of last season.  It's ready for fun.  My husband did the extra work to put the sand under it and the stones around it.  The solar panels have not been placed yet.  I just finished filling it with water yesterday.

The water finally made it to the filter.  Hopefully my hot, pool boy --  AKA husband -- will play with his pool water testing kit and learn new pool math as to what needs added to make it clear.  Well water has a lot of metal in it.  I expect it to be clear early next week.  We shall see.  We are swimming in it today.  The icky color is just because of the metal in the well water.  It's not slimy or anything.

I'm linking up with Susan for Midweek Makers 336 here.

42 Items remain on the WIP list.

Pieces Need to be Cut & Sewn

 1.  Cheddar Jack cat pattern

 2.  Digging up Bones (Owen's dinosaur quilt)

 3.  Rock Island Campfire Quilt

 4.  Picadilly Circle

 5.  ...And Sew On BOM at Quiet Play (one block to go)

 6.  RSC16 Folk Art Birds

 7.  Random Ohio Stars -- started January, 2022

 8.  Leah Day Building Blocks QA

 9.  Dresser Scarf (My Grandma's WIP from the 1970's found 1/1/20

10.  Classic Meets Modern BOM

11.  Gypsy Wife QA started in August 2017

12.  Mod Mod QA (from Block Lotto, circles w/lines)

13.  Unity Quilt Along with Bonnie Hunter (started 4/1/2020)

14.  Rail Fence Blocks (started January 2021 as my leader/enders)

15.  Maroon Sampler Quilt--I found this on 2.6.21

16.  Kite Girl (RSC14)

17.  Amish Country BOM (from Lynn, Johnna's mom)

18.  Kathleen Tracy's 2019 Mystery Quilt Facebook QA started in March, 2019  

19.  2.5" Scraps from Dani -- making "cracker" blocks

20.  Waffle Blocks (August 2019 -- RSC19)

21.  Little Houses (2.5" blocks)

Blocks Still Need to be Made

 1.  Bluepatch Mystery Quilt

 2.  Finding Nemo Scrappy Trip quilt 

 3.  We Can Do It Skill Builder Sampler

 4.  Drunkard's Path Variation quilt

Blocks Are Made But Need to be Sewn Together (and/or Some Sashing)

 1.  Tula Pink's City Sampler 100 Modern Quilt Blocks 5/17/17 QA

 2.  Cruise blocks won from Libby

 3.  Cathy's CRAZY BY DESIGN Dot Dot Dash Bag, Won April, 2018

 4.  Split Stars (blocks won from the Block Lotto, October, 2012)

 5.  African Violet baby quilt (Block Lotto inspired)

 6.  Tall Fly (blocks won from Block Lotto)

 7.  Pre-printed cross stitch pillow sham (May 2018)

 8. Flower Baskets (blue and white with some applique) Block Lotto win 10/1/18

Quilt Back Needs to be Made (Tops are Done)

1.  Card Trick (pink and blue)

2.  Hunter Green Star Quilt

Ready to Longarm

1.  Bubble Gum Pink & Navy Quilt

2.  Plus Quilt (Be Positive) started in 2016; quilt top completed 1.1.22

3.  Rescue Quilt from my SIL (patchwork squares)

4.  Patchwork Squares (longarming for a friend (CM) (matress pad as the batting)

5.  Pumpkins & the Beanstalk (a 2nd quilt)

6.  GO! ABC Quilt started during the pink month of RSC21, January 2021

7.  Ice Follies pattern by Latifah Saafir, started 2/26/22 (on the frame). June OMG quilt