2016 Garden

Here's a picture of my "new" garden this year.  I call it my new garden because I've never planted anything in this field before.  My husband wanted corn... that's a long story... 

You can see my "old" fenced-in garden where my chickens now reside in the very back of the above photo.  I have water and electric in this area!  I'm such a lucky girl. 

I tilled this morning.  I didn't start planting the garden until after June 12th this year.  (We had snow in May!)  Below are pictures of my garden near the house.  (My husband plowed the field and finally fixed my Mantis tiller.)  He hasn't done anything else since.  Guess it's my baby...

We have tons of wildlife that like to feast on the garden goodies:  deer (a mama and her twin fawns live in the woods where it is cool by the creek, wild turkey--the last time I tried to count them the three hens had 23 chicks with them!  SEVEN fox -- don't bother the garden much and seem to keep the raccoon, skunks, and possum away!  Horray for the fox!  Luckily the neighbor two houses down free-ranges his chickens, guinea fowl, and turkey.  That is still providing a full buffet for the fox at our house and they seem to leave my chickens alone for the time being.

This is all the garden I wanted to do this year, but my husband had bigger things planned for me. In my little raised bed right by the house I have zucchini, yellow squash, green peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, parsley, lemon mint, and CORN.  (My husband wanted me to plant corn before I had the other garden plowed.  I planted SIX stalks of corn as a joke, but they are coming right along.)

You can see the six stalks of corn in this picture.  LOL.  Cucumbers are growing on the edge by the steps.  My tomato cages are parts of a old tv antenna that I cut with the cutting torch.  They make very sturdy tomato cages!  They are just odd heights.

In the top left corner of the above picture you can see the rust colored ocean container.  That is my "barn" for all of my chicken and garden things.  It is next to the garden that is in the first picture of this post.  You can see how it is out in the open for all the wildlife to dine.

Summer Solstice QA -- Flying Geese

Here are my 8 flying geese for the instructions this week for the Summer Solstice QA at Happy Quilting.  I'm linking up with Melissa Cory's blog, HappyQuilting.

At first I was totally confused why we needed 8 of these for one block if it's the center block.  Duh.  These must be for the outer blocks.  I may re-think my center color.  I have solid pink as my other color and lime green as my surround color.  Then again, maybe I'll just go with what I have.  I must be meant to be.

It pays to link up!  Here's what I won for linking up last week from Shabby Fabrics.  Melissa left me know that I was a winner on Thursday.  This package arrived in the mail on Saturday!  Not too shabby.  This company knows how to keep their customers happy.

 

Quilting Complete on 2017 Tea Raffle Quilt

I longarm quilted the 2017 Spring Tea Raffle Quilt for my local quilt guild.  Circle Lord Swirl quilting to the rescue.  It's my go-to longarm template.

The back is made with extra wide fabic.  It is one piece.  It turned out great.

Now for binding.

Guild Raffle Quilt on the Frame

This quilt is on my frame.  This will be a raffle quilt for my local quilt guild.  It's a very large quilt.





I was distracted by cleaning up my area to keep my mind free of wandering and being overwhelmed by scraps.  My 9-year old son LOVES to sort scraps by color.  I put all of my tubs on his trampoline and left him sort.


Quilts to longarm (mine and customers).  Guild Projects and Guild Orphan Blocks.  Aaaaahhh.  This is so much better.  Guild items were in clothes baskets.  I need to keep these safe and clean.  I am helping make up "quilt bags".  Each bag contains orphan blocks or a quilt that needs a little work (basically a WIP.)  I take a few bags to each meeting.  Members take a bag as they leave and work on that quilt for the month and then return it to the next meeting.  Eventually a finished quilt happens!

I need a better way to store my batting, but this is it for now.   I'm not interested in mounting them on the wall, because this is our unfinished living room.  Eventually all this quilt stuff will be upstairs.

Fun scraps all neatly sorted by color!

Ugh.  These bins still need sorted.  They are all my neutrals and misc. non quilting fabrics.  I still haven't figured out what to do with all that non quilty stuff.  I used to sew garments, but there aren't many fabrics here that I would want to make something special.  Many of these were thrown away by somebody else.

Here's a pic from across the room.  I'm standing in front of my longarm.  I'm so lucky to have such a large room for this right now.  Please don't ask when the house will be finished.  It's also a WIP.

Q3 FAL Goals

Q3 proposed finishes (Finish Along)

Goals for Q3 set!  I'm linking up at A Quilter's Table here.

To Complete:

1.  Christmas Quilt for my friend's mom. (It's on the frame!)

2.  Finish this baby quilt.  (Top is complete.)

3.  Finish Summer Solstice quilt with Happy Quilting.  (I just finished the cutting stage.)

4.  Finish Bonnie Hunter 2015 Mystery quilt, Allietare!  (Top is complete.)

5.  Finish Celtic Solstice (Bonnie Hunter Mystery 2013).  The top has been complete.  The crazy pieced back still needs to be finished before quilting.

6.  Finish December 2014 Block Lotto Big O blocks that I won 12.31.14!  The quilt has been put together as a top.  The back has been made (one fabric).  It needs to be longarmed and a binding.

7.  Finish a Customer's Flower Sampler quilt (Lisa).  This quilt needs to have the back made larger and then longarm quilted and binding.

 

 8.  Finish Sew Sweet Simplicity (Customer Quilt) for Maxine.  The blocks are made and need to be put together and then longarmed and bound.  (I also need to find the blocks that I inherited.  Her things still need to be sorted. :(  )


Here's one of the beautiful blocks.  I need to do something special for each center.   

9.  Complete my Amanda Murphy Designs (ugly fabric quilt).  This quilt has been on my WIP list for far too long.  It's not ugly at all (it's just a fabrics that I got in a swap that someone else didn't like.  But that was way back in 2012! 

10.  Figure out how to sash and border and finish my kite girl quilt.  It was a RSC14 project.  I love these little kite girls!  They really deserve to be finished.

10.  Make a cute baby quilt out of these fabulous kite blocks.  Accuquilt sent me this kite die so that I could be a die tester.  I haven't finished the quilt yet.  I love these cheerful colors!  Now that my fabric scraps are sorted by color it should be a simple fix.  All I need to do is cut and sew!




11.  Finish this sweet 16-patch baby quilt.  This is one of the FIRST things I hope to finish this year as it is my OMG to finish in January.




12.  Complete this Country Roads Mini.  It was a mystery at Humble Quilts for 2015.




13.  Finally complete my Amanda Murphy Designs (ugly fabric quilt).  This quilt has been on my WIP list for far too long.  It's not ugly at all (it's just a fabrics that I got in a swap that someone else didn't like.  But that was way back in 2012! 





14.  Finish this auction quilt for our local quilt guild.  (Top is complete.)





15.  I agreed to be a pattern tester for Bea at Beaquilter.  She sent me a gorgeous baby quilt pattern that is Accuquilt die friendly!  I have all the dies on a pile.  My helper picked fabrics today for the pattern that has a deadline of 8/1/16.

Here are my fabrics for this quilt (not 100% decided yet.)

16. This is my first red/white/blue bed quilt. It was part of the Spangled Stars QA at Susan's blog, Quilt Fabrication.  It is a king-sized quilt.  I need to make a back and then finish it. 

 

17.  This is my Classic Meets Modern QA at Sew at Home Mummy.  I have all of the blocks complete.  Now on to the sashing, back, and quilting and binding...   Here are my blocks:

18.  I doubt if I'll have time, but I'm going to throw this quilt in with my Q3 goals too.  These are blocks that I won in the Block Lotto.  All of the blocks made it home by February, 2015.

New Playground for the Chickens

Because of the SEVEN fox on our property, my chickens are confined to the fenced-in old garden area.  They have a lot of the grass and other green plants eaten down to the ground.  For fun I give them a half a bale of old hay (rough cut) that I got free on Craigslist.  Luckily I got a whole truckload of the stuff that I keep in the barn.  I rototill the ground beneath the hay area.  They love to scratch for treasures, bed in it, and then find a nice place for a dust bath.

Even my two chicks that one of my brood hens hatched have their own play area.  They aren't very high in the pecking order and get picked on a lot.  I make sure they always have their own everything.

Here's "Eaglett" eating feed from the watermelon bowl.  Chickens LOVE watermelon!

The ducks have a small pan for water (where the one duck is.)  I expanded their swimming area to the repurposed turtle sandbox this year since I bought four more ducks for a total of five.  This breed of Ancona ducks don't really need water.  If they are not raised with water when they are young, they don't really need it.  I like to give them a small amount so they can keep cool and clean.  This breed lays six eggs a week (each)!  That's a lot of eggs!  I LOVE duck eggs.  They are great for use in baking.  The ground is wet in this photo because I just cleaned and dumped the pool.

Here some of the poor young chickens are searching for cicadas.  We had TONS of them this year.  They seem to be gone, but they still get up and walk the fence just in case there is a stray.  They also LOVE Japanese beetles for a healthy snack.  The box they are sitting on is the brood hen/chick box.  I built is when I got the baby ducks to keep them separate.  It is not in use right now because everybody goes in at night together in different coops and I have no need for it.  I can also use it as my chicken "hospital" when one needs to be kept separate.  Luckily I don't need to do that now.

I'm linking up with The Chicken Chick here.  It's a blog hop party!

WIP Wednesday 7.6.16 -- WIPS with Friends!

Finally, a place where I can show my WIP Wednesday progress.  It's WIPS with Friends!.  It's over at Mama Sparks World blog here.   Link up now!


I'm also linking up with the Needle and Thread Network.  It's another fun Wednesday linky party.




I've been making a lot of progress lately!  I'm going to only show a list of current projects on my WIP list.  Sometimes you need to show the reality of things and not the pretty.  LOL.  Here's what happened this week:


1.  The binding is half on the yellow/green charity quilt.  Expect a Friday finish.

2.  Also under the crib quilt you can see that I printed off the July BOM for Quilt Doodles!

3.  In the JoAnn Fabrics bag is the fabric purchased for the customer quilt that needs longarmed and finished. 

4.  Under the JoAnn Fabrics bag is the 12 Days of Christmas quilt that is all quilted and trimmed.  It just needs a binding.  (The customer cut the binding.  I haven't checked that out.)

5.  The white bag in the front of the picture (below) has some lime green scraps in it so that I can make a few blocks for The Block Lotto this month.

6.  This quilt got loaded on my longarm frame!  (No photo of it on the frame...)

7.  I got all of the cutting done for Summer Solstice QA (at Happy Quilting).

8.  I pulled the fabrics needed for pattern testing Beaquilter's  cute pattern.

9.  I finished this inherited WIP quilt for a Friday finish!





10.  AND bees came to live at our house!

What a great week!  I worked on 9 quilting projects!!!  AND made progress!