Pillow cases and seeds

I finally got around to making 2 pillowcases for the bed upstairs.  I love doing these pillowcases and the kids really love them too.  They are quick and all the seams are finished so they look really professionally made.  It takes about 30 minutes to make them from start to finish.  The sheets are cream and I just wanted something to coordinate with the sheets and look nice with the room.  The colors are a bit brighter than the picture shows.

I will be so happy when I can cut accurately.  For small cuts, I can do it...makes the shoulder sore but I can hold the ruler down hard enough to be fairly accurate.  For anything over about 10" inches, the ruler slips as I get toward the end.  I have issues keeping that ruler in place even when my shoulder is not sore.  Don't know why this surprises me.  I am ready to start putting stripping on the 15 minutes of play blocks.  I sewed a few more this week to add to the pile.  I think I need either 42 or 56  I will have to wait for the stripping to besure I am making it big enough to be useful.  I don't want the quilt to be square.  I will probably work on this one and the spiderweb when I go to my Dad's.  I will want something to work on at night while everyone is watching TV.  Below are the last blocks I made.  They sort of look plain and ugly.  Some of them make me want to puke they are so ugly...others I really like.  When they all go together, I like them all.  I figure I will spend three days rearranging prior to sewing the blocks together.  I also cannot decide if I want to use bright yellow or black for the stripping.  More later on that.

The other thing I have been working on is getting rid of some of my smaller strings (scraps).  You can see a few of them in the little blocks above the scrappy blocks.  When they are sewed together, the blocks that make up the square will actually be 1/2 inch big.  Miniature quilts are amazing and I think the people who make them are on some real good drugs.  The one below my squares is an example.  The quilt is 20X20 but the squares within the quilt finish at 4X4.  Can you imagine all those pieces in a 4" square.  Some that I have seen were even smaller.  Don't think I will ever be doing anything like this in this lifetime.  I don't have much hair left and this could make me pull the rest of my hair out.  I could not believe how tiny the actual stars were in the quilt.

I noticed yesterday that some of the seeds I planted last week are poking their heads out.  I believe it might be the cucumbers.  They are about 1.5 inches tall.  I can see the tiniest green in one of the other trays but I have no idea what it is.  I always say to myself...mark the tray, but somehow never do so it is always a surprise when it surfaces.  I had planted tomato, cucumbers, bell peppers and basil seeds.  I will be so tickled if I can baby those little seeds into plants and FOOD!  I usually just buy tomato plants and go from there.  Some years they do good and other years, not much of anything.  I also stuck some marigold seeds, coleus seeds and morning glories in trays this week.  I have something blooming in the yard that is way down the hill.  I thought it was a daffodil but I went down and looked at it today and it is not quite a daffodil.  It is similar to the daffodil but much larger.  Might be a mutant because the blades look like daffodils.  The bloom is very full almost like a rose.  It is really pretty.  I am going to take my shovel and camera downhill tomorrow and take a picture and then dig it up and bring it closer to the house.  So look for the picture soon.  Until we meet again....

Bonnie Hunter and scraps of a crazy woman

It was such a beautiful day today...fairly cool in the morning and warm and sunny in the afternoon.  Everything seems to be blooming and more color pops out everyday.   I actually have 2 daffodils and more blooms coming out of their little green leaves soon.  They have had the bejebers stomped out of them as Bill has been working on a retaining wall and stomping all over them...but I guess long term, it won't hurt them.

This week, I went to the sewing guild meeting and the guest speaker was Bonnie Hunter whose website is Quiltville.com.  She was entertaining, funny and quite a prolific in her quilting.  She also brought a trunk show and displayed about 20 quilts.  She does mostly "scrappy" quilts and has written several books on making quilts from shirts from the thrift store.  She had beautiful quilts and it was hard to believe that she made many them from old clothes.  She doesn't pay a whole lot of attention in assuring that every little piece matches.  She only worries about whether the fabric is  light, medium or dark and never worries about whether the actual fabrics match.  I have discovered that it seems to be very "freeing" sewing scraps together.  It will make you crazy if you "think" the matching too hard.  It will drive you slap silly and I sure don't need to be any sillier or goofier than I already am currently.

Scrappy is supposed to be just that "scrappy".  I sewed about half a dozen "15 minutes of play" blocks over the last couple of days.  I will do a picture soon.  I also looked at my scraps and decided I would put some of Bonnie's thoughts into action.  I made about 20 little blocks from some strips that were too small to sew into my spiderweb blocks.  The squares in each block came out to be only 1/2 inch when the block was finished.  Doesn't that make me sound like a crazy person???  Don't know what I am going to do with the squares, but I felt like I just saved money.  Bonnie's philosophy is that a yard of material might cost you $9-10 dollars a yard and the 2" strip that a lot of people pitch to the trash also cost you $9.00 a yard.  It explains my inability to throw away all those strings of fabric...guess I am just too cheap to waste those scraps.  And the sadder part, is that I love those little scraps.  Anyway, I sure have a problem throwing them away.  I am saving the pieces that are less than an inch in a bag also to stuff a bed for Butchie.  So none of my $9.00 a yard goes to waste.  Waste not want not....that does not ring true with fabric.  A quilter always wants more fabric.  I might just do a 4, 8, or 12 patch miniature quilt with those iddy biddy little blocks.  Then I will have an iddy biddy little quilt.  Always wanted something about me to be iddy biddy...guess it will have to be a quilt.  Several people have asked me to make them a quilt...might just do that.  hehehe!

My little sunflowers and clematus that I grew from seed got planted yesterday.  It got cold last night but they were still holding their little heads up this afternoon.  I have planted tomato, cucumber, basil and bell pepper seeds this week.  They usually do not survive, but I find the will of the little seed trying to push it self out of the dirt shows so much determination, that I sometimes wish for some of that determination.  The seeds usually come up, just don't always make it into a full fledge blooming bearing plant.  I still love to plant seeds and wait for life to spring up.  ...And then there is the time I planted those "bat" seeds and none of them came up...but that is another story for another day...Until we meet again....

roses planted not much sewing

Well, the last few days, I have pulled more weeds, planted 2 new rose bushes (with help of course), planted gladiolas, watered all my plants, sewed with my group yesterday and went to the movies (Hall Pass), worked a night at the fair selling tickets for a quilt raffle to benefit the food banks in the area..  The movie was a little racy in parts.  It seems I have been busier than a cat covering up on a hot tin roof.  Too busy to sew and too busy to blog.

My guild meeting is tomorrow and I am going to a quilt show in Mt. Dora on Friday.  I guess I am feeling pretty good cause I seem to really be busy.  The Lake County show is a pretty big show and I am meeting some of my sewing group to go.  I sure do hope I can resist buying fabrics...I will be able to unless they have some wonderful sales.  Those I cannot resist.

I had planted sunflower seeds a couple of weeks ago and they are up about 5-6 inches.  I hope they don't get too much taller because I want to take some with me when I go up north.  They sure popped up very quickly.  I also did some impatient seeds and they are starting to come up.  Clematus, more amaryllas, some daffodils and some lylium bulbs have also been stuck in the ground or pot in hopes to take some with me.  Clematus grows very good in NC, but I don't know how they grow here.

I have great big blueberries on my blueberry bushes.  I will have to take a picture if I can remember tomorrow.    I kept Miss Emily tonight and the little buggar pulled 4-5 off.  She said she was just holding them...rightttttttt!  She is a mess.  I did not get to touch my fabric or sewing machine today and not much yesterday either.  I really need to decide what projects I might want to take to my Dad's.

There is a quilt show in Paducah that I went to several years ago.  It is one of the largest quilt shows around.  I would like to grab a couple of ladies and hit the road to go to it again at the end of April.  My Aunt Comilla has offered a place to stay if I want to bring a group up.  She went to the show with me and we stayed with her the last time I went to the show.  She was shocked at the beauty of the quilts.  She had no idea that quilts were not like they used to be.  I would really like to go again and this time take my time and spend two days.  Comilla and I ran through the show as fast as we could.  It was still great but I would have liked to stop and "smell the roses" on such beautiful quilts.  We got there at 9 and did not leave until close to 9 that night.  We were both very tired.  It really was too much in one day...but worth it.  Gotta get to bed so I won't be so tired tomorrow...til we meet again......