Busy Sunday!

Looking at the jar of split peas in the pantry the other day, I was struck by a yearning for split pea soup.  Which takes having some ham and a hambone.  So I bought one.  But hams don't come in small - it was over 11 pounds!  So I invited my parents and niecelet over for dinner this evening.  (I would have invited my sister too, but she was working.)  And since there were going to be more than just Wonderful Husband and I here, I made a blackberry pie (Squddle, Jazzy, and Niecelet will not eat pie yet) from this summer's berries.  And some loaded cornbread.  And since my parents were coming over, I made salsa so I could send a couple jars home with them.  And at Squiddle's request, I made hot cocoa.  (Making the cocoa and the salsa at the same time was a bit of culinary cognitive dissonance.)  But despite cleaning up as I cooked, all day long, I have still ended up with a sink and counter full of dishes, waiting for the dishwasher to be done.  Le sigh.

Yesterday, however, I gallivanted!  I picked up a present for my sister, did some grocery shopping at Winco, popped through two different St. Vincent de Pauls, picked up some things I needed at Joann Fabrics (largely to complete Squiddle's Christmas quilt), and some other things (picture hangers, Citrustrip, etc.) at Lowe's.

My thrifting score included two bedside tables for the guest room!  They're badly painted over, with the drawers poorly decoupaged with pages from a poetry book.  They are, in fact, what the aforementioned Citrustrip is for.  But they're solid wood with lovely lines, and I hope to get to work on them this week.  I also found a couple pairs of trousers apiece for the boys, some fabric, about a dozen quilting magazines, a new duvet cover, a vintage pillowcase, a kitchen towel, and a couple of Christmas tree ornaments.

One amusing moment this afternoon: when all three of the short people were wearing us adults down with the running and screaming, I busted out the paint and wooden paint-ables.  Amazing instant silence as they all worked on their projects.  Me, to my mother, a bit too smugly: "Twenty bucks at the dollar store." :)  I think I might've convinced her to get some paint and paint-ables for the days she watches Niecelet.

And, to turn this post back to the quilting I usually post about here, a couple pictures from recent projects!

I love this starry blue fabric from the back of my sister's 16-patch quilt.  I also love the line/circles/line quilting I did through the three borders.

And this is the fabric for and script quilting I did in the border of Jazzy's dinosaur quilt.  If you look carefully, you can read "triceratops."  (And see one at the bottom of the fabric, and one at the right.)

Cluck Cluck Cluck

The chickens started laying eggs a few weeks ago.  Well, at least two of them did.  I'm bringing in one or two eggs most days.  I know they're not from Sunny (Color Pack, so her eggs will be in the blue-green range) or Joanne (Buff Brahma; her eggs will be a light brown) so that leaves Roberta (Brown Leghorn), Kaya (Silver Dorking) and Sassafras (Golden Campine) as the suspects.  When I put more oyster shell in their calcium free-feed dish, though, they all had some.

Thing is, through, Squiddle wants a couple scrambled eggs for breakfast most days.  And if Jazzy or I want some as well, the egg count in the fridge remains going backwards!  I know it'll get a bit better in that regard as the other three hens continue to mature, and when spring comes, etcetera.  Still, this has me thinking I might want to expand the flock next year.  If I do, I'll need to build another run - I am not going to try cramming ten hens into a 8'x4' space!  And in any case, the new chicks, like with cats, would need to be kept in sensing range but not attacking range until the current set got used to them.

So would I want to build the same setup again, but lighter, and have two structures to shift on every few days?  Or go for an 8'x8'x2' true mobile pen without a proper coop?  And, if I do do this, what breeds do I want?  (Current shortlist: marans, barred rock, Rhode Island Red, and ameraucana.)

Thinky thoughts for winter.

Movin' Right Along...

 (Footloose and and fancy free~)

Well, Quilt #4 (that being the dinosaur quilt) is completed, washed, and in the dryer.  I did simple straight-line quilting in the sashing, and Xs in the blocks.  For the outer border, I grabbed a chalk pencil and wrote the names of dinosaurs in cursive, then quilted my writing.  I think that may become one of my go-tos - it's fun and distinctive.  I did much the same thing for the pirate quilt for my dad, scripting Jimmy Buffett lyrics in the border: "Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder, just an over 40 victim of fate." I wish I'd been able to spell out "40" but there just wasn't the space.

Striking while the metaphorical-as-opposed-to-physical iron was hot, I've started in this evening on quilting Quilt #5, which is the 16-patch.  I made a good dent into it this evening - I got to the last row of the alternate blocks before my top thread ran out, and when I loaded up the next spool I also treated myself to a fresh needle.  So that's ready to go in the morning.  I'm doing a simple Orange Peel quilting pattern in the alternate blocks, and I'm planning a slightly more complex Orange Peel variant in the 16-patches.  And probably feathers in the outer border, taking all three as one....

I'm looking down the gun at t-minus 23 days until gift giving, and two of the quilt tops aren't complete yet.  I can do this, but I need to remind myself to stay on track.

Two More Basted

 I spent parts of yesterday getting another two quilts basted and ready to go.  First up was the dinosaur quilt!

I dug around in the bins and found two one-yard remnant pieces of backing fabric (90" wide? 108" wide? dunno) that were the same print but clearly off different bolts if you looked at them right next to each other.  Together, they weren't going to be quite wide enough, so I pulled out all the bajillion 3.5" strips left over from the bright tumblers quilt I did a few years ago, and pieced a couple into a center strip:

So the paisley beige of the back kind of goes with the sandy dinosaur footprints sashing on the front?  I'm planning to bind it in straight black.

Next I set to work on the 16-patch I'm going to give to my sister:

I ran into a problem when I ran into the end of the batting on the roll.  Not that it wasn't enough - you can see the kind of pointy bit on the left which was the tail end of the batting.  It was just the right amount!  No, the problem was that the batting was 90" wide... and the quilt was 92" square!  So I had to pause halfway through, cut a leftover bit of batting from one of the previous quilts into strips, and whipstitch it on.

I also pieced the backing for this one, nicely symmetrically, I think:

I purchased the blues from all the stuff I'm storing for my quilt guild, for specifically this purpose, and the stripe down the center was from my stash.  I did my best to center the quilt top on this.

Now to label and then to quilt.  But first, cranberry sauce and pies to make!

Christmas Quilting (Do Not Panic)

 Quilt #3 for Christmas done, run through the washer, and currently tumble-drying with its matching pillowcases.  (This being the first one that's bed-sized; thus, why the other two haven't had pillowcases.)  I've pulled #4 (this one being for my sister) out of the closet and am ATM piecing together the backing.

I also dug out in the garage and found some possible backing bits for Jazzy's quilt, or maybe for the one for my mother... and also some fabric to expand the one for my mother, as it's a sampler quilt that currently measures ~50"x70".  If I put a couple borders on it, it could become bed-sized.  The problem is, my grandmother made the quilt top in the 1990s, and fabric colors and patterns are very different now than they were then!  Fortunately, I have a too-big fabric stash, and have found some pieces of the right era.  Including some that appear in the quilt!

Four and a half weeks.  Four quilts.  I can do this!

Lacing

 Today's project has been lacing an embroidery piece.  I'd previously taken it for framing, but when we got it back it was just a little crumply and not quite square in the frame.  So I took it back to Michaels and they took it out, cut some acid-free board for me to lace it around, and said to bring it back when I was done, and back into the frame it will go.

One severe pressing and oodles and oodles of white thread later, I'm done and the pins holding the fabric taut have been removed.  I've got a few heavy books resting on top of the piece right now, hopefully correcting the slight warping of the board that I didn't notice until after I got the first half of the lacing done....

Two Done, Five To Go

 The first two Christmas quilts (Niecelet's, and Wonderful Husband's) are completed, quilted, labelled, bound, washed, and in the dryer at the moment.  Next up is the one for my father (labelled and basted), but I need to shift my sewing desks around for that one, as it's larger and needs a bigger surface to lie on.  First, though, I need to prep a fabric piece for framing.

Meantime, here's a picture of the latest quilt top: Jazzy's!

It has a pair of matching pillowcases made from the fossil footprints sashing fabric, bordered with the last of the colorful dinos fabric of the outer border.

ETA: Pulled both quilts out of the dryer, folded them to store for the next month and a half.  Had to pull out a Wearable Art Fabric Marker and rewrite the labels, as the Pigma Micron writing had faded to near-illegibility.  Grr.  Labels no longer as neat and pretty, but hopefully now will last longer?  Only time and further washings will tell.