starting on a new quilt

I have my next quilt all cut out and ready to sew.

These are the colors, and the basket to the side contains a bunch of small light gray cuts.

Normally I don't cut all my fabric completely before beginning a quilt.  I usually cut a little and sew a little...to make sure that I like the way things are going.

This one is different. I will be making the blocks in an assembly line  manner rather than completeing each block one by one.

It's a pattern I bought with someone in mind...so I can't show you how it will look and I won't be showing any photos of it until it's finished and given to the recipient.

However, I do like to work on more than one thing at a time and I have vowed to completely finish a bunch of projects that are started on and just laying around taking up space...beginning with this 9 patch that I started last year....

Since this photo was taken, I've gotten a lot more done on it so it shouldn't take long to complete.

first day of spring

First day of spring and....what?   Snow, and lots of it!  Pretty to look at.

There was a bit on the ground this morning and it kept falling. Big heavy flakes.

You can see how much has accumulated by looking at how high it is on the patio furniture in the photo below.

By afternoon it was already beginning to melt.
Just Mother Nature showing us that she will doas she pleases no matter what our calendars say!

crib quilt finished

I finished up this crib quilt for baby Drew. He was born last month to a very nice couple on my husband's side of the family. Big sister, Faith, was excited about her new little brother.

His Dad is a huge baseball fan so I searched the internet for baseball theme fabric.

I found this panel of 8 different ball player poses...

...and some cute yardage from the same line of fabrics...

Next came a lot of sketching and math and head scratching - trying to figure out a design using what I'd bought.  

I decided not to cut up the blue fabric with the baseball players on it, since that would create pieces with a bunch of random legs and heads on each. I thought it would be better to keep that fabric for the back.

So that left me with only the 8 squares cut from the panel to work with.   After even more sketching and forehead wrinkling (maybe some hand wringing too) I said to myself...

Baseball = Diamonds!

And I hunted through my fabric stash and found some fabrics that looked pretty good with the panel squares, and bought a bit of orangy red to brighten things up.

I put some thought into the lay out. I didn't want any of the ball players to be facing off the side of the quilt without any of the others ready to pitch and catch with.

I machine quilted it with my same old meandering design.  I knew the top was a smidge bigger than the back and I had planned to trim them to the same size after quilting...but with the top being sort of long and narrow any way - I didn't want to lose any width.  

So I made the binding extra wide to make up the difference. 

That worked out fine and I kind of like the wide binding. I had to hand stitch it though, because of the size.

I am happy with the results. I would have preferred the solid blue for binding but didn't have nearly enough left over.

Now off to the post office to get this mailed out for Drew.

Hope he likes it!

signs of spring

Spring must be on it's way...


Daffodils are blooming.

My Contorted Filbert is loaded with catkins.

Birds are looking for nesting spots.  This starling came down the chimney in our bedroom. Of course we didn't realize he was up there until he had managed to shoot crap on every window and the comforter as well.  

He had wore himself out flailing around so he wasn't too hard to catch, but he seemed fine when I released him outside,  

A lone turkey made a visit to see what had been dropped under the bird feeder.  The grass is starting to look green again!

Wmart had a new display of seeds and bare root plants. I couldn't resist. 

 Zinnia and Sunflower seeds and root stock of Coneflower and Hollyhocks.

I haven't grown Hollyhocks since my first mother-in-law gave me a start of them in the early 1980's.

Seeing these made me think about her.

I opened the packages to make sure the roots looked healthy. 

They do, but one of them was a little puny.

I've never bought bare root perennials like this before. I guess I need to wait until the ground warms up before I plant them.

Maybe I'll go ahead and put them in a  flower pot indoors and let them start waking up a little.

Spring can't be too far away.

flooding in our town

We had so much rain that the Salt River flooded our little downtown area in Shepherdsville.

On Sunday, the Sasquatch and I drove down to the flea market.  The outdoor area was all under water.

I guess this is normally an area where concrete statues are for sale.  Most are under water but it was sort of funny to see this Easter Island statue looking like he was popping his head out to take a look at the situation.

These two Bigfoot statues and a deer (with white antlers) look like they are trudging through the flood waters looking for higher ground.

 We started home on the road through town, but the Salt River bridge was barricaded.
We walked across the bridge. Usually you would have to crane your neck to see down to the river. Not today!

There's the downtown area...

The next day Lonnie and I drove down to take another look. 

Business owners had brought in trucks and trailers and were loading up their equipment and merchandise since the water was still rising.

The building in the photo below is our public library. Look how close the water is!

At home we had a little water getting into our basement, which happens from time to time.

This time it was leaking in through the opening in the wall where our electric panel is mounted.

Scary, but it has happened in the past. Nothing shorted out and we stayed away from the whole mess until it dried out.

So many people with worse problems than that to deal with.

Abbey of Gethsemani

My husband has been trying to get me out of the house more often.
When we had a lovely warm sunny day earlier this week (sandwiched between endless days of rain and more rain), he said we should go for a drive...but with a destination where we could get outside and walk around as well.

I scrounged up a "Kentucky Visitors Guide" and started looking through it.    In the first few pages I noticed the listing for the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown KY.
Neither of us had been there before and it was just far enough away to make a nice day trip.

Here is their website if you are interested....http://www.monks.org/

More info on Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_of_Our_Lady_of_Gethsemani

They have a visitors center where a film was shown about the daily routine of the Trappist Monks who live there.  There was also a small room with lots of photos and plaques to read about the history of the monastery. It is the oldest monastery in the US that is still operating.

The photo below is the entrance to the church, which is long and narrow and very plain looking.

We were allowed inside the gated-off visitors area as the monks filed in for one of their several daily services.

We walked around the grounds a bit.  There are two cemeteries, one for the monks, with plain small cross markers (public not allowed in that one) and this cemetery...both men and women...stones dated in the 1800s.

There are miles of walking trails on the property but there had been so much rain the ground was muddy and slippery. 

We did walk up a hill to a statue on top.   Somehow in the photo below I have a tree right in line with the statue on the hill so it's hard to make out.

They had some chairs up there so one could collapse and catch their breath enjoy the view.

We couldn't find any info about who the statue represents.  More than likely one of the saints.

It was very windy up there. It blew my ponytail apart!

Easier going back down than it was going up!

And there was a gift shop.  We had enjoyed our visit so Lonnie felt like we should buy a box of fudge to help the monks in their fund raising efforts. There were several flavors but they were handing out samples of the Bourbon Butter Walnut fudge...it was good so that's what we bought.

The monks actually make fruitcakes and fudge at that location.  The gift shop had jams, honey and more, made by Trappist monks at other monasteries as well.

They also bring in income by selling books by well known author and theologian Thomas Merton who became a Trappist Monk there in 1941 and lived there until his death.

Guest houses and dormitories for those who wish to make a retreat are offered at the monastery as well.

We left with more questions than we had when we started out...leading to a lot of discussion and looking up things on the internet.

Overall, it is a beautiful and peaceful place to visit.

a finished quilt

Well, I finished this nearly a month ago. My camera has the photos dated Jan 17th and I'm pretty sure that's correct.
I remember the snow was beginning to melt that day and I hurried to finish sewing down the binding so I could get some pictures before things got wet and slushy outside.

I had intended to have it finished months ago - because it was a gift for my lovely and talented younger sister, who was celebrating her 50th birthday.

I don't think she noticed it was late though - she was in Hawaii to celebrate the day. 

As she said...Hawaii five-oh  (50 -get it? - 50th birthday?)

It was a challenging quilt to put together. The actual piecing of the blocks was easy, but the hard part was trying to get the colors distributed evenly...and really just making decisions about which color to use where. 

 I did change a couple of things from the original pattern.  One thing was the border.

As you can see below - the pattern had a saw tooth border but I thought instead I'd like to go ahead and use up some of the leftovers of fabrics used in the quilt to make a checkerboard border.

Another change...see that large section of green and gold squares at the bottom of the quilt in the pattern photo below?   It's supposed to look like plowed/planted fields.
As I was putting the quilt together this section kept bugging me.  The rest of the quilt is made from much smaller pieces and I felt like these giant squares looked like an afterthought just to make the quilt longer...so I cut half of them off.

I also pieced some triangles for the mountains so they wouldn't look so much like pyramids. But then the snow covered tops nearly disappeared in the clouds.

The blue floral backing is not the best match but I wanted to use this fabric because it had such a soft and smooth hand (feel).

I tried something different when pin basting this quilt. It's a method I read about on the internet.

  I rolled the top on to a pool "noodle", then after smoothing out the backing and batting, I lined it all up and pinned as I unrolled the top.  It's a good system - everything stayed smooth and flat.

Here is one last photo that I snagged from Joy's facebook page.  I think she likes it!

One of these days, when she gets tired of building and piloting airplanes, parasailing, stand-up paddle boarding, zip lining, snorkeling, river tubing and all of that kind of stuff...I am going to see if she would like to come over sometime and sew quilts with me.