Home Sweet Home

The girls and Rudy are finally in their new home, late on Sunday afternoon we moved them to the new home!  I still have a few "little" things to finish up but those will get done as the summer progresses. 

 They spent the entire night last night on the roost outside, I'm hoping that they will figure out that I expect them to go inside at night like they did in their last home.  The girls have already figured out that the nesting boxes are exactly where I wanted them to leave their eggs!

The have nothing to fear with Midnight on duty.  When they were out back in the other coop there was an "outer" fence to keep the dogs away from them (that fencing was not as well built as this one) so they are getting acquainted with each other.   

Now that this "little" project is finished (for the most part) I hope to get a little sewing done!

Failure with FNSI

Unless working with power tools, hammer, wire, and wood, etc. counts I was a failure at getting anything done for FNSI.  I worked on the coop until well after 6pm last night and didn't have the energy to go into my sewing room.  So if you go to my previous post you will see what I got done yesterday instead of FNSI!

Almost Home

 A good part of this week hubby and I have been outside working on this.................

This weekend we will try to finish it up, we still have to make a "people" door for the yard, enclose the rest of the yard with fencing, put on the roof, put in a roosting pole in the yard area, some hooks for an outside waterer and feeder, a screen for the inside window, and a few other small loose ends.  I would like to have this finished up this weekend, we have had this coop since March, and I want to add several more ladies to the bunch!  If the weather is cooperative and barring any other unforeseen circumstances I think this goal is very achievable.  



In the above photo you can see that hubby had me cut the frame and roof rafters so that the roof would slope a little.  He has done all the "math figuring" for this project, we built the walls on the ground and then carried them over and voila they fit.  While I would rather be sewing than using power tools it is nice that I will be able to stand back and look at what I built with my husband's help!  The even better part of this project is that all of the wood that we have used is from our scrap pile out back, we will have to buy some hinges and a latch for the door but that shouldn't be too pricey, the fencing we have also had for quite some time, hubby has a habit of acquiring things, that he is not always sure how they will be put to use.

Here are the roof panels, they have been in a pile out back for quite a few years, finally a use for them, I just need to hose them down a little!  These should help to provide shade in the summer and keep most of the snow out of the yard area in the winter! 



Friday Night Sew In

I haven't done Friday Night Sew In for quite some time, this coming Friday night, June 17,  is the next one.........are you game?  Not sure what I will work on yet, probably one of my many WIPs, I really need to get moving on the two Civil War quilts!

You can click here to sign up or click on the FNSI box in the margin. 

Have a great day!

P.S.  I just wanted to let you know that I do read all the comments that you leave me, I used to get an e-mail with the comment that I could then reply to......that doesn't seem to happen with all of the comments, just some that is why I haven't replied to some of you, not sure if it's blogger of if some of you have changed settings on you comments.

Pick it Apart, Part II

My last post contained a bit about applique, well I forgot one important part...............what happens with the freezer paper after you attach it to the quilt. 

You will need to applique the piece to the quilt in the method that you are most comfortable with, I chose to do it by hand, I tried sewing two with the machine and the batik fabric is not a forgiving so it didn't look as nice as the piece I did here.  Here is a photo of the leaf being hand appliqued................

 In the above photo the blue leaf is one that I machine appliqued and I think it "shows" too much for my taste,  this quilt will be a great opportunity for me to improve my hand applique skills, LOL. 

Below you can see I finished appliqueing the yellow leaf and have turned to the back of the quilt, the scissor point is on the fabric that is behind the leaf, you need to snip a very small opening in the one layer of fabric behind the leaf, (the freezer paper is just below this layer)  to allow you to cut away some of the fabric under where the leaf is..........

 Below you can see what it looks like after I cut away the fabric, the white is the freezer paper on the back of the leaf, so as you can see you only cut away the fabric that you appliqued onto leaving about a 1/4" from the stitching.

Then you are going to reach under the seam and lift up the freezer paper, if you were good and used only a small dab of glue as mentioned here, it should just come right out.

 Here I have taken the freezer paper out.

I hope that I didn't make this sound too complicated, if you have any questions or notice something that doesn't make sense let me know and I will try my best to answer questions.  Off to stitch more leaves!



Pick it Apart

I know that I have mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating, when you are looking at a quilt that you might like to make........pick it apart, that will help you to see just how easy or difficult it will be to make.  So while I was putting together the June block for the Tonga Rhapsody quilt I decided that it would be nice to show a few photos of the pieces in segments............

In this photo you can see that the corner segments are made up of three half square triangles and one four patch, the center is just a square and the middle segment is made up of a square and a two strip segment. 

 Sew each row together............

 The finished block.

See how easy that really was, I think the combination of the colors makes this quilt look more difficult than it really is, it took me less than an hour to put the whole block together.  Next month I will try to remember to take photos before I do any sewing.  When I look at a quilt that I like I break it down by block then I break each block down to the pieces that make it up, this helps me to see what is involved in the making of the quilt. 

After I completed the above block I moved on to making more of the leaves for the Vintage Scrappy Nine Patch.  Below I will attempt to show what is involved in making these applique leaves, sorry that some of the photos are not the best.

The first step is to trace (from the template in the instructions) the leaves onto the freezer paper and cut them out on the lines, here are the cut leaves..........

Next is to select the various fabrics, in this case I was using batik scraps that I used in the quilt.

I then put a small dot of water-soluble, acid-free glue stick to the middle of the non-shiny side of the freezer paper leaf and place it onto the fabric, making sure that there is enough fabric around the paper to cut a 1/4" of fabric beyond the edges (you will see what I mean in the next photo), then cut around the paper leaving the above mentioned 1/4".

After cutting the leaves I then took the iron and pressed the edge over onto the shiny side of the freezer paper, the shiny side allows for the fabric to "stick" as you see in the photo below.

You will have to use a small amount of the glue stick to "tuck" the flap on each end of the leaf.

The finished leaves.................

 I use a few SMALL DOTS of water-soluble, acid-free liquid basting glue on the edge of the backside of the fabric to attach them to the quilt.

 The "dot of glue" goes on each side and at each point..........

Then put in place on the quilt, now it's ready to be appliqued.  I did try machine appliqueing two of the leaves and don't really like the look of it on the batik fabrics so I will be doing these by hand.

Hope this was helpful, I am certainly not an "instruction writer" but I hope I didn't leave out any major points, if you have questions just ask.  I learned the above "applique prep" from the Kim Diehl workshop, it is also in the front of all of her books. 

UPDATE:  I will be posting how you remove the freezer paper after the leaf is appliqued to the quilt top in the next few days.  Thank you Jackie for letting me know that I forgot that one important step.

Tonga Party

Yesterday was the first of two days of hot humid weather, I got my work done early and spent the afternoon in my sewing room.  I will be doing the same today, tomorrow will be nice with more seasonable temperatures by then I will be ready for outside stuff.  Here is what I got done yesterday afternoon.................

 The Scrap Basket Blossoms (above) designed by Kim Diehl is now officially a flimsy!  I really had fun learning machine applique and will be making many more of her designs in the future as well as using the machine applique in many other projects.

I got the second Tonga Rhapsody block done and today I will get the third one finished then I will be "caught up" with this BOM.   Below are the fabrics for month three, this one shouldn't take very long to it is mostly half square triangles along with simple squares and I think a few rectangles!

I am not sure what I will select to work on after I get the Tonga block finished, may be the Scrappy Vintage Nine-Patch, I have lots of leaves to get done, or maybe the Garden Basket blocks, still have lots of stitching??

Well off to get a little laundry done and a little housework done then into the sewing room.

Coop Site

Here is what we have done thus far on the coop area........

 I painted the trim to match the house, not sure if I should do the top of the nesting box with the brown or not, what do you think??  We still have to move it ahead a little and then level it in position.  Next step will be to make the cage area for the outside, we are hoping this area will be large enough if not we will expand at a later date!  I have some "landscaping" plans the finish up around the area, but that is the fun stuff and has to wait until and the other stuff is done, LOL.


I will take photos of the inside another day, we have a few little things to finish up inside, like the screen that will cover the window (the one that came with the window is not secure enough) and we think we need to make some kind of window on the large door so they will have more ventilation in the summer.  The next few days are going to be triple H days outside so we may not get much done, not sure yet.   Some of the minor stuff may get done after they have begun occupying their new residence!

Stay cool.

Machine Applique

I spent the afternoon yesterday working on the machine applique project I started at the Kim Diehl workshop I attended last month. 

 For those of you that find cutting the back of your applique, it's really not that scary, LOL.

 Here's what the center looks like this morning, I will be adding the borders soon, each corner has a pieced block.  In the right corner of the photo below is the first block from the Tonga quilt, a reminder to me that I need to work on months two and three!

Kim Diehl's machine applique technique is very easy, the prep work can be used whether you decided to hand applique or machine applique. 

Have a wonderful day!

The Best Yard Sale EVER!!

The plans for today were to stay home and putter..........I had one errand to run so I thought I would check to see if there were any yard sales near where I was going, there was one that advertised "country/primitive crafts" so of course I had to check it out!  It turns out that I knew the woman  and she had some wonderful stuff, she also pointed out that she had fabric that she was selling for a friend!  Within a few minutes I realized that I would need a box to put all the yummy fabric that I was finding, I managed to limit myself to two boxes, LOL. 

Here's what I found........

 There are lots of pieces that were over a yard, many 1/2 yard cuts and many that were fat quarters size or somewhere in between.  I also found a few nice pieces of wool.  I found a few pieces of batting that were large enough to use to practice on "Miss J" , my new mid-arm quilting set-up.

The pieces in the above and below photos are completed and ready to be quilted!

 A completed tea-stained stitchery.

There were also some partially completed things, a bag full of half square triangles, a BOM that hasn't been touched, only the border is missing.

I also found this group of goodies at the same yard sale, I collect salt glazed pottery so of course I had to have the lamp and Christmas plate, there are two Longaberger baskets, the cloth liners are not my style, but I have lots of fabric I can use to make new ones.  The lamp and one of the baskets are sitting on two pairs of black plaid curtains, found some candles, a fun little wooden box, a ladle, and some dish towels and fabric napkins that I didn't include in the photo!

I also found this cute little dress, the hem and neckline are not finished but the rest is finished.

Here are some goodies that I found yesterday at a yard sale, I really liked the frame and thought that I could use it for one of my finished projects at a later date.

Coming soon.......updated photos of the progress of the chicken coop area. 

Hope you have a wonderful Sunday!