Binding in a Windstorm

I don’t have a hero shot of the purple and green quilt yet. I finished sewing down the binding yesterday as a windstorm was blowing outside, so there was no chance for a picture. The windstorm was intense, although not on the order of the one in March 2020. We didn’t lose any trees. The lights flickered a few times but the power stayed on.

I had a heck of a time finding a good binding for this quilt. I wanted something a shade darker than the outer purple border to pick up the dark purple in the chain blocks. My stash of Kona purples didn’t suit, nor did any of the stores in town have the right color. I looked at Moda Grunge. I looked at Moda Marbles. I held up my swatch of border fabric against every purple fabric in the quilt store and finally one popped out. It was a geometric print (Kimberbell), which didn’t fit with the floral design at all, but when I folded it on the bias, it looked enough like a flower to me that I went with it.

I like the way it looks on the quilt. It’s dark enough to pick up the purple in the chain, but it’s also got a lighter purple in it that is the same as the border color.

And it looks nice with this giant floral-y watercolor print on the back:

Done and done. This design needs a pattern. If the weather forecast holds for the week, we may be getting cold temps and snow again by next weekend, so I’ll be looking for some indoor work. And it’s probably a good thing I never got the peas planted. On Saturday—which was gorgeous—we pulled the black plastic off a section of the garden and I raked up all the dead vegetation and burned it.

Before the storm hit yesterday, the husband and I went out and pulled the plastic back and secured it with bricks and rocks. That half of the garden is now ready for planting. I’ve still got a few weeks, yet, to tackle the other half.

While I was in the garden, the husband was doing more yard cleanup with the backhoe. That was a frustrating process, though, because our fire department kept getting paged out for out-of-control grass fires. We had something like three calls in the space of two hours. He’s got one or two days a week to get things done here, and when our volunteer firefighters—no one gets paid, not even the chief—spend big chunks of their days off putting out other people’s fires, nothing gets done at their own homes. We had slash piles burning, too. I also felt bad for the dispatcher. She was paging out rural fire departments left and right and you could hear it in her voice that she had had enough. The husband finished out the day on a mutual aid barn fire call down the road with the neighboring fire department. He also went to an out-of-control grass fire that got into the timber just as the windstorm was ramping up yesterday.

Grass fires happen, I get it. The wind shifts or increases and things get away. (Yesterday’s windstorm had been in the forecast for several days, however.) People assume that when there is an emergency, “someone” is going to show up in a timely manner. This is especially true of people who move here from larger metropolitan areas. With so many people moving into our valley, our resources are getting stretched thin.

I started the binding on the wallhanging last night. I’ll have it done this evening. I have one more quilt basted and ready to quilt—a charity quilt, not my own design—and it might be a good one for practicing more ruler work designs.

Hero Shots

The weather finally has cooperated enough for me to take some outside photos of my quilts. When I was a guest on the DIY Channel show “Knitty Gritty” way back in 2004, the knitted object that was the topic of the show—in my case, an Aran-themed afghan—was referred to as “the hero,” so you may think of these as the hero shots of my quilts.

The lighting inside our house is abysmal. I much prefer outside shots in diffuse light, either an overcast day or in the late afternoon, but in Montana, those conditions are only available from about March to October. The rest of the time, the snow is reflective, it’s too hard to get to certain spots to hang things, or the light is too weak. One of my favorite places for photos is the side of the woodshed. The north side has just enough of the right kind of light in the afternoon. (I did not edit any of these photos and the colors are fairly true.) I also like the rustic backdrop. I started with the Bear Paw baby quilt:

As much as I love the spiral square quilting, I think it did cause the linen/cotton fabric to stretch a bit around the edges. Oh, well, it’s a baby blanket, and it feels amazing. Again, it’s a great pattern and one I’ve added to the “go-to patterns” pile.

This is the Under the Big Top quilt:

I still have a soft spot for this quilt. It may never be my most popular design, but it’s one of my favorites. I need to finish this pattern.

And I finally got a good outside shot of Cobbles and Pebbles:

I plan to take as many outside and close-up shots as I can this summer so I can add the photos to my patterns.

The Beginner’s Choice wallhanging is trimmed and waiting for binding. I took it with me to the quilt store yesterday to do a “show and tell” with the ruler class instructor. I was the only customer in the store, so the staff and I stood there and looked it over and did a post-mortem on my quilting. (They had lots of positive comments.) The instructor asked me to bring it to the class in May. I also chatted with the owner of the store about possibly teaching some classes, but I won’t say more than that until and unless it happens.

[We were having drinks on the veranda last night and after I told the husband about my conversation with the quilt store owner, he said, “You just want to teach, don’t you?” I guess I can’t get away from it.]

I’ve got about half the binding sewn down on the purple and green quilt. I need to write that pattern, too. And the one for Beginner’s Choice. Writing patterns involves a completely different part of my brain and I have to be in the mood to do it. I got a good laugh from a Facebook post yesterday by a fellow knitting designer. She was writing a pattern and decided it was a good time to take a break after she had written “Figure it out your own self” on the pattern. LOL. We’ve all been there.

Ruler Work Synthesis

This is a long post, so pull up a cup of tea and settle in.

The other day, I felt compelled to get the basted Beginner’s Choice wallhanging out to be quilted. If you will recall, this is a Laura Wheeler block that I believe was intended to be simple—a nine-patch composed of squares and half-square triangles, which would indeed make it suitable for a beginner—but somehow morphed into a much more complicated block consisting of trapezoids and chisels. I have not been able to find the simpler block anywhere, but the more complicated ( = not beginner) version appears in both Jinny Beyer’s Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns and in the BlockBase program.

I made a wallhanging featuring this block using Christmas fabrics. I was mostly playing around, although this is on the “to be re-done and published” list for a future date. I can’t tell you exactly what motivated me to get it out and work on it, but clearly my brain had some itch that needed to be scratched. I know that wanting more practice with my longarm rulers factored into the decision.

One of the first things Angela Walters said in the class I took from her was that no one gets better at machine quilting without practice. (That holds true for most things.) I have worked hard at adopting a mindset that will allow me to play around with my quilted stuff without assigning super-high expectations of perfection. Angela Walters is in my head a lot:

• Practice, practice, practice!

• Done is better than perfect!

• Every master was once a disaster!

I very much appreciated the video in which Angela shared some of her very first longarmed quilts and pointed out just how awful they were.

The last couple of months have been a journey of getting to know the Q20 and forcing myself to quilt things other than loops. But I find myself getting caught up in quilting design decisions—as if designing the actual quilt top itself wasn’t fraught with a myriad of choices—and having to fight my way through the various pieces of conflicting advice I am hearing. I said to the husband yesterday that I know why some people buy longarm machines on frames and hook them up to computers. Letting the computer quilt an edge-to-edge design is infinitely easier than custom quilting.

But I am determined to master this.

I’m going to take a short detour here. A phenomenon I saw in knitting also appears to have infected the quilting universe. I started knitting in the 1980s. Somewhere around the early 2000s, a group of younger people found the craft, but they wanted everyone to know that what they were doing was “not your grandmother’s knitting.” I found that phrase annoying and ungrateful on so many levels. It is possible to be modern and edgy without denigrating what came before you as primitive and unsophisticated (which it most certainly was not). That attitude has made itself known in quilting, too, and it has caused me no end of whiplash:

“Don’t use polyester batting—it makes your quilts look like 1980s comforters,” only to discover that most quilt designers use either two batts, one of which is polyester or wool, or a 50/50 blend of cotton and polyester. (The explanation is that they travel and hang better on display without wrinkling because of the polyester.)

“Don’t stitch in the ditch—that’s for grandmothers” only to discover that a lot of custom quilting relies heavily on stitching in the ditch.

I am juggling a whole lot of conflicting information in my head and trying to gel it into something that makes sense for me. Read that last part again. FOR ME.

I spread out the basted wallhanging and looked at it. Amanda Murphy advises to “quilt the bones” of the design first. Quilt the structural elements and the parts you want to emphasize and then go back and add embellishments. I knew I wanted the black ribbon-y pieces to stand out, so I started there.

You have to remember that I was trained by a group of Mennonite quilters, and my personal aesthetic has always been more traditional than modern. I very much like the look of quilting 1/4” from the seamline better than stitching in the ditch. I quilted inside the “star” that was formed by the black fabric ribbons:

My first thought was to do some kind of filler within the star I had just outlined. I don’t like dense quilting, though. Quilts with so much thread in them that they could stand up by themselves don’t appeal to me. That was too large an expanse to leave unquilted, however. I spent a solid couple of hours looking through Amanda Murphy’s books and watching YouTube videos and looking at my collection of longarm rulers, hoping that inspiration would strike.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the wall of longarm rulers at the quilt store when I saw the Handi-Quilter “swag” collection. These are four rulers that can be used alone or in combination to make swag patterns. I had no idea why at the time, but I sensed that I needed those rulers, so I bought them. Lo and behold, the two largest swag rulers have cutouts in the middle that can be used for making other designs, too. (I love tools with more than one use.)

The largest swag template had this teardop cutout. I got out a sheet of paper and a pencil and started playing around. (Did anyone else have a Spirograph growing up?) If the pointed end is placed in the center of a circle, a flower forms. If the rounded end is placed in the center of a circle, a different kind of flower forms, one that reminded me of a poinsettia.

I placed these in the center of each star, which added enough quilting to satisfy me. I quilted partial flowers in the partial stars along each edge. That left just the border to be quilted. Once again, the swag templates came to the rescue:

The border wasn’t deep enough for me to use all four, but the three smallest swag templates worked perfectly. I finished off the quilting with rays of straight lines in each corner. I’ll get it bound this weekend and take a picture.

This simple wallhanging—which was made as a way to test a block—feels like a milestone to me. Ruler work and custom quilting are becoming good friends of mine. That’s a bit unexpected but certainly welcome.

I should have several finishes to show off next week, so stay tuned.

Ruler Club and the Swish Template

I had a nice chat with our pig supplier yesterday morning. I am planning a trip to Alaska to see DD#1 and DSIL and wanted to make sure that the dates of my trip don’t coincide with more livestock arriving on the farm. We confirmed the order and the dates and I went ahead and made my travel plans. I will have to get a covid test before I go, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

It was sunny yesterday, but still cold. I got a bunch of paperwork sorted and organized in the morning, then went to town and ran errands. The farm store is awash in chicks now—oh, the irony—and the cashier tried to get me to take 10 more at 30% off. I hope they don’t decide to stop carrying chicks because it has been such a hassle for them the past two seasons. Apparently, after two months of not being able to get chicks delivered on a regular schedule, they got a chick shipment every day last week.

[I would have taken more chicks, but our brooder box is full.]

I ran into my friend Debbie at one of the nurseries. (She did the flowers for DD#1’s wedding.) She was buying some shrubs and I was there just to see what they had. I was surprised to see that their stock is much thinner that it used to be and I wonder what is going on. I think the owners want to sell and retire, so that may be the reason. I wandered around the greenhouses and enjoyed seeing and smelling the flowers and herbs.

The traffic, though—I know people in big cities laugh when they hear me complain, but as I explained to the husband over dinner, I have an idea in my head of how long errands should take based on having lived here for 28 years. That schedule has gone all to pieces in the last year or so. It took me 15 minutes to drive a one-mile stretch of road yesterday. Part of the problem is (special) people who insist on trying to drive and park in places where they don’t belong, which gums up the traffic flow for everyone else.

I made it to the quilt store in time for my ruler class, though. This month, we got the “Swish” template, which joins the On-Point template from last month.

Handi-Quilter runs these ruler classes in six-month blocks, from September to February and then again from March to August. I probably will keep taking them as long as the store keeps offering them. Each series has a theme. The theme for this series is “Borders,” which is great because I can never figure out how to quilt designs in a border. Our instructor showed us some very cool ideas for this curved-line template, though, so I might try it out soon. (I really need to learn to quilt feathers.) I picked up a “center-zero” tape measure at this same store, which will help me lay out and mark my designs.

I think I like ruler work because unlike free-motion quilting—which is done without a net—ruler work provides some underlying structure to the design. “Quilting,” as it pertains to putting designs into fabric with thread, will never be my strong suit, however. For me, it’s a means to an end, not a way to express my creativity. That happens with the fabric and piecing.

The husband watches a YouTube channel put out by some guy in southern Oregon who owns a heavy equipment/big rig repair business. He drives up and down I-5 in Oregon and California fixing stuff. I can tell just from the few episodes I’ve watched that the guy is brilliant, although I wish there were subtitles because half the time it’s like watching a film in a foreign language. I ask the husband a lot of questions. Last night, I learned how to chase down a broken solder joint in the electronic control module of a logging truck. Who knew. The husband reminded me that every trade has its own terminology.

Potatoes and Paws

While I was at church on Sunday, the husband planted potatoes.

We try not to till much in the garden anymore, but this section needed some compost dug into it. Between the chickens, the pigs, and our compost bins, we have no shortage of soil amendments. And when we can get rotted straw, that’s a great addition, too.

It was windy and raw again here yesterday. We are supposed to be up in the 60s by the weekend. Let’s hope. I spent the day moving some quilt projects further along the pipeline. I quilted the Bear Paw baby quilt, after spending an hour determining proper settings on the Janome. (This is straight-line walking foot quilting, which is why I was using the Janome and not the Q20.) I started with the settings I usually use when quilting on the Janome: blue dot bobbin case, Aurifil 50wt in the bobbin, Signature 40wt on top, a Microtex 90/14 needle, and tension set at 4. I could not get a suitable stitch. In the end, I went back to the regular red dot bobbin case and switched to a universal needle and that did the trick. I did the square spiral quilting with the lines about 1/2” apart.

The batting is Luna Kyoto, a 50/50 bamboo/cotton blend. I don’t think I’ve ever tried this brand before, but the quilt store had crib size batts, so I bought one. That batting and the Essex linen fabric are a nice combination. I went with a quilting cotton for the back and had just enough navy blue Kona binding already made up to go around it, with 4” to spare. I’ll sew that down some evening this week. This was a quick, fun project and the tutorial has been added to my list of favorite go-to quilt patterns.

I also made and attached the binding to the purple and green quilt. I decided to make bias binding, not because I have to navigate curves, but because the print I chose looked better as binding cut on the bias. I used my Accuquilt cutter to cut the binding strips and that worked really well. That binding has been attached to the quilt and I’ll get that sewn down this week, too.

Ruler Club is this afternoon—we get a new Handi-Quilter ruler and a quick lesson in how to use it. I am curious to see which ruler we get today. Last month was the on-point diamond. I’m finding that I really like the Handi-Quilter rulers. I have the Bernina set of rulers, too, but they aren’t quite as user friendly. The class schedule from the big quilt store in Spokane arrived in my mailbox this week, and I’ve already circled half a dozen classes I’d like to take between now and July. They are offering a class on using the Bernina rulers and I am tempted to sign up for it.

I have to replant all my zucchini seeds. A little rodent got in and dug them all up and ate them, as well as some of the melon seeds. The cucumbers appear to have escaped unscathed. I was hoping it wasn’t destructive chipmunks because they wrought total devastation three years ago. The husband set up traps and we nabbed a mouse yesterday morning. (I took a picture to text to the husband, but I’ll spare all of you.) Hopefully it was the culprit. I might rig up some kind of wire screen over the replacement tray of zucchinis, just in case.

Everything else looks great. The tomatoes have come up, the cukes have come up, and the tray of lettuce sprouted. Ali, Mike, and Elysian also have seedlings coming up. If it’s going to be nice this weekend, I’ll try to get the peas planted. The peeps are doing fine. I had to have a talk with Dave—one of the roosters—yesterday, because he wasn’t following the afternoon scratch grain routine. It’s kind of a complicated routine, so I won’t try to describe it, but he was not where he was supposed to be when I went into the coop. We had a short discussion in which he looked at me with one eye and then the other, and then he scooted back outside. My roosters are so goofy. They do know their names, though, and they will come when I call them.

Ambition, Foiled

The husband had an ambitious to-do list yesterday. I usually don’t decide what I am doing on the weekend until I find out what he has planned, in case it’s a project where I can help. The first item on the list was planting fruit trees. We had the two apples from Costco, and while he dug holes, I ran up to Susan’s and picked up the Westfield Seek-No-Further and Northern Lights apple trees that she grafted for me. She also gave me one called Hidden Rose (AKA Airlie Redflesh). She gets the most interesting varieties. Her DSIL’s dad also loves to graft and grow apple trees, so the other Westfield Seek-No-Further start is going to their place in Kellogg, Idaho.

All the holes were dug by the time I got back. We are putting these new trees in the front yard with the rest of the apple trees:

The new trees are hard to see because they are just skinny whips at this point. (That black blob is Lila, our project supervisor.) This is looking north on our property, toward the back of the old garage that was here when we bought the property in 1994.

This picture is deceptive. The day was sunny—sort of—but with a stiff, raw wind. We got two of the trees planted and then the pager went off for an out-of-control grass fire. (We didn’t burn because it was too windy, but apparently, other people didn’t check the weather forecast.) The husband left to get the engine and I finished planting the trees. Just as I got back to the house, the wind picked up even more and it started snowing. By the time the husband came home from the fire, snow was covering the ground, but then the sun came out and it melted. Those squalls kept coming, on and off, for the entire day.

Welcome to Montana.

He had wanted to plant potatoes, but it was just too raw out there to be digging in the garden. Instead, he put compost around all the trees and made sure the new ones were protected with wire cages. My friend Anna had gifted me two large bags of Brussels sprouts, so I trimmed and roasted those and finished the last of my MIL’s Guidepost sweaters. Those will get boxed up and mailed this week. Neither of us had the most productive day, but oh, well.

FedEx delivered this:

I am trying a Ruggable system. These are the ones that are supposed to be washable. We have always had area rugs in the living room, but Lila hauls in a huge amount of dirt. She has quite a few “mud wallows” around the yard that she loves to lie in, and all that topsoil ends up in my living room. She’s also had some accidents on the rugs—those have been happening ever since we got her as a puppy, and it’s usually because she drank a whole bunch of water and needs to pee in the middle of the night. (Of course, she doesn’t pee on the vast expanse of wood floor, which is easier to clean up; she pees on the carpet.) I threw out the last stained and dirty rug and went a few weeks with nothing on the floor, but that room is too big not to have some kind of carpet. The walls are painted brick red. I picked this pattern in hopes that the dirt would be less noticeable. The system consists of a grippy pad—I bought the extra-cushy one—with a thin, flexible, obviously petroleum-based carpet on top. The top layer can be peeled off and thrown in the washer.

We’ll see how it works. I want my house to look nice, but it’s a constant battle out here on the farm.

Runs Like a Deere

This is the emoji you text your mother when you find out she is buying a tractor:

It speaks volumes, LOL. (That was DD#2.)

I said last year that when I turned 55, I was going to go shopping for a riding lawnmower, because—as much as I appreciate the exercise—it is getting to be too much for me to mow our acreage with a push mower once a week during the summer. I hadn’t planned to go shopping quite this soon, but we were having a discussion about mowers in the homesteading chat group yesterday morning, and as I needed to go get chicken feed anyway, I thought I’d look at what was available in town.

The Kubota dealer had no riding mowers in stock and couldn’t tell me when they thought they would get more inventory. The young man I spoke to tried very hard, though, to convince me that I needed the $7000 zero-turn radius commercial machine with the 54” mower deck. I have no plans to start a lawn care business.

The sales guy at the John Deere dealer had a much more relaxed approach. He asked me what I needed, listened to my answers, then gave me the pros and cons of riding mowers versus zero-turn radius mowers and showed me models in a range of prices. I took the information home with me, intending to discuss it with the husband over dinner. As luck would have it, he was home—passing through between jobs—so we had our discussion, decided on a model and accessories, and I headed back into town to make my purchase.

[Somewhere on this planet is a picture of me, about age 15, sitting on my grandfather’s John Deere riding mower. I was the grandchild willing to drive that behemoth around the yard, so the job of cutting the grass fell to me. I remember that that mower had a manual clutch. It might have had power steering, but I rather doubt it. The rational part of my brain thinks that nostalgia is a lousy reason to buy something (says the woman who drives a BMW because her boyfriend-now-husband had one in college), but I looked at that John Deere tractor and was transported back in time 40 years. When the husband blesses an equipment purchase, though, I feel okay about it even if it involves less-than-rational decision-making on my part.]

The dealer has to bring the model I want up from Missoula—everyone is short on stock—but I was able to test drive the same one, an X384:

Tractors have improved considerably in 40 years. This one has a hydrostatic clutch with forward and reverse pedals. We chose a model with four-wheel steering, which I tested by doing figure-eights in the parking lot. It will not be hard to maneuver this machine around our trees.

There are lots of optional accessories. I can get a snowblower, a snowplow, a rear blade, a bagging attachment, a sun canopy or even a full enclosure, and a trailer. I added just the bagging attachment and the trailer for now, but I can see where having a snow removal attachment would be helpful in the winter.

Our chat group discussion reminded me, once again, that men and women have vastly different approaches when it comes to homesteading tools. The whole discussion came about because one of the women, who is younger than me and a single mom, mentioned that she was picking up her new tractor. (Hers is similar in size to mine, but a different brand.) I asked what machine she chose, and as soon as the guys found out I was looking for one, they bombarded me with all kinds of advice, which boiled down to two things: 1) Bigger is better and 2) Sexier is better.

[I’m not going in the direction you might think I’m going, but that sums it up nicely.]

The husband is a bit like this, too, but practicality is foremost in his decision-making. He also has had to listen to me complain for 30+ years about machinery designed by men for men. We have equipment here—the brush hog mower comes to mind—that I don’t use because I can’t operate it safely. That mower requires upper body strength I simply don’t possess. Sometimes smaller and more basic is the right choice. Having this tractor will allow me to do stuff around here in ways that are manageable for me without waiting for him to break out the heavy equipment. And this machine will go places, like the garden, where the access is too tight for anything larger.

Because I spent all day shopping, I did not get anything else done. I still need to put the borders on the baby quilt, make the binding for the purple and green quilt, and sew the last couple of rows of the Flower Garden quilt together. I think we might finish up burning today, though.

Hold On, Spring

I was sewing upstairs yesterday afternoon when I heard what sounded like thunder. The problem is that lots of things sound like thunder around here:

• Snow sliding off the metal roof

• Trees falling down in the yard

• Kids running across the porch

• Car accidents in front of the house (we had someone wrap his truck around a tree in our yard about 10 years ago)

• Actual thunder

It took me a few minutes of investigating to realize that it was, indeed, thunder. And it was accompanied by snow! And wind! Yay. I love Montana.

I was good and tied myself to my office chair yesterday morning so I could finish the tax prep. The construction company tax returns are done and filed, but all of that information is kept in QuickBooks and is easy to give to the accountant. The other two businesses and our personal stuff take longer. Because the IRS extended the deadline for filing, I’ve let that slide longer than I should have.

My reward to myself for completing that task was to make a baby quilt. I need to have a supply of them on hand. Specifically, I’ve been wanting to try the Scrappy Bear Paw Baby Quilt tutorial on Jeni Baker’s website. If I am going to gift a baby quilt, it should have a Montana theme, and what could be more Montana than the Bear Paw block? I loved the chambray version that Anna Graham of Noodlehead made. Anna suggests the Robert Kaufman Essex Yarn Dyed (55% linen/45% cotton) fabric as a substitute for the chambray she used. I pulled all of the Essex Yarn Dyed out of my stash and played with some color combinations.

[I understand that stores can’t always carry entire lines of fabric, but it frustrates me when ALL THE STORES in the same geographical area carry the exact same colors. Our quilt stores carry the grays, beiges, and denims of this fabric. Hobby Lobby has also started carrying it, but only in black, denim, beige, and seafoam green. And that’s the same lineup in every one of their stores, because I checked at all the stores in Washington on our recent road trip. I think it’s a shame, because this line has some really spectacular saturated colors in it.]

I have a lot of denims and grays. I also have beige and seafoam green. I am pretty sure I also have a chunk of a chocolate brown somewhere, but I can’t find it. That’s odd. Not only is my stash well organized, but I keep a running inventory in my brain and can almost always put my hands on a fabric within a few minutes.

One nice feature of this pattern is that it doesn’t use up a lot of fabric, and even smaller scraps work for the Bear Paw half-square triangles. Speaking of half-square triangles, I took this opportunity to try out the Diagonal Seam Tape that I bought on the road trip:

My overall impression is that the seam tape is a step up from painter’s tape with drawn lines. I don’t want to dissuade anyone from buying it. My issue, I think, is more that I don’t like piecing on my Janome. I use my beloved Vittorio, the Necchi BF, for piecing. I had to fiddle with the Janome’s settings quite a bit as the Essex is just a bit thicker than quilting cotton. In the end, what worked was to use my even-feed open toe foot on the machine instead of the standard foot. I suspect that when I make HSTs, I will have to do all of them on the Janome with the seam tape and then move to the Necchi for the rest of the piecing. (I don’t want to put the seam tape on the Necchi because the finish is a bit fragile.) The seam tape does result in accurately-pieced HSTs, although I make mine slightly oversized to trim down.

This pattern goes together quickly. This is the center with the four Bear Paw blocks. I still have to add the 6” borders on each side. Those will be in the same dark blue denim Essex.

The Essex is wonderfully soft and a great choice for a baby quilt. Because that fabric is a bit heavier that quilting cotton, I plan to use a lighter batting (bamboo?) or maybe even just a piece of flannel in between. I am curious to see how this quilts up. I think I will do what Anna did with hers and quilt a square spiral.

The weather forecast doesn’t appear to include more snow (I hope), but it is supposed to be cool through next week. Except for checking on seedlings and chicks, I think my outdoor activities will be postponed for a few more days.

The Joy of Dirt

The greenhouse has been a busy place lately. I’ve got most of my veggie seeds planted.

I even have my first tomato seedling. This is one of the Dirty Girl seeds I saved from last year’s plant.

Ali came over on Monday and Tuesday to plant seeds, and our neighbor Mike joined her yesterday so he could get his started. We have plenty of space, plenty of pots and trays, and the sunshine is free. I am delighted to share. We will all have lovely gardens this season. I plant my seeds in a 50/50 mix of potting soil and compost and that combo seems to work well.

I did a Costco run Monday morning and was thrilled to see apple trees for sale!

Costco used to have fruit trees for sale in early March. My State Fair, Honeycrisps, Red Wealthy, and Lodi apple trees all came from Costco about 10 years ago. (I also had a Sweet Sixteen but it died.) The Costco trees did much better than the bare root ones we planted at the same time and have produced steadily for the past five or six seasons. Costco either stopped carrying trees or had them for such a short time that I missed the window. When I saw these, I grabbed one each of Cortland and Winesap. They also had Northern Spy, but Susan has one and says it’s a late apple and hers hasn’t flowered yet. We’ll get these planted along with the Northern Lights and Seek-No-Further that Susan has for me, and I should have a very respectable selection of apples in my orchard.

I am curious to see if we get peaches again this year as it was a fairly mild winter.

*********************************************************

I finished quilting the purple and green quilt. I had done loopy flowers in the middle section, intending to do something else in the borders, but I wasn’t happy with the small bit of border quilting I tried. I took it out and ended up doing more loopy flowers. I think that was a good choice. I don’t need to be fancy on every single quilt, and finished is better than perfect. The quilt needs a binding and then I can write the pattern for that one, too. (I am waiting for a cold and rainy day.) I’d like to remake that quilt in different fabrics. It’s a fun and quick design.

I hope that allergy season slows down soon. I am really struggling this year. The problem isn’t so much respiratory as it is itchy, watery eyes and itchy skin. I forgot to take some allergy medication Monday morning and by dinner time, I was miserable. I may look into doing a low histamine diet for a couple of weeks to see if that helps. All the foods I like to eat—spinach, yogurt, cheese, etc.—are on the high histamine food list, and I have been eating a lot of cooked spinach lately. (Go figure.)

Out of Hibernation

We’ll see if I can get through today without taking out any windmills.

I worked outside on Saturday. We have a very tiny window for burning slash piles—tiny because of the weather and tiny because of the husband’s schedule—and we would like to get as much done as possible before open burning season ends. This is continued cleanup from that windstorm in March 2020 when we lost dozens of trees.

Our neighbor, Ali, who works for the state department of natural resources in their forest management/fire division, came over for a few hours Saturday morning to help us. She set up her camera to take time-lapse photos. (When she finishes the montage and releases it, I’ll post a link to it.) These piles of brush have been drying out for a year. They burned hot and fast. The problem with spring (and fall) burning is that sometimes the wind comes up and fires get away from people. Just after lunch, the pager went off for an out-of-control grass fire south of us. The husband left me in charge of the burn piles and went and got the wildland engine from the station. Just as he was returning from that fire, though, the pager went off again and he headed off to another grass fire down in the valley.

Cleaning up this mess gives us a lot more usable area on our property. I’m not sure what we’ll do with it yet, but it’s not nearly as hospitable to ground squirrels as it used to be and that’s a bonus. We do plan to put a new driveway along the south edge of our property at some point, and our neighbors just to the south are planning to put up a fence line there. All of this should look much nicer in a year or two. We should be able to finish up the rest of the burning next weekend.

[I think I need to start shopping for a nice riding lawnmower.]

Inside the house, I took down all the insulated shades and swapped out our heavy down comforter for the lighter summer one. I like being able to see out the windows again.

We do need some rain. A weak front came through last night with a bit of wind and rain, but we could use more moisture.

*****************************************************

I am going to finish up the sewing projects I have in the pipeline: quilting the green/purple quilt, getting the Flower Garden quilt basted, finishing the Pepper and Flax top, and completing a few small miscellaneous projects. After that, I’ll reassess where I am before I start anything else. You can expect more garden and animal pictures for the next couple of weeks. Tera and her husband just got a small flock of sheep and I plan to stop over there soon to check them out. I am sure Cathy has got calves on the way. Our peeps are doing well. Piglets won’t arrive here until the end of May/beginning of June, although Elysian thinks her sow is pregnant and may have babies this month. It’s a busy time of year, for sure.

Raising the Bar

The libertarian part of me that doesn’t concern itself with things that don’t affect me directly sometimes comes into conflict with the part of me that likes to go tilting at windmills. (The husband has been known to leave for work in the mornings by giving me a kiss and expressing sympathy for said windmills on his way out the door.) I couldn’t help myself yesterday morning. I ran across such a badly-written article on a Spokane news station website that I felt compelled to e-mail the news director. The author of the article would not have passed my eighth-grade English class back in Avon, Ohio. The entire piece read as though it had been written by a child. The most egregious error was the use of the word “breached” to describe a buttocks-presentation birth. (Hello? Merriam-Webster? Google?) I did not receive a response to my e-mail but I saw, later in the day, that the errors had been corrected.

And now we reach the “get off my lawn” portion of today’s blog post. What is with people nowadays? Is it laziness? Is it ignorance? Is it sheer incompetence? Has the bar really fallen so low that some middle-aged woman in Kalispell, Montana, has to take a virtual red pen to an article on a regional news stations’s website?

This makes quite a statement (I would like to credit it but I can’t remember where I found it):

How many 18-year-old boys match this description today? My very attractive and accomplished younger daughter has a lot to say about the lack of maturity in the young men of her generation. I know that mediocrity is rampant among people of all ages, not just certain generations. I’m tired of it. And I am becoming far less willing to ignore it when I see it. Show up and make an effort.

**************************************************

I planted more seeds yesterday and will finish up this morning. The husband and I also did a recon tour of the garden to formulate a plan of attack. The potatoes need to go in soon. If it’s too windy to burn today, we might plant. I have to decide if I want to leave the billboard tarp on the spot where I want to put an herb garden, out by the strawberries. That area is terribly overgrown with quackgrass and Oregon grape. It would be better to leave the tarp on one more season to make sure that nothing survives under there, but I’m itching to plant that section.

Our neighbor, Mike, came over and I gave him some bacon as a thank-you—he feeds scraps to the pigs because the pig pasture backs up onto his property. He’s on the fire department with the husband and also works as a flight medic on the ALERT helicopter. His garden was lovely last year. He grew enough kale for the whole neighborhood, LOL.

Cobbles and Pebbles and Peeps

The Cobbles and Pebbles pattern is live in the store and on sale for the first week.

Some time between now and next fall, I need to figure out how to handle the social media end of pattern production. I am terrible about posting on Instagram and I only check Facebook when I get a notification of activity on my page. The time I do spend online is usually in a homesteading chat group, which is full of people who actually do things rather than wasting their time on social media yelling about stuff they can’t change.

As a result, there is no coordinated social media campaign to launch this pattern. I will try to fix that before I release any more patterns, but farming is the big focus for me right now. With the nice weather, we’ve also had some visits from friends and neighbors, and sitting on the porch enjoying the sunshine with people we haven’t seen all winter is important.

******************************************************

This is not my first rodeo. I am convinced that the farm store really has no clue when they are getting chicks. An employee might tell you the chicks are expected on Friday, but when you get there on Friday, you discover that the shipment came in on Thursday and all the chicks have been sold. I had a hunch the store might get a shipment yesterday, so I drove in to town midmorning. I heard the telltale peeping noises as soon as I walked in. The stock also bears no resemblance to what the chick schedule said was supposed to come in. I get a different breed of chickens every season so we know how old each cohort is. I needed black or white ones this year. There weren’t enough of one breed of either color, so I ended up with 10 black Jersey Giants and 10 White Plymouth Rocks. That works.

[I think that next year, a group of us is going to have to get together and order directly from the hatchery. I’m not interested in playing chick roulette with the farm store again next year.]

I also bought six chicks (a variety of breeds) for Susan, although when I dropped them off and she opened the box, she discovered that one was missing. We still don’t know where it went. She drove back in to town with the receipt and got a replacement.

Our peeps went into the brooder box where they settled right in:

This is a very active group of peeps. The chicks I hatched out last year slept a lot.

We made a change this year and put the brooder box in the old garage instead of the coop. The old garage stays at a consistent 55 degrees, which—along with the heat lamps—provides a better environment than the temperature swings in the coop. This also means that big chickens are not standing on top of the wire cover looking down into the brooder box. And I can pop out to the garage several times a day to check on peeps without the big chickens mobbing me for scratch grains.

I spent a few hours in the greenhouse yesterday potting up seeds. We are having a plant sale later this spring to help raise funds for our local community group, the Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation, so I am planting extra of everything. Last year, Susan gave me two Dirty Girl tomato seeds that she got from a farmer in California. (This is an open pollinated tomato similar to Early Girl.) Only one of them germinated, but I saved all the seed from that plant’s tomatoes. If they germinate, I’ll have several dozen—plenty for us and some to share. I also saved the seed from the largest Cherokee Purple and Indian Stripe tomatoes. Plant genetics are kind of fun to play with. I keep thinking that as promiscuous as my lavender plants are, the chances of a new variety popping up are pretty high, but I don’t have time to spend trying to isolate and propagate it.

I’ll plant the cukes, melons, and zucchinis today. This morning, though, I am going to assemble Bertha’s Flower Garden blocks, which I finished appliquéing last night.

The Kiss of the Sun

After a quick trip to the farm store yesterday morning (still no chicks), I went out to the garden to see what needed to be done. I know there is advice circulating around social media not to clean up dead branches, etc., until the temperatures are consistently in the 50s so as to allow pollinators to emerge from their winter homes. The problem here is that we don’t have those conditions until later in the season, and there will be other pressing tasks then. I’m going to continue to work as I always have. Yesterday was a bright, sunny day and it got up into the 50s. I worked in a T-shirt and jeans.

I got out the clippers and went after the dead canes in the raspberry patch. Our raspberry patch got very overgrown, and cleaning it up has been a multi-year project. I’m also beating back the suckers that want to take over and slowly taking out the thorny variety in favor of the thornless one. The two varieties were interplanted when we put the patch in. Thankfully, the thornless variety is more vigorous and productive.

The patch looks much better now, with better air circulation between the canes and less cover for the ground squirrels.

It felt so good to be outside moving around! I wandered around the garden to see how things were doing. The rhubarb is just starting to put up shoots. And in last year’s row of lettuce, I found this:

A few plants overwintered! We may have greens sooner than expected.

I moved some landscape fabric around and put cardboard down to get ahead of the weeds. The husband will help me move the black plastic around this weekend. The potatoes need to go in soon, too.

I still have to finish pruning fruit trees and decide where the new ones will go. Susan grafted some apple varieties for me last year. One is from her Northern Lights tree—she says that is her favorite pie apple. I am not sure it will de-throne Duchess of Oldenburg, which is my favorite pie apple, but I’m willing to try it. She tried to graft a Duchess for me last year but it didn’t take. She’s also got a Westfield Seek-No-Further for me. That is an apple I wanted simply because it’s mentioned in one of my favorite books (the Wilderness Series by Sara Donati).

I’m going to give the farm store another week, and if I still can’t get chicks, I’ll set up the incubator. A couple of hens are taking turns sitting on a pile of eggs—of course, being birds with brains the size of peas, the pile of eggs is on the floor under the nesting boxes instead of inside them. I asked the husband to leave the eggs there—we have plenty—just in case they manage to hatch out a chick or two. I usually collect eggs in the afternoon when I feed the chickens, but he’ll bring in any he finds at night when he closes up the coop, so I have to let him know if I want to let hens go broody.

Gardening season is officially underway. I will still work on sewing projects here and there as I have time, but I’ll be outside as much as I can.

I quilted the inside section of the green and purple quilt the other day. I did loopy flowers in light lavender thread:

I still have to do the outer border. I’d like to do some kind of leafy vine in that area, but I need to practice, first, on some scrap quilt sandwiches.

The GFG blocks are almost done—I have six left to appliqué and then I can put the top together. That one may have to wait until next fall to be quilted, but at least the top will be done. This is my favorite block:

I love how Bertha fussy cut the little chick for one of the hexies. I plan to put this block in the center of the top.

Another Quilt Finish

As I mentioned, the Under the Big Top quilt has been quilted and bound.

Temps are supposed to be in the 60s here by Thursday, so I am hoping to get some nice outside shots of some of these quilts later this week. For now, though, the floor of the bedroom has to do. I am pleased with how this turned out, particularly because I reverse-engineered it and was flying by the seat of my pants. Now I need to finish the pattern.

I will get the Cobbles and Pebbles pattern put into the store this week. I was reluctant to release a pattern for sale just as I was leaving town.

I sat and undid the rest of the flower blocks from their white hexie backgrounds yesterday. They had been hand sewn together with small running stitches and very secure knots. I put on a YouTube video and worked under the Ott Lite. The flowers are all pressed and starched and ready to appliqué to the Kona White background squares, which I will cut this morning. The purple and green quilt is basted and sitting on the table next to the Q20. If I have time this afternoon, I’ll start quilting that one. I’m trying to take advantage of a few crummy weather days to get stuff done or moved along in the pipeline before I start working out in the greenhouse and garden. The husband would like to burn slash piles in the woods this weekend, so that’s on the schedule as well.

There were no chicks at the farm store yesterday. One of the employees told me they might get a shipment today or tomorrow, so Susan’s husband is going to check there today and I’ll run in again tomorrow. I did get some seed potatoes—Yukon Golds and Castle Russets—but the garden center was limiting customers to 10 pounds total. (We still have some potatoes left from last season that we can use, but I like to get new stock every couple of years.) I have plenty of canning jars and lids, which continue to be in short supply, but who knows what’s going to become scarce in the next couple of months?

*********************************************************

I had a long phone visit with DD#1 yesterday. It sounds like she and DSIL are settling in to life in Alaska. DSIL is setting up the dental clinic at the Coast Guard base and she is working on getting her Alaska occupational therapy credentials so she can look for a job. Their house is right on a small bay and she said a mama seal and baby are often out there. Bald eagles are everywhere. They’ve met the neighbors and might try out a Lutheran church. Both of them love to sing and it would be wonderful if they could be part of a musical group.

DD#2 started her new job last week, which is why I spent a fair bit of time shopping and entertaining myself in Seattle during the day. She and her roommate (who is employed by an accounting firm) both work from home. They have their desks set up in the front window of their living room and the arrangement seems to suit them both. We had time to visit in the mornings and evenings. I’ve been to Seattle often enough that I’m comfortable exploring on my own.

I am glad my kids are happy and productive.

Visiting the In-Laws

Susan and I arrived in Seattle on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, DD#2 made me breakfast, we swapped cars, and I drove her diesel Jetta onto the ferry for a trip across Puget Sound to the peninsula.

Our DSIL’s parents helpfully arranged an appointment with their mechanic so we could get the Jetta’s oil and filters changed and the summer tires put on. (Snow tires have to be off by March 31 in WA state.) That also gave me an excellent reason to visit them. While the car was in the shop, DSIL’s mom and I went to a small quilt shop in their town. The store has temporarily located to a building next door while their original shop undergoes some renovations, but they have a lovely selection and I did some damage there:

I bought a length of Grunge in navy blue with teal accents, some Kona in a color called Blueprint (for binding), an older Bonnie and Camille print I had been searching for, and some wool felt. This store had several out-of-print fabric lines in the back room, including some of the Corey Yoder Pepper and Flax line. Large quilt stores tend to churn through inventory quickly. The big quilt store in Spokane rarely has fabric from lines older than a year or so. Smaller quilt stores might keep stock for several years. They often don’t have online ordering, though, so the only way to find some of these older fabrics is to visit in person.

I spent the night at the in-laws’ house rather than driving back to Seattle in the dark. I timed my departure the next morning so I could stop at another quilt store before getting on the ferry. The Quilted Strait, in Port Gamble, WA, has always been closed when I’ve driven over to the in-laws’. I arrived a few minutes before they opened Thursday morning. This store is well stocked and beautifully laid out and worth a visit if you are in the Seattle area.

I bought a fat quarter bundle of Tim Holtz fabric, some Diagonal Seam Tape—which had been a specific item on my shopping list—a holder for my spray bottle that clamps onto my ironing board, and some Valdani thread. This store had a fantastic selection of wool embroidery supplies, including the entire line of Valdani threads. These are the same ones that Primitive Gatherings uses in their patterns. I had never seen them in person. I bought several balls of the #12 perle cotton, which is impossible to find except online (more on that in a moment).

[Diagonal Seam Tape is the brainchild of Allison, at Cluck Cluck Sew, and adheres to the bed of your sewing machine much like painter’s tape. It provides clear center and 1/4” sewing lines for making HSTs and other units where you sew on the diagonal. Everyone who has used it says it’s a game changer, so I thought I’d try it.]

After I got back to DD#2’s and retrieved the BMW, I headed up toward the mall where she used to work. I had a few items to look for at Kohls and Target and also stopped at Barnes and Noble, Trader Joe’s, Joanns, Hobby Lobby, and Half-Price books. I found a book on blacksmithing for the husband.

Friday’s shopping excursion included a trip to Ikea, which is south of Seattle by the airport. I go there because it’s fun to walk around, but on this trip, the only thing I bought was a dozen lint roller refills and some small items for DD#2. (I have found lint rollers to be very useful in the sewing room.) Just a little bit further south, off of I-5, is a small town on the edge of Puget Sound called Des Moines (like Iowa), and there I visited Carriage Country Quilts. I could have spent hours in that store. They carry a lot of reproduction Civil War and 1930s fabrics, as well as tons of wool embroidery supplies, including both Valdani and Aurifil threads. Aurifil makes embroidery threads in addition to quilting threads.

[Visiting stores like this reminds me that despite the internet and the availability of online ordering, Montana is at least a year behind the rest of the country in terms of trends. It always has been. Our quilt stores carry small amounts of wool embroidery supplies—and have more stock than they did a year ago—but clearly, the wool embroidery craze has yet to reach us in full force. It is frustrating to watch YouTube videos touting all these cool projects and know that you have nowhere to take a class or even see them in person to to determine if it’s something you would like to try.]

In any case, it’s probably a good thing that my shopping time in that store was limited:

I came out with a pattern for a quilt done in wool embroidery on a linen background. The owner of the store is doing it as a block of the month kit and I briefly considered signing up for that, but settled on just the pattern. I also bought a spool of Aurifil 12wt thread to try and a small bundle of wool felt fat quarters. The wool felt in this store is hand-dyed by a local artist. Because I bought wool felt, the owner threw in a bag of wool scraps—always useful—and because it was my first time in the store, I got a free fat quarter of fabric (the flannel pig print). I certainly will be making another trip to this store the next time I visit DD#2.

My vacation is over and now the fun starts here on the homestead. The husband picked up eight bags of potting soil for me so I could get seeds started this week. Susan and I also worked out a plan for getting chicks: if I go to the farm store and they have chicks, I am buying hers as well as mine and vice versa. They have been selling out as soon as they get a shipment, but I don’t have time to camp out at the store all week. Plan B is to hatch out my own again.

The Big Top quilt is finished and bound (pics soon). I have 24 of the 42 Flower Garden blocks appliquéd:

I’ll finish the rest as soon as I cut more background squares. I am pleased with how quickly this came together. I plan to put a label on the back with Bertha’s information on it. She pieced these flowers in February 1950, and 71 years later, they finally made it into a quilt.

The Mothers Take a Road Trip, Spring 2021 Edition

I think I’ve mentioned before that my friend Susan—also known as my kids’ other mother—has a daughter currently living in Seattle, so the two of us took a road trip last week to see our children. (For security reasons, I don’t like to advertise when I am going to be away, or for how long.) We left Monday morning and drove as far as Spokane. I had some hotel points that needed to be used up and also wanted to do some shopping, so we had arranged to spend the night there. It was snowing when we left home and snowed through most of north Idaho. In Spokane, we were treated to sunshine, sleet, rain, snow, and even a thunderstorm.

I had a list of things I wanted to look for on this trip, and I confess to getting a bit carried away with the quilt shopping. As nice as both our quilt stores are, they can’t carry everything. We started at Heartbeat Quilting, where I loaded up on Signature 40wt thread and some grippy stuff for the backs of my longarm rulers:

From there, we moved on to the Quilting Bee, which is a huge store in a big barn-like building. I cannot go into this store without a list, because the sheer amount of stuff is overwhelming. I knew I wanted some of the Thatched fabric by Robin Pickens in a particular shade of blue. I’ve seen it paired with Corey Yoder’s Spring Brook line and like the way it looks. I bought that and a spool of 50wt Aurifil thread in lavender for the bobbin thread in the green and purple quilt:

We also went up to Regal Fabrics and Gifts on South Hill. This is the store where Tera and I took the collage class last November. I went in there looking for a yard of some sparkly gold fabric for binding for Christmas items, but was seduced by some Tula Pink fabric. I am not a Tula Pink fangirl, nor do I really understand the obsession. However, this fabric had sewing machines on it and I think it will make a nice quilted cover for one of my machines. As Irene, the owner, was cutting my fabric, she asked if I had seen the clearance fabric in the back room, so I popped in to take a look and found enough of a vintage reproduction fabric (at 50% off) to back the Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt when I get that one done:

I also mined the remnant racks at Joanns and picked up a couple more yards of Kona White for the Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks.

We finished our day with dinner at Wisconsinburger, which is a restaurant in Spokane where DD#1 worked as a waitress when she was in grad school, and then headed back to the hotel.

Tuesday morning dawned cold and foggy, and the sleet from the day before had frozen the car into a solid block of ice. As we headed out of Spokane, though—and climbed in elevation a couple hundred feet—we exited the cloud bank to find clear blue and sunny skies, and the weather was nice all the way to Seattle. Getting over Snoqualmie Pass has been such a hit-or-miss proposition this winter that I was glad we were able to sneak over when the weather was nice. I dropped Susan off at her daughter’s place and headed over to see DD#2. She lives in a duplex and the woman in the other half of the duplex runs an Airbnb in the basement studio apartment. I stayed there all week, which was perfect.

Washington entered Phase 3 of its reopening last Monday, although it was hard to tell that much had changed. Everyone there—especially in Seattle—wears masks indoors and out. I am willing to wear a mask when it’s requested, but some of this is verging on the absurd. I earned a glare from the lady 15 feet away from me while fueling my car because I didn’t have a mask on (she did). And while shopping at JC Penney—where I picked out half a dozen pieces of Liz Claiborne clothing to try on—I was informed that the fitting rooms are closed during the week but they are all open on the weekends, because apparently the virus doesn’t infect anyone on Saturday or Sunday. (Please don’t tell me it’s a staffing issue—even if they wanted to clean and disinfect after each use, I think they could still have ONE women’s and ONE men’s room open during the week.) Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything, and ridiculous policies like that are why JC Penney will eventually go out of business. Nordstrom has at least a few fitting rooms open because they want to sell clothing, not frustrate their customers.

These are only a few of my fabric acquisitions, but the rest will have to wait for tomorrow’s blog post.

Oh, Look—A Hexie!

I am sure by now that some of my blog readers are convinced I have ADD. I don’t. What I DO have is an insatiable curiosity about a whole lot of stuff, and that is what gets me into trouble. I am also conscious of the fact that I do not want to suck the joy out of quilting by monetizing what I do. Part of why I got burned out on knitting was that I never had time to knit things I wanted to knit. I had locked myself into producing patterns on a regular (and rigorous) schedule, so anything I sat down to work on had to have future income-producing potential. I want to give myself permission to monkey around with other quilting projects when I feel like it.

A few years ago, I happened to go into one of the quilt stores in town when they were having a “garage sale.” I bought a large plastic zipper bag containing a whole bunch of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks, which are quilt blocks made of small hexagon-shaped pieces sewn together. The name and phone number of the quilter who started the project—Bertha—were still in the bag, along with some additional hexagons and a few pieces of material. I contemplated working on it, but that was early in my quilting journey and I didn’t feel up to the task of completing Bertha’s quilt. Everything went into a plastic bin for storage.

Last week, I got the niggling feeling that I should get that box out again and look at it. I know a lot more about English Paper Piecing now, which is the usual way of making Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks. Small pieces of fabric get basted or glued around cardstock shapes, like hexagons. The individual shapes are sewn together and the pieces of cardstock are removed and re-used.

The universe must have been leading me down the garden path—no pun intended—because as I was perusing the wall of Accuquilt dies at the quilt store the other day, I saw that Accuquilt has dies for cutting both EPP templates and fabric pieces. They have a Qube for EPP, which contains dies for making many shapes beyond the traditional hexies, but I decided to start small and bought just the hexie die.

We have good supply of prayer shawls at church now, so I’m going to take a break from knitting. I am hoping to be traveling more this year (Alaska!) and would like to have some handwork projects to take along. My embroidery projects are hard to make portable because I need so many different threads. I am going to see how hexies work as my traveling handwork projects.

But back to Bertha’s quilt . . . the plastic bin contained a number of completed “flowers.” Some flowers had already been joined together using plain white hexies. The flowers themselves are made of truly vintage fabrics from the 1930s and 1940s. Unfortunately, the white fabrics are discolored and stained. Everything appears to have been hand cut and hand pieced, but without cardstock templates.

I was contemplating how to proceed, thinking that at the very least, I could make a bazillion white hexies, replace the discolored ones with new ones, and join the rest of the flowers together, when YouTube, which I had set to autopilot, decided to queue up a Missouri Star Quilt Company video about using vintage quilt blocks:

Jenny mentioned that she likes to buy old quilt blocks at antique stores. She had a whole pile of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks and decided to appliqué them to white background squares. Brilliant! That would be a much faster way to get these blocks into a finished quilt and honor all the hard work that Bertha put into making them.

I have 42 large Flower Garden blocks measuring 10” across and a dozen smaller ones measuring 8” across. The smaller ones still need to have the outer ring of hexies sewn to each other. The larger ones are complete. There are also a couple of smaller centers that don’t have the outer ring of hexies attached yet.

I pulled out a three-yard chunk of Kona White and cut a stack of 12-1/2” background squares. Jenny suggests attaching the blocks to the background square with fusible strips before appliquéing them. I set up the Janome to make a small blanket stitch edging and loaded it with white Aurifil 50wt. (A 60wt or even 100wt thread might be better, but I used what I had handy.) And before I knew it, I had six appliquéd blocks.

I’m not a purist. I will vote in favor of finished and usable before historical accuracy almost every time. Forty-two 12” blocks are going to make a nice-sized quilt, with or without sashing and cornerstones. Jenny notes that she takes an hour every morning to work on a “fun” project before starting her work sewing, so these will be my “fun” project. Everything I need is stacked in a bin next to the Janome.

And while I was cutting cardstock hexie templates on my Accuquilt cutter, it occurred to me that index cards would make excellent templates and fit easily onto the die. It just so happens that I have a box full of index cards with the names of azalea varieties on them. Grandma Milly was a quilter as well as a gardener—I have half a dozen of her quilts stored in the textile collection—and I think she would approve of that method of recycling them.

*******************************************************

I’ve got the binding attached to the Big Top quilt and have sewn about a third of it down. I should have that done by the end of the weekend. I also discovered that the quilt store in Spokane where I buy Signature thread has PDF inventory sheets on their website, so I printed them out and went through my collection of Signature thread to mark off what I already have. In the process, I discovered that I have a cone of light lavender, which is the color I want to use to quilt the purple and green quilt.

I am a bit concerned that the farm store still has no chicks. I was in there on Thursday. They have all the brooders and lamps out, and by now there should be chicks in at least some of them. The husband asked me if that was because the chicks were selling as soon as they arrived, but I don’t think the store is even getting shipments from the hatchery yet. (I have heard that some hatcheries won’t ship because the postal service is having so many issues and chicks were arriving dead.) Elysian was going to use my incubator, but when we took it out of storage, we discovered that the control module isn’t working. The manufacturer is sending me a replacement module because it’s still under warranty. She found another incubator.

I will hatch out my own chicks if I have to, but I’d prefer not to have to deal with all those juvenile roosters come fall.

Worldwide Quilting Day

Did you know? March is National Quilting Month! And this coming Saturday is Worldwide Quilting Day! A holiday just for quilters!

I hit the to-do list hard yesterday and got the green and purple quilt laid out in the morning. I am using this for the backing (this is pre-pressing):

I snagged the last 2-1/2 yards of this wideback at the quilt store the other day and got a nice end-of-bolt discount. It coordinates well with the front.

One of my blog readers e-mailed me a potential name for the quilt, so I am trying it out to see if the quilt likes it. (I know that sounds bizarre, but quilts have opinions, trust me.) Lilacs fit, definitely, but so do pansies and other purple flowers.

I pulled out some Quilter’s Dream Orient batting for this quilt. It is a luscious blend of bamboo, Tussah silk, Tencel® and cotton. We’ll see how it quilts up. I don’t intend to do any custom quilting on this one except, perhaps, in the borders. The main part is going to be an allover design. I might do flowers. I’d really like a pale lavender thread for the top, though, and I’ll have to get that from the store in Spokane.

And that border—once I got the top smoothed out on the batting—wasn’t wonky at all. I think the pile of the carpet may have been grabbing the seams when I took that previous photo. The top is now pin-basted and rolled up. I’ll start quilting it as soon as I have get the thread.

[The husband had a funny story for me when he got home. He had to use a different line pump company for a pour yesterday. It’s run by an older guy with two older employees. They were dragging the line out for the pour and one of them muttered that he was “too old for this” and said he thought he should retire and take up quilting. I wasn’t pulling a pump line around, but I did crawl around on the floor for a couple of hours getting this quilt basted together.]

After lunch, I sat down at the Q20 and quilted quadrants in two rows of circles. I contemplated doing the rest of the circles but needed a break, so I quilted the border with loops. I’ll finish the rest of the circles this afternoon and then that quilt will be ready to trim and bind. I think the Beginner’s Choice wallhanging will be up next for quilting. Do I know how I want to quilt it? No idea. We will all be surprised together.

I’ve got the Pepper and Flax quilt blocks up on the design wall. I added the beige ones and a couple in gray.

I’m still thinking on this one a bit. Having it up on the wall forces me to look at it regularly.

*******************************************************

I’ve developed a mucous cyst on the joint of my middle finger on my right hand. (Yes, I am self-diagnosing here, but it looks exactly like the photo on the website, so I feel fairly confident that I have it correct.) It is small and doesn’t bother me unless I accidentally bang my finger on something. I’m going to give it a week or two and then decide if I need to make an appointment to have it looked at. My mother has a history of having cysts in various locations that either need to be drained or excised, so this is not unheard of in my family. I am inclined toward conservative management ( = do nothing) unless it starts to interfere with my daily activities.

Our neighbor across the street texted me late in the afternoon and asked if I wanted to walk with her. She and our other neighbor usually walk once a day when the weather is nice, but our other neighbor is visiting her daughter. I put on my hiking boots and headed out. We walked about a mile and a half down our road, then turned around and came back. It was a gorgeous day:

Unfortunately, our next walk is going to require that we bring gloves and a trash bag, because there were an appalling number of beer cans along the side of the road. The amount of trash that people are leaving all over the valley—including mattresses and furniture—is increasing exponentially. Idiots.

Darning in Ends

I’ve been sewing together the last few Guidepost sweaters knit by my MIL so I can package and send them, and it occurred to me that I haven’t finished—as in sewn together—a sweater in over a decade. Apparently, when I left knitting behind, I really left knitting behind. Those skills were right there when I needed them, though. Like riding a bike.

I started quilting the insides of the circles on the Big Top quilt. Each quadrant gets quilted separately.

Custom quilting takes a long time. Hand quilters wouldn’t think twice about this, but on a machine, this kind of quilting involves a lot of starting and stopping. I am being a bit OCD and darning in all my thread ends. The Q20 has a feature that makes a securing stitch at the beginning, but I just don’t trust it. So I pull my bobbin thread up, quilt the section, and when I am done, I grab the self-threading needle that I keep in a pincushion next to the machine and run the thread ends into the batting. It takes a few extra seconds—and over a quilt like this with a lot of little sections, that can add up—but that step makes everything neat and tidy. I did it in knitting; I can do it in quilting.

Once the circles are quilted, I am going to quilt the border and then trim and bind this one. If I think it needs additional quilting in the open sections, I can always go back and add more. For now, though, I need to keep moving projects through the pipeline.

[And I need to stop looking at BlockBase+ or figure out how to clone myself so I can get more done.]

I pulled out the Corey Yoder Pepper and Flax blocks and put them up on the design wall, and then I got out her new Spring Brook fabrics to see what I could add that would finish off that quilt. Another half-dozen blocks and some assembly and I can cross that one off the list (and put it in the growing pile to be quilted). There will be plenty of Spring Brook fabric left from that fat quarter bundle to make at least one other quilt.

This what needs to be done, quilting-wise:

• Post the Cobbles and Pebbles pattern for sale in the store (that will happen this week).

• Quilt the Beginner’s Choice wallhanging and decide if I want to make a quilt version with that block.

• Quilt the Lilac Chain green and purple quilt (its current working title, but if anyone wants to contribute suggestions for a name, drop them in the comments). I need to get thread for that one as I have nothing in light purple or light green.

• Finish quilting and binding Big Top and write the pattern.

• Write the patterns for Beginner’s Choice and Lilac Chain.

• Decide on fabrics for Duck Duck Goose, which is the block I designed that needs to be made into a quilt. The block told me that was its name so I am going with it. Also, I can’t find it in either EQ8 or BB+ or online, so I am claiming it as an original block design and will contribute it gladly to the quilting universe.

• Start the Slabtown Backpack.

• Make some new tops for spring.

I just need to stay accountable to this list and not be distracted by anything else (coughBlockBase+cough). Wish me luck.

Hello, Daylight Savings Time

I know people hate switching to Daylight Savings Time because they lose an hour of sleep, but I welcomed it because now my body has stopped feeling like it was fighting an abnormal schedule. The fact that we have to figure out how to pass laws to get previous dumb laws repealed—Washington state has been trying to eliminate the time change for several years now and can’t seem to get it through the legislature—is a ridiculous commentary on just how useless government can be.

I don’t care which time change we eliminate, as long as we stop this nonsense. Also, it wasn’t the farmers who wanted this, because cows cannot tell time.

I came home from church yesterday and worked on quilting Big Top for a few hours. I made enough progress that now I’m motivated to get it done. I just needed to get over that “middle of the project” hump and get to a point where I could see the finish line. My ruler work continues to improve:

I’ve got to do a thread resupply soon. I am keeping a list of colors I need and will get them from the longarm quilt store in Spokane that carries Signature 40wt. I wish the stores here had it, but they all seem to be fans of Mettler thread. I am not.

************************************************

It was warm enough yesterday for the husband and I to reinstate our late afternoon habit of drinks on the veranda. I’ll need to hang up the shade curtain and the hummingbird feeders soon.

We use that time for daily briefings and strategic planning. I asked the husband what he thought about the current building boom here. Northwest Montana has a history of boom-and-bust cycles. We ran into that when we moved here in 1993. We deposited a huge chunk of money from the sale of our Pennsylvania house into one of the local banks, intending to use it as a down payment. A few months later, I went back to that same bank and attempted to get a mortgage for $30,000—an amount that was less than half the purchase price of this property because we had such a big down payment—and they refused. The loan officer told me that they wouldn’t loan money to self-employed contractors because the bank had gotten burned in the previous housing boom in the 1980s. That same bank did, however, give a much larger mortgage to some people we knew who moved here from the east coast, because the guy was employed by the local semiconductor company. That couple also had a mortgage on a house in Maryland, and he was laid off by the semiconductor company less than a year after they moved here. Apparently, though, the bank saw them as a better risk than the husband, who has never been unemployed in his entire working life and is now one of the most sought-after concrete contractors in the valley.

[No, I’m not bitter. Needless to say, we switched to a different local bank.]

In terms of building and real estate, 2020 was nuts. Out-of-staters were buying property sight unseen. Interestingly, the paper had an article last week about a 455-home development west of Kalispell that had gone through the entire planning and permitting process, and at the last second, the developer pulled the plug, citing lack of labor and lumber prices as the primary reasons for halting the project. (I am not sorry about this, for obvious reasons, but it was a shock to see the story.) I wondered to the husband if we are at or near the top of one of those boom-and-bust cycles. I just don’t think this is sustainable. I think that part of the reason we haven’t been completely overrun is that we do not have adequate internet service here for people to work remotely. We can’t even get YouTube videos to play during our church service without a “your internet connection is unstable” message appearing on the screen. Also, we have snow. And bears.

The husband is already booked well into the summer, so it doesn’t appear that 2021 is going to be less nuts than 2020 was. He doesn’t think this is sustainable, either. I guess we’ll find out.