February Sky and a Quilt

I finished "Picnic in the Park" yesterday and headed outside to take pictures. My very basic camera does quite well outside in good light. I love the way the quilt looked against the February sky.










The pattern for this quilt can be found at Crazy Mom Quilts HERE and Crazy Mom's finished quilt can be found HERE.

**** If you aren't completely sick of seeing this quilt, there are more pictures on my quilting blog, Angel Scraps Quilting.

In The Sewing Room This Morning With - the Party Animal

Wow, its Friday!!!

Here's what's going on in the sewing room.

Sitting above the window.



Planning and experimenting with fabrics for a new pocketbook.



I have begun machine quilting the Picnic in the Park quilt and in fact have finished 1/2 of the quilting. I have to confess that my plan to try out various other free motion quilting designs has been postponed for now. I practiced making a simple vine with leaves on a practice swatch and made progress on it, but NOT nearly good enough to use on a real quilt, even if it is a scrap quilt. I tried quilting the vine with leaves on one square of the quilt and was not happy with it at all. I then spent an hour taking out the stitches. Yuck! I hated it.

So I returned to my old standby of simple meander quilting for now. I haven't given up on learning different quilting designs, however. You may see some different quilting designs on this blog soon.









The back of the quilt.





Practicing!



This weekend I have so many projects to work on! I want to make some mug rugs, pillow shams to go with the Farmhouse Magic Quilt, a pocketbook, start on the quilt for my soon to be born Great-Neice, finish the Picnic in the Park quilt and it goes on and on.....

Fun, fun, fun in the sewing room. Yes, I am a real party animal, right??

A Bad Habit Broken

I am happy to report that I haven't had a fast food sweet tea since my post HERE. But, just so you will know, there are many more bad habits to tackle:

1. I replaced the large sweet tea with a large Diet Cola. I hope it will be a bridge to drinking more water, and not just a bridge to nowhere!



2. I absolutely love flavored liquid coffee creamers. I enjoy all of the many different flavors Currently I am drinking "Cinnabon", "Bavarian Chocolate" and "Mocha". The sugar free and fat free types are really good, but don't come in as many different flavors. I guess I will need to limit myself to Hazelnut and French Vanilla....



My husband brings my coffee to me each morning and he really knows how I like it, with lots of the creamer!

3. I'm not a big fan of adding salt to my food. Everything has so much sodium already! I am faithfully practicing not adding salt or at least not adding much salt, to anything I cook. It really is an acquired taste and getting used to less salt is something we all need to do.



I have noticed that even the store brand of canned vegetables come in "no salt added" varieties now. I stocked up on Food Lion brand canned "no salt added" vegetables last week on sale for buy one get one free. A pretty good deal at 40 cents a can. If you combine a can of "no salt added" whole kernel corn with a can of regular creamed corn, you've got a great side dish that's not too unhealthy.

4. Chips... why oh why are the baked snacks so expensive? If I simply must have a salty snack, low fat tortilla chips with salsa are one option.



I guess that about covers it! NO SWEET TEA, LESS DIET COLA, MORE WATER , LESS SALT, LESS FAT AND LESS SUGAR IN THE COFFEE! ... AND NO CHIPS! :O(

The magic of a few scraps.

It was a very satisfying weekend of sewing, even though there was much busyness going on that was totally unrelated to sewing and quilting. People do have to buy groceries, do laundry and other things on the weekend besides sewing, I suppose.

I had such a good time making the ECU pillow case for Friday Night Sew In that I didn't want the fun to end, so I pulled out some scraps left from making this quilt for my grandson a couple of years ago,



Made a matching pillowcase,



With rickrack trim,



And bought one of these pillows from Dollar General to go inside the pillowcase. I tried to convince my grandson that sleeping with this special pillow and pillow case would make him brave when he wakes up in the middle of the night. Apparently he doesn't share my belief in the magic of scraps, but he liked the pillow and pillow case anyway.



The picnic quilt sandwich is ready for pinning on the sewing room floor. This will be my project for the next couple of nights and then on to machine quilting what I hope to be many different designs.



We delivered the quilted walker caddy to our housebound friend who was very pleased with it. It looked very neat and fit securely on the font bar of the walker with velcro.



Using fabric scraps to make useful gifts for others is an important part of satisfaction in sewing for me. Each of these three projects were made with scraps and I feel they will be useful to the persons who receive them. Its a very special gift when it is sewn with love and the magic of a few scraps.

Late Winter At The Farmhouse

(**For quilting posts, please check out my quilting blog, Angel Scraps Quilting)

What a ride its been! I looked so forward to our first Fall and Winter in the farmhouse and have enjoyed it immensely. I am a fan of Fall and even Winter. Yes, I know I am sick, sick, sick, but I am already waiting expectantly for Fall of 2011.

I took the opportunity late yesterday afternoon after work to take a walk around the yard to see what changes I could find and was pleasantly surprised to find a few blooms already.

This fuchsia colored quince bush is ushering in Spring already. What a tough plant! After all its been through, it still has these delicate little blossoms on it.



Its hard to believe its been a year since I took an identical picture of these daffodils when we first saw the farmhouse in February 2010.



After all, it is still February, so I moved inside and found some more traces of winter. Here are my Valentine flowers from my hubby:



Would you believe this is a Christmas Cactus and its blooming again!



It seems that many of you who are tired of Winter aren't the only ones. This tendril of a Mandevilla that is spending its Winter in the window of our dining room is trying so hard to get outside!!!

Chickens!

As promised, here are some pictures of chicken decor in my kitchen and dining room. Some are new, some are old and some are a mixture of both. As is normal for me, the new ones were bought on clearance or at a Dollar General. I just can't pass up a good deal on a chicken!!







For Quilting posts please go to my other blog: ANGEL SCRAPS QUILTING. Thanks!

A Glimpse of Home

*** Please visit my quilting blog, Angel Scraps Quilting, for more quilting posts****

I may be at work today in body, but this is where I will be in spirit:



This week at night I am working on a quilted walker caddy. One of my hubby's friends has requested one for his wife who uses one on her walker The one she has is worn out. He brought home measurements and a description of the one she has, which is not quilted. I think quilting it will make it more sturdy and prettier.

I am also working on the quilt backing for the Picnic in the Park quilt. I would love to have it ready for quilting this weekend.

Enjoy your Tuesday!

A Sneak Peek at Picnic In The Park

I have been working on a new quilt top that will be a play/practice quilt. HERE is the pattern from Crazy Mom Quilts. Using the large size blocks allowed me to make this quilt top in a week, which is unheard of for me. :o)

I want to use this quilt for learning to do some new free motion quilting designs, such as leaves, vines, flowers and more. This top is made completely from my stash and scraps. There are 70 different fabrics in it, some I love and others.... not so much. The backing will be made from stash, as well. It takes the pressure off when I know the quilt won't be sold or a gift. I do want to do a good job, but it doesn't have to be perfect. But, then none of my quilts are perfect anyway.

When finished, this quilt will be a great utility quilt and the name of it is PICNIC IN THE PARK. In other words I envision it as a great quilt to put down in the park for a picnic. I can just see my daughter, son-in-law and grandson having a picnic on this quilt in their neighborhood park.

It was a sunny day Saturday when I was taking these pictures, but windy! I could hardly hold on to the quilt top while attaching it to the line. It reminded me of some scenes from Little House on the Prairie when Ma and the girls were trying to hang clothes on the line on a windy day.











This week's temperatures are forecast to be nice and I plan to take my walking clothes and shoes to get in a little exercise on my lunch break, even if its windy.

My Gift Box

I love these large plastic boxes with lids that fit perfectly on the highest shelves of our bedroom closet. They also fit well underneath beds to help solve lack of storage problems. I found them at Dollar General, which has the best price too.

Here's a picture of one that I have designated my gift box. Its safely out of the way and neat.





My gift box contains odds and ends, stocking stuffers bought with Extra Bucks at CVS and the firstPillow Case I made during Friday Night Sew In in January and some things that have been there for a while that I need to go ahead and give as gifts instead of letting them hang around another year.

Its almost time for Friday Night Sew In for February! I can't wait to make another pillowcase and need to get busy picking out the fabric!

The Color Green at the Farmhouse

Green has never been my favorite color, but it has gradually become the color I am using all over the house. I've grown to really love it for decorating. So, here are a few pictures of touches of green, some old, some recently added, in the farmhouse.









I have added some new chicken things in the kitchen and dining room. I will post some pictures of them next week.

Happy Thursday!