The sun, the sun the beautiful sun

I had to cancel our Northeast Quilting Friends meeting today because the roads are so slippery. They usually get the roads prepared, but, somehow they underestimated the slickness and wrecks were everywhere.

But, the sun began to shine. Here is the sun in the foyer.

Sun in the backyard.

The sun in the front yard.

Happy Quilting!

Baby chicks everywhere

Baby chicks on the front porch in my hanging basket.  Those are cow bird eggs and robins eggs and a baby bird.

My baby chick, Chelsea Elizabeth Brunner, graduated this weekend from Western Kentucky University with a Geology degree.  Shameless mom bragging: She is The Outstanding Geology Student of the year 2008 and 2009.  She was also a Cum Lade with her grades.  And now she's off to San Francisco for an internship and then to New Mexico for grad school.  Life goes on.  

Springtime in Kentucky

God knew we needed flowers so we got some.

This is the view out our front door.

I've planted these iris' around the yard in a variety of places and this is the first year they have bloomed in several years. We've been going through a lot with my daughter's cancer, but, these flowers make me smile.
There's even a potential of some roses that also haven't bloomed in years, yes Jesus loves me.


This is our backyard, not a lot of flowers here, just faeries. There are some iris planted at the top of the stone steps, leading down the hill,but, they are buds right now.

It's springtime in Kentucky so there are lots of flowers and birds. This is a robin in the dogwoods in the front of our house.

What's a front porch in the south without a fern hanging? And this is I don't know what kind of bird that has built a nest in my fern. Far be it from me to destroy a nest, so this will be my nature experience for a while. Maybe it's a little sparrow, my girls love it when I sing that Dolly Parton song...smile...

Nest photos to follow.

A quilt grows and a cowbird mystery...hmmm

First the quilt. It's a really big quilt. We have a king size bed and it needs to be large on the face of it and then comes the borders to hang over the sides. I like combining appliqué and piecing so the quilt will have an appliquéd outer border, with vines and tulips. If you click on the label of this post, pink and brown scrap quilt, you should be able to see all the work I've been doing on this quilt, as well as the book the pattern is from.


Now on to the next example/lesson for adding the borders. I usually like an inner border to set off the quilt, but not always. In this case I have added an inner border, which is light brown with polka dot to frame the inside of the pink and brown hour glass/nine patch quilt. I don't know what I'll name it, maybe something will hit me as I write.

Anyway, I like to tear my fabric. As long as it's good quality fabric you should be fine doing that. Especially for borders, where you are cutting many yards of fabric, tearing is easier than wearing out your hands. This is a great quality Northcott brand fabric. To me, their fabric is close but not exactly like, Liberty of London fabric, which is like butter. If your fabric is not so great, you might get a lot of thread pulls when you rip, so check a small piece before you tear. You will get some little ripples, but, should not have any deep thread pulls.

I also like a mitered border. When you are tearing your border fabric, be sure to add extra fabric in order to make the miter. You will want an extra amount of at least the width of the border and I add a couple of inches more for good measure. You can always cut fabric-it's harder to add to something. Sew your inner border on first, miter it, then attach the outer border. To miter it, fold the borders on top of each other and draw a line from the seam of the inner border out to the end of the mitered outer border. Pin and sew on the line. Trim the seam and iron. Repeat on all the sides. The next time I work on this, I'll be adding my applique vine and flowers, using the Quilt in a Day method of applique and using the Fast Turn tool for the vine. But, this post is getting pretty long, so it's off to bird land, my other favorite hobby.

Has everyone turned on their air conditioner? We are still trying to save some money and have 4 fans running-2 pointed in the house-2 pointed out of the house to really circulate the air. So far, it's 85 degrees outside and I'm working with a sewing machine and iron and am staying comfortable.



The cowbird, I've only recently learned, is a parasite of sorts. It likes to lay it's eggs in another birds nest and lets them sit on it and raise it.

Anyway, the other day I opened my front door and noticed the floral wreath had fallen off the door. Underneath the wreath lay a broken egg. I thought, OMG, someone in our neighborhood doesn't like us! What did I do? Was I driving a little too fast? Should I have gone to that party, but, had other plans...hmmmm....

Upon further inspection, I realized the egg was splattered away from the front door. Not towards it like someone throwing it at us. Then I noticed is was really small with light brown speckles.

So I went upstairs and don't we all just love the Internet for the answer to anything? Sure enough, that egg matched the egg of the cowbird and don't you know, that bird has been a regular visitor to our bird feeder. So mystery solved!

We worked outside all weekend...

The weather was truly spring like and beautiful. We worked outside all day-both days. Well, mostly my hard working man, husband, whose name is Bob.

I got to supervise, take pictures and hold the ladder....all in all we got a lot done and it was a good day.

This is a picture of my garden girl statue. Someday, I want to incorporate her into a quilt. Will get right on that after I finish my other 2032 projects started...smile...life is pretty good....