Catching up...and some new sewing....

This is a photo heavy post, believe it or not.....I have been sewing!!!  :)  I'll get to all of that in a few minutes but first I'm sorry that I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I do thank you for all of the emails of concern.  I have just been feeling a little down, just aggravated with life I suppose.

First my quilting machine was down for what felt like forever, then once I did get that fixed and back I had to rush and stress over getting the quilts quilted before my surgery.  If you remember I even had one lady to pick her quilt up at the hospital that morning.  Then I had my surgery and first she said I would be down for 2-3 days but it was more like a couple of weeks!  I wasn't expecting that at all!  Once I felt better and could get upstairs I planned on getting back to my quilting and then realized that I had forgot to place my thread order!  I had planned on ordering the day after my surgery but I guess I was just too out of it to remember.  So I ordered my thread, got it in and NONE of it was what I ordered!!!  They mixed my order up with someone else.  They were really nice about it and gave me a gift certificate for my troubles and I am now waiting on my correct order to arrive.

Then as I mentioned in my last post, Richard's truck was broken into and we lost about $800 worth of tools and such!  That really got me down.....  So I guess that is enough complaining about life, but I have still been busy!

We decided to clean out one of our outbuildings!  :(  Man, I don't know how everything was in there.  Some of the stuff belonged to Richard's grandmother so all of that had to be sorted.  I had tons of stuff in there too.    I had put things back in storage for a few years to save for when we got moved in the house.  I had lots of new stuff in there and lots of antiques too.  It was almost like Christmas getting to sort through it all.  That took us a couple of days.

I'll go ahead and show some quilting stuff before I get on the the family stuff.  :)

Do you remember me talking a few posts back about a quilt that I designed and was making for my granddaughter, Raelynn?  Well, here is what I have so far, I'll try to get a better photo of it once I get all the blocks sewn together.  I've decided to call it, Shades of Lilac.  As I was working on it all of those different shades of purples reminded me of the Lilac tree in my mom's yard and how pretty it is when it blooms.  This was a great use of all my purple scraps.  I didn't have to buy anything for it, just used what I had.  Anyway, I need to get the blocks sewn together and the borders on so that I can get it quilted.

The past few nights I have been watching the Hatfield and McCoy movie on the History Channel.  From what I have read a bunch of you watched it too.  I can remember in college I had to do a research paper on the Hatfield's and McCoy's which all happened right here where I live.  So while I watched it, I decided that I would work on something simple and mindless.....  So here is the story of how that all came about.

I am so sick of my older stash that it just makes me sick when I have to dig through it.  I did have a fairly large stash before Richard lost his job and I am very thankful for that because I would have gone crazy if I hadn't.  I read on someones blog the other day that she felt the same way and she jumped in a cut it all up and used it!!!  I don't even remember which blog it was, sorry.  I thought that was a great idea because no matter how much I hate it, it's not going anywhere unless I use it, right?

So I grabbed a stack of greens and started cutting...

I ended up with 350+ of these 3.5 x 6.5 rectangles before I stopped.

 Then I sewed them end to end in sets of two...

 Giggle, I'm still working on it so you will have to wait to see what it looks like!  I will tell you this though, I did end up adding one more color in it to give it a little "pop" and it will be pretty big once it is done.  The measurements that I figured up will be 94 x 103.  Even though I hate my old fabric stash, I really like how this quilt is turning out so far!  :)

As I mentioned we cleaned out the outbuilding and I found my old antique table and a couple of chairs that my great grandfather made.  They look a little old and rough but, hey they are antiques!  I placed them on my front porch and put this little quilt over the table top. This is something that I made a few years ago and it is about the size of a baby quilt.  My porch is 40ft long so I have plenty of room out there but I thought it might be nice to sit out there and have my coffee early in the morning or to even do some handwork too.

 Here is the quilting on it.  I used a panto called "on the forest floor"  it is one of my favorites!  I just love it, even though there is a ton of quilting in it.

 Now on to other things in my life the past few days....  My day lilies are starting to bloom!!!  Don't look at the mess in the flower bed.  This is just a temporary one until we get our dozer work done and the yard all fixed the way that we want it.  I am in the process of putting thick newspaper down around the flowers and then I will add some OLD sawdust over it all.  I've done it this way for years and it has always worked good for me.  I put a think layer of newspaper down to keep the weeds out and then put a layer of old sawdust over that.  It has to be old sawdust because the fresh stuff has too much acid in it.  The old sawdust just turns back into soil once it decays anyway.  This works great for me since we own a sawmill, it doesn't cost me anything.

I baked 5 loaves of Banana Nut Bread!  I put four in the freezer and cut this one to eat!

Here is a photo of Andrew and his yearling, REV.  Rev is the Tennessee Walking horse that he bought a while back.  He is doing great and will be sent off to the trainer in November.  Just in case you don't fool with horses much, in this photo he is "parking out"  He is doing great so far and Andrew just loves him so much.  BTW....see the background....I told you that I lived in the woods!  :)

Here is Hunter taking a break from playing.  As you can see he has his little toolbox and his toy gun beside him....that's my boy!

I've been babysitting Zoey, my sister's poodle for the past few days while she it at work.  Zoey likes to watch me sew!  She has seizures and Chantal doesn't want her to be alone during the day just in case she has one while she is at work.  So most days she is at my house unless mom is home.  She is a sweetie and my little dogs love to play with her.

This morning while I was making my bed, I kept hearing something and when I went out to see what it was, I found this.....Cocoa!  She had got out of her lot and was on my porch!  Maybe a little redneck but it's just farm life.  :)  I love it.  As you can see, we haven't stained the side of the house yet.  We'll get to it as soon as we can, just so much to do.  Anyway, the long windows on the front porch are my master bedroom windows and the french door on the side, you can see a little of it, that also goes to my master bedroom.  Eventually we will have a big wrap around porch all the way around the house.  I can't wait to the the porch done on this end, I think it would be nice to get up out of bed and go out and watch the sun rise...

I guess that is all for now, I need to finish up our late supper.  Richard has been working in hay all day and probably will not be home until dark.  I know he will be starved....
Kristie