I didn't get everything done that I had planned. LOL! I knew that wasn't going to happen. :) I did get the binding sewn by hand on the cardinal quilt. I also got this queen size quilt loaded and about 2/3 of it quilted.
I'll have to say that I'm anxious to post a pic of the whole quilt once I get it finished. This is a customer quilt that is pieced from 10" squares. The most awesome thing about it is that none of the fabrics go together normally but once pieced together they look awesome! Does that make sense? :) The more that I look at it the more that I love it. The lady's mom is the one that sent it to me and she said that they were planning on making a duvet cover with it. She just wanted a simple stipple quilted on it.
I also made 20 Breakfast Bombs for the freezer before 6:30am yesterday! LOL! Freezer meals changed my life many years ago and I use them a lot. These are for breakfast and consist of hash browns, sausage, scrambled eggs, mushrooms and cheese. I just lay one out the night before to thaw and pop it in the oven while Richard is in the shower and they are done by the time he gets out. Sometimes he puts a little salsa on them and eats. A good filling breakfast that saves me time. I don't eat them because I'm diabetic but Richard and the boys love them.
I mentioned in my last post that Richard was on vacation starting yesterday. He is so bad to just pop it on me and not tell me. He thinks it's funny because I'm a person that has to plan and schedule everything and something like that rocks my world. LOL! So yesterday he tells me that he is actually off for 2 WEEKS!!!! Oh my! That really throws me off. :) I love having him home but it just really throws my routine off. Does this make sense? :) We really don't have any plans, he's just going to catch up on a few things outside.
So this morning I am going to finish quilting this quilt. Then I plan on trimming and adding borders (hopefully) to my SIL Kellie's quilt. Oh I can't wait to show it to you. It is awesome!!!
My latest customer quilt is finished! I'll admit this one was trying. The fabrics were very stretchy. The customer and I decided that an overall large stipple was best for it. So many different fabric textures that it was just very stretchy to quilt. In the end, I think it turned out pretty good. Sorry the pics are blurry.
Last night I loaded another one on the frame so it is ready to go this morning! It is a very pretty patchwork. I'll post pics of it tomorrow.
Have you ever been in a big hurry and messed something up so in the end it is just going to take you longer? Shew.... A few days ago I got in a big hurry quilting a baby quilt and ruined it. Yep, I either have to pick it all out or just make another one. LOL! I have quilted with Minkee a million times but I got in a big hurry and stretched it so bad that when I removed it from the frame it is just a big wrinkled mess. That's what I get for trying to rush. LOL!
Richard had been off work for the past few days and yesterday was his first day back. He is getting ready for work today as I type this. The boys are still asleep but Andrew will be getting up shortly for work as well.
I forgot to post about my Acorn Flour! The first batch, I used about 1-1/2 gallons of acorns and in the end I have a little over half a quart of flour. I used some in waffles, mixed it 50/50 with self-rising flour so that it would rise and it worked perfectly. The taste is hard to explain but the closest thing that I can think of is "wheaty". It has kind of a wheat taste. Anyway, it is good and a fun little treat.
I think I mentioned about a month ago that my momma fell and was off work. She had another appointment on Thursday and the doctor put her off for 6 more weeks. She is doing better but just not back 100%. Her biggest issue that she is having right now is her shoulder and with her job being a cook she certainly has to use both arms and do a lot of lifting.
Soooo....I did not get the last two quilts finished that I wanted to do before I left for vacation! That's okay, I'm not got to sweat it. I had one loaded on the longarm and as soon as I started on it, my machine started breaking top thread. Not sure why and I did try to figure it out but then time got away and I realized that it just wasn't going to happen so I stopped and moved on to something else....cleaning my house. LOL!
I have some EPP packed and ready to take on the trip as it will be about a 12 hour or so drive by the time we have to stop several times with the kids. As I mentioned before there are 14 of us going. I also decided to take this quilt along and sew the binding on.
It's hard to tell much about the quilt in this pic but it is called, Indian Star. I quilted it sometime LAST year and never did the binding on it. I looked back through my blog to see when I pieced it but didn't find it right off, but I know it has been YEARS. LOL!
We usually take a small quilt on trips because Hunter always wants to sleep and have something to cover up with. I also wanted to take a smallish quilt to use on the beach as they all want to lay on something and the beach towels just are not big enough. Last year when we went to VA Beach I took a small quilt too. This is a quilt that I plan on "using" so I don't care to use it on the beach. LOL! So I figure I will do the hand work while Hunter is not using it to sleep with. :)
Richard has picked over 8 quarts of raspberries so far and I made a cobbler a few days ago. They loved it! I didn't eat any as I am a diabetic but it sure smelled good.
I also had a bunch of zucchini that I needed to do something with before we left. I shredded it up and put 2 cups in each freezer bag. That will be enough to make 8 of these Chocolate Zucchini Breads. Richard's grandmother used to make this for him and she gave me the recipe a few years before she passed away. It is good and to me it tastes a lot like German Chocolate Cake.
Today is Hunter's 15th birthday! Where does time go? Shew...I miss my boys being little. I took this pic of Andrew and Hunter a few months ago at mom's. They are such close brothers even though there is a 9 yr age difference. My boys are my world!
Richard has to work today and will not be home until 8pm so we will just have a small celebration as we will be leaving on vacation around 2:30am so just a few hours after Richard gets home. I told Hunter that sometime after we get back that he could have a few friends over.
Speaking of friends...last night one of Hunter's best friends had an ATV accident and had to be flown out to the hospital. I sat up until after midnight waiting to hear something as Hunter was very upset and Richard and I also grew up with his dad. They flew him to a hospital over an hour away. We finally heard that he had several broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a fractured neck. That is all that we heard last night but they were still running tests so I will check again this morning. Shew....things can change in a blink of an eye.
So we will be leaving very late tonight and I have a million things to finish up today. As I mentioned before my MIL is house sitting for us and I need to do a quick once over on my house before she comes late this afternoon. We also have a good friend/neighbor that is going to come up and feed all of the animals as my MIL is not able to feed the horses, chickens and such. I also have a few errands to take care of then come home and bake a birthday cake for Hunter.
I will probably overload my blog with vacation pics! LOL! I'm also on Instagram if you want to pop on over there and follow me. I'm on there under "The Quilted Mule" :)
That's all for now....gotta get my long day started! Please keep us all in your prayers as we travel.
I'm making a little more progress on my Remember quilt blocks. These are large 20" blocks. Only 2 of these have the machine applique done on them. The other 2 need to be finished. I just have the pieces ironed to the background. I really like this quilt because it is so different from any of my others. Don't worry, I am still working on my Trail Mix quilt as well. I am just sewing together some diamonds on it.
I am so excited about the photo below! This is from one of the ladies that took my hexagon class the other day. I think she has been bitten by the hexagon bug!!! I love it!!! I know that some of the people that took my class will never make this quilt BUT when I see someone this excited, it makes me feel great! I love seeing new quilters getting started with this stuff. I think she made a wonderful selection of fabrics and her hexagons look perfect. I can't wait to see more of her work in the near future.
Richard was off work Monday and Tuesday and when he is, it is hard for me to get much accomplished. LOL! Oh well, I love having him home. I ended up canning 12 pints of chili and 1 pint of leftover taco meat on Monday.
Tuesday I canned 7 more quarts of pinto beans.
I also made a batch of these for Richard and Hunter. Richard could eat his weight in these babies. :)
We also ended up getting a new propane tank set. They should be back in a week or so to fill it for the winter.
Richard is back to work today so after I get my housework done I will work on my quilts. I hope to make a lot of progress on my Trail Mix diamonds and maybe even do a little more applique.
Another block for my "Remember" quilt. I'm loving this so far! Sunday I switched back and forth between this quilt and my Trail Mix. Both are by Edyta Sitar.
I got 100 of my 176 diamonds cut for the Trail Mix quilt.
Now to finish the last 76 diamonds, I have to do a little bit of piecing. Let me explain how I will get these. The pattern tells how to do this. When cutting the diamonds from my strips, I have leftover scraps. (see below)
Cut those apart and you get two triangle shapes. You then take a scrap strip that is the same size as the strips in the strip set and sew between the two triangles. This then gives you a larger diamond shape. Take the template and cut out the exact diamond shape. No waste!
After cutting my 100 diamonds I am left with a big pile of triangles that need to be pieced as mentioned above, then cut to size.
I ended up getting a lot of sewing time in yesterday! Richard worked all day. Andrew being the wonderful big brother that he is, took Hunter to the drag races. So I was home alone until 7:30pm. I made simple healthy tacos for supper which did not take too long to prepare. I made two versions...extremely lean beef and chicken which I used a jar of my chicken breast that I canned a week or so ago.
Well...here it is a little after 1am and I'm still awake. I have to get Richard up for work at 4:30am so I might as well just stay up.
Yesterday I actually did a tiny bit of sewing. These were some Windmill units that had been under my needle for what seem like forever. Also a couple of tiny 4 patches. I cut these units apart and finger pressed them.
I sewed them together and ended up with 18 more blocks. This takes me to 144 of these Windmill blocks and I need something like 528 or so.
I do believe that this is all that I had cut and ready so I grabbed some scraps and cut a few more out. These are cut from 2.5" strips. I have a few backgrounds cut but need to cut more.
While I was cutting with 2.5" strips I started cutting some Tumbler blocks. Now this is NOT anything that I plan on working on anytime soon, but a future project.
One reason that this is a future project is because I already have on that is a UFO and I need to finish it first. The reason that it's a UFO...I never was completely happy with the block size.
I have most of these sewn into units of 4. I need to just sew together what I have cut of this quilt and call it DONE!
Gardening...we've so much rain lately that my garden is a mess and I wondering if my potatoes will just rot in the ground. Richard has been working a lot and I've been down so my garden is getting neglected and overrun with weeds. I'm hoping that we can salvage part or most of it.
Speaking of growing things...my dear friend Annie sent me a few packs of herb seeds. Hunter and I planted them in pots and now he is obsessed with growing things. I think he was surprised on how fast the Cilantro sprouted. So while he was in Tractor Supply the other day he picked up these tiny pots with seeds that were one clearance. They were regular priced $4.99 and marked down to .99 each. He bought 8!!! LOL!
Hunter and Richard picked some blackberries for me.
So I taught Hunter how to bake a cobbler! He did a great job and it tasted great. I have been teaching him to cook a little lately.
That's all for now! Hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July! Richard works all weekend so we will not be doing anything special.
I'll have to say that I'm anxious to post a pic of the whole quilt once I get it finished. This is a customer quilt that is pieced from 10" squares. The most awesome thing about it is that none of the fabrics go together normally but once pieced together they look awesome! Does that make sense? :) The more that I look at it the more that I love it. The lady's mom is the one that sent it to me and she said that they were planning on making a duvet cover with it. She just wanted a simple stipple quilted on it. 
