Lazy Sunday

We are not getting much done today. Mostly I am sitting around staring at half-completed projects and wondering what to do.

It was very wet here this morning (although it doesn't seem to be raining). I saw my humming girl out in the birch tree this morning. The rain yesterday means a lot of the blossoms have fallen off the plants. I have neglected my hummingbird feeder for the last couple of weeks because they (I have two!) have been hitting the plants all the time, but with the flowers gone I fixed it up this morning.

Man, they have been feeding away!

A Patriotic Rainy Day

I AM going to get these projects done. Who says you can't put a stubborn, hard-headed family trait to work?

Brother mine wanted to go south of Fort Worth today to go pick out a couple of Japanese Maple trees. Apparently there is a nursery down there that has a hybrid that will survive the Texas heat. We were also going to stop by the Botanic Garden and see the Asian gardens. He is trying to work out what he is going to do with his petite backyard- he sent me some pictures from the gardens that are wonderful.

When I got up in the dark this morning to let the dog out it started thundering, so when I finally got up I checked the radar. It looked like a monsoon is blowing through. So I guess no outdoor visits to the gardens today.

So I guess it is a quilt day!

Here is at least one more project done- I put a machine binding on it, which I do not like at all. Mom tells me she pins hers to death and they turn out fine. Maybe I will have to try that. Or maybe I should just sew them all by hand....
I had originally intended to quilt this so I looked like the flag was waving but it just didn't work out at all. I ripped it out and started over... I do like how the field of stars turned out.

Stay-cation Update

I had great plans for getting a whole bunch of projects done while I was home.

Guess this wasn't a great success.

The first thing I worked on was my Goldfinch. I'm not sure I'm done embellishing, but the quilting is all done. I think it needs some more couching on the tail.
In between all the free-motion quilting, I had to do something else. So I worked on my swap blocks. As I want this quilt to be about 100" square, it is about half done.
The Kite is the next project I started on, sewed and sewed on this but detailing all these feathers just takes up so much time....
Here's the back so you can see the quilting:
On Wednesday, I had a run in with some fire ants. I got bit on my left wrist, my right ring finger and both my feet. Needless to say, I wasn't really interested in quilting by that point. Just killing ants. But by Friday I was fretting getting things done again and figured I could get my flag quilt finished. Didn't quite manage that... but almost.
So maybe I should aim for getting all these done by the end of the month... that gives me a couple more weeks to fudge.

Did I mention that Sunday I went to the Trinity Valley Show? I won't even mention what I bought because I am NOT starting anything new yet. (Even though I caved and bought stuff!)

Hmm..

Why is quilting always so much slower than I expect it to be?

I have been madly free-motioning in the morning, and working on my blocks in the afternoon. This is what I got done yesterday:
Pretty cool, huh? I haven't yet decided if I want the signed blocks in the middle or on the outside edge. I think I have 5 more blocks to finish, then I start pulling from my collection. Silly me, I didn't sew blue around any of mine..

Today my arms hurt so bad after working on the kite that I skipped sewing this afternoon and went to the quilt store. Big mistake. So now I have some "extra" civil war fabric. Did I mention that some of my UFO's are unstarted kits? Do they qualify as UFO's? I guess this one does now.. Also got background fabric for my flag quilt which is in the washer now. So I should be able to get maybe two or three quilts completed this week. I hope.

Stay-cation begun!

So far, I have spent a little time quilting on my goldfinch and today I finally sucked it up and started on the kite. I have to switch to something else in between- I can only free-motion for a couple of hours before my shoulders start to cramp up. Also, by about 2 pm I lose the light. I seem to need really good sunlight to be able to do free-motion, too.

So I started thinking about what I was going to do with my swap blocks. Several of you have put your tops out there and they look great. But I have been wracking my brain to figure out how to use my blocks to make a quilt that doesn't look the same as everybody else. So what to do?

I started with the idea that I would make something like a square in a square. I really like black in a scrap quilt (having seen several really cool ones lately) and decided to edge everybody's blocks in black. That seemed a little harsh, so I added a HST in the middle. Now it looks like there is a square behind the block. The remaining triangle I was stuck on for a while- I dug out my book of 101 quilt squares. Amazingly, after going through all of those I ended up using two triangles (which will form ANOTHER pinwheel!) Here is an unfocused sample of the triangle I will sew on to all four sides of the blocks:


Well, I was really excited when all of my blocks came but I didn't really pay attention to what exactly I received. Right off the bat, I started sorting by color and pinwheel direction. As it turns out, everyone but one person sent me one block trimmed in blue and one block block of a different color. But Joanne sent two blue blocks so I have a matched number of blue blocks and other colors. Cool. Then I checked the direction the pinwheels were turning and the blue blocks had half of each direction and the colored blocks had half in either direction. Eureka! Are you guys amazing, or what??

Now, typically I figure out most of what goes on in a quilt in my head. I've been doing this for a long time, so most of what I do is either in my head or I am making it up as I go along. But between the switching of the direction of the pinwheel and every other block being blue, I decided I need to graph this out.

Good thing I drew it out- it got awfully complicated trying to piece the corners. Note the opposite sides have the HST's sewn together differently. My first blocks were all out of kilter- it took me awhile to figure out that the pinwheels do not all turn the same direction!

So if I do this right, every other horizontal row will have pinwheels turning the same direction. At the same time, every block on the diagonal will be either blue or mixed colors. I told you this was complicated!

Okay, with this long weekend and my stay-cation coming up next week I have every intention of COMPLETING a couple of projects. That is the plan, anyway.

However....

Saturday was Blackland Prairie Raptor Center's "First Saturday" where you can go out and see the birds. Since I haven't been out there since January (when it was something like 10 below zero) I thought I would go take some more pictures. A friend went with me for the first presentation, but the weather turned out so beautiful that I got a recharged battery for the camera and went back for the second and third sessions. Not to mention that they were going to bring out birds that I don't have any pictures of. I suspect that may even be for my benefit, as the last session started a little late- they had to go fetch different birds...

I had taken the finished quilt of Hunter and the not-yet-quilted Miki, as well as the little goldfinch that I am working on now. Everyone was very enthusiastic and impressed, which might explain their willingness to show off all their birds...

This is a Red-Shouldered Hawk:
And the female Kestrel:
And this is the male. He is 19 years old and is the oldest captive Kestrel in the U.S. In the wild, they only survive 5-6 years. The female is much stripier in the front and the male has more blue on his wings.
This is a Screech Owl in the Gray Phase. The one I got pictures of in January was the Red Phase.
In between sessions, I went for a walk. Brockwood Park is undisturbed Blackland Prairie and the are building a hiking path and restoring the natural plants in the park.

Here is my buddy, Miki the Mississippi Kite. See how much her colors have changed? She only has a little bit of brown left under her wings. In a little while, her eyes will start turning red. And yes, for some reason she has no tail. They are hoping that will grow back eventually.

This is the male Redtail:
and here is the female. See the difference in the coloration? The female is from the North Western U.S. The male is a Southern bird and is much lighter than she is- the colors of Redtails vary regionally.
These two were showing off quite a bit, so I got a lot of shots I like.

This is one of the new acquisitions. He is a Barred Owl. Since he is just starting to be used as an education bird, he is not too keen on all the people around. See how puffy he is? He is trying to look bigger because he is still a little worried about having people around.
And this guy is a Barn Owl. The person that took him out of the wild fed him on a diet of cat food so he never got the proper nutrition for his bones to grow. When he tried to fly, his right wing was broken and never healed properly. We were sitting in a covered picnic area and he kept trying to get up into the rafters. We were told that Barn Owls can hear your heart from 20 feet away, so by the time you get to them they are already flying away. I guess there's no use trying to sneak up on them...
Man, I just love birds!