Still Here!

This has been a very busy summer and fall - I can't believe it's been over two months since I've blogged!  Plenty has been going on.  I guess I've just been too busy to write about it.

My son's going-to-college quilt got finished, a couple weeks ahead of schedule, even!  It's all music-themed - mostly black and white notes, instruments, etc.  If you're ever looking for a specific fabric, I can recommened Equilter.com.  They had a great selection of black and white prints for this quilt.  No affiliation - I just liked their selection and service.  I also made a pillowcase and two throw pillows to match the quilt.  I'm looking forward to seeing this quilt on his dorm bed!  We moved him in, but left before the room was put together.

And I finally finished my Primitive Gatherings 2009 Block of the Week quilt:

I really like how it turned out, but the white daisies really jump out at me.  Do you think some instant antique would fix that?  My version of the quilt is the wool on cotton one.  The 2011 BOW blocks are finished, and I'm anxiously awaiting the finishing kit for them.  The 2010 BOW blocks are also done, and waiting for inspiration on how to finish them!

Today, while the weather is beautiful outside, I sat on the deck and put the finishing touches on four mini table mats.

The acorns and sheep are from the Mat of the Month club at Primitive Gatherings (can you tell I'm a Primitive Gatherings groupie?)  The other two are Bareroots patterns.  All of these mats are about 8" across.  These have been in various stages of completion for awhile, so it feels good to get them done. 

Our weather has been outstanding here!  It's been sunny and high 70s all last week, and the trees are beautiful.  We'd better enjoy it, because the leaves are falling off the trees and I'll be whining about snow soon enough.

Thanks for stopping by!  I promise I'll get back to blogging more regularly.

Hands2Help Update!

It's time to reveal our quilts made in the Hands2Help project.  The quilt I made from the fabrics received from my swap partner is this one:

The fabric had cute turtles, frogs and caterpillars, which I fussy cut and added borders around for the blocks.  The outer border is a border print from the same fabric line.  This quilt is much cuter than the picture shows!

I also sent two additional charity quilts to Green Fairy Quilts.  These blocks started out to be a full-size  quilt, and I don't even remember now what the pattern was supposed to be, but somewhere along the way the plan changed, and they are now two lap-size quilts.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the trip Judi and Clint take to distribute these quilts in Romania!  I hope we can do this project next year - it was a lot of fun.  Thanks, Sarah, for getting this all organized and getting us all together for this project.

Vegetables, Dogs, and a BOW

Those are my excuses for not posting for a whole month!  I can explain...




Vegetables -  This year I joined a Community Supported Agriculture deal at a farm near here.  The way this CSA works is that you pay a certain amount of money at the beginning of the season, and they deliver a box of vegetables each week for 12 weeks.  You are taking a little bit of a risk because what you get depends a lot on the weather and what they are able to grow.  I only bought a half-share, and despite the lousy growing season here, I have been up to my elbows in vegetables for the last six weeks.  We've had arugula, broccoli, kohlrabi, kale, garlic in various forms, several different types of lettuce, radishes, carrots, fennel, zucchini, beans, beets, potatoes, popcorn, strawberries, spinach, basil, parsley, and a bunch of things I've left out.  I joined this so I would be forced to try some different vegetables and get out of my comfort zone cooking-wise.   I have and I am, and nobody in my family has moved out.  Yet.  If I give them one more salad, they may!  Tonight we had a neat kale salad from a recipe I found here.  It was good, but I'm not sure I'm totally into kale yet.  We'll probably move on to okra or something this week anyway.

Dogs - I've been spending a lot of time with Holly.  We finished our obedience class and are now enrolled in a beginning flyball class.  We're having fun with it, and she's the star of the class in my biased opinion.  Of course, her classmates are two poodles who won't fetch, and another dog who has yet to come to class.  If you don't know what flyball is, Youtube has some good videos.  My goal is for us to be like the ones in the Crufts championships LOL.  It's good exercise for her and she seems to have fun with it.  We've been walking three times a day, too, so we're both getting a lot of exercise.




BOW - My other time-consuming summer activity is the Block of the Week from Primitive Gatherings.  I love it this year, and I'm keeping up...pretty well.  The first six blocks are done, block seven will be done this weekend, and block eight just arrived today.  Sitting on the deck and working on these blocks is a big part of my summer, but it's been so hot I've mostly been inside with the AC on lately.  I can't wait for the weather to cool off a little bit.

I've also made some charity quilts this summer, but I'll post about those next week when we have the Big Reveal.

Hope you're all having a nice summer.  If you don't hear from me again, that means the vegetables did me in.  Is there such a thing as vegetable poisoning?

Middle of June Already???

Wow, I can't believe it's already the middle of June!  I sure haven't been posting much lately, have I?

Well, I have a good excuse.  Seven weeks ago we adopted a new dog, a 10-month-old English Shepherd named Holly. 

She's a very nice dog, but needed quite of bit of training, so we had a six-week obedience class which we completed Saturday.  Here's her graduation picture

She even got to wear the hat.  It used to have a tassel, but some previous wearer chewed it off - LOL.  I'm having a lot of fun with her, but a new dog is really time-consuming.  She and the cat are still not best friends, but we're working on it. 

Not too much quilting has been going on in the last few weeks, but I did finish Town Square and sent it off to a friend.

The colors didn't come out too nicely in this picture, but this was made with the Lovely fabric line from Sandy Gervais.  It reminded me of a beach vacation with the turquoise and peach colors. 

So that is about the extent of my quilting lately!  I joined the Block of the Week from Primitive Gatherings, so I've been stitching on the first couple of blocks of it.  I'll post pictures when I get a few blocks done.

Hope everyone is having a nice spring.  It has been beautiful in Wisconsin the last few days. 

Hands2Help Update

A little quilting has been going on at Troublesome Creek Quilts!  Not too much, since spring is finally here and flowers need to be planted, but I have made some progress on my Hands2Help quilt.

The top is finished, and it's ready to be basted and quilted, which will hopefully happen yet this holiday weekend.

The fabric Joy sent to me was very cute, so I fussy-cut the little animals for the blocks.

I found some border print from the same line of fabric, so I'm really happy with how this turned out.  The quilt is about 60" square.

Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day weekend!

Mr. Mailman's Been Good to Me!

This week has brought all kinds of goodies to my mailbox.  First, I won a contest on The Noble Wife and Jacquelynn sent me these wonderful quilty items - three of her fun patterns, some notecards, and a hand-painted quilt pin.  Thanks, Jacquelynn!  That pattern on top is saying "Make me in wool!"

For the past few months, I've been a pattern tester for the Quiltmakers 100 Blocks Volume 3, and yesterday in the mail I got my copies of the magazine AND and nifty mug with the magazine cover on it!

There are some great blocks in this magazine, and I got to test some of them.  It was great fun, although a couple of them were a real challenge.  I have a greater appreciation for what magazines go through to get a good pattern printed, and will probably be more forgiving of an occasional mistake after this experience!  Be sure to hit the blogs that are having the 100 Blocks tour this week - you'll love this magazine!

And last but not least, I got an Easter basket from my mom, but I haven't opened it yet.  Have to wait until tomorrow for that!

This weekend has mostly been spent getting to know my new dog.  Yesterday we got a 10-month old English Shepherd from another client at my vet's office.  We've spent the last 24 hours getting to know each other.  It's going as well as can be expected at this point - she needs some obedience lessons (which start next Saturday) and to meet the cat, but we're taking that part prettly slowly.  The cat is mostly hiding out upstairs or downstairs.  We left her plenty of escape routes.  She was used to our last dog, but it all has to start over again.  Last time, it took three months for the cats to be able to cope with a new dog, so I hope the process goes a little faster this time!  The dog is very keen to meet the cat, though - too bad it's not mutual!  I'll post pictures in a few days.

Hope everyone has a Happy Easter!

Off They Go!

Today is a vacation day for me, so I'm using some of the time to get some of my charity projects in the mail.  I mailed this quilt to Quilter's Newsletter to send to earthquake victims in Japan.

This quilt was made from a pattern in a Quiltmaker magazine.  I liked it because of the large pieces of fabrics that weren't cut up, and I had this cute dragon princess fabric to use.

Isn't this great fabric?  I've had it in my stash for years waiting for the perfect pattern.  Hopefully a little girl in Japan will love it.

The Just One Star blocks were finished last week and sent to guild to be mailed off to Moda.

And last but not least, the fabric for the Hands2Help quilt was sent off to my swap partner.  I had some neat dinosaur fabric for that one.

Can you tell I'm a sucker for kid's prints?  I have never met one I didn't like!  I made an I Spy quilt for my son many years ago, and just never stopped collecting fabrics for another one.  One of these days, I need to make about ten I Spy quilts.

Have you heard about the Hands2Help project?  The button on my sidebar will link you to the project.  I think it sounds like a great idea, and I had fun picking out fabric to swap with my partner.

We're in the middle of getting 6" of snow today.  (Sigh)  I thought spring was here, but I guess I have to wait for a few more days.  The daffodils always get snowed on at least once.  At least it's a nice day to stay inside and sew!