Here I am with spring in full bloom and a thousand new project ideas taking seed in my grey matter. Will they come up as weeds or show plants? Let’s jump in– then you decide!

This is my third spring here, and also the third time I’m determined to make a little flower garden by my front door. Let’s hope the third time’s the charm! Here is a bird’s eye view of the project from Quiltopia.

Can you see the problem? Yes– birds! Chickens make one spectacular yard ornament and by this I refer to the plastic, metal or cement facsimiles, not the real ones, who dig. They dig with two little rakes each attached to little feet, thus uncovering seeds and then pecking up said seeds with extreme prejudice. If any seed escapes notice, which it will not, the little sprouts will get pulled up and eaten, and if any little sprouts escape notice, which they will not, the flowers would most certainly be eaten.

I gave myself to overthinking as I do, and it turns out MARIGOLDS are the answer. I’m sure you know that weird smell they have and apparently they don’t taste good. To chickens. I have not actually tasted any. So I bought a few test plants– the seeds probably taste well enough, so I’m starting with the flowers as the test. In the closeup here, you can see my marigolds and a couple other test plants lined up as in a buffet table.

The test appears to have worked. As you can see, the customers sampled, spat out a couple of yellow petals, and moved on. It’s still going to be challenging to keep the little monsters out of the area– for one thing, they’re super cute, so you can’t yell at them– also, if you yell at them, they will forget anyway and be back within five minutes.

I’ll keep you updated on this spot over the course of the summer– let’s see what happens– I think this storyline will be very amusing in a gentle, boring, country life kind of way.

The Sprout Project.
So with all the visits to the nursery and all the overthinking, it has rained anyway, so I satisfied myself with digitized flowers this past week. The bowl filler sale this week was a knockout– the best one I’ve had in a while. So I will keep on. The SPROUT bowl fillers will debut most likely tomorrow.

It looks like it will finally stop raining on Tuesday and I can get back to real seeds. One indoor job that could use doing– all of my hundreds of bowl fillers are mixed up in a huge tub and could use sorting and bagging!

The Longarm Project.
Without missing a beat, “The Secret of Sugar Meadow” was off the longarm and “Moonbeams” is on. This is the first full-ish size quilt I’ve done on the longarm– I’m not “floating” the top now and it’s the first time the top is secured and rolled up on the lower bar. (Wow, do I need to get some pictures up on that blank wall!)

I thought quilting and long arming were the same hobby– turns out they are not. Now, imagine if you have two different obsessive hobbies– say, GOLF and FISHING, and it was a beautiful day out. You would not be able to GOLF and FISH, would you? You would have to choose. So, it’s frustrating, but I have spent so much time on the longarm lately, no actual sewing is taking place. After Moonbeams, there’s no more deadline quilts, so I’m hoping to mix it up a bit more. Like GOLF in the morning and FISH in the afternoon.

Notice the black batting– I purchased Spoonflower digitally printed fabric for the backing for the first time, too. I was afraid every time the needle punched it, I would get that little white line, and also puffs of white batting on the back. I’m happy to say, none of my imagined problems happened! It may look like there’s a few puffs here and there, but I think my camera is just picking up a little dust.

Spoonflower really opens up the world in terms of printing your own fabric– printing a giant picture of an applique quilt to practice on– or printing family photos for a memoir quilt. Which shall I try first! haha.

I plan to do one block a day for the next 16 days, and I already did the top border and a dragon.

I just did “diamonds” in the top border. This is a wedding quilt for people who met at a Dungeons and Dragons event. So the DD said, “Is that supposed to be the dice?” And I said, “Yes. Yes, it is.” 🙂 I probably picked the worst points on the whole 72″ strip to photograph– haha!

So here’s my dragon. I realize I would have really knocked this out of the park if I’d had the patience to use green, white, and red thread. But I really want this DONE. It’s going to non- quilters. So I’ll take points off for the navy thread, but I’ll give them back to myself for cleverly delineating the dragon’s face.

You can see the ear now, and I added eyelids, and a cheekbone for definition.

It turns out I didn’t need black batting– so it’s showing through on my whites– boohoo. I’m still learning, and in my opinion, you only learn by doing. Again, this couple are not quilters, and I think they are going to love it. I embroidered their names, wedding date…

and even an extra dragon for good luck.

The whole thing is going really fast– this is today’s block, and you can see there’s not much to do, so I may even get ahead of schedule. I really want to get back to sewing my Brio table piece borders on. The picnic table is out and waiting!

The Summer Project.
After Brio, I want to start another lap size quilt. It’s between an old “Liberty Box”– this is the Fat Quarter Shop’s Fourth of July summer sampler box– and my Carefree Highways Quilt!

They aren’t supposed to re-use the patterns from these boxes, but this was too good not to, I guess. Here is the new version they just added to the website a few weeks ago. My original kit has slightly different fabric. I kind of like mine better, because it’s less flowery, and I might give it to my son.

… or Choice #2– finish my Carefree Highways Quilt! After taking two years to digitize all 50 states into cross stitch, complete with capitals, state nicknames, flowers and birds, this is the sad state of affairs– sitting in my closet!

All fifty blocks are just waiting to be trimmed.

I also bought a set of flying geese papers– I confess, it’s a block I struggle with. And I have a ton of the first “American Gatherings” fabric from Primitive Gatherings. Since we’re on Set 3 of that line now, maybe it’s a sign? I sorted all the fat quarters, but only left the merest of indications what the sorting was for, so I could easily add to my stock with the new collection.

Here is the grand plan… all the heavy lifting is over and it’s ready to just stitch, stitch, stitch– the part of quilting I love best.

I even have a first block finished. The poor thing is crumpled!

I am so dying to do some piecing right now, I think I’ll just allow myself to start both– two great summer projects, right?

Project Christmas Stocking.
I am beavering along on this as if it’s my regular job! I banished scrolling on the evil iPad and am putting in about and hour in the morning and an hour at night.

This is last week:

And here is this week. I filled in the leaves, the mane, and more of the horse’s neck. It’s beautiful!

My strategy of stitching entire lengths of thread is forcing me to branch out in a ton of different directions. If I have a little piece of a color left over, I move into a new area to use it up. The strategy has worked to keep my floss card neat, but soon I’m going to have to go back and fill in all the little areas that don’t need a whole length. I did some of the blue– I was wondering what blue was for– turns out the red ribbon has a little blue edge all the way around, and it’s in three different shades– haha– that sounds like something I would do! So progress may slow down with that, and this portion still has a full back stitch which I may start before turning to the next page. Still waiting on my DMC gold– I reached out to the Etsy shop and they have other things they need to do right now– but maybe THIS week–lol. I don’t leave bad reviews. 🙂

Thanks for listening to me go on about 1% of all the projects that are in my head right now. I’m super excited for summer stitching.

A baseball quote is appropriate– SWING HARD in case you hit something! 🙂

And that’s just what I intend to do.

xox
Carol