Life at Full Throttle

What can I say...life this time of year is just busy.

How about some "Highlights" from the family?!

• Three more days of school. I really don't mind my kids being at school, but this time of year they are starting to need to be de-toxed from the other kids.
• Three more days of school....and my youngest will be a Senior! And then the expenses will begin!
• Since I don't have an internet connection at home (thanks so very much technician that won't show up) I don't have new pictures to post.
• We are gearing up for wheat harvest. I don't know when the combines will be rolling, but the wheat is starting to turn colors. The temperatures were 100 degrees for the past three days and thankfully it's going to cool down to mid 80's over the holiday weekend. Too much heat too fast and the wheat berries will ripen too fast and shrivel up....(kinda like me when I'm out in the sun too long).
• I found out that my niece is getting married in August...so another quilt project to make during our BUSIEST time of the year!
• DH's class reunion is this weekend. I hate those things....and DH loves them. He's told three separate couples that our house is open if they need a place to stay. HUH?
• MIL/FIL's 50th anniversay is coming up. (Can you say frozen punch? yum)
• Was told last night that instead of a one-cheesecake request for a friend's daughter's wedding.....it's a THREE cheesecake reception!
• Oh, just wait till I get to post a picture of what I got for Mother's day! Just remember....I'm a farm wife....and use your imagination.....it was NOT on my wish-list!

Until next time...maybe I'll have some pictures.

Results

If you guessed $50. then you win the prize for what the the coconut creme pie brought. It was a good dollar prize for our group. The brownies brought $35. I think I made a good contribution. Do you think having owned a bakery for several years in town might've helped?!

Troy is our FFA group's new Vice President. He was trying for President, but when best friends are trying for the same spot it's hard not winning top. There are three who are best good friends who are all officers and they'll make a good team. Three boys and five girl officers...it'll be an interesting year!

Seems like these are the two things I make when we have either a bake sale or a get together. But...they're also asked for...so guess they're favorites.


Tonight is our end of year FFA banquet. Guess who's kid is running for chapter president? Probably the same person who made an extra chocolate pie and put it in the fridge (it's hiding) to eat tonight after the banquet.



The booster club is having a mini-bake sale. Any bets as to how much these will sell for? I'll fax you a piece if you guess the closest dollar amount?! lol

Saturday is another celebration. We're having (gulp) 30 people over for lunch after graduation.
More cooking to do!

Oh (BTW) the chocolate brownies are still warm...can ya smell em?

Many, many hearts!

I wasn't going to post this until I gave it as a gift, but since I showed what I made from the scraps...oh, what the hay...here it is!

I took many, many pictures of these many many hearts because I'm very-very please in how it turned out. This is a graduation present (shhh don't tell) for Troy's girlfriend who's graduating from H.S. this year. No, she doesn't know that Janice and I have made this.

Janice found the pattern and re-sized it to suit her. We picked the brights from my stash and she cut and I sewed. We do make quite a good team. Yes...her brain thinks faster than mine, but hey... my gray hair didn't come automatically--it came from raising her hubby (my son).

I have to brag. She did the quilting. She free-handed every single one of these little and big and squiggly hearts. Didn't she do a marvelous job? Her Mom has a Nolting (which I've used), but this is actually her first big quilt to quilt by herself. I'm impressed and so is everybody else who's seen this in person. She used varigated thread on the top and pink on the back.

Another one finished!

Weekend Purse Project

Okay, in all honesty it took me TWO weekends to make this, but I had several "come and help us" moments.

The handles are a little long for me, but the recipient likes to put the purse up over her head. --I'm sure there's a technical name--sling bag? I don't think she'll mis-place this bag..it's very bright!
I've made enough of these that I've learned to put pockets in them. This one had three smaller pockets on one side and a larger one on the other.
I found this Bucket Bag Pattern and have made several using different sizes of squares.
Anyway...this was made from scraps of another project that I'll post later.

Sold Quilts

The two quilts (in the previous post) were sold last night. They were put in the silent auction (not by choice) and were given a beginning price of $75.00. ...and that is what they were sold for.

As quilt makers, we all know it's hard to price and sell items that are handmade---and fundraiser are always hard to predict what price things will bring. They could've not even sold, or they could've brought 3x's that amount.

In my experience, a live auction will bring more money for items too. But...we don't always have that option! Since the parents in her class paid for the materials used to make the quilts, she wasn't out any money for fabrics...only time and labor (and MIL's labor is free, right?!) Time spent together can never have a pricetag put on it!


...and there's always next year's project!

Two Quilts

Power sewing is what this should be called. My DIL is a Pre-K teacher (I think she's nuts!) and has two classes with 20 students per class. Their school has a major fundraiser and the teachers are required to come up with something for the auction. This year she decided to make quilts--but since there are two classes, there has to be TWO quilts.

These two quilts are the handprints from the students in each class. She had the students write their own name under their handprint. She's going to go back and write their whole name somewhere on the block, her name, and the name of the school somewhere on the quilt.

I then took the blocks and sashed them with two different fabrics to make sure they were different.


She tied them with red thread. I think they turned out really cute.


The backings were even done different from each other. AND..these were done in a day and a half! Definitely a lot of sewing done in a short amount of time.
Sure hope DIL's principal appreciates these! They will be on display at her school for about two weeks before they're auctioned off. Wouldn't YOU buy a quilt if your child's handprint was on it?!
And, if that wasn't enough sewing...we made another baby quilt for a gift she needed. I didn't get a picture of it, but after binding three quilts in an afternoon...I think I've got the technique down pretty good.

Crossroads nearly finished

I've been asked by several if I've finished my Carolina Crossroads...no, I haven't but here's where it stands(lays). It only needs borders. (It's laying on top of a small pink quilt, so don't think there's a crooked pink border on the end!) I'd like to make it larger and haven't figured out a way to do that just yet.

The red sashing is a blender fabric and isn't the stark red it seems in the pictures. It's bright for sure, but I like what the sashing did for it--toned down the busy-ness of it. Judy has claimed that lime green is the new neutral, but red is the neutral at my house.


I have the rail fence blocks that I replaced with solid blocks and I'm thinking they will make part of the border too. One of these days I'll get to stay home and work on it.

(No, I haven't started the Orange Crush project either. Must finish some things first!)

One ugly finish.

DH's cousin recently has her first child (a leap year baby) and asked for a camo quilt. Okay...I'm a little slow, but a camo baby quilt? This is what I came up with. Glad it's going out of state (without a label) and she tells nobody who made it.

The camo squares are 8", so that gives you an idea about how big it is. It's all flannel--no batting and camo flannel on the back-- so it'll make a nice snuggly-ugly quilt.

Controlled Burn

Springtime always brings smoke to the skies. In our area we burn the dead grass off so the cattle can start grazing the green grass faster. We also had an abundance of grass last year and couldn't graze it off as fast as it would grow. If we don't burn the excess off, then there's the chance it could get burnt for us (lightening or a stray cigarette). We don't want more than the grass burnt...like the trees and barn...so we do a controlled burn. The ground is worked around the edge with a disk on the tractor and then the field is set to fire.

We burnt about 120 acres this year--not a big job, but a necessary one. Yep....real good on a person with a head-cold too.

Then we came home to this....storms and rain and more rain.

Just a picture of the girls eating hay. Wish somebody would bring me supper sometime.

That time of year

• Horribly sick
• Jury Duty!
• Deadlines at work
• Internet service not working at home because of storms

Life is just crazy right now. Will return shortly.

March goes out like a Lion

We were pelted with little frozen stones from the sky last night. .....actually twice. The ground has little dents where the hail hit the earth. These came down about 6:30pm and the second round came about 11pm. Two inches of rain and this hail doesn't compare to all of the damage sustained in OKCity...but we still didn't like it!




There's a chance of more storms tonight. It's gonna be a long Spring.

Not a lot of sewing going on right now. When it's almost 80 degrees, I'm going to be outside after work as the days are getting longer.
The garden has been plowed, and we should get potatoes in the ground in the next few days.

I did get the binding put on the bargello but that's about as much bonding as the Bernina and I have done. When there's been more progress, I shall return!

Gettin' closer to Spring Break

What do you do when you find a BIG piece of that fake yucky fur that for some unknown reason I had stashed in my sewing room?

If you leave it on the floor, Rusty finds it and drags it over to where the rug is suppose to be.

This was taken BEFORE he found the skunk.

The bargello made it back from the quilter and I'm happy with it...it's not finished, but it's quilted. She did an all over paisley...swirley...something design on it. Don't know what it's called, but it satisfied me and it'll satisfy the recipient..who is going to get it for that masculine holiday in June.

Didn't realize till I already had this uploaded that there's a string in the middle. Okay..it needs binding and needs some strings trimmed. I still love the plaids and paisleys! Found some blue plaid for the binding. Still think those plaids multiply in my sewing room by themselves!

~~Strings~~

This was an on-going project for our local guild. The members made the string blocks and I 'volunteered' to put them together. I learned there are several different ways to bind a quilt during this project! I had a gal who longarm quilted four of them and then the rest were either tied or Bernina-quilted by me and my DIL. She was a big help in getting them done. Thanks Janice!

As we were taking them down from the clothsline, I snapped this picture to show the second row.

Seventeen string-blocks will be donated to the local youth-shelter in our county. I hope this was inspiration for the members to keep doing it....but sure hope they get somebody else to 'volunteer' to put them together!

We had a wedding, built a house, numerous stock shows and two major holidays during this project.