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August 6, 2023
Unbridled.....Horse Quilt from May Your Bobbin Always Be Full

 

I am still making my way through 

a pile of fabric panels

I have purchased over the years...


This horse panel is called...Unbridled



As soon as I put this panel up on the design wall,

I just knew I wanted to include big stars


I could not find a pattern 

so I made a star block of my own...

The star is paper pieced

then I cut it into a circle

and it is turned edge appliqued to the quilt top...





I like the way this is looking...

so I made more stars...





At this point a gold Stonehenge ...

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July 30, 2023
A Summer Garden on the Veranda, and on the Table from From My Carolina Home

The summer flowering season continues, and the veranda pots have not been adversly affected by the heat. At least not yet. This lobelia is such an intense blue-purple, with the blooms cascading down the side of the ceramic pot. I love it.

The white begonia is so prolifically blooming, it has been going for weeks and weeks.

The darker leaf white begonias in the table pots are also happy.

The summer garden seems to be very late this year. By now I usually have a lot of tomatoes, but this year they are slow to ripen. It seems like these ...

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July 15, 2023
High Desert Mule Deer...#2 from May Your Bobbin Always Be Full


In May I created two of these

Mule Deer Panel Quilts... 


I finished the first one and 

gave it away as a gift...





I just finished the quilting on the second one...





I machine quilted it on my

Sweet Sixteen sit-down long arm...





I changed thread colors several times

to match the colors in the quilt...

















It is so satisfying cutting off the rough edge,

stitching on the binding and hanging sleeve...





Here it is hanging in the living room.





Here are the first 3 blooms on the

Black Eyed Suzy plant....





The Day Lilies are blooming...





The Orange Cone ...

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Farm & Garden... from May Your Bobbin Always Be Full

Here it is summer...

and I haven't even posted Spring images !

 


This is in the backyard by the guest house...

Whiskey barrels make great plant stands.





The Wisteria vine really put on a show...





Wisteria blooms...





More whiskey barrels by the grape arbor...





Check out the size of the lime hosta...

We tore out all of the rhodies in front of the house

last fall and are going 

low maintenance flower beds.

I am still looking for landscape rock to fill in

the flower bed with the whiskey barrels.





We removed all of the iris from this flower bed ...

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June 29, 2023
the Sewing Watch, a Beautiful Border, and Strawberry Biscuits from caledonia quilter

Waaay back in 2013 my Singapore niece was married in Bali.  If you have insomnia some night, you can scroll back through my blog and find my stories about that.  BUT, on the way home from Bali I had a layover in Hong Kong.  While strolling around, killing time, I wandered into a little gift shop and saw a watch that was clearly made JUST FOR ME.

It was originally equipped with a red, fake leather band.  Which lasted about two weeks.  Seriously - that's no joke.  Two weeks.  On one of my adventures with Beach Girl Diane to a ...

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June 28, 2023
HOLEy- MOLEy!! from From the Strawberry Patch...

Last year we extended the perennial garden to increase the potential for additional plants needing more sun exposure. The "new" section was mulched and this spring I added Peonies and some groups of Lily bulbs. The Peonies were doing great (I had planted four) and then, all of a sudden ,one was dying- and FAST! I tried to baby it, dug it up to replant it and then discovered that the roots were

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HOLEy- MOLEy!! from From the Strawberry Patch...

Last year we extended the perennial garden to increase the potential for additional plants needing more sun exposure. The "new" section was mulched and this spring I added Peonies and some groups of Lily bulbs. The Peonies were doing great (I had planted four) and then, all of a sudden ,one was dying- and FAST! I tried to baby it, dug it up to replant it and then discovered that the roots were

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June 25, 2023
Bird Adventures, Garden, and Wildlife from From My Carolina Home

Rain every day this past week has brought out the flowers in the garden and on the veranda. Almost every early morning, the valley and mountain ridge was heavy with clouds. The morning air was cool and almost fall-like, but more humid. Rain brings out the lush green, and everything is growing.

My garden has made progress, strong tomato plants and lots of basil mean freshness yet to come for the table. Squash came up that I didn’t expect, and the parsley is showing promise as well. I have a good number of flowers, and even some tiny green ...

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June 20, 2023
Moda Love Quilts... from May Your Bobbin Always Be Full


I've been piecing Moda Love Quilts

 


This is the first Moda Love quilt top

I pieced with 5 inch charm squares...





I had another charm pack in the stash,

so I pieced another one...





I was not happy with this lay out...

I thought the inner star points should be red...



So, I ripped out the center of the quilt and

pieced red star points...


Much better with red star points

and the final red border treatment...



I found a mini 2.5 inch charm pack

in the stash...


You can see from the piece of paper,

that this ...

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June 11, 2023
Sunday Chat – Garden, Book Reviews, Quilts from From My Carolina Home

It is another quiet weekend with lovely cool mornings spent on the veranda, a nice place to read while enjoying the quiet and a hot cup of coffee. Sometimes it is hard to get going with it being so nice outside as it is so tempting to linger a bit longer. The haze from the Canadian wildfires hasn’t been too bad this week, and it is mostly cleared now with a southerly wind pushing it back north. In the garden, my pretty day lilies are starting their blooming season. These flowers only bloom for one day then fade. I ...

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June 4, 2023
Sunday Chat – Garden, Cooking, Wildlife from From My Carolina Home

It was mostly a quiet week here, with not much going on. I piddled in the sewing room pulling fabric for the swap early in the week, stared at the quilt on the frame with no idea how to quilt it, tidied up a bit, and generally spent days doing next to nothing. I read a really good book, and another that was good but not great. I’ll have reviews on those soon. One morning, My Sweet Babboo called me to the window to see two deer at the edge of the forest where it comes up to the ...

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May 31, 2023
It's 31.4c in the shade from caledonia quilter

So, yeah.  This is not where I am.  It's where I WAS on the weekend - up to visit my friend Margaret in the Kawarthas.

We went to the Lindsay quilt show one day, ate too much every day, hung around the dining table gossiping catching up, and of course sewing.  I got this stitched together - it will be the center of my version of the guild Block of the Month.

Here is the whole quilt, made by my Program partner.  I donated the quilting. The guild will give this to Glanbrook Community Services to assist in their fundraising efforts ...

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May 27, 2023
lucky star block from Making A Lather

I am finished with orange for the rainbow scrap challenge in May.  I made 3 orange stars from batiks to add to the stars I have been doing this year. I made them this morning. I am just getting up too early any more.


The Spring flowers have been beautiful this year. The pink roses are from my Grandmother's garden. I rescued them when I was a child. They are blooming this year just like the year I fell in love with them as a young girl. In front of the them are dame's rocket which is one ...

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May 19, 2023
May In the Garden from From My Carolina Home

This has been the weirdest year, with temperatures too warm through the entire winter, then just about the time I should be planting, we get overnight freezes. And while my vegetable crops did well from seeds in the basement, they didn’t survive when transplanted. I did harden them off for several nights, then put them in the planter where I usually grow tomatoes. Then we went on our MINI adventure, and the rain we were supposed to have that week didn’t come. So, off to the garden center to get the annuals for all the pots, and a ...

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May 15, 2023
Asparagus & The Cost of Groceries, and the Current Quilt from caledonia quilter

 FOOD

I'm currently at the beginning of a couple months where I will pick asparagus every day.

This week I've made:
GREEN CURRY CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS  DH and I don't find it hot, but if you're not used to cooking with a curry paste you may have a different experience.

ASPARAGUS & CHEDDAR QUICHE (this freezes quite nicely, and I use a homemade pie crust).

I have to admit to being SHOCKED when I saw this...

Holy Mackerel!  $7.99???  I had to employ my mental coping technique of adding an imaginary question mark.  


Apparently this will ...

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May 6, 2023
fishy from Making A Lather

I made 25 orange fish school blocks for May's rainbow scrap challenge. I am aiming for 320. I am a 2/3 of the way there.


Hubby found this neat mushroom outback, and, we had a yummy mess of mushroom for dinner. We have never collected this before, and it was huge.



dryads saddle



it was little chewy, but tasted great

And we lived to tell about it.


I am linking to:

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April 23, 2023
Sunday Chat – MINIs, Garden and Photography from From My Carolina Home

Once again this week, I have several things to chat about. Spring is warming up and it puts us in the mood to get outside, change things around inside, and do a little digging in the dirt. Warmer weather also means our car clubs are getting out on our mountain roads for some driving. The MINI club was first up this month with a drive. The red one on the left is ours.

The day started out partly cloudy but warm. Of course, we put the top down, then started out going north from our meeting spot to a road ...

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April 22, 2023
Apple Core Quilt....DONE ! from May Your Bobbin Always Be Full


I began piecing this apple core quilt top

in Jackson, Wyoming in 2009... 


I stopped at a quilt shop in Jackson,

purchased the template and fabrics

and began cutting out apple core shapes...





I spent the next year stitching on the GO !

with the applecore quilt

as my take-a-long piecing project...





Hand Piecing while traveling

is so relaxing and rewarding...



I spent the last week putting the finishing touches

on the Apple Core Quilt...


Here it is on our bed.....DONE !





I had FUN incorporating a few Kaffee Fassett

fabrics into this quilt...





The binding and label are all DONE ...

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April 10, 2023
A Day In The Garden from Podunk Pretties

 Hey Quilty Friends!  Yesterday was a quilting bust.  I didn't even step foot into the Studio.  The morning was spent relaxing (surfing the internet).  Then as soon as it was warm enough to get outside it was time to start working in the garden.


This week I'll be moving a mound of gardening soil that has been sitting under this tarp all winter.  Mr. Podunk will not be helping due to a recent lower back issue.  


Since I don't have his man muscles I've rigged up a hillbilly wheel barrel.  Moving the pile of dirt a ...

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April 2, 2023
Sunday Chat from From My Carolina Home

It was overcast several days this past week, but those days were the only ones I had to try to get some wildlife photos. I sat on the veranda for a while, quiet and still until the birds felt safe and came back to the feeder. I watched the bluebirds go in and out of the house building a nest. This was so fun to see.

The male sat in the oak tree for a photo, then few off to help gather nesting materials.

The house is in the redbud tree, hanging from a lower limb, but high enough off ...

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