Saturday, December 27, 2014

and a happy New Year

I hope everybody had a great Christmas!  We did here because my oldest son and his girlfriend came to stay for a few days.  It feels good to have them home.

I did a little fabric cutting while they slept this morning.  I am probably not going to start sewing this one until I collect enough darks and lights, but I think I will have enough reds and aquas (I am doing aqua/blue/turqoise range instead of yellows in this pattern).  I seem to collect mostly mid-tones, so darks and lights are sparse in my stash.




karinsiggy

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Deer hunting success

WARNING:  This post contains pictures of a dead deer.  If you do not wish to see them, please don't scroll!

On Saturday, hubby and I went Christmas tree hunting - and we brought our bows with us ''just in case''.  We got way up high and got a nice Christmas tree.  Here it is pictured in the background propped up against our Suburban:

Our dog, Lucy (the St.Bernard/Mastiff in the forground) had such a good day playing with my nieces dog, Shadow (Chesepeake).  They played together like they have always been best friends!  I knew they would hit it off and was so glad they did :)

We hung around for a little while (in the rain!) and had a fire and let the dogs play.

We headed down about an hour or so before sunset and joked that we hoped a deer would jump out in front of us on the way home.   We did spot a pair of does on the way down, and I was able to get one!  My first deer harvest after 4 years hunting, whew!

pic below














Me (wearing my dads down jacket and his wool hunting pants!) and my harvest:


My shirt says ''I don't wear bows, I just shoot them'' - and it is now officially my lucky shirt :)


karinsiggy

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

hoping for less rain

We came home from our deer hunting early the day before Thanksgiving because of the weather.  On the east side, it was snow - but when we got home to the west side (the WET side), it was rain.  The day after Thanksgiving, the river flooded.  Luckily, not deep enough to get to our house, but it was way too close for comfort.

Here is a pic of the water directly across the street that borders our property:

Tonight, it's expected to flood again.  And, it's raining pretty good right now, so I have no doubts.  They predict about the same elevation in the river for a crest, so I am hoping they predicted correct (or even over predicted) and we will be OK.  This is about as stressful as stressful gets.  I really dislike fall!  I am hoping for winter soon so that the precipitation is snow in the mountains instead of rain in the rivers!
karinsiggy

Friday, December 5, 2014

vintage dresden plate blocks

I just realized that I don't think I shared the completed top from the vintage dresden plate blocks I acquired earlier this year.  I used some of the orange fabric that thankfully came with the blocks, and an orange/white DS Quilts print from JoAnn's.  I would really love to get this one quilted soon.  I am actually going to hang onto it for a wedding present for someone in the family.  Nobody is engaged, so I might be hanging onto it for a while, LOL.

I will bind it in orange, or mainly orange print, to finish it off (it will have to be something as close as I can get as there is none of the original orange left).
karinsiggy

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Moda Bake Shop: 9-Patch Posie quilt

I am excited to show you my latest Moda Bake Shop project.  This is my 9th project for MBS, and it is a 9-patch quilt made from ONE jelly roll (and solid yardage).


For the quilting, I used a 10'' circle template and centered it over the white blocks between the 9-patch flowers.  This intersected the centers of the 9-patches around the perimeter of the circle.  When all the circles were drawn out (with washable quilting marker), it created an orange-peel type design. 






 I was able to use my normal walking foot for this quilting and lengthened my stitching to 3.5.  I quilted on the diagonal in a wave, like pictured:


It took longer than I thought it would to do this quilting, but I love it!  The quilt is very soft and drapes very well with this loose quilting.

I also did a different type binding.  I added a faux piping and did a wider-than-normal binding.  I knew I wanted a solid to divide the outer border from the binding print, but I only had about 11 inches left of the navy blue.  So, I improvised.  I sewed a 2'' strip of the print on each side of a 1 1/4'' strip of the blue. (2'' print, 1 1/4'' solid, 2'' print)  Then, when I folded it in half, I had about a 3/8'' bit of blue showing on the folded edge.  I stitched it on the back first, then folded it around and stitched on the blue with blue thread close to the stitching line between the blue and the blue/aqua print.  I really like how it turned out and I think I'll do more of this type binding in the future!  The wider binding was MUCH easier to stitch down!  No wrangling to get it into place at all!


karinsiggy

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Back from vacation and a quilt sneak peek

We are back from our hunting vacation - we didn't get any deer, but we had quite an adventure.  That's what matters, right? Right?!  ::sigh::  We do have blacktail season still open in our area, but I have little faith of the archery hunting around here.  Oh well.  Here are a few pics from our trip.

 Setting up the tent:

We ended up getting snow:

A LOT of snow:

Too much snow in fact, and we pulled out early because the road was slick even with 4 tire chains and in 4-low.  There are some scary spots on the mountain when conditions are like this.  One couple wound up sliding off the road the day before we left and it was a STEEP incline, probably at least a 45 degree incline.  Luckily another hunter had a big pickup with a big winch and he was able to pull them out.  They were SO lucky!


So, onto quilty news.......

I have a project I just finished up for Moda Bake Shop which should be posted anytime now.  Here is a sneak peek!  I stepped out of my comfort zone with the quilting (and binding) on this one and did a sort-of ''orange peel'' type quilting and a wider-than-normal binding with a faux piping/flange.  I'll show you more after the project is posted on MBS :)


karinsiggy

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

A vacation of sorts

It has become a tradition for hubby and I to take 1 1/2 weeks 'vacation' around Thanksgiving..... not for Thanksgiving, but for our annual hunting trip!  This will be our 4th year doing this.  The first year we stayed in a cheapo motel that had a kichen in it (that was pretty nice, but even if it was only $65/night, that adds up!).  Then, we acquired a wall tent (and it only cost us a bottle of whiskey, what a deal!).  The tent was huge and hard for us to put up on our own, so we made it smaller and bought smaller steel for the supports.  Now we can put it up on our own.  It's still not easy, but it sure is a lot cheaper to do it this way.
Here is a pic of our tent after it's alterations on our first hunting trip with it:

Last year, we bought a beat up tiny little enclosed trailer, repaired it, and it's now exclusively the wall tent trailer.  I am very happy that we did that because those wall tent parts are too heavy to move around and they take up precious storage out of the trailer!  This is a pic from last year.  It was a dry year, so we left the tarp off the roof at first.  I think it's supposed to snow this year, so the tarp will definitely be ON!

We haven't harvested a deer the last 3 years, but our confidence level is high this year.  We both have new bows and we have practiced more this year than the 3 years combined.  I am crossing my fingers/toes that we are able to harvest some meat for the freezer this year!!!

I am so glad that our youngest son is still at home to house-sit and puppy-sit.  Lucy would probably do really well in a kennel, but it's nice not to have to worry about doing that to her!


karinsiggy

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Leaders and enders

I have been working on my April Showers ''Metro Rings'' quilt without really working on it - just using it as a 'leaders and enders' project when working on my Daysail quilt for the Moda Bake Shop :)


I'm getting quite a pile done......  after trimming is done, can't wait to start making the triangles into squares - once that is done, the assembly should be easy peasy!

karinsiggy

Friday, November 7, 2014

waste not, want not

I have been saving the cut-offs from the batting from my last several quilts - there is always about 20'' or so 'extra' that I save....


So, sewing 4 scraps together made one 'new' full batting, yay!  No waste and saved myself some $$.  Gotta love that.



karinsiggy

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Daysail happy mail

Happy mail from Moda!  Wohoo!  I couldn't wait to unwrap one of those jelly rolls!  Fabric is Daysail by Bonnie and Camille :)




karinsiggy

Friday, October 24, 2014

Quilting fail

Excuse me while my seam ripper and I become reacquainted.......

Bloggers Quilt Festival - Grandmother's Flower Garden

The Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2014 is here!


This quilt has been a long time in the making!  The top was pieced decades ago and when I saw it, I knew it needed rescuing :)  I purchased the quilt top, and sent it off to the wonderful Angela Walters to be quilted.  What she did for this quilt was beyond my wildest expectations!  Since these photos, I have bound it in muslin (same as the backing) and added a hanging sleeve.  I plan to display it, I just have to make room on a wall for it somewhere!  My husband says it's too beautiful to actually 'use', which makes me sad!  I want to use this quilt BECAUSE it's so beautiful!




















I have entered this quilt in the Large Quilts category - because it's the biggest quilt I own!

karinsiggy