Happy Halloween Everyone

Hope everyone is enjoying the day!  I finished my Halloween quilt Friday night, so it is officially done in time for the holiday! ! !

This is the quilt that I received the patterns for at a shop hop to four quilt shops in my area.  It was lots of fun to make, all of the applique let me be really creative.

Here are each of the individual blocks:

For the above two blocks I purchased the kits at the quilt shops.

These last two blocks I used fabrics from my stash with a little bit that I had to buy to get the right colors.  I didn't have any good purple for the hat.  The last thing I can add to the cat on the wall is a tiny ristra to hang from one of the posts.  I have to look for a cheap pair of chili earrings for that.

I stitched the narrow red border to my Two Piece Puzzle quilt top and I now have the fabric for the wider navy border.  I still have to cut it.  Another project has gotten in the way.  We are going to take a quick trip back to Illinois to visit my parents and I want to have the gifts for our family gift exchange ready so I don't have to mail them.  I am making five table mats.  Since my sisters and I and two of my SIL's all grew up on farms and my brothers wife is included since she is the daughter-in-law, I am using the Farmer's Daughter quilt block for the center of the table mat.  It seemed fitting to me.  Anyway, I have them all ready to quilt and that needs to be finished before I get back to Two Piece Puzzle!  I will post pictures of those when they are all finished.

Be sure to check out the two buttons at the top left of my blog page.  There are two blog hops coming up, one starts Tuesday, Nov 2, the other Nov 15.  There will be free projects, recipes and more.  They sound like lots of fun!

I hope everyone enjoys their Halloween eve, have fun!

Sewing Sunday

It's been a busy week.  I have the center of Two Piece Puzzle all stitched up, now to add the narrow red border.  Next is the wide dark blue border, but I am still looking for the right fabric for it.  I ordered a nice wide quilt backing fabric on Ebay, it will be here by the end of the week.  I have never used the 108" backing before, I thought it was very expensive.  I found some for about $8.00 a yard from a vendor on Ebay.  I bought 3 yards and she only charged an additional $5.00 for shipping.  I thought that was pretty good.  Otherwise the pattern calls for 7 1/2 yards of regular fabric and that would have been pricey, too, so I did pretty good there.  I have the batting since I went to JoAnn's for their "buy one get one" sale.  I bought two queen size battings, two spools of thread, and everything I needed to make a new ironing board cover for about $40.00.  

I spent a couple of hours today on the ironing board cover.  Here is the before picture, this one isn't that old but it is worn through.

Sorry it's so blurry but you can see the tears in it.  And here is the new one:

Aren't those little owls cute!  The fabric is a heavier weight cotton so I'm hoping it will last a while.  I put the new cover over the top of the other one so it will have some padding.  Now it will be fun to iron!

I'm still quilting the Halloween wall hanging but I think it will be done this week, I hope.  I decided to do a cross hatch quilting in the outer border.  It is all done going one way, I am now working on the stitching tilting the opposite direction.  I think I will use solid black fabric for the binding once the quilting is done. 

The weather today was sunny but cool.  Tomorrow more bad weather is expected.  Some parts of the state are in for 30 to 50 mph sustained winds with gusts up to 70 mph predicted.  That means we won't put up our flag tomorrow, I spent a little time today mending some rips in it anyway.  We will see what happens.

Oh, I have one more "wildlife" pic. 

I was outside a few evenings ago and found this praying mantis chowing down on a black widow spider.  How cool is this?  I can't take credit for taking the picture, my DH is the photographer in the family.  I see praying mantis' in the flowers all summer long, usually when they are much smaller.  When I go out to water, they pop out to say hi and watch what I'm doing.  They are my little pets!

Hope everyone had a great weekend and lots of sewing was done.


  

I Won, I Won, I Won

What a great way to start this blog!  Actually, I won in two giveaways!  One I just found out today, in the Fall Into Fall giveaways I won a pattern for a fall table runner and a hot pad from Mary Grace at Hooked on Needles.  That was my excitement for today. 

And yesterday, another win arrived.  It was from Kelly Mueller of the Wooden Bear on her The Bears Blog  .  In her giveaway I won this:

It's Kelly's book Fresh off the Farm with patterns for a wall hanging, pillows and several bags, and 24 fat quarters + a panel of her Fresh off the Farm fabric line.  This is the best.  Her patterns are adorable and the fabric is so cute.  I want to make everything in the book which means I will have to buy some more of the fabric!  I am thrilled with this.  Thank you Kelly!

As for what I have been doing the last couple of weeks, we have had company on and off.  My son came by two weeks ago on Monday.  He flew out on Tuesday to visit his best friend from college in Hawaii ( it's always great to have a friend who lives in Hawaii).  So we dropped him off at the airport at dawn.  He left his dog with us while he was gone.  Sadie is a 2 year old, 120 lb, Greater Swiss Mountain dog.  She is well behaved and was no trouble to watch, except she sheds a bit and smells like a dog.   Then on Thursday that week, my step daughter flew in from Florida for her friends wedding.  She was busy playing with Sadie, visiting friends and running errands, then flew home before dawn on Sunday morning.  This past Wednesday, my son returned from Hawaii so our fourth trip to the airport in two weeks was to pick him up.  Sadie did a happy dance to see her boy returned.  He stayed overnight, then drove home on Thursday.  I cleaned the yard of doggy droppings, vacuumed up dog hair, washed the guest towels and bedding for the third time in two weeks and cleaned doggy slobbers off of the sliding glass door.  It was lots of fun having kids in the house again, at least for a little while.  We rested up and today went for a 220 mile ride on the motorcycle to check out fall colors and a beautiful fall day.  We are suppose to have rain coming in a few days, so gotta get out while we can.  Now I would love to take a nap, all that fresh air and sunshine!

In between all of the house guests, I did manage to get some sewing done.  I have all of the blocks finished for Two Piece Puzzle:

There are 16 blocks with blue stars, 12 blocks with red stars and 28 hourglass blocks.  Now to square them all up, stitch into rows and put the quilt top together.  I don't know how long that will take, but the end is in sight.  After the blocks are all together, there is a narrow red border, then a wide blue border to be added.  Then, the quilting can begin!

I have the October snowman for Snowbound finished:

It is so cute, if I say so myself.  I embellished a little extra with the bow and bell on the sheep's neck and the heart shaped button in the star.  There are only two more months of snowmen left in this BOM and it has been so much fun. 
I have more swap blocks to show off:

These are from Theri.  They actually arrived weeks ago but the vacation and house guests kept me busy.  We finally got pictures of them.  I love the fabrics, they are just fantastic.  Thank You Theri, I love them!

And these came from Karen:

I love the bright red borders and the fun prints.  She also sent the cute little tote bag, isn't it pretty!  Thank you Karen!  I can't wait to start putting them all together.
In my "free" time, I made Trick or Treat bags for the three littlest grand kids.  I have a bunch of panel fabric, so I used a panel for the front of each bag, a Halloween print for the back, another for lining and made black handles with orange polka dot ribbon stitched on.  I mailed them before I got the camera out, so no pictures of them.

I guess that pretty well covers the last two weeks, they have been busy.  I have lots of projects to work on, which reminds me, I am hand quilting the Halloween wall hanging from the patterns I got on the shop hop last month.  I have the individual blocks all quilted and am working on the inside border now.  Once that is done, I have the outside border to do, then bind and hang.  I hope Halloween isn't done before I finish the wall hanging! 

Take care and happy quilting!


Oh, Oh, I almost forgot!  When we got home from our ride today and were putting everything away in the garage I noticed this across the street:

These are pictures of a roadrunner that was in our neighbors front yard.  It ran across her yard, jumped up on her front wall, then up on the roof.  I love watching these birds, they are so fast and fun to watch.

Welcome Fall!

Yes, I am still here.  Have you seen the fun fall giveaways?  One is here at Fall Into Fall, they have a ton of giveaways to enter.  It starts today and there's some great stuff out there.  The other one is Fall-O-Ween and I have the button at top right on my blog page.  It links to the list of designers who are participating.  It started on Monday and they are doing a free project pattern each day.  So far they are really nice patterns.   Visit each designer and leave a comment on their blog on the day they present their pattern.  At the end if you have commented on all of their blogs you will be entered to win some really nice prizes.  It would be great to win the prizes at the end, but so far the free patterns are worth the visit!

I promised some pictures of our trip to the North Rim so here goes:

Here we are at the campground at the North Rim.  It is a very pretty campground, very quiet, nice paved roads, but no hook-ups.  Water is nearby and they have restrooms throughout the campground and a laundry/shower facility at the entrance.  There is also the gift shop/store at the entrance, too. 

This is Angels Window, that is the Colorado river winding through the view in the rock.  We did some hiking on the trails.  Here the trail goes over the opening to a viewpoint, you can see the rails along the sides of the trail.  

There were some great views into the canyons along the trails.  At night, there were tons of stars and the moon was bright.

There were lots of tiny, tiny flowers blooming.

There were Kaibab squirrels, they are only found on the Kaibab plateau at the North Rim.  These little guys have dark bodies, tufted ears and white tails.  They were in the campground.

Ground squirrels were everywhere.

We also saw lots of wild turkeys and

  some beefalo.  They are a cross between cattle and bison.

In the lodge there is a life size bronze statue of Brighty of the Grand Canyon from the book by the same name.  Brighty was a wild burro who lived in the area long ago.  Marguerite Henry wrote the children's book about him.  His spirit lives on at the North Rim. 

Our last night there we ate dinner in the Lodge dining room, watched the sunset over the canyon and walked the trail to Bright Angel point just as it was getting dark.  This is the entrance to the lodge with the moon right above it.  The only time I had a problem with the height over the canyon was on the trail to Bright Angle point, but I made my feet keep moving and the view from the point was worth it.  There were a few spots along the trail where it felt like the edges just dropped off into the canyon and it was a little scary for me but I am glad I walked it.

The day before we left for out trip my husband rode our motorcycle to Grants, NM with several of his friends who were headed to Las Vegas, NV for a few days.  DH just rode part way, then came back home.  They invited him to go on the trip but we had the vacation trip planned.  Anyway, he got home and we went out and traded our Harley for this:

It is a new Honda Goldwing.  Several years ago we traded our old Goldwing for the Harley.  DH really wanted a new Goldwing then but they didn't have what he wanted so we ended up with the Harley.  We rode it for five years but it was loud and causing hearing problems for DH plus it was a bit of a rough ride.  He decided on the way home from the last ride with his friends that is was time for something different.  He has wanted the "tweety bird" yellow since it first came out and he found one at the shop in Rio Rancho so we got it.  It is so quiet and the ride is sooooooo much more comfortable and smooth.  We have been busy riding, have about 700 miles on it already.  Can't wait to take it on a trip, maybe to see his brother who lives north of Amarillo, TX. 

Got some bad news last week, my Mom and Dad have moved into a nursing home in my hometown.  Mom has been taking care of Dad for a while now and she has gotten to the point she needs some care herself so they made the move.  So far they are getting along fine, it is just hard knowing it has come to the point they need more help.  But they are getting what they need and doing well.

As for quilting progress, I only have 14 more blocks to put together for Two Piece Puzzle.  All of the HST are made, I just have to put 16 HST together to make the star blocks.  This part is a little boring, doing the same thing over and over to make these last 14 blocks.  Once they are done, I can put them together into rows and the quilt top will really take shape.  I have the Halloween blocks finished and the top is basted and ready to quilt.  I will work on that while watching TV in the evenings.  I want to make some Trick or Treat bags to send to the grand kids so I will break up the monotony of piecing blocks with that project. 

I still have to take pictures of Theri's blocks and the Halloween quilt top.  I will try to have them for the next blog.  

Don't forget to check out the giveaways, there is some great stuff there!