Pickles!!

Pickles day 1

This gardening thing is keeping me too busy.  The last few weeks I have spent canning beans, in all 36 quarts, and 5 pints.  I refuse to can anymore beans.  Now it is pickle time, our cucumbers haven't done that well, but I did manage to pick enough to make one batch of pickles.  Most pickles are very time intensive, and I didn't want to do anything that took forever especially since we are leaving on vacation on Sunday.  I found a new recipe to try in the new Pioneer Woman Cookbook.

Pickles Day 2
Cooking away in the pickling spices.

Day 3, 7 pints of sweet pickles, thank you Pioneer Woman for the great recipe.

Christmas through the Year

This  month I managed to get two items made for Christmas.  The first is a heat wrap for  my mom.  I made some of these  a few years ago out of old chenille bedspreads for Christmas gifts and several family members have asked for new ones.  I found this free pattern online.  It has flying geese blocks on the front and is backed with flannel for a soft feel.  It is filled with flax seeds and lavender.  Hope mom likes it.  I am thinking about making a few more assembly line style for the secretaries at school.

The other finish for this month is a set of pillowcases for an aunt.  She says the pillowcases that I make are softer than the ones you can buy.

Gwinnett Quilters Guild

 Tuesday was meeting day for the Gwinnett Guild, fortunately I was able to attend this month.  I am usually at work and can't attend the  meetings,  June and July are the only  meetings that I make.  ( unless it is a really good one and I take time off from work. from work).  The speaker this month was Sue Reich, speaking about quilts from World War II.  The program was wonderful, full of history and great personal stories. 


As you can image many of the quilts are red, white and blue. 

This quilt was  made from Sweetheart pillows.  The pillows were purchased by soldiers at the various military bases and sent home.

This quilt was made from a flag and a banner.  The banner was awarded to companies that supported the war effort.

This is a special wall hanging that was made from the uniforms of concentration camp victims.  It thanks the German Army for rescuing the Jews there.

Two very different "V" quilts of the period.

I could have listened to Sue talk all day about the quilts of this time period.  I never thought about these quilts before.  Many are just now coming to view because the wives of t he greatest generation are beginning to pass away and the quilts are being discovered in attics, trunks and closets.  It is amazing to think that women still had time to quilt, and join the work force, take care of their familes while their husbands, brothers and fathers were fighting. 

Almost wordless Wednesday

Believe it or not as a child I would sing to our pigs, no wonder the meat was so tough.

Community Quilt Show

 For the last few years, DH and I have attended the Communtiy Quilt Exhibit at The Art Center in Blue Ridge and I have said I wanted to enter a couple of my quilts.  Well time always got away from me and I never got my quilts entered.  This year I vowed that things would be different.  I have not one, but four quilts in the show, I am so excited. 

Poster advertising the show.

I love the "old timey" look of this quilt. 

This is one of mine!!!  The pattern is Glory Bound from Red Crinoline Quilts.  It is one of my all time favorite quilts.  This was also a Silver Thimble Kit. 

This one is mine too!!  I made this one four years ago, I started it the week before I had a hysterctomy and finished it during my recovery.  I was unable to walk down the steps to  my sewing room, so I had to go outside around the back yard and walk in the basement until I could do steps again.  This is DH's favorite quilt in the show.

The photo doesn't do this  quilt jsutice, it was really striking in person.

This is mine, also.  It is one of the first quilts I ever finished.  I think it is where I got my love for start quilts.  (Have you noticed that all of my quilts in the show have stars on them?)  This was also the first quilt I made from batiks, they really didn't photograph that well.

Cute basket quilt.  This one was completely done by hand, the stitching was incredible on it.

Lots of tiny half square triangles.

If you are in the area please stop by there are  a lot of wonderful quilts in the show. It has even been extended to July 21.

Back to Stash Busting

It has been a while since I have posted what is going on in my stash.  I have been keeping up with it, and it is not pretty.  I got in trouble  a couple of weeks ago going to A Scarlet Thread.

Stash in:  25 yards  (the last month)
Stash out:  11 yards  (the last month

For the year:
Stash in:  82 yards
Stash out:  42 yards

Happy First Day of summer !!!

Can't believe that it is already the first day of Summer, enjoy!!

Gardening Cowgirl, not Quilting

When growing up in Mississippi I swore that when I grew up  I would never spend my summers gardening.  I am eating those words, I have spent most of the last two weeks working in our garden.  It is green bean time.  We have two types in our garden, bush beans and pole beans.  The bush beans came in first, quickly followed by the pole beans.  In the last week I have picked and canned 30 quarts of beans. 

Making sure they are clean

Some of the canned beans.

In addition to canning beans, I also make 8 jars of fig preserves.  I have declared today no gardening day and plan on sewing.  Wish me luck.

Highland Games

Last Saturday we went to the Highland Games in Blairsville, Georgia.  Joe and I are  both of Scottish descent, so it was a lot of fun to see the different clans with their tartans along with the traditional games that are played.  I loved the music, bagpipes just do something to  me.  We  I die, I want Amazing Grace played on the bagpipe at my funeral.  There were about six different bands that played.  They were all great.

The Atlanta Falconry Group was present doing demonstrations.  The Harris Hawk above did not like dogs. 

Pipers coming in for the opening ceremonies.

Who knew that Santa was Scottish?

I am part of the Stewart clan.

This really made me want to do more research on my ancestors.  Maybe next summer.

Oops!

Have you ever done anything and regretted it?  I have, oh boy have I.  Last Friday was our 15th anniversary and I made my DH a t-shirt quilt out of all of his vacation t-shirts.  I had worked on it for over a month, wanted everything to be just perfect.  I knew the  minute he opened the box that I had  made a big mistake.  He hated it and wanted his t-shirts back.  Oh, well that really wasn't going to be possible.  I think part of the problem was, it wasn't quilted yet.  I gave it to the quilter today, I am hoping that will make a difference.  (You notice there isn't a smile on his face). 

Can't believe it has been 15 years!

Fifteen years ago Joe and I headed to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  Everyone thought we were just heading out for our yearly after school vacation.  However, Joe had proposed to  me about three weeks earlier and he already  made plans for us to go to Las Vegas.  I  know you probably think that was weird, but we had been together 7 years and had always said that we would just go to Vegas and get married.  I did get to pick the chapel, I picked the Little Chapel of the West.  (it is the chapel at the end of the movie Viva Las Vegas were Ann Margaret and Elvis get married).  It is very small and old fashioned looking.  We got to Vegas on Saturday with an appointment to get married at 10:00 on Sunday morning.  Sunday morning we were picked up at 9:00 by Fred the limo driver and taken to the Clarke County Courthouse where we filled out our marriage license with golf pencils.  From there we went to the chapel, I have no idea the ministers name, but I did remember the limo drivers name!  The limo driver and the organist were our witnesses, and the ceremony was over in about 10 minutes.  We went back to the Luxor and called my parents, they were so happy we were no longer living in sin, Joe's mom cried that she had missed our wedding.  For us it was the perfect wedding!!  We stayed in Vegas a couple of days, then headed to the Grand Canyon and Jerome.  This was the beginning of our "out west" vacations.

 I decided to make Joe a T-shirt quilt using all of the t-shirts from our vacations.  This is the first t-shirt quilt I have made, they are not as easy as you  might think to make.  The hardest part is deciding on the fabric for the background, borders, and sashing. I decided to use batiks, the background is a brown southwestern design with the borders brown and a greyish green leaf print.   The backing and bindings are also batiks, I found them last week at Country Stitches in Blue Ridge.   First you have to cut out the design, then use a fusible backing to stabilize the knit.  After stabilizing you sew the sashing on, then comes the fun part---deciding on the layout.  Becky has made several t-shirt quilts so I decided to take it to the cabin and have her help me lay it out.  One thing I did not take was my new best friend, 505.  I don't think you could make a t-shirt quilt with out this.

My  new best friend.

 Without 505 all I could do was pin the t-shirts down.  We used lots of pins I didn't want to have to figure out this layout again.

After coming home I replaced the pins with the adhesive spray and zigzagged around each piece.  The quilt top is all finished, I even had enough fabric left to make a pillowcase to store it in.  Unfortunately, I will have to give it to him unquilted.  Lisa, the best quilter in the world, has a broken hand and can't quilt it yet.  I thought at first Joe was going to be really surprised, but now I think that he might have an idea of what he is getting. Hope he likes it!

Gardening Time Again

Joe and I both grew up in the country, me in Mississippi and Joe in Virginia, so we know how good fresh veggies are.  

For the last few years we have only had a small garden behind our house, usually a few peppers, some tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs. We wanted to do more but just didn't have space for a large garden.  Last year we were lucky in that our neighbor across the street asked if we wanted to take over her garden.  Her husband had passed away and her children weren't interested in gardening or didn't have time for it.  We eagerly said yes that we would love to use her garden space and would gladly share our veggies with her.  We planted corn,  tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, okra, beans, peas,  watermelons, pumpkins, mustard greens, Swiss chard, broccoli, and cantaloupes.  You can see the mustard greens just starting to come up.  (we have since picked them twice)

Last year we had problems with rabbits and squirrels.  I remembered that my parents used to put pie pans out to scare animals.  So far it seems to have worked, we have had very few critter problems. 

Our beans are looking good, they have grown a lot since this photo was taken.  We actually picked a few tonight.  There are lots of small beans, I know what I will be doing on Monday, canning beans.

Our broccoli has been incredible, we have had lots of roasted broccoli this year.  I have never been a huge broccoli fan, but love it roasted with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Cleaning before roasting.

This is our small garden behind our house.  We have a rogue pumpkin that came up that is about to take over.

Swiss chard, love this sauteed with olive oil, red pepper, garlic, salt and pepper.

Almost wordless Wednesay

Love this little flying piggie and his wonderful advice.

I got mail

One day a few weeks ago, while eating lunch and reading my email I read about a Jo Morton pincushion swap.  I thought that it sounded like a fun trade and when I saw that the deadline wasn't until June 9th, I quickly signed up.  I knew that I would have to wait until school was out to get started on my pincushion for the trade. 

Not everyone waited until the last minute, like me, to get their swap in the mail.  Last week when I got back from the cabin I had a package, by this time I had totally forgotten about the swap.  ( I hadn't forgot that I had to make one, just forgot that I would get one).  When I opened the package I found not only a pincushion, but a hot pad and some fat quarters.  The workmanship is incredible!

The pincushion is so cute, and it has red hexies!!

This is want is in the package I am mailing tomorrow.  Jo Pincushion, pins and a small tool caddy.  Hope she likes it.