So this will probably be boring to you, but...........
So Chuck left for his annual motorcycle trip last Wednesday. I always hate to see him go, but at the same time I welcome having my own space and time for a while. And I really wanted to get some quilting done because I was missing it! The first couple days that he was gone, I only got a little bit of quilting done because I had to catch up on things. His friends came over for breakfast so I had to feed them and then clean up after they left, did my daily Bible studying, cleaned the bathrooms, etc. So Wednesday was a long busy day for me.
Thursday was a little better but it wasn't raining so I had to water the garden, but I only did part of it. Friday I watered what didn't get watered on Thursday. Saturday it rained, so I was able to get some serious quilting done. My priority was getting those kennel quilts done because I need to have them done by the 27th. I had the first one almost done, so I spent Saturday getting that one finished.
I know..........it's ugly. But it's for a dog, so who cares? I know......whoever heard of making a quilt for a dog? At least that's the question I was getting when I was working on it at the quilting retreat. As I explained to those ladies, these quilts are made out of my crumbs (bits and pieces of leftover fabrics). I didn't want to throw them away so I made blocks out of them. I ended up with a little over 50 blocks, so I made two quilts using 25 blocks each. Anyhoo, since they're ugly, why not give them to the dogs who could use some cushioning in their kennels? I used all scraps, so I did not spend any money to make this quilt except for the backing fabric, and also I bought some fleecy stuff for the batting (I didn't want to use expensive batting in these). I think what makes it even more ugly is the brown sashing, but I had it in my stash and I wanted to use it up and get rid of it. I'm glad I didn't have enough of it left to use on both of them. But I still have some left, which is now in my "crumb" bin to use for another crumb quilt later.
Anyhoo, here is the other one. Since we started getting rain a couple days ago, I had time to put this one together too, and just finished it today.
It has more striped blocks in it, and I used blue sashing that I had in my scrap stash, so this one I think looks nicer. Plus, I was really pleased that pretty much all of my corners matched up almost perfectly in the back! That never happens!
I was practicing a new method of Quilt As You Go that I learned from watching videos from a lady in Australia. I practiced on these doggy quilts because I want to use that method to finish PW's quilt. Hopefully the back of PW's quilt will turn out this nice.
So now all I have to do is applique these labels on them and then they are good to go!
When I got those done, I took PW's quilt out and tried to figure out where I left off cuz I really haven't done anything with hers since the quilting retreat. I knew that I still had to add some quilting to these kitty blocks because there was too much unquilted space in them.
I was procrastinating on it because I don't know how to draw and I wanted to add the right kind of lines to make it look like a sitting kitty. I especially didn't know how to draw the front paws curled under - you know how kitties curl their wrists under their chest? I always think it looks so cute when they do that! That's the look I wanted but didn't know how to make that, so what I ended up doing is just using the top part of a heart stencil, not really knowing how that was gonna turn out.
Then I used the same heart to add some stitching to the upper square piece.
And this is how they turned out.
I still don't like how the front paws look, but maybe they will look better after the blocks are joined. For the eyes I just made swirly circles.
So now I got all the blocks made and tried laying them out.
Chuck said he will probably come home tomorrow so I'm debating if I want to spend my whole evening working on this. The next few days are supposed to be cloudy with no rain, which means I might not have time to work on it this week. I have normal duties you know.
But this has been nice for me, having all this quilting time with no one to bug me.
On the side, those guys that we hired to cut down our cottonwood trees - they were delayed for one reason after another (the 3rd was his girlfriend's birthday so he was spending the day with her, the 4th was a holiday, then it started raining for a few days), so today they finally came back and got started again. And of course, a couple neighbor boys were eager to watch the action and help them out.
I know you can't really see anything in the picture. But I sure do wish we had those cottonwoods cut down a few weeks ago before they shed all their seeds. They make such a mess!! I'm hoping next year I won't be picking all those white things out of my garden beds.
Something funny: our neighbor boy (in the picture that you can't see very well - I think he's 6 years old) came to my door today and informed me that we have a dead bird in our yard. I already knew this of course. And of course I already knew that Peeka was to blame for it. Anyhoo, he was asking me if I knew what happened to it because he was thinking that maybe it choked on a worm. LOL! I was chuckling about that all day imagining a bird actually choking on a worm. Maybe I should've just humored him and let him believe that, but I told him that my cat killed it. Then he wanted to know how my cat kills birds.......and why.
I hated to be the one to educate him about the dark side of cats because he looked kinda sad about this new revelation. Maybe I should've just let him believe that the bird choked on a worm. Anyway, I am still laughing about it. What a cute kid.
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