Retirement, Quilting and Canning

 I've been retired for a month now. I Love It! I was worried I'd be bored, but I almost feel like I'm working harder now than I was when I was actually working. The only difference now is I can stop what I'm doing and sit in my chair to rest up. Ha!

I've been canning quite a bit, I'm enjoying making jellies and jams again. I didn't realize how much I'd missed doing that.  

I haven't been quilting near as much as I thought I would either. I've finished the top of my BH Mystery Quilt 'Grassy Creek', it's still not my favorite, but I feel like it's okay now. I put a very light gray outer border on instead of the string pieced border she called for, to me it made the quilt 'muddy' looking. I think once it's quilted I'll like it. 

I've also finished my Civil War Reproduction Quilt of 6" Ohio Stars. It's a favorite that I'm pretty sure I'll keep for myself.

I've begun quilting on a Mary Engelbreit quilt for my sister. She loves all things ME. I've been collecting ME fabric for at least 5 years. It's gotten very hard to find, I'm sure she hasn't designed any fabric for years. Then I couldn't decide what pattern I wanted to use. I finally decided on just set-in circles and an extra wide black ric-rac in the border and a little something to personalize it for my sister. There were plenty of ME 'sayings' to pick from. But this one was my favorite. 

I should have it completed by the end of this week. I only have two more rows of circles to quilt and it will be finished. And that's all the quilt related things I've been working on lately. I've only done a little on my Temperature Quilt, and I'm a month behind. I should catch up pretty fast if I spend a day working on it.

I've decided the next quilt I'm loading will be my 'Lollipop' 1930's reproduction quilt. I'm anxious to see it quilted.

Well,  I hope you all have a very Happy 4th of July! God Bless America!

Happy Quilting,

Kris

Grassy Creek Mystery Quilt (Bonnie Hunter)

 This is the 7th Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt I’ve done, I’ve always enjoyed doing them and most of the time I really like them. This year not so much. When I saw the ‘reveal’ in January I just put all my finished parts and pieces in a large ziploc bag and put it away. I just wasn’t interested in finishing it right away like I usually do. Well,  last week I opened that bag and started sewing those pieces together. I’ve finished the 25 blocks and the sashing pieces are ready to sew together. I will change the border. In my opinion, all of the different colors of gray used in this quilt make it look 'muddy'. 

Grassy Creek Mystery  Quilt Blocks

The border was supposed to be string pieced with varying shades of gray. Of the finished quilts I've seen on line, the only ones I liked had used a different color for the gray, or had used only really light grays instead of light, medium and dark grays. I'm far enough along that I'm not going to change what I've already completed. I will be changing the border to a tone on tone light gray, with a small inner border of a bright green. I'm hoping this will help me like it a little bit more! Only time will tell...

While I've been sewing these blocks together I started on an Arkansas Crossroads quilt for a leader and ender project. It's fast, easy and will use up a lot of scraps. It's time to go through all of my scraps and organize again. I try to have boxes of 2 1/2" strips, 3 1/2" squares/strips and 1 1/2" strips. This method works the best for me. 

Scrappy Arkansas Crossroads 

I did just finish my Keyhole/Hole in the Wall Scrappy Quilt. It's just a fun scrappy quilt that's very fast and easy to make. I end up making lots of scrappy quilts, they're probably one of my favorite quilts to make. I quilted it with a variegated thread, did a wavy piano key in the border and just did an overall meander in the center. It's so busy you can't see the quilting anyway.

The feed sack quilt that was loaded on my longarm for 2 months is at it's forever home. Took a long time, but it's done. I just quilted it with a small all over clam shell design.  It needed a good washing and it came out of the dryer beautifully. I would love to know who started sewing all the feed sack strips together and when that was done. My sister Val found the ziploc bag full of these feed/flour sacks at a garage sale already cut in strips and partially sewn together. She knows how I love and collect feed sacks so she bought it for me. It took me a while to decide what to do with them, I didn't want to rip them apart so I needed to figure out what pattern to make with these.   I finally decided to add some strips of Kona Snow and sew the shorter strips into lengths long enough for a quilt. I love how it turned out. 

My 2021 Temperature Quilt is caught up through the end of April. The more days I add the more I love it. 

I've only got 2 more weeks of work left before I retire. I'm getting pretty excited about that, I guess I know I'm ready and it's time.

                                               Happy Quilting!

                                                      Kris

Orange Peel Temperature Quilt

 I decided to start a temperature quilt for 2021 when I saw how low the temperatures were in February.I have a friend who started a Temperature Quilt using little houses and I loved it. It took me a few weeks to figure out the fabric and pattern I would use. A Temperature Quilt and an Orange Peel Quilt were both on my Quilt Bucket list so I finally settled on combining the two. The background squares are 3 1/2” unfinished and represent the day’s low temperature. The orange peel represents the day’s high temperature. The small circles represent the months. I’m also stitching a vein like line on the orange peel with Perle cotton.

   

   I’m finding the daily temperatures from McCook’s local airport. It’s making it personal for me because I’m at the airport in the morning unloading our FedEx plane. I will be retiring in 5 weeks and that’s getting me pretty excited. I had a fat quarter bundle of Robin Picken’s ‘Thatched’ laying around and thought it would be perfect for this quilt. I love the bold bright colors and there were 24 different colors in this bundle.

This is the chart I’m using. I printed it from something I found on Pinterest, and it’s great for keeping track of your temperatures and fabric colors. I have a different color for every 5 degrees. It’s from aquiltingsheep.com

I’m using a permanent marker to write the date on the back of each orange peel so it’s easy to keep track of, and then sew together.

I love  #100 silk thread to appliqué with. It truly makes the stitches disappear. I’m able to purchase this at my local quilt shop.

I’ll keep updating my temperature quilt as I add to it every month. If you’re interested in making a temperature quilt, you’ll see a lot of different ideas on Pinterest. 

   

 Happy Quilting!

Kris

Tops To Quilt

 And here are the quilt tops that are ready to be quilted...

2020 Stash Buster Challenge Quilt with 4" finished blocks

Scrappy St. Louis 16 patch almost all sewn together

As you can tell I love Scrappy Quilts. I have tubs full of scraps and I keep using from them, but they never seem to get any smaller. I have a very large Mt. Scrapmore to climb! But I'm up for the challenge.

2020 Stash Buster Challenge 6" finished blocks

Scrappy Keyhole Quilt

6"finished Ohio Star Civil War Reproduction Quilt

I also love Civil War and 1930's  Reproduction fabric. I keep making more reproduction quilts and I love every one of them.

Lollipop Quilt made from 1930's reproduction fabric

Mary Engelbreit fabric/circle quilt made for my sister Val who loves anything with Mary Engelbreit. This quilt has been in the works for quite a few years now. She's been very patient with me knowing that eventually it would be done. This fabric is very hard to find since it's been out of print for many years. I've picked up pieces as I found them. I even resorted to some Etsy shopping to find some of the prints I really wanted to use in this. 

A wild Christmas Tree Quilt that was made for Lesley

This is made from old feed sacks/flour sacks. My sister Val found a large ziplock bag full of these strips already sewn together at a flea market. She purchased them for me for $25. I collect feed/flour sacks so she knew I'd love them. They were much shorter strips, and I just kept sewing them together till they were long enough for a quilt. It's nothing fancy, but its an older pattern that suits these feed sacks. I do have this quilt loaded on my longarm now. It's been loaded for 6 weeks and I've only done about 6" on it. I can't seem to get motivated to get it finished. 

I have more tops that I'll show later. I have a couple of wool quilts from 5 to 6 years ago and some very old quilt tops from Civil War times and a top from the 1930's. When I retire hopefully I can get then all done.

                                                                      Happy Quilting!

                                                                             Kris

Vacation Week and soon to be Retirement!

 

Wayne and I visiting Erik, Lesley, Emy and Magnus in St. Joe

Happy Birthday Lesley!

While in St.Joe we purchased our new 2021 Honda Ridgeline pickup. We love it so far. We’re going to have to figure out all of the knobs and buttons....for me it’s a big learning curve. Wayne will have it figured out right away.

And of course I’ve been to a quilt store in Kansas City...I only bought a Tilda fat quarter bundle and a yard of a new Kaffe print, I couldn’t find anything else that interested me, which is a bit unusual. I also found a lot of colors of bias tape I can’t purchase locally that I use when making baprons. Here are a few of them I’ve recently made.

I’ve made so many quilts since I’ve last blogged many many years ago. I’ll try to catch up...you’ll want to get ready for a photo overload! 

The biggest ‘news’ in my life is that my husband Wayne retired in December and I’ll be retiring from FedEx in 7 weeks. I’m getting more excited by the day. The list of quilts I want to make on my bucket list is growing larger by the minute.

And one more photo of the last quilt top finish...

This quilt is ‘Lollipops’....made from 1930’s reproduction fabrics. I think I know how I want to quilt this top, I’ll be happy when it’s finished. Since I have about 12 tops ready to quilt I’m not sure when this one will get done.

Hopefully I’ll be posting again soon.

Happy Quilting. Kris

I'm Still Quilting! (Just in case you were wondering!)

It's been a few months since I've posted anything, I've just been busy with life! August 12th our grandson Magnus Andrew was born, so we've made three trips to St. Joe in the last few months. Work has been very demanding too and I'm sure that won't let up till after Christmas, I have to deliver all of those Christmas presents from Amazon. So here are a 'few' photos from my latest projects.....

Farm Girl Vintage

Two quilts done and one just needs to be quilted. I plan on making a few table runners, and maybe another quilt. It's been fun to make these from start to finish...I did some custom ruler work on these two and this was my first attempt with rulers....I learned so much with just 'going for it'! It gave me a lot of confidence to just try some new things. My friend Kelly Kreft came the end of September to show me how to do ruler work, I quilted 4 quilts in 4 weeks after she left...I was driven to finish them. It was so much fun! The more I learn the more I realize I need to learn!

 

 

Up close of some of my quilting......I'm very happy with my wooly sheep. I put black button eyes on him too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My John Deere Tractor block....Not sure what I'll do with this one yet...Maybe a wall hanging for my sister Barb's grandson who is crazy about tractors.

 

 

 

Magnus Andrew's quilt

The quilt I made for my new grandson...the circles are set-in, I love how this turned out...The quilting on it makes me happy too.

 

 

 

Bonnie Hunter's Mystery Quilt!

the first clue was published this past Friday...we had to make 294 2"half square triangles for this week...Woo Hoo....I finished mine this morning. I hope they are all as easy as this week's clue, but I'm afraid they will only get more time consuming as the weeks pass....Even if they do, this is something I really enjoy doing.

Wonky Log Cabin Flannel Quilts  These are both ready to quilt...They are about 80 x 70....good size for the couch. They just might be for Christmas!

1/2" Hexie Quilt  It's still growing! It's measuring about 52" now at it's widest point. I'm not sure how big this will end up yet, I'll just keep going till I get tired of it, or it's the size I like...we'll see which one comes first. The Hexie paper punches make this a much easier job....I used to cut  all of the hexie's out of card stock...now I just use a paper punch...I have the 1/2", 3/4" and 1" size...There will be more hexie quilts in my future! The picture below is my 1" hexie quilt...I finished quilting it about a month ago...I used a baptist fan ruler and then did a piano key border. I LOVE it!

Wool Projects...I almost always have at least one wool project going at all times. Right now I've got a Buttermilk Basin-January thru December  project going and I just recieved my last month of a Primitive Gathering's 'Sunflower Gathering' BOM wool quilt...I'm pretty much caught up with both of them, so I'm very close to getting both of these projects done. I love to just sit and stitch.

And last but not least....Baprons...which is a cross between an apron and a bib. I've got two sizes, a 6-18 month and an 18 month to 3T. These are fun and I'm using fabric I've had for at least 20 years. I'm even using old bias tape I found in my stash...I have had to buy a bit more bias tape, but that's been it so far. I'm lining them with flannel...These should make great baby gifts.

Happy Quilting and Stitching!

Kris

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I've been very busy in my garden and at work, I'm not having quite as much 'quilt' time and I don't like it! If I want to buy more fabric I have to work, so I guess it's all okay, except when I get home at around 9, and I'm just too tired to do anything but go to bed.

Believe it or not, I got Best of Show at the Red Willow County Fair again. I'm really surprised at this, I thought other quilts were better, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. This quilt is really impressive with all of the embroidery on it, and my piecing was very good, but my longarming was just okay on this one. I'm still happy to see it hanging up with the Big Ribbon on it though. Below are the other quilts I entered.

In my opinion this quilt I made for Emersyn's 1st birthday was much more deserving of the Best of Show Ribbon....Lots of curved seams and I thought the long arm quilting was better on it too, but who am I to say?!

This Kansas Troubles Log Cabin quilt was the second one like this I made....this was pieced right before my mom went in the nursing home...I would make a block and she would cut out the flower to put in the center and iron it on...I would then blanket stitch around each one...My sister Barb has the other one I made. This quilt has a lot of sentimental value since mom and I worked on this one together.










This is my 2011 Calendar quilt that I just finished quilting...This is a very fun
quilt and I love to just look at all of the fabrics in it...I added a strip for every day of the year, and used the fabric that I was using that day. I did a bunch of embroidery on it too.








My latest fun project...Farm Girl Vintage Book by Lori Holt...these are 12" finished blocks, you also can make them 6" if you wish. I've been making the 12" and will probably do them smaller also. This is just plain fun to do.

Some of my wool projects that I've started...only 4 more months to  finish the Summer Gathering BOM quilt, and I'm just waiting for the next block to come in the mail... the ones on the top represent a month....May will be up next for me. The snow man table topper was purchased for 75% off and that made me very happy! I'll have it done in a few days.

My hexie quilt is growing daily...I love working on this.


In the last week, I've frozen 30 bags of corn, made 39 pints of salsa, made cranberry hot pepper jelly, strawberry mango hot pepper jelly, Peach mango jam and Peach Rum jam...Yummy! I'm on a jelly making tear right now...who knows how many jars I'll end up with by the end of the summer!

Happy Quilting,
Kris