agilejack

It’s been a week. work has been a little nuts. Since my last post I haven’t spent much time in my sewing room and I’m ok with that.

I got a message yesterday from my friend who visited last summer. She’s the one who recently retired and has been looking for a property in my area for their retirement. They’ve been looking for around eight months and there haven’t been very many houses on the market. Well, there was a new listing and her agent wanted her to fly up to see it.

She arrived this morning. I was supposed to play pickleball but the rain put an end to that. So Instead I hightailed it out to the property she was coming to see and met her and her agent there to walk the property and see the house.

To make a long story short, she now has an offer accepted on that house! She’s so excited about it. it’s a really lovely house and property in a great area.

She is a friend of mine that I’ve known for years through dogs. The she got into quilting, and she started playing pickleball at about the same time I did. All of this at an 800 mile difference.

It’s going to be so fun to have a pickleball, quilting, doggie friend in the area! We’re going to play pickleball tomorrow, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday! She leaves Thursday.

I did feel a spark of oomph and hit my sewing room last night for just a few minutes to pull some black and white fabrics. I’ve been thinking I might strike out on a black and white with a little color version o the interweave quilt. There is a black and white version on the pattern cover.

Here’s the ten fabrics I pulled from my black and white stash.

I’m pretty happy with this initial pull but it’s entirely possible I may make some changes. The accent strips that will interweave with these fabrics will likely be Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics in a limited color way. But I still haven’t decided what color… red? Orange? Pink? turquoise? Purple? It will be interesting to see where this lands. I’ll also need to decided on a background fabric. I’m thinking a low volume black and white with very little pattern. I’ll have to see what’s in my stash.

I did sort out my Brandon Leftover blocks by color, approximately. it’s hard to decide what color some of these are!

Now I need to sort of shuffle them up and get them up on the design wall.

While my friend and her realtor talked this morning I hit a small quilt shop in the area. I bought a few pieces of fabric. Not very much. My friend joined me there when they were done. Then we visited a nearby pickleball court area and headed off to another local quilt store on the way back to my area. I bought one piece of black and white batik and this KFC glasses case.

The store has had these for awhile and I saw on Instagram that they had received another shipment. So I decided to dive I and finally get one!

We did grab an early dinner before we headed back to my place. My friend got the good news about her offer being accepted in early evening. It was so exciting!

It’s been a pretty rainy week. But there were moments of brilliance.

It looks like we have some dry, yet cloudy weather coming up.

With all the creative drive I’ve had so far in 2024 I’ve been thinking I’ll probably see a dry spell coming before too long. I think I might be entering that dry spell.

I haven’t been in my sewing room the last two nights. I was going to get in there tonight and start sorting my Brandon leftover blocks and get them up on my design wall but I got busy with other stuff and lost my oomph.

So with what feels like a dry spell looming I have several quilts I’ve been thinking about making but I don’t have one that I’m itching to start next. So I’m making a list of things I SHOULD do while my creative juices are rebuilding. Plus some quilts I’ve been thinking about.

1. I should finish the bags that will be made from the four panels I made from the strips trimmed away from my Aboriginal Libby quilt.

2. I should add the borders to the quilt for my guest room that has been in a state of incompleteness for far too long. I should also make the backing for this quilt and get ready to take it to my long arm quilter.

3. I should do something with all these blocks I made about a year ago. I had planned to go with a color wash approach but sort of lost interest in that. I had another idea recently and think I might go with that instead.

Thinking I might do a sashing treatment with the indigo batiks left over from my Wensleydale quilt. There a lot of left overs!

4. I’ve wanted to make a Gridlock quilt. It’s in one of the Kaffe Fassett books I have. This first photo is Kaffe Fassett during a critique of quilts in a Gridlock workshop. The second one is the quilt from the book.

I’ve been thinking it might be fun to make this out of a selection of batiks I’ve had set aside for some time.

5. I can choose to make the red version of my blue swirly quilt. Hmmm. Looking at that photo of the reds makes me think this is a good place to start!

6. I SHOULD finish this Australian Aboriginal scrappy trip quilt but I don’t have a lot of enthusiasm for it. It just feels so drab in the photos. It’s better in person when you can see all the detail in the fabrics.

I like the idea of finishing up some UFOs when I’m not feeling particularly creative. it’s a good time to dig in and be productive while I wait for my creative juices to start flowing again.

Our beautiful streak of weather is coming to an end as the rain approaches. I’ve really enjoyed the last few days of sun and warm temps. I took my good boys for a walk late this afternoon and the sun felt so good on my face and on my back. It was so wonderful.

And tonight these boys are worn out.

I played pickleball this morning indoors and had an absolute blast. It was me and nine men. I’m pretty sure that I was one of the top two players in that group. My coach had asked me to focus on controlling all my shots… being careful to place them where it made it difficult for my opponents to return them. I kept that in my mind as I played and felt so good about how I did! I think I won five out of the 8 games I played and two of the ones I didn’t win were still going on when the timer went off. Some really great games.

I’m scheduled to play pickleball tomorrow night outdoors and than Thursday morning indoors. It’s a good pickleball week!

I slept in a little this morning after being up early the last three days. It felt good to sleep until after 9 am. After breakfast and some strong coffee I was off to my long arm quilter to pick up my friend’s Australian Aboriginal quilt and deliver my Aboriginal Libby quilt for her to quilt.

My friend’s quilt turned out great!

It’s such a simple design that really lets these gorgeous prints shine.

And the backing is just yummy.

The quilting design is sort of spirals with bubbles.

Here’s a little eye candy.

I ran a couple errands while I was out. When I got home I played with Bender and Rico in the back yard for a while then hit my sewing room.

I decided to dig in and make some Frankenbag panels out of the strips I cut off my Aboriginal Libby quilt yesterday. I knew that if I didn’t get it done right away those scarps would sit in a drawer for years.

(Wondering what a Frankenbag is? Check out my tutorial and make your own!)

I had more than enough to make four bag panels. They are very free form and interesting with all the diagonal lines. I think they will look really cool quilted and sewn into bags.

There are only some small pieces left over. I’m glad I got this quick task done.

Then it was time to take my boys for a nice three mile walk in the sunshine. It felt good to get out. When we got home I ordered some dinner to pick up later and hit my sewing room again and finished up the last of the four panels.

Before I had to go and pick up my dinner I decided to press my green quilt again. I was concerned that the edges were a little wavy when it was on the design wall and I was afraid I had stretched out all those bias edges. So I pressed it using some fabric stabilizer.

It all actually laid out nice and flat on my ironing board so I’m not worried about it being wavy any more. I think it was just on the design wall in a wonky way. I didn’t want to manipulate it too much and deform it. It’s now folded and hanging over my sewing room chair to make sure it dries out completely before I fold it and put it in the closet.

After dinner I had another play session with my boys. This photo was taken at around 7:30! I’m so happy to see the light come back to my evenings!

It was a beautiful sky tonight.

After that final play session I hit my sewing room again to start squaring up my Brandon leftover blocks.

Thought I’d probably only get about half of them squared up but it went so fast that I finished all 80 blocks!

All I have to do now is shuffle them up and toss them up on the design wall! This has been one fast little quilt!

I’d better start thinking about what I’m going to make next.

Back to work tomorrow. We have some nice weather coming up. Looks like spring may have arrived after all.

Day two of lambs on Saturday started with feeding the ewes with their lambs. Even the little lambs are loving their grain!

Once everyone was fed I took Rico to move some sheep from a small pen near the barn to a large pasture in the back of the property where they could enjoy some fresh spring grass all day.

It was such a spectacular day!!! What a great day to spend with lambs, dogs, puppies and friends!

Once we had the morning chores done we headed up to the back pasture to see if any lambs were born over night. We drove through looking in the trees to see if there are ewes with babies under cover. And there they were…

Three ewes had a total of five lambs. Two sets of twins and a singleton. We got busy getting them all loaded up in the lamb wagon. This little one’s mom was nervous so my friend had me hold her on a piece of twine so the mom would stay close. If we had put this lamb in the lamb wagon while we caught the other lambs she may have been too stressed and would have joined the flock of pregnant ewes.

The mom stuck around while we got the other lambs loaded up and then this little lamb went in last.

There are five newborn lambs in that crate! So we were off to the barn with moms following along.

Wyatt the Australian shepherd helped keep everyone moving and Isaac the guard dog came along to be part of the action.

We got them all taken care of right away with ear tags, banding tails and castrating the males and had them in their pasture for time to continue bonding with their moms.

After getting those lambs and moms all settled we spent some quality time with PUPPIES!

They were wrestling and growling and having a blast!

One last puppy photo…

My friend had to make a run to the airport in Portland next so while she was gone I did some more work with Rico on a few sheep. He was brilliant again!!!

Then a quick dip to Rico cool off.

After eating the delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich I brought along we headed down the road to some logging company land to have a nice stroll In the trees.

These boys do love an opportunity to run free.

We walked about two miles then headed back to let Rico work the sheep one more time before my friend returned.

It was almost 3:00 by that time so we made another swing through the pasture with the pregnant ewes to see if anyone had lambed and there were no new lambs. But there was one ewe who was clearly in the process so we split her and three others off from the flock and had Wyatt help us get them down to a paddock near the barn with the lambs we had picked up earlier in the day. We left the mom in labor there and took the other three ewes back up to the pasture. Trudy let me know this evening that the ewe had twins!

I was on my way home at around 4:00 and was so tired! It was such a gorgeous day! Look at this!!!

Days spent lambing are two of the best days of the year! It’s spring! There are adorable lambs everywhere. I get to do things I’ve never done before And I get to do some physical work and spend the day outside in a beautiful place! Nothing wrong with any of that. Oh, and there were puppies this year!

I played pickleball this morning then headed home to start checking stuff off my to-do list. I did get my tax materials all put together and off to my accountant.

I also got my Aboriginal Libby quilt trimmed… first I marked a cutting line, then stitched inside that line, then cut the excess fabric away.

All those cut edges are on the bias so I used the line of stitching to keep everything in place.

There is enough fabric cut off to make one or two bags. It will not go to waste.

Once that was done I measured the quilt and calculated how big my backing needed to be and then dug in on that final project… a project I detest! I had it measured, cut, sewn and pressed in no time.

I was able to make the backing with fabric running across the width. Two widths will be enough.

And since someone will ask, here’s the info on that backing fabric.

My friend Linda gave me that fabric for Christmas. It was intended for this quilt. The trimmed quilt top, backing and binding fabric are all folded and packaged and ready to head off to my long arm quilter tomorrow.

After visiting my long armer tomorrow I hope to get my strawberry tank soil boosted with some compost I bought and then I’ll plant my new strawberry plants. After that, I’ll have a lot of time to square up the rest of my Brandon Leftover blocks.

Happy Easter!

Note: I’ve gotten so many requests for how I made this quilt that I’m adding some basic instructions to help you out.

Quilt is made from 8 inch Quarter log cabin blocks with low volume nine patches made from 3 inch strip sets. For the green blocks I started with a 2.5 inch block. Added 1 inch of stripe, 1-1/4 inches of white accent then green strips. Green strips vary in width… 1 inch up to 2 inches. I squared them up to 8 inches. You can find lots of tutorials on YouTube for making a quarter log cabin block.

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Today was a gorgeous day with lots of lambs, I finished up the borders on this green KFC quarter log cabin block quilt this evening.

Putting borders on a quilt is not my favorite thing to do, but I persevered and got it done. So much pinning1

…. and pressing….

I’m really glad I decided to add that little striped border. This quilt really needed it!

And that climbing geranium in the larger border is really pretty1

And just a little bit of eye candy…

And one last one for good measure.

I’m so tired tonight. I don’t have in me to do my post on my second day of lambs. So I’ll leave you tonight with a couple of quick videos of Rico working sheep today.

That shows Rico doing some lovely driving and taking my commands so nicely! This next video is a quick little outrun, which was gorgeous, with a fetch (bringing the sheep to me).

I’m playing pickleball at 8:30 tomorrow. the weather is supposed to be glorious.

I have two goals for tomorrow. 1. get my tax materials prepared and off to my accountant. 2. trim my Aboriginal Libby quilt and make the backing. I’m picking up my friend Linda’s quilt on Sunday and want to take this Libby quilt to be finished.

Today was a specular spring day here. A perfect day for lambs!

Day one of lambs was a pretty low key day. There are a lot of healthy moms with lambs who are doing really well so that means less to do in taking care of everyone each day.

After feeding the sheep this morning we castrated, docked the tail and gave an ear tag to one lamb that was born yesterday afternoon. Then I got Rico out of the car and did a little farm work with him. We brought a group of about 20 sheep out of one small pen and moved them to a large pasture through several gates. It’s so much fun to see Rico’s sheep herding training put to a really practical application. You could certainly run a sheep farm without a trained dog, but having a good dog to help really makes a difference.

And now for some happy and healthy ewes and lambs.

And a close up of a lamb born yesterday.

Then we headed out to the back pasture where all the pregnant ewes hang out to see if there were any lambs born over night. Voila! One ewe with one tiny lamb. So we gathered up the lamb and put him in the lamb wagon and headed back to the barn with mom following close behind.

We had this new lamb tagged, castrated and tail banded in no time and they joined a bunch of other mom/baby combos in a nice green field.

With that done it was time to play with puppies! My friend who owns this farm has a litter of six week old Australian Shepherd puppies, and they are so cute! This one fell asleep in my arms later in the day.

This little one is such a sweet and pretty little girl. GAH! I really love puppies!

Six weeks old is really the perfect age for puppies! I could sit and watch them play all day long.

They play hard and then the fall asleep! And they are so friendly and confident.

It’s really good timing to have an easy lambing season with relatively good weather when you have a litter of puppies you need to watch for hours on end! And they even got to meet a lamb close up.

They were all very curious and interested.

Since everything at the farm was so low key we decided to head into town to grab a warm lunch. But first, I got Rico out and worked him a little on some sheep. And he did some lovely work for me… of course!

I told my friend that if I had to use one word to describe Rico’s work today it would be “control!” it’s so amazing to see how I’m able to control how he’s moving the sheep around the field. All with verbal commands. I’m so proud of how he’s doing and I’m having a blast watching all his training show up in such a great way.

After lunch we headed out to the back field again to see if there were any more lambs and two ewes had given birth since we checked earlier in the day. But they were so newly born that we decided to leave them in the field for a few hours to allow them to bond before we moved them to the barn. Trudy messaged me after I got home to let me know that one of them had another lamb! I thought she looked like she wasn’t done.

It’s so amazing to see instinct kick in. These moms just know what to do with their new babies.

It was raining pretty good during our trip to check for lambs and I got pretty wet. When we got back to the barn we were back into the pen with the puppies for a final play session of the day and a little early dinner. The puppies who were a little slower at eating had the last part of their meal elevated so the little piggy puppies didn’t eat ALL the food.

They thought it was terrible that they didn’t get to eat all the food.

Here’s my boyfriend Isaac (on the left) and Elsa, two of the three wonderful guard dogs who keep all the moms and babies safe from predators.

I’m betting we have a good number of lambs to take care of in the morning. And the weather is supposed to be really gorgeous tomorrow. A perfect day for lambs.

After a nice warm dinner tonight I hit my sewing room to do two things. The first was to square up one block in each of the many fabrics I’m using in my Brandon Mably leftover quilt so I could see a good variety of them together. I was really anxious to see these blocks up on the design wall, but since I promised myself that I wouldn’t do that until my green quilt top was done, I pinned that final diagonal seam…

Then I sewed the seam, pressed it and trimmed the two remaining corners.

Only borders left to go now.

Before I put that quilt back on my design wall I tossed up the blocks I trimmed and grabbed a couple of quick photos.

I am soooo happy with how this looks! I’m so glad I cut those shark’s teeth sashing pieces just a little bit wider. It makes such a difference and gives this all such amazing movement.

And one piece of eye candy…

On the drive home I stopped at a lovely nursery to see if they had strawberry plants. I bought six of some ever-bearing varieties they had and a couple bags of compost to feed my raised garden beds. They had the most gorgeous selection of coleus plants!

The most amazing color of burnt orange!

I’m pretty tired tonight and need to turn in and get a good night sleep. More lambs tomorrow!

I got up early this morning and was on the indoor pickleball court at 8 am. I had a blast playing! I played 8 games in two hours and every one of them was close and really fun. I won half my games, which is pretty darned good. Not one game was a run away today. It was a great way to start my day.

It rained most of the day today. I had to go into the office this afternoon and decided to take my boys and their leashes with me so if the weather took a good turn we could get a walk in. And it was gorgeous when I finished at the office so we took a three mile walk along the Willamette River.

It was so beautiful out and it felt good to get our walk in a different place. My boys were fascinated with all the smells and sounds.

Rico surprised me with some master posing skills! Bender’s expertise appears to be rubbing off on him.

Saw this amazing blooming red currant along the way.

There’s just something so rejuvenating about being near the water.

When we got home I fed my boys and grabbed dinner for myself. And just as I was getting ready to hit my sewing room I got a phone call from my friend Linda. We yacked for at least a half hour, probably more, and then I finally headed down the hall.

After such an early day and a lot of physical activity I’m tired tonight so I decided not to tackle finishing up my green quilt top. Instead, I cracked out 30 more of my Brandon leftover blocks.

That makes a total of 45 blocks that are sewn and pressed and ready to be squared up. I need 80 for this quilt top.

And there’s two of those out of print Brandon fabrics. It makes me so happy to see them in a quilt block!

I just love seeing all these fun prints and wonderful color with the graphic black and white fabrics.

One more day of work, an evening pickleball session and then I’ll be up to my neck in lambs!!! I talked to my friend with the lambs today and she said that about half of her pregnant ewes have lambed so far, so there are plenty left for my two days on the farm. And the weather looks like it’s going to be pretty much perfect! I’m so excited!

And it’s always nice to have a short work week.

I hit my sewing room after I did my blog post late last night and started cutting my Comb Stripe fabric for the corners for my new Brandon Mably blocks. I got about 3/4 of what I need for 80 blocks cut and then called it quits to get ready for bed. I cut the rest of the 80 squares I need during my lunch break today.

I had planned to finish sewing my green quilt top together tonight and then get the edges trimmed. But I convinced myself that I would certainly do it tomorrow night if I allowed myself to have some fun with these Brandon Mably blocks tonight. I felt confident I could trust myself this time so I felt good with this negotiation with myself. I told myself that if I worked on the Brandon blocks tonight, I couldn’t put them up on the design wall until my green quilt top is done.

So I started prepping the pieces to add the triangles to the pieces I sewed last night. First I had to cut all the striped squares into triangles. In order to maintain the swirls where the blocks meet it’s important to cut all these pieces the same so that the stripes are oriented the same in all the triangles.

Here’s the 160 triangles ready to go.

I decided to take a few minutes and press creases to make the centers of the center strips and the triangles to make putting them together quick and easy. I folded the center pieces in half with wrong sides together then pressed a 1/2 inch crease on each side. Here’s the center crease on one side of the sharks teeth sashing.

Then I folded each triangle with right sides of the fabric together and pressed a 1/2 inch crease in the center of the long side.

Pressing this way makes the pieces nest with the creases marking the center.

Here’s the center strips with the centers pressed and all ready for assembly.

It makes aligning and pinning them so fast and accurate. Here’s the view from the top… You can see how those two pieces of fabric almost align them selves.

… and a view from the side.

I pinned triangles to centers until I ran out of pins, then I sat down and started chain piecing.

I got these 15 blocks all pressed and ready to square up.

You might notice that I was careful to make sure all the sharks teeth are pointing away from the colorful center fabric. The details are important to me!

Those two fabrics on the top row are out of print Brandon fabrics from my stash. I think this is a good way to use up a little of that precious material.

I finished this block assembly up earlier than I thought I would so I decided to get some work done on my green quilt. And I’m glad I did! I sewed one of the diagonal seams remaining so that the quilt top is basically in two equal pieces.

Then I put all the pressed pieces for the Brandon quilt on a ruler and moved it off my cutting table to make rom for pinning and trimming.

Then I got organized on my cutting table and started trimming.

I wanted to trim all I could with the quilt in two pieces because I thought it would be a little easier to manipulate. I didn’t cut all the way to the center diagonal line because I wanted to trim those sections when the two pieces are sewn together.

But I did trim the two corners that are all assembled.

So all I have left to do on this is to sew that final diagonal seam and trim the few inches that haven’t been trimmed yet. Then it will be ready for the borders to be added. I have to be gentle with this now because all those exposed edges are on the bias.

It rained a good portion of the day today so we didn’t get our daily walk in until around 5:00. But it was nice while we walked and we got a good three miles in. That makes two good boys happy… and me too!

The Oregon grape blooms along the trail are so spectacular right now and their scent is in the air.

I’m playing pickleball early in the morning before work. I’m looking forward to it!

Two more work days then a nice long weekend!

I had intended to get my green quilt top all sewn together today… at least to the point of being ready to add the borders. I didn’t quite get that far but I did get it all sewn with the exception of two of the long seams. This quilt top is still in three pieces.

You might ask why I didn’t finish it. Well, I started chasing a squirrel instead.

Last night I mocked up some blocks for the “swirly” quilt using left over Brandon Mably fabrics that used a little wider strip of the sharks teeth. And I like it better with a little wider strip.

I love the way the sharks teeth give almost a star effect in those black and white centers. And it looks so three-dimensional.

This next photo shows the comparison between the mock-ups with the wider strips on the left, and the narrower strips on the right.

It might be hard to see the difference in those small photos. You might just have to take my word for it.

I was actually going to leave my sewing room to take my boys for a walk and instead I cut into those Brandon Mably leftovers and started cutting the centers for these blocks. I pulled a few Brandon pieces from my stash to supplement the leftovers and in no time I had 80 pieces cut forthe centers of the blocks I want to make.

I just LOVE those fabrics! Brandon’s designs are so fun and light hearted. I’m really having a blast creating with them.

Once these were all cut I decided to head out for a nice long walk with my boys. We really moved our butts and I was able to maintain a pace under 19 minutes for the first two miles! It’s been a while since I’ve been able to walk that fast.

We walked three miles by the time we got home. My boys were happy to see that the first azaleas are starting to bloom.

When we got home I decided that I would dig in and cut all the strips I’ll need so laid a couple of these pieces on top of the sharks teeth with spacing of 1-1/2 inches on the left, and 1-1/4 inches on the right. There’s not that much difference, but that quarter inch makes a difference! I prefer the one on the right.

So I pressed, cut, and sub cut some of my sharks teeth into 10 inch strips that are 1-3/4 wide. They will finish at 1-1/4 inch.

I was on a bit of a productive jag so started sewing the strips to the center pieces and with some focus and efficiency I got them all sewn and pressed in about 90 minutes.

I’ll just need to cut the striped squares and sub cut them into triangles and then sew them on. It won’t take long when I dedicate time to this project again.

I have promised myself that I will finish sewing the rows of my green quilt together and trim all four sides before I do any more with these fun blocks. We’ll see if I can stick to that promise when tomorrow night rolls around.

Back to work tomorrow but it’s a short work week. I’m taking two days off and will be busy with lambing on Thursday and Friday! I’m really looking forward to it and the weather looks like it’s going to be perfect! You can read about last year’s lambing adventures here and here.

I got up early this morning and headed out for pickleball. I didn’t have a great night sleep and didn’t play very well. I was the host for the lower level play this morning so the games weren’t as fun as they have been the last week. Plus I didn’t feel great.

I took my boys with me and tossed their frisbee in the park and wore them out before we headed home.

Once we got home I plopped on the sofa with ice on my back and watched a movie. It’s been a long time since I was lazy and watched a movie…actually watched it. So it was quite enjoyable and my back felt better after the ice.

I did spend some time in my sewing room assembling my green and low volume blocks. I didn’t get it all done but I probably got about 75% of the way there before I pooped out. I can easily finish it up tomorrow and probably get the borders on as well.

Before I left my sewing room tonight I decided to play with Brandon Mably fabrics left over from my Interweave quilt. I just folded fabrics and stacked them up to mimic the blocks, then cropped the photos and dropped them into a document to see how they look together.

Here’s the result.

That sharks teeth does some really crazy stuff in a sashing!

I’m liking this! I may play with the width of those sharks teeth pieces and the size of the corners. But I think this is something I’ll actually make. I might play with the different colors of jumble for teh strips just to see what it looks like. There are a lot of options.

Here’s a couple of blooms we saw on the trail this week. Red blooming current and Oregon grape.

And then this beautiful bush that my plant app identified as Sand Cherry. It has the mostly lovely aroma.

Tomorrow is a quiet day with some pickleball in the afternoon. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll actually go or take the day off. It would be good for me to get out of the house. I’ll play it by ear and see how I feel.