Small Scale Gardening

Yesterday we did a little small scale gardening.    Terrariums seem to be making a comeback.  You can see them at a lot of nursery's and garden shops.

So Susan, Hanna and I thought we'd give it a try.

All you need is a glass vessel for an indoor one, or a shallow bowl shaped vessel for an outdoor table top garden.

The basic steps for layering it are:

Rocks for drainage
Charcoal for filtering (I bought it at a pet store)
Potting Soil
Plants - small scale, succulents or sedum
live moss (for indoor terrariums - i found mine in my yard)
Pretty Rocks for decoration

Here they are finished~

Hanna's:

Mine~

Susan's - I love the color in hers~

The Hummingbirds are back!  I set up a feeder off the deck which they seem to really like.

The Female

 The  Male - he is gorgeous in the sunlight.

I have a good view from the kitchen sink and I'm amazed how much time they are spending at the feeder.  Sometimes they just sit a spell.

Have a wonderful Memorial Weekend!

Jill Reid - A Tribute

On Friday I lost my dear friend, kindred spirit and creative playmate Jill.

Jill was a talented quilter, devoted wife, loving mother and fiercely loyal friend.  She loved gardens, decorating for the holidays, board games, crafting and outings.  She was always busy planning something fun to do, somewhere fun to visit or a project to work on.   I can't fully realize how my life will be without her yet.

She had a long partnership with Windham Fabrics.  As a quilt designer and her quilts were often featured in the best quilting magazines, often on the cover.  Jill also won many ribbons including The Founders Award at the Vermont Quilt show.  Here are just a few of her quilts.

Jill was usually behind the camera and documented many of get togethers.  Here are a just a few photos that I had.  This first one is the Cupcake group.  We met monthly for years.

I'm so grateful for the time we had together and for all the wonderful memories I will cherish.

God Bless You Jill -

xo

Long Live The King!

Even my new design wall isn't large enough for a King sized quilt.   Here is a quilt I'm making for my bed.  I'm going to call it King George.  I started this several years ago and I'm finally getting back to it.

After the Revolutionary war, America didn't want a "King", so he became President George Washington.  In any event, he certainly was an American Hero.

I love this fabric and have been saving it for a long time.  I used it in 2009 to cover this hat box.  Check out the original post here.

Here is my sketch.  It really helps keep me on track making double nine patch blocks and cutting the setting blocks.

I used beautiful rich brown fabrics reminiscent of Civil War dressing gowns like this these.

I intend to quilt it myself, one half of at a time, adding batting half a time.  I haven't done this before so let me know if you have any suggestions or hints.

I am very late to Game of Thrones, but really enjoyed binge watching and now I'm caught up.  Here is Joffrey, King of nightmares.

And here is the future King George 7th of England.   He's dreamy!

I'm really looking forward to the reign of my King George king sized quilt.  In the meantime.....back to sewing.  99 blocks is quite a project.

Design Board - Finally!

After almost a year without one, I finally have a new design board in the sewing room.  It isn't hard to make, but takes some planning and supply gathering.   Here it is at work yesterday with my Hot Flash blocks.  I am waiting for new fabric for the last block.

Supply List

2-3 sections of 1" foam house insulation (available at Home Depot or Lowe's)
Utility knife
Ruler
Carpenters Ruler
Pencil
Duct tape
Neutral Flannel - I ordered 100" wide flannel from eQuilter.com
Batting large enough to cover your sized board.
Hot glue gun
3" nails

Step 1:

Decide how wide and tall you want your board to be.  I needed to shorten mine as it came in 8ft lengths.  My board is 72" wide by 77" tall.

Lay your sections face down on the floor and push the tongue and groove sections together.  Duct tape the seams to secure them.

Lay your batting and flannel over the section and trim.  Batting should be about 2-4" larger and the Flannel 3-5" larger than the board section.

I invested the time in steam pressing the flannel.  I used a little "Best Press" light spray starch.  It turned out nice and smooth.

Now lay the flannel on the floor, then the batting being careful there are no stray threads or any between them.  Smooth everything out nicely.

Carefully center the board on top.

This is my favorite glue gun.  It is a cordless heavy duty one.  I've had it for years and it comes in handy for all sorts of projects.

Pull the flannel and batting around to the back and glue down.  When you've done one side, be sure and pull any  slack from the other side before glueing it.  Glue the center then the edges on the corners.  Don't sweat it too much as you won't see it when installed.

Here is the tricky part.  Installing it.  We had several false starts as you can see here.  At first we tried dry wall anchors.  We kept hitting studs and ruining the anchors.  We really boogered up the wall and ceiling and didn't we?

Coco is so over this whole thing.

Here is the finished board.  If you don't want to install it, you can lean it up against a wall, or slide it behind the door or store under a bed.

Using a stud finder, we nailed mine into studs with 3 inch carpenter nails.
Hooray!  Here you can see the side.  You can pin your layered pieces into the foam.

I installed mine at the top of the wall because of the outlets.  If I need to, I can pin blocks at the bottom.

I can not tell you how much I rely on my board for designing quilts, auditioning fabrics and taking photos.  I've added this as a page at the under my header for quick reference.

I am so happy to finally have mine up and ready!