The corners

Very slowly this project has been getting done

When last I posted on it cardinal corner was done

 except or the embroidery I planned to incorporate

A little decoration on the house

Some vanes for the the leaves

and eyes for the birds

nothing to fancy

Just a little extra

And here are the bottom 2 corners 

Done and dusted

                                                    The orange peels go in the middle

Then the other two corners

And the whole thing together, Finally

Now all that needs figuring out is to border or not?

It's been a long dry summer

 It's been a long dry summer, 

full of dire portends for the future and 

small signs that "crazy"season may be on the wain

One can only hope.

Meanwhile there are things that need to be done

That all seem to be stuck somewhere in the middle

We started to cut down a few of our "inconvenient" trees this year back in may.

Intending to get them down and dusted by the end of June

Which didn't happen

What did happen was we discovered the poplars on the north side of the property are dead, 

getting punky and need to be torn down 

before they fall down.

Note to self; More plants may be satisfying for a while

and gorgeous 

but they do need to be watered every day

Sometimes twice a day when the weather doesn't cooperate,

Which it hasn't

So we galloped off to get us some estimates

Easy-Peasy right?

no 

You see the poplars are close to 80' tall

3 of the tree guys wouldn't even give us an estimate

the other 3 were varying degrees of almost $10,000 per tree.

because they would have to rent the equipment.

I'm sorry, what, what now?

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

This in turn triggered the insurance company to decide they wouldn't renew our insurance based on a fuzzy satellite view google maps pictures, 

so now (mid July) they want us to do their job with aerial photos to prove to them our house isn't a fire hazard    -.-

Throw in moss remediation on both roofs, ugh. 

and ick,   there is now dust and moss crap everywhere, 

Making sewing outside is impossible. So much for my happy spot this year

I sublimated my rage at the wood pile ^

It now stretches the length of the house and

Is about shoulder height

Since the insurance was being a prat we decided 

in addition to the front trees 

We would get down all the dead branches in the cedars along the western fence.

there are 25 of them so it took a minute.

The wood pile grew to a second wall along the driveway

which isn't finished yet

< this used to be a nice little cedar privacy wall,

40+ years ago.

It also started out on the neighbors property....

Guess who's problem it is now.....-.-

Anywho, we finally got the insurance company to renew,

 We have found a tree guy who already owns a ladder truck for the poplars so it doesn't cost the world to remove, yay!

Both my yards are still full of 

tree limbs and brush but that will be removed soon too. Also, yay! 

My inner German was beginning to despair of it ever getting tidy again.

On the good news front we have plenty of wood for us and the kids to run the fire place for the foreseeable future, if they would only come get some of it.

And my mulch pile is about to get epic.

CQJP 2023 side done- how it sometimes goes

Sometimes when working on a long term project somewhere near the end I loose it.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         What do you loose Flora?  you may ask                                                                                                                                                                                Sometimes it's the desire to continue the project.                                                                                                                                                                     Sometimes it's the energy or the brain capacity to think about the project.                                                                                                                              Some times Life gets in the way and it's difficult to fine the thread of the project.                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Sometimes it's the creative spark that sent me on the journey in the first place.           

But aren't those the same things?   Nope.  They are not, Each roadblock comes from a different spot.

Most of it is internal but every once in a while something outside your control takes you away.

All in all I find it difficult to re engage my head if I'm just not feeling it.                                                                                                                                                                                                 For me the only way to get back to a project is to set it aside for a time and let it marinate in your lizard brain for a while.                                                                                                                    And then all of a sudden, POOF!  It's done!

Cardinal corner applique finished.

so here are mr. and mrs. Cardinal Keeping look out on their holly tree.

Those leaves took a bit of doing!

But I must say I am much better at turning nice tight corners now.

I need to do a bit more and I may need to add some embroidery to it but over all i'm pleased with it.

This was a BOM from a few years ago, I got it from an online quilt store, i can't remember just which one right now.

Time to start the next corner

Will it be the bunny corner or the bluebird?


 

CQJP 2023 5th side

Here is the 5th side to the Lampbox so far                                                                                                                           I have chain stitched the vines and

 have started the trumpet flowers in pink floche   

These leaves are done in raised buttonhole stitch

I added 3 rows of stem stitch to this upper part of the vine in maroon                                                                                                                                       to start balancing the colors of the block                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

This little flower at the bottom is made up of all the colors in the block in straight pistil stitch, Pad stitch and cast on stitch

The dragonfly is just hanging on but I like it there                     so will leave it for now as a place holder

                        

 

Cardinal corner

 The cardinal corner already in progress,

those holly leaves really improve your point turning skills! 

I have done a little more than half of them here

And because I'm me it looks too plain 

so I may add some embroidery for more pizzazz

Easy in my vocabulary only applies to housework!

From Cathy's gift box

I found myself more Cigar boxes to get in good trouble with                                                                                                                                                                                                                      So I mounted a bunch of things from Cathy's giftie box from a few years ago

       

The white work piece I ended up cutting off the bottom third because it was too big to use whole                                                                                                                                                                              This is the top part                                                                                                                                           It's still to big to put on a cigar box,                       so I will have either to find a box to fit it               or make my own. I haven't decided which yet

The bottom third fit on this cohiba box

It was already painted white and fit perfectly!

I'm trying to figure out what to do with it from here

 

Isn't she pretty though!

                                                                                                                                            

I also mounted this Pink one and this pretty blue one with the swifts but have yet to put them on anything.

I am still fiddling with these other bird panels,

They go together buut they kind of don't

I like the way the right side looks but the left side needs help.

I don't know if I like it.

Maybe it's configured wrong?

I tried it this way first

 The problems I see with it ^ are,

 

 1) the tree unbalances the other three panels

    and the only way to fix that is by adding more to          the others.

  2) The harsh lines of the joins are bothering me too

  3) The upper left hand bird panel was too small, so         I had to add some "like" fabric, to make it wider

     now I'm having trouble trying to integrate it                                                                                                 into a whole contiguous piece. 

This happens every time I put panels together like this, the harsh lines of the individual panels takes my eye away from enjoying the piece as a whole and I can't figure out how to integrate them.

The way I have dealt with this in the past is to add sashing between the panels, but that breaks it up farther.  I'd like to try something different. It's just not working very well here right now.

Frustrating! I can sort of see what I want, but I can't make it work. 

I need to separate the blocks, find some more "Like" fabric to maybe add some joins to make the pieces flow better because right now it looks choppy to me. 

Maybe one more time with the seam ripper.

I know I can get this.

And so it begins

May the 4th be with you
 

Idea's I will try to get to this time!

We had joy

So I have started to dip my toe back into Applique again

I flirt with it every once in a while

 and my past efforts have turned out 

allright buuut, nunghh......

I'm not a big fan of some of it (see it here and there)

It strikes me as blocky and meah The turtle is nice though

There is a bit more but we won't go into it here

I found this kit as a BOM from an online shop 

Meaning to do it whilst I ferried my MIL to her appointments 

And that did happen

I finished the 32 orange peel 3.5' blocks 

in a variety of parking lots, between running shopping chores 

and waiting on Robin to finish seeing whatever doctor had her next

Those took the year waiting for all the blocks and their instructions to filter in

Then they sat around 

Waiting

for another year, or so.

I took the sun parts to Chicago with me in march so I'd have something to do 

I finished those pretty quickly

But I had the wind by then

You know, 

That undeniable "Something" that gives you 

the desire to keep going until it's finished 

April has been busy with all sorts of other things too

Like our Quilt guilds bi-annual Quilt show, which was a roaring success by my count of oohs! and aahhhs! whilst standing as a door monitor, stewardess and goer.

I have a bunch of projects that I am working on between,

A new BOM in felt from SueSpargo which you can't see, as per the instruction I am not allowed to show it on line! well pooh!

It's really cute though!

 

also the lampbox which is mostly done with has one panel to go

And a few little embroidered things that scratch that new itch.

I finished the piecing parts of the top

and even got the sun even more or less 

Some of the points got lost, but I thought it more important that, the round part fit properly.

That cross where the 4 fabrics of the sun come together would have been waaay more distracting! 

Had it been off by even a smige, as that is where your eye goes first, it would have taken away from even the most precise of applique work.

So that part is done, it's off to the outside panels, 

which are all applique. 

Lets see how long this one takes me.