Rag Quilt with a name

My little niece is the recipient of this little rag quilt.  She is a year old this weekend.  It is cuddly with pink, purple, and green turtles and elephants.  3 layers of flannel fabric and her name is appliqued on a diagonal down the quilt.

Rag Quilt with a name

Applique ready to fuse

Closer look after blanket stitching

Stitching used to hold flannel squares together

I'm working on a quilt for all of my nieces and nephews.  I'll call it my "Aunt Challenge."  I love the flannel rag quilts, but will branch out with different types of quilts as I work through the older kids.  I now have the two youngest ones set up with quilts from aunt Carla. 

Actually, I have delivered the next one also.  But that's another post...

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Our garden has been providing us with an overabundance of zucchini this year.  I'm one of "Those" people.  You know, the kind you act like you don't see because I probably am going to try to unload some zucchini or squash on you.

We've had zucchini every which way and then some this year.  I have a freezer full of shredded zucchini to make this recipe all year long.  You will love this one. 

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Super Moist Chocolate Zucchini Bread

2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups shredded zucchini

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla in large bowl until blended well.  Combine all dry ingredients and slowly mix into sugar mixture until well blended.  Stir in zucchini.

Pour into two loaf pans sprayed with cooking spray. (I like to put waxed paper in the bottom of the loaf pans so the bread comes out without sticking.  Just peel the paper off when it comes out of the pan.)

Bake 55-60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes in pan before cooling bread on wire racks.

I think nuts and chocolate chips would be good in this, but it's extra good just as it is.


Maybe I'll just make my friends bread and quit throwing vegetables at them,

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County Fair Contest, My first

I entered a contest at the county fair for the first time in my life.  What a great experience.  Now I know how nerve racking competition in sewing and quilting can be.  But talk about exciting...  I even got a blue ribbon.

This was a special contest for quilt blocks that will be made into a quilt for a drawing at the fair next year.  The block had to follow the theme, "No Place Like Home...Town's of Kansas." 
I had a crazy time trying to come up with an idea for my block.  I went through books, magazines, and web sites with no inspiration at all.  I wanted to go out of the box and not do a basic house block.  I really wanted to go bright with the colors.

I was about to give up, when I opened the July 2012 issue of American Quilter magazine.  Deborah Gordon created a foundation paper pieced baby quilt called, "Baby Bunting" that looked beautiful and reminded me of  a sunset.  Kansas sunsets are so beautiful.  I knew that was what I wanted to do.

I knew curves would be a good challenge for the judging, but I wanted to do patchwork also.  I pulled out the graph paper and designed silhouette of the roof tops for the bottom of the block with 2 1/2" squares and half square triangles.

Sun on Kansas Horizon quilt block

(Just noticed every paragraph starts with I.  lol)  This one was about to too.  I'll work on my writing skills..................................................

The half square triangles were made with this technique.  I love it!!  There is a chart to help with the starting size of the squares in that link.  It is very handy! 

The rays of the sun were made with charms from  
that I participated in earlier in the year.  The rest of the block was a variety of batiks from my stash.

It's so funny how picky you can be when you are going to be judged.  I sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped and sewed and ripped again.  If I spent this much time on each block every time, I may only be able to make one quilt in my lifetime.

The support I received from my husband and daughter were incredible.  When I was ready to give up the idea of doing this, they encouraged me.  I thought it was a crazy idea to do this when I only found out about the contest a couple of days before the block was due, but my husband knew I could do it.  I'm so lucky to have them in my life. 

The ladies accepting the entries made me feel so good.  The first words were, "Oh my, how pretty."  I was good with that and was on top of the world.  They even invited me to join their quilt group. 

Overall, this was such a great experience.  Even without winning, I would have been a winner.  But winning is cool.  lol  My prize?  50 bucks...oh yeah!!!

Now I'm ready to get out of my comfort zone again.  Maybe I'll enter 2 projects next year. 

My husband also had an entry at the fair.  I want to share it because he is so talented.  Check out more of his work here.

Gone Fishing Metal Art

Now to clean up my sewing room,

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Any man can be a father...

Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad. ~Author Unknown

I'm one lucky girl.  I have so many great men in my life, but today I'm celebrating my dad.

Rocking my world

Coaching my ball team

 (Need to remember to put the picture of my ball team on facebook.  That will be funny.)

Giving our dogs baths

Grandpa with Trista

Dad with Trista and Chanda

My wedding day with my brother and sister

Randy's graduation

Dad with Allie and Madeline

Love you dad.   Happy Father's Day!

I'm so lucky,

Our First Vegetable Garden

First off, I've always thought my thumbs are black.  I seem to lack the skills of a gardener.  This year I've been determined to change that.  I'm learning gardening 101 by trial, error, error again, look it up on the Internet, ask questions of green thumbers (why isn't that a word?), try it their way, error again, pull it up, plant something else, watch bugs enjoy, spray the crap out of things, plant again, error again, man it's working, and look on the Internet again.  Experience seems to be the best learning tool of all.  If failure breeds success, next year I should be off the charts.

We have fence around the garden to keep dogs and deer out.  The birds seem to love it.  They use the sprinkler as a bird bath and the worms are keeping them fed.  We have strawberries in an old horse tank next to the garden.  The birds ate my first strawberry, so we now have netting over the strawberries and we have harvested 2.  YES 2 whole strawberries.  lol

Garden June 3, 2012

I started with spinach, but the bugs really chowed down on it, so I pulled it up.  I like spinach but not leaves with bug holes in them...  I planted cabbage and broccoli which seem to be doing fine. I've planted tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow and green squash, peppers, dill, watermelon, and pumpkins.  I have marigolds on one side, because someone told me rabbits hate marigolds.  I thought it was worth trying to keep out the rabbits.  OR I could just put the chicken wire I purchased around the bottom of the fence.  I don't think there are any rabbits around here that could jump the 6 feet it would take to get over the fence.....

Our first harvest

The first thing we consumed from the garden this year was this itty bitty strawberry.  Hubby and I split it.  Tasty.  That was June 3rd.  Success.  Oh yeah.  This is what $15.00 worth of strawberry plants gets ya..........

Harvesting broccoli June 10, 2012

This morning I was out watering the garden and started wondering about the broccoli.  It was starting to look ready.  I checked this web site, "Gardening Know How" and learned we definitely needed to harvest it.  The hot wind was taking it's toll and turning the broccoli yellow.  I hate this wind!

Our second harvest

The second harvest looks a little better.  ha  YES, That is another strawberry and yes, we will split it.

This gardening thing is starting to be fun.  Stay tuned.

Learning and loving it,



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