Christmas Through The Year

Remember my idea, here, to make a different pillow cover every month? These will be going to my son and DIL for Christmas. Here is the newest pillow. You might recognize the fabric from yesterday's post. I think this fabric is so pretty. I had been seeing this idea of taking a piece of big print/floral fabric and embellishing it with embroidery stitches. When I saw this fabric I knew it would be perfect for this pillow. I used #8 perle cotton thread.

 Here are some of the details.

Last month I entered my heart pillow in the Christmas Through The Year Challenge that Darlene and Cheryl are hosting this year. I won last month. I got a gift from both ladies. To the left is what Darlene sent. All those things were stuffed into the stocking. A wool pincushion, bees wax, scissors, and a journal. Cheryl covered some kind of container with the cute polka dot fabric. Great place to put all kinds of goodies. Thanks ladies for my early Christmas presents.

Christmas kept coming to my house because I won these vintage sheets (fat quarters) from Quilting with Debi.

Then I won some King Tut thread from During Quiet Time.

Then an unexpected box came in the mail. Michelle May sent me this ceramic blue bird as a thank you for letting her stay at my home when she visited our guild. It was my pleasure to have her stay!

Thank you all for all the goodies!

With Passion,

Carrie P.

FMQ Challenge

I never thought I would say this but I am beginning to like Free Motion Quilting. I still have a lot to learn but it is becoming fun for me. 

This months lesson from was Ann Fahl. We had squiggles, flowers, and stars to try out this time. I had a time with those stars though. It was hard for me to stop doing the loop and go to straight lines. I had to stop and really think about what came next.

I enjoyed the FMQ I decided to go ahead and quilt this project. I just went a little crazy. This is the back of the project.

Here is the front which you really can't see to much of the quilting but it was great practice.

Here is the finished project. I made an e-reader cover for daughter-in-law's birthday.

The pattern was in a magazine I bought a while back called Simple Quilts and Sewing.

With Passion,
Carrie P.

A little more of the Garden

Spring has definitely sprung in our part of the world. If you look close you can see a perfect little bird nest in this bush. It is near my black rain barrel. I had heard a bird fly out of it when I would go to the rain barrel and saw that it was a Cardinal building the nest. Hopefully this year a black snake won't get the babies before they can fly. That is what happened last year, I think. I am going to try to take pictures of the progress.

 The Weeping Cherry and Red Bud trees are blooming.

I thought I would show you the garlic bed. The two in the front with the large leaves are a garlic called Elephant garlic. The cloves get really big. I bought the original cloves from last years farmer's market.

 Yay! All my little seedlings are coming up. April 14 is our last frost date. Not sure if we will get any more really cold weather but I am going to wait until that date to put these in the ground outside.

 Remember this post, I had cut some of the tops of some basil from the garden, put in water, and grew some roots? Two of the plants survived. They are taking off. Some of those little peat pots also have more basil growing. I love to make pesto.

 I got a sweet belated birthday present from Candace. Look at that sweet bird fabric. Reminds me of the Goldfinch birds we have around here. She also send the vintage coffee jar filled with some bamboo variegated thread, Clover Wonder Clips, which Candace highly recommends, and a book mark.

 Also in the package was a paper bag with some Walla Walla, Washington sweet onions for my garden.  Candace is from Washington state and she grows these too.

 So I got those planted in the garden right away. Thanks Candace for such  a fun birthday present.

With warmer weather coming it is easier to make bread in my home. We try to conserve energy in the winter so we keep the thermostat down so my house is pretty chilly for bread making. Anyway, I got a sourdough starter going and made some bread the other day.

 Mr. P. came in the house from his job and lifted his nose in the air to smell the fresh bread baking, got a smile on his face, and said it sure did smell good. It was so yummy with some real butter on it too.

Hope your weekend is filled with things you love to do. Have a great one.

With Passion,

Carrie P.

The Garden

I thought today I would show you a few photos of my garden that I have been working in. This is what I grew over the winter in my hoop houses.

Here are some Brussel sprouts which are finally taking off. I have never seen the real plant before so this will be fun to watch the little sprouts grow.

Here is some cabbage. Since this photo we have eaten one of them for dinner. We have also eaten all the lettuce and spinach.

Here is another bed with Cilantro which is now getting ready to bolt because of warm weather. There is also Kale which we have been eating through the winter. Way in the back is just weeds. I will not let that happen again because they have a zillion roots and they were holding onto all my good soil as I pulled them out. Now that spot is ready to plant something good in it.

Here are five more beds which I have planted some seeds in and some are coming up. I will show them later.

Because we get our water from a well which is very precious I bought this rain barrel a few years ago to water the plants. It has come in pretty handy when the rain has been scarce and things are looking dry. It seems to rain just in time too when the rain barrel is getting low. I purchased this rain barrel from Whole Foods.

This is our newest rain barrel we bought from Lowes Hardware. It is made by Fiskars. It came with  a diverter kit. It is the black stuff attached to the gutter and rain barrel on the right. When the rain barrel is full the rain will go back down the gutter. The black barrel has the hose at top which lets out the excess water. I place the hose in different parts of the yard so the plants will get more of the excess water.

The only thing I don't like about this barrel is that it holds too much water below the spigot which won't get used unless I take the lid off and use a bucket. I will do this if I really need some water for my garden. You can see the spigot is much lower on the black barrel. The diverter kit is perfect for this area because there are no plants on this side of the garage.
It is good exercise carrying two watering cans up to the garden a couple times. Hopefully I won't have to do it too often. lol

With Passion,
Carrie P.

More of the Show

Here are the rest of the pictures I took. Enjoy! You can see more quilts at "From the Strawberry Patch"

With Passion,
Carrie P.