A bit of bird-brained brooding on a Slow Sunday...

Hello -well I can't decide if Spring has sprung or not around here... a week ago I thought it had but currently I'm skeptical as we have had 3 nights with temps in the mid to upper 30's... not a frost but definitely  concerning for the petunias I bought... so I hauled them into the garage and I'm waiting out Mother Nature. 

A couple of days ago I thought about getting more plants, but the garden center wasn't open ...and I'm taking that as a sign that God is looking out for me... sigh... around here I've always been told that it is safe to plant after Mother's Day... which is next Sunday... not that far away right?  I shall try to be patient... not my forte...

And thinking about the upcoming Mother's Day had me pondering, "what did I want to start to stitch that day?" For years I've given myself the gift of starting a new project, guilt free on Mother's Day... throwing caution to the wind and totally ignoring all the gazillion other projects I have started... and not finished... sigh... and let's not think about how I do that same thing other times during the year... I'm trying to make Mother's Day special ... LOL...  I went back through the blog to see which pieces I selected over the  years, and was pleasantly surprised that the starts I had on Mother's Day were pieces that I finished ... and I finished them in a reasonable amount of time... EXCEPT for my start in 2024... don't know what happened but I stitched on it Mother's Day and didn't put another stitch in it after that... and it has been languishing in a plastic zippered pouch ever since... oh my... so on Thursday opened up the zippered  pouch, planted myself out on the sunroom porch (it was a lovely sunny day) and put some more stitches in it... here's where it was when I opened the pouch with Red Bird Sampler from Three Sheep Studio... I purchased this as a PDF... I do love immediate gratification!

and here it is now...

not bad for 3 days of stitching... I made the C and the N red for my sons initials... appropo to acknowledge my boys on a Mother's Day piece, dontcha think? 

Now you know I LOVE birds... I even have a  small sampler wall that features birds... 

on the left there is The Red Bird Sampler by With Thy Needle & Thread...  I added an alphabet to the bottom of this one...

on the right is Vintage Birds by Jeanette Douglas... I love how the alphabet wraps around this one!

and at the bottom is Faith of the Heart from With Thy Needle & Thread...

as the Mother of a special needs child this one speaks to me ... "God Finds a Low Branch for the Bird that Cannot Fly" ...

and I'm going to add this bird sampler to the wall... just got it back from the framer... The Sweet Bird Sings from Blackbird Designs...

This is another piece where I added the alphabet at the bottom and I'm in love with this frame...lots of close ups...

So all this bird-brained brooding helped me in deciding what my Mother's Day project is going to be... bet you have a good idea what it is going to feature...LOL ... drumroll please... a BIG BIRD!!! Say hello to  Bobby by Kathy Barrick!!

Okay I love that great big bird in the middle and the alphabet scattered around... I need to go to Hobby Lobby and pick up the flosses and get a piece of linen painted or dyed by next Sunday... a very doable task... that certainly will be helped by the deadline of next Sunday...

As for decor, well I'm still enjoying my birds and tulips... here's the small shelf unit...

up top I have this little bird from Homespun Elegance called Delivering Posies... such a sweet little piece...

and on the other side by mini quilt of yellow tulips and a little pillow which is Hello Spring from Sub Rosa Designs..

below Good Deeds by With Thy Needle and Thread...

in the middle from the OOP BBD book Thank you Sarah Tobias the Pins & Tulips Pincushion where I stitched the front and the back on one piece of fabric... and the tiny gal with the flower is from Pineberry Lane she was a freebie called Wee Crowned Maiden in a field of tulip knickknacks!

On the bottom, the bird in the heart shaped frame is the very FIRST cross stitch piece I ever did... it was a kit and I remember tossing the fabric as it was a boring beige and getting this piece of sage green... don't remember the name of the kit as that was 40 years ago... and the bird with the spool of thread is Bobbin' Along by Notforgotten Farms... 

and over on the left side on the bottom is Prairie Schooler's Spring...

Oh the reason I got out the forgotten Mother's Day project was I finished Primrose Cottage American Sampler... yippee!!!

I dropped it off at the framer when I picked up the BBD piece... and while I still have some patriotic pieces I want to do, I needed a little break... along with pondering bird projects I've been overall pondering just what I want to work on at the moment... soooooo many many many things I want to do but there are only so many hours in a day... and even though I'm "retired" I seem to do a lot of running around... some of my choosing, some not of my choosing... such is life...

Next week has its fair share of running around... gonna work out with Anna, a lunch one day and a dinner another day with a friend, a doctor appointment about my knee and of course helping out a family member with stuff... oh and add in I do want to work in the yard... there is definitely some cleanup that needs to be done and of course I want to plant some stuff... I picked up some beautiful Coleus ... I'm still deciding about the window boxes... I'll probably pick a color scheme when I see what is available at the garden centers... they haven't got a lot of the wave-type petunias in yet... guess they are paying closer attention to that Mother's Day date for frost than I am...

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... gotta do a grocery run for a family member and then Nick is making dinner for the 2 of us... hopefully I can get in some stitching or sewing... or I'm might opt for a nap on the porch... always a good choice!

hope you have a good week ahead...

happy stitching!

carol fun 

A Slow Sunday where procrastination appears again and again...

 Hello - ok... I can't believe it is Sunday already... the week flew by me at mach speed... something to do every day and then several surprise events came up too... some good, some not so good ... but as I type this I think everything has settled down ... fingers crossed. 

As for a good surprise I was able to spend an afternoon shopping for petunias ... and a few other plants... I know I'm pushing it... but the 10 day forecast doesn't have a single temperature less than 40 degrees... and I'm not putting anything in the ground or in the window boxes so if Mother Nature throws a temper tantrum and does give us a cold night I can rescue my precious petunias and bring them into the garage.

Here's my cart at the garden center... lots of petunias and some verbena and a potted dahlia peeking out on the bottom...

Here's what I got so far... 

again I'm going to color block the shelves ... yellow, orange, pink, purple... I found lots of purple varieties ... but I'd like to find more yellow, orange and pink... need to check out a couple of other garden centers and circle back to the 2 I already shopped at... neither one had all of their inventory yet.  I also purchased 3 big planters... 2 for next to the garage and one I stuck on the patio... yes I could plant stuff up like this myself, but the older I get, the lazier I get, and the pots I got are already filling out and looking pretty... I'll show them next week.

As for crafty stuff ... I FFO'd 3 items... two I framed, and one I sewed into a little pillow... starting with the framing... so last week I showed a sampler that I had stitched in 2013 and it finally got framed... this week I'm showing you a sampler I stitched back in 2011 and this is the week it FINALLY got framed...talk about procrastination... sheesh...

this is Country Flower Sampler from Cedar Hill Designs... and I can't find a copyright date anywhere on this chart but I assume it had to be prior to 2011.  The designer's name is Maria Gossard and at the time these patterns were printed she lived not far from me... but I didn't know that.  Anyway at the time I was stitching this one I was very enamoured with this style of sampler that combined the alphabet with flowers and I purchased several other charts... which I found in my stash!!!  OMG ... I really really need to take a day and look at everything I have filed away... more procrastination to be sure... LOL

They are well aged at this point and I still like them ... and it's not out of the realm of possibility that I might stitch another... that one  in the upper left hand corner certainly caught my eye...  and I like that long narrow one at the bottom... and you can never have too many samplers with flowers... IMHO... 

The other piece I framed was Here Come the Robins by With Thy Needle & Thread...

I picked up that cute scalloped frame at Hobby Lobby ... it was brown and I painted it green... next time I'm at HL I'm going to see if they still have that style and get another one... I think it is very cottage-y and I like that look. Since I finished this after I had everything else arranged I just kinda plopped it down here...

That is my favorite vase... it is vintage Mccoy pottery... the little pillow is from the border of the Shakespeare's Peddler chart A Saviour's Praise and those flowers are alstroemeria...also called a Peruvian Lily... they are always inexpensive at Krogers... $5 for a bunch and they last a long time. I saw a potted plant of them the other day at one of the garden centers... I've never seen them before as a plant. They had shorter stems than these do but I think I need to go back and grab a plant and see what happens. 

As for a little pillow, I was able to FFO the Notforgotten Farm Bit of Honey bee that I started last week to pretty much match Bee's Knees from last year...

and they both look spiffy in my tier tray tucked in with some vintage Debbie Mumm teapots and another little pillow which is from Pineberry Lane - Tansy, Yarrow, Rue...

Here's a WIDE picture  of the living room and it looks enormous... which it isn't...

these  happy yellow quilts certainly brighten up the living room... the one on the wall....

is the pattern was from Kim Brackett's book Scrap-Basket Sensations and was called Flowers for Nana's Girl, but I call mine the buttercup quilt... a throwback to the 1968 hit by The Foundations  - Build me Up Buttercup... I still know ALL the lyrics to that one... anyway every flower is a different tone on tone yellow... OMG... I just realized that I started this quilt back in 2011 and I didn't get it finished till 2025... what does that say about me?  That good things come to those that wait?  Or again, Carol, you are a world class procrastinator? 

On the back of the couch is a charm quilt that I started prior to having this blog... so maybe 2010... it was part of a QAL and mine got bigger than I planned... there are 362 different yellow squares... lots of novelties, such as frogs, monkeys, hearts... 

I've made several quilts like this... lots and lots of different fabrics over the years ... they are some of my favorites but they do take time... lots of time... and the older I get the more I want to get things done NOW!! It would also help if I didn't let the projects get away from me and grow to humongous proportions but they always seem to do that...LOL

As for doing any actual sewing or stitching, very little was accomplished. I'm still plugging away on the Primrose Cottage American Sampler... 

I got the flag stitched and some little bits here and there... I want this done ... and it seems like it is close to being finished... but every time I pick it up I see that there is more to do... 

As for sewing I sewed these 3 very simple  blocks...

this is the start of my patriotic quilt... the pattern is a freebie from FQS called Jelly Roll Relish..

the fabrics are from Lori Holt's Americana collection and the Uncle Sam colorway from the Blossom collection. By my count (and we all know the issues I have with math...LOL) I need 49 blocks to make this fit my bed... so I have a looooooong way to go... 

So there is something I have to attend to M/T/W/Th but Friday  is still open... I'm hoping to squeeze in some stitching, some sewing and some gardening... fingers crossed... I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts today... I need to take Nick to get a haircut  in a bit and I want to pop into the garden center and order some sod which a friend said he's pick up for me later in the week and then another friend said they'd put it the lawn... I have such nice friends... later today we are taking Nick to a Brazilian all you can eat steakhouse to celebrate his 36th birthday... how did he get that old? Better question,  how did I get that old???  I was his age when I gave birth to him... sheesh. 

hope you have a good week!!

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Zoned out on a Slow Sunday...

 Hello - well as I expected this week wasn't nearly as productive as the last one... but it was certainly busy busy busy for me. When I wrote last week's post I thought I was going to pick up my quilts at Delinda on Friday but that got moved to Monday and Monday was already stacked and  packed... I left the house at 11:00 am and I didn't get back home till 7:00 pm... I worked out, had lunch, drove 30 minutes to pick up and drop off quilts, drove 30 minutes back, came home and picked up Nick but never left my car, drove 30 minutes in a different direction to have a lovely dinner with friends, drove back home ... collapsed into my comfy chair and zoned out... 

Tuesday is my day to hang with Elliott... always a good day but I come home pooped... collapsed into my comfy chair and zoned out... 

Wednesday I finally got some energy and banished the bunnies to their plastic bins, but it took waaaaay longer than I anticipated... and yet everything any more, takes more time than I anticipate... I think it is called getting old... sigh... I'd work on collecting the bunnies and some of the cross stitch and a knickknack here and a knickknack there and knickknack everywhere...and then I'd take a break and put my feet up in my comfy chair... and it was tough getting back to the task at hand... so it took all day Wednesday to get the bunnies buttoned up in their bins and then I collapsed back into  my comfy chair and zoned out...

Thursday I was determined to get out my Spring and bird decor... the weather was glorious this week... more like Summer than Spring but all that sunshine has been so nice... and Nick was a big help bringing up the bins from the basement and bringing down some bins with quilts from the 2nd floor... and I put in several hours of futzing until I had to leave for my hair appointment... and then after that I popped into one of my favorite garden centers for the first time this year... I didn't get any flowers because I'm not being fooled by Mother Nature... she gave us a week of lovely weather but as I write this on Saturday it is raining and the forecast has lows in the 30's for the next couple of nights... however I did get this...

yes that is a rather rotund metal chicken... she's about 18" high and when you touch her she bounces... insert squeal... I could NOT leave her behind as there was only one more like her... and I suspect there were more of her but they already found their new homes... I'm not sure exactly where I'm going to place her... right now I'm thinking of putting her at the bottom of the front porch steps... my Ring doorbell has a good view of that spot in case anyone gets the idea of kidnapping my chicken... she needs a name... hmmm... I'll have to give it some thought...

Friday started with attending to a family members glucose monitor... it needed changing... then I took them to lunch, came home and finally got all the rest of the Spring decor out... it is heavy on birds... and I know that isn't everyone's cup of tea but I LOVE birds... and I may have as many birds as I have bunnies... LOL... but I got everything pretty much out and then I collapsed into my comfy chair and zoned out... 

Let me show you some of what I did... every time I change the seasonal stuff I'm always hesitant to start ... I don't want it to look exactly like it did the year before but some items only fit in one spot in my little house... but once I get into it I really enjoy trying out new arrangements and I'm happy with how it has all turned out... here's a little display in my TV cabinet... 

I went with a turquoise/blue theme here... my thought is that having the same colors keeps it more cohesive... the little bird pillow was a pattern I found on Pinterest years ago... the HOPE pillow was a freebie during Covid from Liz Matthews... below I have 2 giant birds I got at Hobby Lobby and the Bluebird Sampler from Threadwork Primitives... now I stitched this in 2013 and I just framed it YESTERDAY... good things come to those who wait, right??  It just barely fits into this frame and I considered painting it blue but I think the wood tone looks nice ... but I still may paint it... here's a close up ... I stitched the C and the N in blue to represent my sons Chris and Nick and the F in pink for my last name... 

Out on the sunroom porch I went with a green and white color scheme...the sunroom porch is only 7ft across and 10ft long so it is hard to get baaaack to get a wide shot ... this is the best  I could do...

The shelf unit...

Up top is the Alphabet Hill by With Thy Needle & Thread... one of my favorite samplers as I LOVE that tulip border...

In the middle I have my abbreviated version of Liz Matthews Bower Birds... I like the tone on tone look with the dyed linen and floss being almost the same color...

On the bottom shelf I have Brite Birds by Kathy Barrick ... as I remember it was a freebie I found on Pinterest...and I did the tone on tone thing again with this piece...

and last but not last a pear from Annie Beez... I want to make more of these...

On the wall I moved the Alphabits sampler from the other side of the doorway ... I like how it brings in more green tones to the display... 

I have a couple of cross stitch pieces I need to FFO and I want to include them in my other displays... stay tuned and see if I git 'er done. My plan is to leave up this Spring stuff till early to mid- June and then break out all the patriotic stuff... and speaking of patriotic stuff I did get a little  time in on Primrose Cottage American Sampler... where it was...

where it is... and the color on both of these pictures is off... need to get a good pic in daylight...

I had hoped to have it finished by now but the decorating took up most of my time ... and I also got distracted by this... Bit of Honey by Notforgotten Farm...

she is the companion to this guy... Bee's Knees by Notforgotten Farm..

I found a scrap of linen in my stash that I think came from the same piece I stitched Bee's Knees on... it is tiny ... barely 3.5" x 4.5"... but she will fit ... but I'm not sure if she'll be as tall as her buddy...  I can see she's going to have a very scant seam allowance.  Here's where I am at the moment...

I've got Bee's Knees in my tier tray and I want to add her ASAP... 

 As for quilting I somehow squeezed in sewing up  one block and slapping up 2 more blocks on my design wall ... 

The pattern is Hush Too-ra-loo by Jan Belnap...

I'm using lots of low volume prints and the blue is Thatched by Robin Pickens in the colorway Cornflower... go here to see a better capture of the color... it is a blue with a lavender undertone... periwinkle blue ... I bought about 5 yds of this a couple of years ago and I've been saving it for the right project and I think this is the right one!  The blocks are BIG... they finish 18" ... so to make a quilt for my double bed I need 16... I have all the blue fabric cut out and all of the low volumes for the smaller squares... I still need to get the larger squares and the sashing cut... now at first I was only going to use quiet low volumes, but my stash is full of noisy low volumes... lots of novelty prints... and it will make a busy top ... which will make me HAPPY! 

I have no business working on this quilt... I have at least 4 quilts that are waiting for binding and I really should get started on the patriotic quilt I want for my bed... I'm going to use Lori Holt's Americana collection, and a print from  Riley Blake's Blossom collection in the colorway Uncle Sam... and the freebie pattern from FQS called Jelly Roll Relish... and while I want to get it started this week I'm not sure that is gonna happen... there is something on my calendar every day this week from working out, to hanging with Elliott, to lunch the quilty ladies, to a medical appointment, to a semi-annual meeting with my financial guy... we shall see how things play out...

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts... after attending to a family member's grocery shopping I should have some me time... might go downstairs and start on the patriotic quilt... might go out on the sunroom porch and stitch... and might collapse in my comfy chair, zone out and take a nap... 

happy stitching-

carol fun