Author: Texas Quilter

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A few Cudo’s to my Blogger Buddies!

A short post to give a shout out to Lori who is a neat Lady and Blogger.  She can take a bad situation and find some humor in it all the time!  Her posts are funny and express things we all feel at times!  The other day she sent me a surprise package with some goodies and the nicest (very large) pin cushion!  It is just what I need to hold my long pins when I load quilts on my long arm!  What a great gift!  She is a ‘Good Hearted Woman‘ as Willie’s song goes!  So thank you Lori for the gift – so nice to have a Blogger friend!  Thank you Lori!

 

Another thank you to Susan who showcased my post on Yoder Lodge the other day!  So sweet of her to do that as this is one of the most trying and difficult quilts I have ever made.  Susan has some very neat patterns that she has designed and she just finished one that is so neat!  I enjoy watching her creative in designing quilts.  Keep up the good work Susan!

I would also like to direct you to Gretchen who has inspired me to stop making new projects and finish up my UFO’s in 2018.  I did start Yoder because I only had applique projects to work on and wanted to work on a pieced project during the day!  Gretchen has finished up some beautiful quilts so far this year and has even beat her own schedule!  If you have time, check out her Sweet Surrender, Nearly Insane, and Pastor’s Attic.  Absolutely beautiful work!  Gretchen hand quilts a lot of her quilts, to perfection!

Now to moving out of the Yoder Lodge.  Have you ever ‘hit the wall’ when working on an intense project?  Sometimes I feel that we need to run into that wall and then get up the next day and go forward.  Yesterday was that day for me!  BUT, this morning I am ready to get going again.  I was having some more issues when I finally figured out why I was having issues again!  It was a DUH time!  Using a ‘scant’ versus a full ‘1/4″‘ seam allowance when sewing the strip sets together! No wonder things were not coming out at 1″ finished!!  I continue to ask myself why have I had such a problem with things with this quilt!  It is not hard to answer that – NEW GLASSES!  I knew that I was having issues the last 3 months, but kept on going.  The new lens will be here next week, until then I will have to really double-check my work! – I will continue to stay at the Yoder Lodge, but I really want to rename this quilt!

Have a great day and thank you again Lori for thinking of me and you too Susan – so nice to have quilting friends!

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Yoder Lodge

Greetings!  I will not have to find a sauna to sit in – just take a 30 minute walk in 75 degrees and 99% humidity!!!  The good news is that we probably have about 20 more days of the hottest month!  Maybe we will settle into the mid-90’s, but that humidity will still be here.

Yoder Lodge is coming along.  The new foot for the HQ D1 is really working great!  I have found that some of the errors started when I did the initial strip piecing.  It is imperative that each strip set must be checked before cutting to ensure seams are an accurate 1/4”.  I cut the strips in 11” strips rather than the 22” now to prevent other issues   The longer the strips the easier it is to have issues with wavy seams, or accidentally moving the fabric as I am sewing.  Additionally the new Creative Grid rulers are working great!  Keeping the fabric stable when cutting the 45 degree angle strips.  I am concerned that a few may have to be re made but I will deal with that problem when I finish the 30 blocks.  I have now finished 13 blocks – back where I had hoped to be 3 weeks ago.  But looking back is not worth the time so I am going forward and enjoy the process – besides – it is too hot to do anything else so I am making ‘hay’ while the sun shines.

I do believe that I am addicted to this quilt project!  I have no idea how it will be quilted, but I will not hand quilt it for sure – Batiks are not conducive to that!

Nesting is down to 2 red birds and some embroidery work!  I am so pleased with this quilt.

I follow Tazzie Quilts Blog and she has just finished Phoebe!  What a masterpiece.  This quilt is going on my Quilt Bucket List.  She Is now going to finish up her Honoring Our Quiltig Heritage Quilt which is a BOM stated last year using Reproductions and Shirtings only!  Lori Smith designed the quilt.  I miss working with my Reproduction fabrics so either this quilt may be the next piecing project.

Tummy Update!  I have now realized why I felt so bad with the tummy!  One who eats 2 flour tortilla tacos, 2 pieces of ham, a peanut butter with jelly sandwich, bacon, and eating Cheetos two times in a period of a week  = Not feeling so well.  I did not eat all in one day – it was spread out over a week and I really paid for it as it affected my breathing this time.   Now this is a normal diet for some people, but not me, and it can be so difficult at times to just live on eggs, chicken, yeast free rice bread, Lays Lightly Salted chips, and Almond Breeze milk, but if I do not want anymore days where I feel bad, I just have to become more disciplined again and quit thinking I can eat normally!  It is not fun, but better than where I have been the last week.  Celiac and Gastroparesis and food intolerance’s (corn, wheat, sugar, salt, dairy and preservatives) are just not fun to live with but IT COULD BE MUCH WORSE!  I wish that they would not have started the GMO food supply in th early 1990’s because it has really impacted my ability to eat the foods that I love like Salads, vegetables, and other heathy foods but fiber is not my friend.  I have never been a junk food eater, but now that I cannot eat them it seems that I crave them.

This morning as I am writing this post I have been enjoying watching our Deer eating.  We have 2 young babies (who are growing fast) and one of them is the instigator!  It loves to jump up and down and then run off and do circles around the Mothers, and then it will get the other baby to start chasing her.  This morning the Doe’s were even feeling frisky!  So much fun to stop and just watch them!

Have a great sewing day, I am hoping to finish more than 1 block today as they go together much faster now.

Nanette

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HQAL – Nesting Progress

Greetings, well as we enter the lovely month of August, I am beginning to become accustomed to the horrible heat and humidity!  If only I could quit cheating on the Celiac Diet, I would have more days with high energy!  Oh well.  Today is a great day!  Walked and the cool towels really do help!  This week was busy and not with my Yoder Lodge blocks.  Tuesday was annual ‘fun and games with the Mamo’ and on Wednesday the Den A/C went belly up!  We were sooooo blessed when this happened!  We found a Handyman who lives around the corner and Thursday afternoon he came over, drove to Home Depot and picked up a new unit, and by 10 AM Friday we had a brand new A/C in the Den.  No fuss, no hassle, and a great person that we have now available to help Clay as he needs assistance!  So life is good, and better if I am a good girl and do not stray off my very very limited diet!

Now to the important thing!  I tried to have Nesting completed today, but still have a couple of evenings to applique the Red Birds and a few more leaves on the top center of the quilt along with some embroidery for connecting twigs to leaves.  This is going to be one of my very favorite quilts that I have made when completed.  I will hand quilt it and enter it in the SA Show next September!  Here is a peek at my progress!  On the top left, the quilt is not laying flat and the stem looks crooked, it isn’t.  I see I may have to add some embroidery stems in the top 2 blocks!  Oh well!

Update on Yoder Lodge – I have now completed 11 blocks and have 5 in the preparation stage.  I ordered a new 1/4″ foot for the D1 Husqvarna and that has made a difference.  I also ordered a new Creative Grid 6.5 x 12.5 ruler and they now have changed the rulers where my fabric is not slipping on me when cutting the 45 degree strips.  My blocks are taking less time and fewer mistakes in matching strips that make each quadrant.  I am hoping that I do not have to remake anymore, but if I do it will be when I am finished with 30 blocks total!

Have a wonderful week – we start our Monday off with our annual eye checkup and bone density – we are hoping to be home by 2 – Hum  wonder if this will happen!  One never knows when heading off to San Antonio!

Nanette

Check out the other participants in HQAL!

Kathy, Lori, Kerry, Emma, Tracy, Deb, Connie, Deborah,  Susan, Jessisca, Sherry, Nanette, Sassy, Edith, Sharon and Bella.

Linking To:  My Quilt Infatuation; Confessions of a Fabric Addict; Finished or Not Friday ; Sew Can She; Em’s Scrap Bag;  Fiber Tuesday;    Sew, Stitch, Snap, SHOW; Sew Fresh Quilts; Crazy Mom Quilts;  Oh Scrap; Scrap Happy Saturday; Show and Tell Monday with Bambi;

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RSC 2018 and Yoder Lodge Update

Texas is experiencing the hottest summer since 1925!  Now I was not around then, but last night Clay and I were trying to think when our weather pattern started to change.  In 1996 when I came back to Texas from Virginia I knew I would miss the seasonal changes.  But during Fall of 1996,  the trees in our area were changing colors just like VA!  Well that was the last time I had that experience, and since then we have had 3 years of floods 1998-2002 and then in 2005 the water spicket turn off and it has been nothing but hot hot hot and drought.  This year is the worst!  We are happy that we did the new roofs this summer as there is not one place I would want to travel in this heat!  We will wait until Fall (if it ever gets here).

There will be no more RF back treatments for me.  This time the Twilight got me real good!  So my back brace will be my bestest buddy forever!  This set me back a week or so and time spent on my Yoder Lodge quilt project.  Well, OK, I cannot blame it all on that!  This time a week ago I had 10 finished and 4 ready to sew.  I was a happy camper.

Remember when?

The last step in making these 10” finished Lone Star Blocks requires a triangle be sewn on 4 of the 8 corner to make a square block.  Of course, like a dummy, I did not do this last step until I had the 10 blocks made.  Why worry, I had made a practice one and thought that would be the least of my worries!  What an eye opener and talk about absolutely sick when I realized the one part I had not completed would set me back on the hard work I had done to complete 10 of the 30 blocks.

Long sad story short – 8 of the 10 became rejects!  At first I tried to salvage them, but decided they would be difficult to remake the block because of the bias.  So they went into the mesh trash bin.  They stayed there 3 days and I decided to move them to the “never will be finished” drawer!  They are now back in the mesh trash bin!

I quickly pulled the same fabrics that I used in the rejected ‘8’ and recut the strips.   (Hell, I thought I would be through with this quilt by the end of July!)  All went fairly well UNTIL I started on the last 5 of that batch!  Somehow I had done something wrong because after making 3 blocks I realized that I had screwed up somehow because all the blocks were flaring beyond repair.  It takes up to 3 to 4 hours to make a block.  Precision is imperative I could not figured out what I was doing wrong!

Yesterday Clay and I performed an autopsy on the last two blocks that had not been sewn together, of course they had to be pulled out of the mesh trash bin, and the first strip that Clay checked for me was NOT CUT ON AN ACCURATE 45 degree angle….. Another Nanette error!   I then rechecked all strips and half of them were off.  This problem began when I cut the strips from the last 2 strip sets!  Duh – that was were the problem was!

I now know all pitfalls of this project and hopefully things will go smoother.  With all the problems I have experienced, I am still going to finish this quilt!  There is a plus side to the project – I am able to focus and look forward to working on it each day.  It is a challenge and one that I have needed to get back my passion for quilting!  At least this part is a success!   Here are the 9 blocks that are finished!  (I refuse to count the total number of blocks I have made counting the ‘throw away’s’!). I am so happy now that I purchased all the batiks I have through the years as I am using them now. Each block only uses 1/3 of a fat quarter so it is only time that has been wasted!  When complete there will be a sashing’s between each block!

Yoder Blocks (20 more to go)

Yesterday I sewed my 3 blocks for RSC and compared to what I had been working on this month they were so easy and a breeze to finish!  The color for the month of July Red!

 

Nesting is coming along nicely!  I have 2 Red Birds and 1 Blue Bird and some leaves and it will be a finish.  My goal is to finish by mid-week.  I will post when completed.

Other than still burning up here in South Texas and watching our beautiful 50’ pines starving for water, I will be working on my Star blocks.  Hiccups happen, and there were a few this month, hopefully August will be better!

It will continue to be in the 100’s with a possible chance of rain on Tuesday – I will believe it when I see it!  My walking took a hit for 7 days due to the heat and humidity.  I solved that problem by ordering a ‘cool’ hoodie cape that I wet, wring out and then keep it on my head and shoulders – makes a difference for me!

Have a great week!

Nanette

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Nesting, and Yoder Lodge!

Happy Sunday to all.  The weather is hot and so humid, but we have been getting some rain for the last 4 days and then back to the horrible heat!  I have been working on 2 projects, Nesting and Yoder Lodge blocks.   The border for Nesting is not complicated so I am pretty sure I can finish it by the end of the month or before!  Tomorrow is Radio Frequency treatment for my back – they cauterize the nerves from the waist down and it really helps!  So while ‘resting’ I will work on Nesting as soon as the twilight wears off!

Progress is being made on Nesting. The top border has 2 Red Birds, and each border side there is a Blue bird.  On the bottom border there is a nest with eggs!  Each corner has the 4 leaves.  There is some embroidery left to complete, but I usually do this when all the applique is complete.  This is going to be a striking quilt and will be hand quilted!  Hummm maybe this will be one that is going to be loaded on that new Grace Z44 frame that I purchased over a year ago.

The other project I am working on is Yoder Lodge.  I have completed 10 of the 30 blocks that make up this quilt.  I am excited because each time I make one it takes less and less time!  Guess the saying ‘practice makes perfect’ still goes!  I am thinking that Wednesday or Thursday I will begin to cut some HSTs and add them to each corner in order to square each block.  The blocks will square to 10″ finished and 10 1/2″ unfinished so these are not large blocks I am making!  A lot of work, but I do believe this will be a great Show Quilt next year.  I have not seen anyone else making it.  The pattern is neatly tucked away in a Quiltmania book!

I am not sure, but that orange star with that dark background may be the first to square – just in case there is a problem.  It will not hurt my feelings if I have to make another orange as this background really sticks out like a sore thumb.  But that was my mood for the day!  LOL  I am very happy that all my points are turning out perfect, and crossing my fingers that all works out when I square the block or I will be one upset puppy!

I am off to cut out 5 more blocks and then hopefully I will complete one more for today.  the block on the bottom is the one I completed this morning.  My goal is for 2 per day and hopefully 3 a day as I get closer to completion.  Final goal would be end of July to have it completed.  The quilt will be put together with a sashing and there will not be a need for a border as this would take away from the floating star effect.  I am not sure which fabric I will use for the sashings, but thinking about the P&B white or a Batik white.

Have a great week and happy quilting!

Nanette

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A Warning to Bloggers on Rebot Spam

Please take the time to read what has happened to Bella.  I am not sure how Blogger works, but if you use WordPress you might want to take heed.  I change my ‘re-blog’ as Anita stated (copied from Bella’s latest post entities Help Please!!!!)

This information is from Anita and is posted on Bella’s blog post that I have linked to:

FROM ANITA:  “You’ve been hacked by a content robot. This is how it was explained to me. What has happened to your site is done by a robot system that searches for vulnerable blogs then exploits them for “visitor counts”. The blog owner probably doesn’t even look at their own site except for the numbers because they get paid per visit. When you send your readers to make comments that just ups their numbers even more. I believe it works similar to other spam sites that grab content and email addresses to make it look like the emails are coming from you.

In order to stop this from happening you need to re-set the “re-blog” button to NO.
1) go to your wordpress dashboard
2) click on the settings
3) click on the sharing
4) Scroll down to the wordpress re-blog button
5) change it from show re-blog to don’t show re-blog
6) important that you save the change
7) Change your wordpress password

This should stop the re-blog robots from grabbing your content. At least for now until the criminals find a way around the fix. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about what has already been stolen. I learned from experience when this happened to me a few months ago. It would be a good idea to change your email password too. My email got hacked soon after my blog got hacked. A message was sent to every single one of my blog readers that I was stranded in a foreign country and needed money to get back home. How embarrassing! I was at home and safe.

I don’t believe any of your faithful readers would dream of re-blogging your content. We would rather post a link for readers to see your site for themselves. The re-blog button is for hacker use only and should be destroyed by wordpress!

I forgot to say that those links on your post to other blogs are now vulnerable to being hacked too. Content robots look for any links within your site as another possible connection. Please warn them to reset their re-blog button ASAP”

PASSING ALONG TO ALL INTERESTED!  I RESET MINE!

Have a great week-end.

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York Lodge and RSC 2018 Challenge for June

This has been a great week for productivity for me and my quilting projects.  Even with all the pounding going on with the new roofs.  They should be through by tomorrow (Saturday).  I hope when they start on the Studio I can still work with the noise.

I have completed my RSC 2018 blocks for June – almost did not get them done.

RSC 2018 Block – I chose a turquoise and picked up on the green for the cross pieces.

Three blocks together On-Point

On to York Lodge I feel now that I have mastered this block.  I have completed 4 5 blocks – only 26  25 more to go.  It is taking me less time now to make one.  Here are the steps I go through (minus the strip piecing part)

I have discovered that if I draw a 1/4” line on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pieces that things go together great.  Now this does not mean that I do not have to rip a few to get them perfect, but this is much easier to pin than other ways this technique can be mastered.

A section before sewn

This is how I draw the 1/4” line which really helps in getting the seams perfect.

As shown, all seams are pressed open. The section on the righj shows how the seams/points are perfect!

Here are the 4  5 blocks that I have completed (without the Corner HST’s which will make the block Squared)

York Lodge Blocks – First 5 – 25 more to go!

 

I am now enjoying making this quilt!  So much fun to work with a different color and background.  At first I did not like the Orange Block, but it is growing on me.

Have a wonderful week-end!  Hot here and by Sunday the roofing project will be complete and it can rain rain rain!

Linking To:  My Quilt Infatuation; Confessions of a Fabric Addict; Finished or Not Friday ; Sew Can She; Em’s Scrap Bag; BOM’s Away; Fiber Tuesday;   Esther’s Wednesday WOW; Sew, Stitch, Snap, SHOW; Sew Fresh Quilts; Crazy Mom Quilts;  Oh Scrap; Scrap Happy Saturday; Show and Tell Monday with Bambi;