Finished "Peace" Fabric Junk Journal

In the Crafting Department {basically the whole house}:

I have sure been having fun with my fabric junk journal project! I themed it after my word for the year - Peace. 

Having been blessed with a fairly decent collection of tea towels, placemats {particularly beautiful ones embroidered in the Philippines where I grew up}, laces, lovely silk scarves dyed by my daughters, and some linocut projects, I hand-sewed them together to make my book.

This placemat had a silverware pocket so I made use of that...

...by backing a cross-stitch made years ago by my kind sister-in-law...

...and rolling it to insert into the pocket.

To make some of the quote pieces, I embroidered the words and on others I wrote them with permanent pen and ironed them.

This "Mine" embroidery was the edging of a beautiful pillowcase that was wearing thin.

It will become my regular coffee table book as soon as I clear the freshly laundered and folded clothes off the table. 😁 I am just so tickled with this creation and want to do more. So I shall!

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On the Homestead

I'm finishing up hatching out a bunch of quail eggs and they're happily peeping in the brooder for three weeks till they get moved to grow-out cages. Some will become new layer clutches and some will go in the freezer. I've got two regular egg customers that are pretty much paying for my feed costs, so that's a nice thing and I hope to grow that base.

The red lighting in the brooder is the heat lamp and the pen is there for a size comparison.

We have a young buck rabbit who was traded back to us because I mis-gendered him 😕 and he is quite the acrobatic escape artist! His first morning back I found him running around the rabbit room having escaped from his five-foot-high cage. I put him back in after a merry chase. Then in the evening, here's where I found him...twice.

With Lovey's help, we moved him to a more secure cage. Not sure if he should end up in the freezer, or sold to pass along his strong acrobatic genes.

The snow is melted!!! So, of course I want to get out gardening, but in reality it's not smart to do so till Memorial Day weekend or so because of the danger of frosts and even freezes. So I'll do other outside chores as able.

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This week's goals:

In the Craft Department:

* Finish April's Elefantz BOM

* Solidify a plan for making another fabric book using my Elefantz BOM {again} blocks from a few years ago - the monthly garden series. Since I'll have Mom here again for a week, I'm not sure how far I'll get on this project, but if I do most of it by hand rather than machine, we could "keep company" watching TV together.

* I'd also like to catch up on A Quilting Life's BOM, but I'll have to play that one by ear.

On the Homestead:

* Buy more materials for building more quail cages

* Build two more quail layer cages which can also serve as grow-out cages as needed

* Spread manure/compost {"Money is like manure. No good unless it's spread around, making young things grow." or something like that}

In the Home:

* Make more pickled quail eggs - Lovey's favorite

* Wash insides of windows and install screens

* Organize neglected papers/paid bills from desk

May the coming of spring {or autumn as the case may be} bring many more ways to see the glory of God in everything.

Project Progress and Goals

In the Craft Space {basically the whole house}:

I just discovered The Joyful Quilter's Tablescraps Challenge through Pinker n Punkin and I think the themed challenge is a fun idea to do in cahoots with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I'm going to give it a go.

RSC - The only yellow that I worked with in March was this embroidered piece to add to my current fascination - fabric junk journaling.

My Sewing Room BOM - Finished just in the nick of time

A Quilting Life BOM - Oops. Didn't get to it. Will do two in April.

UFO - I did find a block I made quite some time ago that I decided I'd like to hang in my sewing room while leaving room for the BOM wallhanging that will be hung at the end of this year. I'm planning to handquilt this one which shouldn't take too long since it's only about 20"x20".

Fabric Junk Journal - After watching some Youtube videos, I'm off and running with my junk journal and having fun with it. In fact, I'm so into it that I set up a small craft table in front of my favorite living room chair and have been spending my afternoons there while watching the somewhat sappy, but fairly good Heartland TV show. My dear huggy is very patient with my project messes. 💖

Here's what I've accomplished so far on my "word of the year - Peace" journal:

The outer cover:

The cover's inside:

One spread made of a hand-dyed scarf by one of my daughters and dragonfly stamped on some thicker fabric, kinda canvas-like:

The back of that spread made of placemats from the Philippines where I grew up:

Another spread made from another daughter's hand-dyed scarf and my as-yet-unattached yellow embroidery:

The backside is more scarf and a placemat with a napkin insert that will be fun to use for some as yet undiscovered treasure:

My sewing machine is still skipping stitches though I've tried changing to newer thread, so I'll have to do some spelunking {cave-diving} into its innards. Meanwhile, my hand-stitching is slowly improving through all this practice.

Cross-stitching - Since I've gotten March and April done with my monthly cross-stitches, I'm going back and doing January and February now. They are simple and fairly quick, though very cute, projects that are nicely portable in these project bags from Michaels.

So, my goals for this week {late though I am at posting them} are basically to make progress on all of them, especially on the journal. I might not get to the hand-quilting since I'm obsessed with the journal and I have a little bit of a life outside the crafting zone. 😄 But since we're still having snow and ice, I'm not overly eager to get out of the house.

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On the Homestead:

The quail flock is growing well and the young hens have started laying, for which I'm very grateful. I'll be starting the incubator this morning to provide some replacements for older laying hens as well as to provide us some meat. I learned that there is a good possibility that I can sell chicks to our local Family Farm and Home later in the spring, so I'm excited about that possible income stream. I'm regularly selling eggs now, too; almost enough to pay for feed which means almost free food for us.

The rabbits are growing well. I retired one of the mamas, Doenut, but couldn't bear to put her in the stewpot, so I gave her to a family who wanted her as a pet. She'll be well cared for into her old age. Next month I'll do the first breeding of her replacement, Doerita. Meanwhile, Doedoe is due to deliver this weekend. Winston II is beginning to go gray around the ears and I dread the day when he'll have to be retired. He may have to become a pet because he's just so friendly and funny. I know I'm not supposed to become attached to the breeders even, but sometimes you just can't help it. 😏

The garden remains indoors or too snowy:

Well, I'm off to do the dirty but necessary work of providing one's own food - clean-up and filling the freezer.

Hope your week has been full of the joys of life and continues to be so. And may Spring come soon to these northern lands!!!

Back with Project Eye Candy

 Yup, once again I was just not motivated to blog or was also too busy with caring for Mom and other stuff. But I've not been idle with my handwork, so here comes the show:

January's and February's BOM with A Quilting Life

Hand-quilting the mug wall-hanging

Cross-stitching another month block

I went to an herbal tea tasting class and got re-inspired to make my own blends primarily from my own gardens so I made a notebook to keep track and be able to replicate what I'd done.

I didn't want to name my blends something bland like "Herbal Blend #1" and my husband gave me the idea of naming them after birds since I enjoy the birds at our feeder so much. Here's the list of birds I've sighted there: {the birds are not as blurry even when they fly quickly as my photo is 😆}

Lemon Balm

I've also been working on the animal section of our little homestead, incubating and hatching out more quail chicks, building a new grow-out cage, giving away a rabbit doe who has outlived her usefulness but I can't bear to dispatch because I've had her so long. So she gets to be a pet for awhile for a young girl who's good at caring for animals.

The quails are becoming numerous and mature enough that I can start regularly selling some eggs. Yippee! Being a small operation, I won't get rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I hope to cover feed costs for both the rabbits and quails and that will mean free quality food for us. 😊

He states my philosophy of caring for my little bit of God's Creation well in his beautiful book.

So Much Coffee Cup Fun!

 

I was going to just make one coffee mug per month as my RSC block, but I got carried away. 😄 I finished all the blocks for a wall hanging and hope to sew them all together this afternoon and then handquilt it. This one I intend to keep for myself to hang above my coffee/tea buffet.

Since one of my big goals this year is to make lots of charity quilts and thus use a lot of my stash, I wanted to do coffee mugs for at least one of them. But, I don't want to spend a lot of time with small pieces and these blocks only end up at 9.5" square. So, it was off to the graph paper {I'm very math-challenged and very hands-on visual} to design a larger block.

I came up with 15.5" blocks that look like this:

So I'm off and running on that project as well as continuing to finish off at least two Scrappy Spools per sewing session. And I've been able to sew nearly every day recently. Happiness!!

Because I've got so many projects at once and I'm a little on the scatter-brained side, I made myself a dry-erase productivity plan {aka get-your-focus-back-board} with monthly plans broken down into daily snippets. {Good grief, the photos aren't coming out too well today. Sigh.}

So, this week's goals are:

Embroidery

* Keep stitching on Elefantz BOM from January

* Trace Elefantz pattern for February

Crochet

* Hat that actually keeps my ears warm when cleaning animal pens

* Maybe start edging around flannel receiving blankets that are now hemmed {for pregnancy care center}

Quilting/Sewing

* Continue trying to finish off 2-4 Scrappy Spools/day

* Probably make more 15.5" coffee mugs cuz I can't resist

* Keep cutting scraps for use in various projects {Scrap Wrangling}

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I have just finished an amazingly helpful and encouraging book by Brant Hansen.

It and another of his books {Life is Hard, God is Good, Let's Dance} are so engaging, well-written, funny, and inspiring to just let God handle the "bad guys" and we'll focus on loving and caring. The chapters are short so you can dip in as you have time, or read them all because they draw you in so much.

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I leave you with these cute pictures of newly hatched quail chicks and the hope that your week is a joyfilled one.