Not Much to Show…..

I know it’s been a long time.  I’ve been busy busy busy, but can’t show you any of the fruits of my labor.    I’ve decided that I want to submit my Dresden Flower Garden for publication, so I can’t show you.  But there are other things ……

I’ve been prowling around on Pinterest.  Have you done that?  I have never seen so much eye candy in my life!

                             

This was up one day last week and I had to paste it onto my desk top for future reference.  I love it!  And I want to make it.  I don’t know what this one is made of, but I’d make mine out of cotton gauze.  There is lots more over there too!  Food!  Oh my goodness.  If I made everything that I saw on Pinterest that looked good to eat, I would get too fat to leave the house!  And tutorials for making all sorts of things …… pincushions, pot holders, hair bows, pillows …… and the list goes on and on and on.  All kinds of neat things.  If you haven’t been there, you should go ….. NOW!

I also now in possession of the box set of the first season of “Game of Thrones”.  (I’m too lazy to get up and take a picture of that, so you will have to visualize it. I’ve been reading the books and can’t seem to put them down.  I wish I could sew and read at the same time.  Have mercy!  Anyway, so now that I’m well into book two, I can watch without ruining the book.  I always like to read the book before watching the movie.  To tell the truth, I enjoy the book more than the movie just about all the time because the movie inevitably cuts out some parts of the book that were really really good; and I’d miss out on all of that if I didn’t read it.  So, I am reading book two and watching book one.

                                                                                                

My cherry tree produced a bumper crop of cherries this year.  I managed to pick a bucket of them before the birds raided it and got the rest.  I went out there one afternoon last week and picked cherries until I had my bucket full.  Then I decided that I would need a ladder and would get it out and pick some from the top branches the next morning.  So I got up and went out onto the front porch the next morning and looked at my tree and ALL THE CHERRIES WERE GONE!!!!  ALL OF THEM!!! NOT A SINGLE ONE LEFT!!!  The birds must have been watching me pick them and decided that I was not going to get any more.  LOL.  I got some jam and some cherry crisp made with the bucket that I had though.  Next up will be plums.  I have an orchard in the back yard with peaches, plums, apples and pecans.  The pest I have to fight back there are the squirrels.  I want you to know that I have 2 pecan trees back there and have yet to collect any pecans off of them!  And I have seen the squirrels carrying off peaches and wondering how they can carry something so big in their mouth up the fence and into the trees!  I’ve thought about getting one of those sonic transmitters like I’ve seen on tv to drive away the little beasts, but I don’t know if they work or not.  Have any of you had any experience with them?  I’d really appreciate any advice you can give me. 

So it is off to my beloved sewing machine for the afternoon.  Janice, I still have not finished that little flannel baby gown that you sent me the bonnet pattern to go with it.  But it is half finished and I’m thinking that I may work on it today since I’m sick of applique right now!  Maybe I will have a blog post about that next week!  I hope so. 

 

Enjoy,  Merry Gay

A Place of Her Own

               

I have to apologize to all of my readers.  I promised this post at least 2 weeks ago.  Sometimes life just gets in the way.  Sorry .  Anyway, here it is.  I made this bed for my sweet puppy, Sophie, a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn’t hard since all the hard work (the quilting) was already done for me and all I had to do was cut it out and stitch it up.  This is an old quilt that was on my oldest son’s bed when he was LITTLE.  It was pretty much worn out.  In fact, it had a hole chewed out of one corner by another puppy which is sadly not with us any longer.  In spite of the hole, I decided that someday I might find a use for it, so I packed it away in my ‘junk room’ JUST IN CASE!  LOL.  I have a whole room full of ‘JUST IN CASE’ upstairs, so I need to get busy!

At any rate, back to the dog bed.  I eyeballed the size and decided that 4 quilt blocks x 3 quilt blocks would be just about the right size for the bed, so I cut 2 of those pieces out for the top and the bottom. 

              

Notice the pretty edge.  The quilt had those fancy edges and I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to use them.  I knew I wanted the edges to extend out from the edge of the sides of the bed, so I cut the edges measuring about 4 inches from the top of the fancy edges.  Then I started sewing.  I sewed the cut edge of the side to the perimeter of the top.  Once that was done, it gets kind of tricky because I inserted a zipper into one side of the bed so that it would fall underneath the fancy edge,  But once that was done, it was a piece of cake to sew the bottom piece to the sides. 

             

Oh, sorry for the bad picture!  Anyway, I did not make an insert for this dog bed, but rather filled it with cedar bedding that I purchased from the pet store.  It smells heavenly.  And when the bed needs laundering, you can just take it out in the back yard and dump it out,  wash the bed, and fill it again with fresh cedar.  It’s working out really well.  At first, Sophie could care less about her new bed, having grown accustomed to the sofa.  (Did I mention that she is spoiled?)  But now, after having it for a couple of weeks, she has warmed up to it.  Now I need to dig out another ‘treasure’ from the junk room upstairs and make her one for the sewing room!

 

Enjoy!  Merry Gay