Kaffe gone prim

I was going to make just a Kaffe quilt like he does using big, wide strips, which I did, but I just had to add more to it, looked boring, I added some needle turn applique flowers to make it a little prim. I used my Brannock and Patek fabrics for a bold look. Still needs to be quilted.

Internet friends

are the best! I received this wonderful handmade doll from an internet friend who of course made it all by hand, look at what she even appliqued to the petticoat. She is not a well person, yet is so generous in making this for me for the cabin. For now it sits in my old rocker in the living room.

Liberty Garden

Libby asked about some of the quilts and blocks that were in the background of my fabric room. The blocks that were pinned to the walls are for Liberty Garden, a Jan Patek BOM from several years ago that I am still working on. All the blocks are stitched together now and I'm working on the borders. Here's a scan of the quilt.

My Sweet, sweet Bailey

Is he not an angel? He's the love of my life after Jim of course.


In regards to the last blog, that quilt that is hanging was my first attempt at machine applique, boy did I not like it, sure it was fast, but just isn't my style. I love sitting and feeling the fabric, turning the fabric with my needle, putting my heart into the design. Probably why I do prim quilts and rarely even do piecing.

Some quilters

have wonderful design walls, I have my closet doors that Calico Cat asked about. I either hang batting to pin my work to or just hang the quilt from the string with clothes pins to photograph and or get ideas. Then it all comes down if we need to get in that closet.

My rooms

The first picture is of my fabric room across from my bedroom, the deer head was bought at a garage sale for $10.00, he's very old, would never have an animal on my wall otherwise.




This is a pic of my bedroom from my bed, I can look at my Mother's quilt while I'm laying in bed.

Here is another pic of my fabric room.

Love

This is love!

A closeup for Lucy

Hope this helps you to see how the sewing machine just sits in the sewing table, just put a board in the bottom to make the machine level.

K.T.

K.T. is a Montana cat, after we bought the house, we were up here for two weeks while still living in Texas to start some clean up and here was this little gray fur ball that the renters had cruelly left behind. She was so thirsty she walked right in the open door, knocked over a mop bucket and tried to drink the soapy water. Well, we took her back to Texas with us so she got to live there for a year, bet she was wondering where the hell she was going and then back to Montana to her original home. She is the sweetest thing except when she was young, a huge hunter, but probably the only way she learned to survive with those renters. Now at probably age 15 she is content to lounge on Jim's bed or the heating pad.

Favorite place

My bedroom is absolutely my favorite place to sew especially hand sewing, climb into bed in the evening, have Bailey lounging on the bed, all my projects laid out and books if I need them, very much my place.



I just repainted the floors, they were plywood of all things, but then this was a hunting cabin, and then I painted this huge quilt block in the center, the colors are really more mustard yellow and gray green.

Sable

Sable was my first Burmese, I bought him when we were living in Texas. Jim's cousin had one and I just fell in love with the breed, their colors and their intelligence. No one told me though, that they could scream like a two year old, that I had to get use to. He would come up to me and scream to eat, scream to be let out and then lovingly sleep with me like a little human, head on the pillow with a blanket over him. Burmese are very cold natured. While living in Texas, I went to Colorado by myself to work while Jim stayed behind, I took Sable with me for companionship. He loved to ride in the car to a limit so the vet gave me valium to give him so he could endure the long ride, I just ended up with a drunk cat on my hands that staggered from the front to the back seat, that trip was a nightmare.

So we moved to Montana from Texas and brought five cats with us, Sable like Mickey became lost after a week, we were sure he had acclimated himself to the area before letting him out, but day after day we looked for him. Ads in the paper and on the 7th day a fisherman called and said he saw this dark brown cat at the river trying to catch fish and hiding out in a cave. This wonderful man came to our house and took Jim to where he had last seen Sable, and thank God, there he was, almost wild, with a wound on his backside from a predator, but once he got home, he returned to normal except he became fearless. If he wanted outside and I wouldn't let him, he would sneak thru a screen window and leap off the second floor roof. He would take on a fox and run it off the property, he showed that burled up look cats have only one time when he was nose to nose with a bear thru the screen door.

He was 15 years old when he became sick with kidney failure, I gave him fluid IV's under the skin twice a day, once before I went to work and then when I got home, Jim even learned to do it, kept his kidneys going for a year. Sable would sit in my lap while the fluids ran and then off like the wind until the next time.

Sable loved our other Maine Coon who died from diabetes, I actually watched him mourn this loss, and I still mourn my loss of Sable to this day, he was so special and so unique. Don't we think that of all our pets?

After reading Finn's wonderful poem about her and Ebby, I am finally motivated to write/blog again, had been feeling very overwhelmed with life, work, state of our country, you name it and it was bothering me, anyway, back to cats. This first picture is of Jim with Sidney, (the one with the deer), she's a Maine Coon we found as a stray, she's a queen in every respect, like riding on Jim or my shoulders, especially if there is snow on the ground, she can't stand getting her paws wet. And then here she is with Bailey, my sweet burmese who came to us over the internet after I lost my first burmese after 16 years of kidney failure, he deserves a post all by himself. His name was Sable.


This third picture of a deer who is very curious of Bailey.




And here is Sidney flying thru the air trying to catch a field mouse.

Bailey with his play rat, he learned to fetch immediately and now years later will bring me a play mouse to fetch when he's feeling playful. We have more more cat, KT, a beautiful gray stray, but her pictures are on my other hard drive so will post that pic later. They certainly make our life interesting and full of joy.

Mercer Lane

This is a BOM from Sue Spargo that I am working on, it's her 2006 BOM, she supplies all the wool, fabric, pattern and beads, so much fun and so out of the box in regards to primitive quilts.
The applique is all hand did, with wool threads, yarn with couching for stems, unholstery fabric for the weird flower center in the last block shown below, lots of embellishment and contrast with the layering of wool over fabric or vice versa.


All that is left is the borders, will receive that any day now.

Yo Yo Quilt

After seeing Laura's pictures of yo yo quilts and pillows I wanted to share this one made by Jim's Grandmother, it's huge and we use it as a headboard for his bed, can you imagine making this many yo yo's.

Another bear story and Primitive Primer

One more bear story before I get back to prim quilts. This is a picture of how the black bear in the previous post got in our house last year. Those are his bear prints on the outside of the house, he then tore off the screen to climb in the window. May asked if I've ever been scared, no, just that in this instance that he would tear the house apart or take one of our cats. Anyway, the story begins with a preface that Jim sleeps downstairs and I sleep upstairs because he snores and I talk in my sleep so we keep each other awake. So it's about four in the morning and I hear a whisper, "Nancy, wake up", I fall back asleep, then I hear Jim say louder, "Nancy, WAKE Up!" I sleep naked, wear contacts, so I grab my glasses and run down the stairs, Jim says "there's a bear in the house, go put your clothes on" Why do I care if a bear sees me naked I'm thinking, so I run back upstairs to grab some clothes, as I'm running downstairs, one lens falls out of my glasses, holding up the one lens to see I run to the store room where the bear is, Jim is counting cats, all okay, they are hiding out in the livingroom, and with the one lens I see the store room in disarray, and the bear pulling a 50 pound bag of bird seed back out the window, boy was I perturbed, I had just bought that bag of seed. He sat outside the window and ate the whole bag. We never leave the window open anymore and I still don't know why Jim wanted me to put my clothes on.

This was my first prim quilt, Primitive Primer by Jan Patek, a kit from Rustic Yearning, I chose to make two lap quilts from it, fell in love with these dark, deep colors and have been hooked ever since.

Bears

We had a bear last night, forgot to take in the bird feeders, so he had a field day tearing down feeders and eating the seed. These photos are from last year, I love the sequence, I felt as thought I was right with him, with his thinking process on how to get to the seed, like can she see me behind the post, this is how I push down the feeder and are you kidding me, this is all there is?

Prim Art Quilts

I call this quilt Prim Donuts, it's a prim art quilt in that the donuts were fused and then machine appliqued at the same time as I machine quilted it. Something a little different.

Winter is here in Montana, four inches of snow last night, it was a surprise, but oh so beautiful.

I was on the phone last evening when I heard a bump outside the window, there was a doe with her twin fawns teaching them how to stand on their hind legs to reach my window boxes and eat the flowers, so close thru the glass that I could see their beautiful eyes and even more beautiful eyelashes. I let them eat away since the season is over already for any flowers.

I was born on October 8, 1950, but

this isn't about me, it's about my Mother who passed away almost 6 years ago, right before Christmas, she was 80. She lived back in Texas in a assisted living home, she hated it, wanted to be back in her own home and was always calling me to ask why she couldn't be home and have her car and her cats. She had named all her cats after her children, I of course was named after the most rowdy one. She drove until it scared all of us to death that she would and could be behind the wheel of a car. I made this quilt for her for Christmas, this is a duplicate of the original. Jim, my husband, was flying to Florida to see his family fo the holiday and was stopping in Texas to see her and give her the quilt. She had a stroke the day before he arrived. He brought the quilt to the hospital and the nurses kept it on her bed until she died. It was displayed at her funeral and we buried it with her. The duplicate hangs on the wall in my bedroom. There are pictures of her when she was young with my Dad, posing in a bathing suit that she would be embarrassed that anyone saw her in now, but I love it. She have birth to her only daughter 56 years ago tomorrow.

Me

I love this picture of me and my Dad, I have no recollection of this picture when it was taken, but it reminds me of the memories we create with pictures and quilts. You all don't know me, but you sent me wonderful emails during a time of sadness, picture me older, a birthday looms as I type, and the messages were very much appreciated.

Mickey

We found Mickey 20 years ago, he was about 2 years old then, we lived in Texas back then. Jim came home from work, it was dark, storming and raining and said there was a Siamese cat sitting in the ditch crying out. I ran out into the rain and grabbed him and bought him home, he's been with us ever since. Thought only once that maybe I took him from a neighbor, but no one ever asked about him so he became ours. He always hides under a bed when ever there is a storm, must give him a bad feeling. He's had an eventful life. He's been caught in a trap that a neighbor had set up to catch who knows what, one leg almost severed, but the Vet saved his leg. He rode for five days with us in our move to Texas to Montana, howling like a Siamese the whole time. I'm sure he got on the nerves of the other four cats who were riding with him in the Jeep. We were still unloading our moving van when he disappeared. It didn't take us long to find him, he had found a cave and was in there howling, he never strayed after that. He's been bitten by a rattle snake and survived. He's lost most of his teeth now, but he can gum any fish I put in front of him. I'm cooking catfish for him tonight. Tomorrow we will have to put him to sleep, the grave is dug, rocks ready to put over his grave and a little cross to mark the spot. He's had a good life, probably better than most humans. We will miss him.

Wool

I love working with wool, the first pic is a wallhanging I designed, all wool scallops that are appliqued by hand with wool threads and then tied instead of quilted. The second pic is a penny rug table mat. The background is wool and the circles are a combination of wool and fabric.

How do you catch a rattler? We use a very long stick with a wire on the end to hook the rattler around his neck, this is the tricky part since they can strike the length of their body, and then drop them into a bucket. Then off we go with the snake in the back of my truck to an area that is remote and release the snake, now they do sometimes find their way back like a homing pigeon. So I think we sometimes catch the same snake over and over.

Quilts & Snakes

Don't think I ever showed you the original Ginger Grove from Sue Spargo that I made, wonderful wools and cottons and lots of embellishments. This one I gave away so I made the red version for myself which I posted earlier.

And then there are the snakes, we have them in Montana, rattlesnakes, I hate killing anything, so Jim and will catch them and release them to an area where they are safe and we are even safer.

The Women of Blogland

That's the title of an article in Quilter's Home, a new quilting magazine I've never seen. I just bought it today at Borders on a outing with my husband Jim, we had gone for a drive, picnic and such and ended up in Bozeman. Can't wait to read the article, Tonya from Egypt is featured with a few others.

Another article that looks interesting is How to Get Your Quilting Mojo Back. What I need is how to work, be a wife, mother to 4 cats and still quilt, rug hook, needle punch, all the things that keep me sane.

This is another of my prim quilts called Twelve Baskets, inspired of course by Jan Patek.

My Life

would be so boring without my quilting and the wildlife we live around. You can't imagine how blessed we feel that animals like big horn sheep, deer and elk come to our property for refuge. We moved into this "hunter's cabin", just thrilled to find a little house on some acreage in the mountains, never expecting to be a part of a wildlife show every day. (The wildlife were probably thrilled the hunters moved.) We do have rattlesnakes in the summer, but that will have to be another post.

The wallhanging is my version of an antique string quilt I saw, I made it as a quilt as you go, each triangle sewed separately and then joined together, added the vines and flower for interest from a Ginger Co. quilt I had seen. I'm afraid it's on my ceiling, we have a little house.