Block-a-day-July Day 31

It's fanfare time!! I got through the month of making at least one block a day EVERY DAY.

I mostly blogged every day too - with the exception of a few days at the start and then some days where the blogpost was next morning instead of late night.

But in my mind I did it, and all it was, was a silly challenge to myself to spur me on with my sewing and blogging.

Thanks for following along, your visits and comments - they meant a lot to me. I have big plans to catch up on my replies, answer some of your questions and reciprocate visits too!!!

As my grand finale, I was going to make a cow block. There's a rather sweet one in Lori Holts' Farm Girl Vintage 2.

Very fitting with what's been going on around here lately!

I did make a start —

Today we moved the older 10 calves down to another shed, where there's more room. The main calf shed is starting to fill up now so the move is necessary in the interests of good hygiene. Over crowded calves pick up and spread bugs too easily —

YD and her family popped out. They made us lunch, they helped with some farm work. They helped with the calves. 

It was a glorious afternoon to have those roller doors up!

Tonight I have sewn another hexie rosette —

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 30

In spite of the busy day, there were no dramas, and with a pile of body parts already partially assembled, it didn't take me long to whip up 8, eight, eight, YES EIGHT more churndashes!!!!!

That dark one looks black; it's actually a very deep Japanese indigo colour.

This post is dedicated to Chooky who has sent out an email telling us to keep sewing and counting our blocks for the Churndash SAL. Apparently we signed up so that we'd get nagged motivated to keep on track.

Here is my family of blocks so far. They're all 6" blocks. Except of course, one 12" block —

(Not the best photo colour-wise, but you get the idea!!)

Final day of my challenge today! Yesterday's post has snuck into today but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll squeeze the final post into today as well!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 29

The beady eyed amongst you will notice that some of my block-a-day-posts have been written first thing in the morning, whilst having my first coffee and before the day gets busy (I'm an early bird, not a night owl). 

The beady-eyed amongst you will notice that this morning's yesterday-post is even later!!!

I did make my block yesterday, as planned, but once it was finished there were cows and calves to tend and I ran out of daylight. Not normally a problem as a lot of my block photos have been taken 'afterhours'.

This one, though, demanded that I take a properly lit photo. So it had to wait until after this morning's chores for that!

I completed the partially sewn 'block' for the top of Memory Lane, which I blogged about *here*. Strictly speaking it's not a block and I could be claiming for about 4!

I just have the three corresponding sides of this quilt to do - they'll be similar but with different sized and shaped stitcheries.

The morning chores included feeding these critters first thing —

At the moment the MOML is helping with these in the morning as we're not yet milking then. Another couple of days and we will start the twice-a-day milking regime, and will be nearly ready to send milk to the factory.

In the meantime I appreciate his help with feeding the calves; they're about the last ones he'll feed for the season!

After breakfast we tended to these cows —

and these —

and these (plus opened the doors for sunbathing calves!)—

Just as I thought the coast was clear and I could whip inside to photograph and blog, we had some small visitors. They came out to stock up on firewood, but also ended up having a nice little play and a visit with the calves —

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 28

In spite of my best efforts I just completed one block —

Yes one more trusty churndash. You can see it's nestled in a pile of body parts so with a bit of luck I may have an enormous pile to share next time I post!!

My calfshed is gradually filling up - I have 27 calves in there now. They're all doing very nicely.

In spite of us saying we don't "sleep with our cows" we're having to with these ones below. We've brought a bunch back to a paddock close to the shed to keep a close eye on as we've discovered that one of the bulls we used when mating throws calves that are quite big. Consequently we're having to help more than we'd like to calve. 

A bit upsetting as we always ask for easy-calve bulls but that didn't happen this time.

They're all doing ok though!

'til next time,

happy stitches,

UFO Blog Hop

Oh dear, I'm late, I'm late....and I'm not finished!

When Joan of MooseStashQuilting put out the word that she was hosting a UFO Blog Hop this week, I thought it would be a brilliant chance to work on one of my UFOs.

It also coincided with me deciding to do "Block-a-day-July". A personal challenge to make at least one block every day and also do a blogpost every day.

I decided on Memory Lane, which was a BOM run through my lovely local quilt shop last year. It combined stitcheries and piecing. I had chosen to do the version that used Tilda fabrics.

The fun thing about this BOM was that it comprised some of the shop's favourite stitchery designs from projects that had been done over the years. So a real trip down Memory Lane.

I impressed myself by getting all the stitcheries done —

— but stalled rather spectacularly after that.

Oh I tell a lie, I did piece Block One approximately a year ago —

My thoughts were to gradually work on it throughout my Block-a-day-July challenge, and get to the 27th with a completed top.

And there the story twists. I decided it would be fun to go rogue and adapt the pattern so that I had a completely unique quilt.

There was a lot of trial and error. I used the blocks that were used in the original quilt, but made up my own arrangement.

Some of the blocks pieced over the month —

Here is a photo I took the other day —

Since then I have put a grey-spot border around this centre and I am up to piecing the final border, using leftover stitcheries and the rest of my fabric.

It was double fun to combine my Block-a-day-July with working on this UFO for the bloghop. Of course it may have been finished if I hadn't got distracted with a Churndash SAL.....

...isn't that often how UFOs come about....??!!

Here are the other participants for Day 3 of the blog hop—

stitchingfarmgirl (that's me, you're here!)

Bea Quilter

Selina Quilts

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Quilt Doodle Designs

Quilting Gail

Take a moment to visit them and see what they have got up to with their UFOs.

The complete list of participants is *here*.

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 26

I first sewed this block up to see if it would work —

It did, so I made three more —

If you look closely at the thimble block, you'll see that the bottom strip is pieced - I needed one more 1¼ x 8½ inch strip and didn't have enough for that cut. I had just enough left over to join some pieces and make do! It's not the best matching but it will pass.

We got off fairly lightly with the rain this week. Faired a lot better than other parts of the country.

This mob of cows made a little mud, but it's not too bad —

The river rose, we had a small flood, and not nearly as big as we were expecting (you can see the debris on the fence, so it had come up further overnight and was on its way down) —

We had four new calvers so our numbers are starting to ramp up a little. I'm walking these two back to the shed —

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Block-a-day-July Day 25

It was definitely a day for hunkering down inside and keeping dry today. That sounds like a perfect recipe for lots of sewing but I'd forgotten I had two (now) 4 year olds for the day...so no sewing but plenty of fun regardless.

We managed outside for a bit, of course the puddles were a huge attraction. (haha I've just realised you can't really see any puddle here, but water was pouring down off the shed roof and the kids were having a blast in it!) —

And the calves too —

You may be wondering how my friend (#201)(red tag) from last night is doing. That was him with George in the above photo this morning and here he is tonight having a good feed with his mates —

......This was how far I got with my post when the power went out.......

We had dinner by candle light - luckily it was almost all done when it went out. The mince was cooked, then the power flickered on again for 5 minutes so I quickly threw some bread in the toaster and eggs in the pan before we lost it again! 

I groped around in the dark and found some fabric for a hexie rosette - and prepped that by candlelight, thinking while I was doing so that I'm fairly certain this is not the only hexie that has been prepped by candlelight. I'm guessing they didn't have glue pens back in those days!

....Then the power came on and stayed on...

Not 100% sure that I like this one but it's done and might look ok at some stage (this is what happens when you choose your fabrics in the dark!!)

'til next time,

happy stitches,