A Little Chicken Inspiration...

We have new baby chicks at our house and they have inspired me to pull this landscape quilt out of the mothballs and finish it up. This is a piece I started in a Joyce Becker Luscious Landscapes Class. If you ever get the opportunity to take one of Joyce's classes, don't miss it. Her landscape quilts and techniques are in a class all their own.

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I found some fabric in the cupboard that resembles barn boards. I think it would frame this piece perfectly, and look just like a wooden frame around the quilt. I will miter the border corners to complete the affect.

The roses you see on the quilt are all individually put on there. I could not find the fabric I needed, so I cut out roses and put them on one by one. The barn door is not wooden fabric, I sliced up gray fabric, added shading and made the door from scratch. The rock wall is a piece of landscaping fabric, and saved me lots of time, it gave me the exact look I wanted on the barn wall. The chickens are cut from commercial fabric, and will eventually be covered with thread as I machine quilt.

New Baby Chicks at our house. We picked them up at the feed store today.

We have raised laying hens for 20 years, and I still find the new babies delightful.

This is Gunnr's first experience with baby chicks. Until now, all he has seen is grown hens that lay eggs in the hen house. This baby bird business is all new to him!

We opened the box and there they are.......little cotton balls with legs.

First baby out of the box is a Rhode Island Red. She will begin to lay beautiful brown eggs for us in September when she is 5 months old.

Brad built a brooder box 4 feet wide and 8 feet long and 4 feet tall. The chicks will live in here all summer until they are grown and can live in the hen house with the mature chickens. We keep the brooder box on the patio behind our house, so we can keep a close eye on the new babies.

Lots of peeping going on right now. These little cotton balls with legs are darting back and forth here and there checking out their new home.

They eventually settled down and enjoyed the warmth from the heat lamp hanging above.

I see we have a babysitter for the new babies. Gunnr quietly whimpers out of concern and keeps a steady watch on them.

We will all enjoy watching the new chicks grow into big, beautiful hens.

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May Your Bobbin Always Be Full,

LuAnn

Fairy Business Isn't For Sissies...

I have had this image of my niece since last year. I have been saving it for something special. The look on her face speaks volumes.

At first I thought about printing it on fabric and then painting over the background. I also wanted to add fairy wings to go with the wand and a crystal ball.

My inspiration kicked into high gear today and I spent the day manipulating this photo, the old fashioned way........no photoshop was used at all.

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This is the original image

Monarch Butterfly Wings Clip Art

Crystal Ball Clip Art

I printed the original image, then cut out my niece, taped the butterfly wings to her back, then taped on the crystal ball. All done manually w/ scissors & tape. No computer enhancement was used. I have photoshop......and maybe I will have the time to learn to use it in my next life!

I raise flowers and enjoy photographing them. I enlarged this pansy image to 8x10 and printed it out.

I placed the taped together image on top of the pansy image.

I remember the day I took this sunflower photo......the sky was such a gorgeous blue.

I printed it out 8x10.

I placed the taped image on top of the sunflower.

The yellow background really works.

This is a climbing rose on our patio.

I printed it out 8x10

Again, here is the taped image on top of the pink rose.

I like all 3 designs.

Here they are printed onto fabric w/words added at the bottom:

All 3 images are on cloth and ready for borders and quilting. It will be fun to stitch each one differently and see how they turn out. I will post the completed quilts when they are done.

p.s. To see the completed quilt CLICK HERE

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Remember........

This Fairy Business Isn't For Sissies,

LuAnn

Stumps & Birdhouse

I have been itching to do some stitching........but the sun came out today and lured me outdoors again! Here in wet and rainy western Oregon, you NEVER waste a sunny day indoors.........you just don't know when you will get another one!

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Last summer we put new siding on our house.......in the course of doing that we had to cut down a a big hedge on the backside of the house. This spring we are left with 8 stumps to remove.........and today was removal day.

After some digging, Brad hooked a chain around the stumps and pulled them out with the pick up winch.

Those little stumps had a lot of roots on the underside. Check out the size of the last one that was pulled out.........it was a whopper!

While Brad worked on the stumps, I started painting the bird house he built for me. He used wood that was salvaged from our barn loft. Yes, this is a 2 story farm house for birds.

Here it is with a coat of gray primer on it.

By the time I had the primer painted on, all the stumps were out of the ground.

I was able to get one coat of white paint on the birdhouse before the weather quickly changed to cold and rainy. It chased me back indoors for the day.

The daffodils in the front yard have reached their peak. They were gorgeous this year. I am sad to see them go. The flowering cherry trees are just beginning to bloom. They remind me of popcorn popping. You can't see the blooms yet in this photo, but I will take another photo next week so you can see the popcorn trees.

This is a daybed frame we put behind the Thread Shed a couple of years ago. It is a perfect fence to hold up the yellow glads that will be growing here this summer.

My sewing machine is set up just inside that big picture window. I have beautiful, morning sunlight to sew by.

Next week, when we get the 4 newly painted bed frames set up for the hollyhocks, I will post a photo.

For now my plans include a hot cup of tea, and an evening spent cutting images from books for future paper quilts. I have a class to teach in May making paper quilts.

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Looking Forward to More Sunshine,

LuAnn

Bed Frames & Bedding

If I can't be sewing, then I want to be gardening.

This time of year I have to split my time up between the two. Spring has arrived here in western Oregon and the yard work is starting to call me outdoors. My project today was to prime and paint brass bed frames. I found them over the winter at second hand stores for $5 each.

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This frame was half primered before I remembered to get the camera out and take a few photos of my progress. The brass is just too bright, so I decided to tone it down a bit with some green paint.

Brad set posts in the yard and leaned the frames up so I could paint on both sides.

The frames looked great just standing there in a row in the backyard. If the paint wasn't wet, I would have draped a few quilts over them for a photo shoot!

We found 3 cans of green paint in the garage........each can was a different shade of sage green, so each bed frame is a different color..........I like that too. I am not big on matchy matchy in my quilting fabrics, and I guess I feel the same way about paint colors as well.

This is a king size frame and will make a perfect flowerbed fence out by the Thread Shed.

Some of the hollyhocks by the Thread Shed grow taller than the roof top. These bed frames will be the perfect support for such tall flowers.

Have you priced flower or garden fencing? It would cost a great deal to fence the 20 foot stretch down the side of the Thread Shed. And......the fencing is so flimsy it wouldn't hold up those 8 foot tall hollyhocks. These 4 bed frames cost a total of $20 and will make a perfect flowerbed fence.

We made time to mulch around the grape arbor Brad built a few years ago. After 3 years, the grape vines are producing yummy grapes, and gorgeous red and purple leaves in the fall. Alongside the arbor is a patch of lavender and 2 blueberry bushes. I don't have time for weeding, so we heavily mulch all the beds in the spring and fall.

There was still time leftover to clean out the hen house and fill it with fresh bedding. The hens seemed to enjoy it.

This is the front side of the Thread Shed. It has fresh mulch to keep down the weeds. The camelia is blooming now. The soaker hose is stretched out and ready for irrigation.

It's never officially Spring until we hang up the owls. They keep the birds from building nests on the house, garage and thread shed.

I am hoping to get out to the Thread Shed soon to get in my quilting fix. But I need to scrub the paint and dirt out from under my finger nails first.

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p.s. To see more flower and garden images Click HERE

May Your Bobbin Always Be Full,

LuAnn

Be Inspired

Thread Inspiration

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Just looking at all this thread gets me inspired!

I am ready to begin the stitching on the Pepper Dish quilt I showed you last week. All the applique is on and it is time to choose some quilting threads. Your thread stash is just as important as your fabric stash. When I begin cutting fabric for a new project, the quilting thread choices are already on my mind. They are another design choice in creating your quilt. While I am working on the quilt top, my mind is also on what backing fabric to choose, and what quilting thread to use for the top and back side of the quilt sandwich. All design decisions. Don't wait until the last minute to choose your threads. Get them out where you can see them............let them inspire you!

Sometimes a simple phrase can inspire people. It could be something impactful, funny or thought provoking. This video is full of those kinds of phrases. Perhaps it can be an inspiring start to your day or week. Click here to view it.

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Be Inspired,

LuAnn

What A Beauty

Brad came in this morning from the hen house and told me we had a visitor. A beautiful, and un-welcome visitor. I grabbed the camera and headed outside in my jammies. A chicken hawk had made it's way into the wire fenced chicken yard, and now he was trapped inside. Here he is hanging on his side on the wire. The underside of his wing is white and brown checked. You can see it fairly well in this photo. Click image to enlarge and see more detail. Tip your head to the left and you can see him better.

The hens did not like him one bit and would charge at him with their neck feathers all ruffled out. He flew around the fenced in chicken yard looking for a way out.

He sat still long enough for me to get a close up photo.....below.

Right after this photo was taken, Brad opened the hen house door and he flew inside the hen house and out the door to freedom. We watched him fly away down to the river. He perched in a tree and stared at us.........and we stared back. What a beauty!

If I can't be sewing or quilting, then I want to be gardening. We planted 3 Burning Bushes by the garage today. Someday they will really put on a show in the fall.

This little bear was found at a second hand store over the winter months. He weighs better than 50 pounds! He has such a beautiful patina. He is quite old, but still in great condition. He is perfect to watch over the newly planted bushes.

The yellow Thread Shed is directly behind the bear.

To the right is the red hen house, where the chicken hawk was trapped earlier.

The camelia by the Thread Shed is beginning to bloom.

The daffodils out front are the biggest and tallest and brightest we've ever had!

Spring has arrived in Oregon..........what a beauty!

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From The Garden,

LuAnn