Heirloom Skipping Squares Quilt

Coming in at 96" by 80" before washing, this is by far the biggest quilt I've ever made.  It was hard to photograph, too.  What's going on up there is my boyfriend and a friend are each holding a pole with the quilt clipped on the top of the poles.  It was that or climb on the roof! 

The quilt is based on Skipping Squares by Allison Harris of Cluck Cluck Sew, which is so far my favorite quilt pattern ever.  I just added one extra row of blocks vertically and horizontally, and then a border that will finish at 10" for a queen sized quilt.  This will go on my sister's bed.  She said she wanted colorful, but with pink, so I hope this makes her happy.  

Since I can't imagine trying to quilt something this big on my little machine (it's a Bernina 440, and I love it dearly, but it only has 8" of throat space), I laid it all out, and then sewed it up in quadrants with a backing of plain Kona Bone, quilted those individually in a large meander-in purple of course-and joined them together.  Now I have to add the backing fabric and bind.  I'm planning to back it with Joel Dewberry's Heirloom Rose Bouquet in Sky.

Picture from fabric.com

I figure, this way, it could be turned over for a different look every now and then.  I am thinking just some stitch in the ditch quilting to make sure there is no shifting.  I hope this doesn't completely destroy the look of the meander on the front, but apparently I'm all about finding out the hard way.  Fingers crossed it all works out!

I'm trying to decide whether to bind the quilt in green or the same Kona Eggplant I used for the front.  I'm leaning towards the purple, for the continuity and for the hope it won't show dirt.

See those flowers by the bottom of the quilt?  They are just some of the beautiful flowers in our yard, and they smell wonderful.  I claim no credit for this, it's all the landlords' doing, but I do enjoy it.  This weather is crazy...it was 79 degrees out today.  And it's still March!  I dread to think what will happen come July and August.  I may have to drive up to 9000 feet and camp just to stay cool.  Luckily, this place does have central A/C; a lot of houses don't around here because it just didn't used to get that hot.  A swamp cooler would do fine for all but the few hottest days of summer.  Climate Change, people...it's all our fault.  

My last three puppies, the ones I've had since January 25th, were adopted today.  They were 10 weeks old, and I hate to admit it, but it was a relief to see them go.  I finally have my kitchen back and I can walk around without dragging teething monsters on both legs.  It helped that I feel that all the pups adopted to day went to absolutely fantastic homes.  I am positive they will have great lives, and hopefully their new owners will keep me updated.  Several of the adopters of the pups who went two weeks ago have contacted me already, and they love their pups dearly, and tell me they are all doing great on house-training.  (They weren't when they lived here!).

I still have Brownie, their mother, and she is doing quite well, all things considered.  She deserves her own update, and I'll try to do that soon.   I also have Starla, a 1.5 y/o chihuahua/dachshund mix.  She's sweet with people, but not house-trained and a bit growl-y with other dogs, so we're working on that.  I imagine I will be getting a few new pups this week, as well.  Hopefully they will be sweet, cuddly, quiet and not destructive.  What?...it could happen.

Go Gators! or something

So, remember that post I made a while ago...goals for February?  Hmmm, well, most of the way through March I'm finally more than halfway done!  A friend of mine has a son who is obsessed with University of Florida.  My Mom went there, too, so I am familiar with the rabidness of Florida fans.  Never make the mistake of calling my parents' house during a game, really, your hearing will never be the same.


When my friend asked me to make the quilt, I thought, OK, an orange and blue quilt.  But it turns out I'm not the only one looking to make things with a Florida theme.  There are at least 7 different Florida fabrics out there.  I bought the 5 that were in stock.  Then, she wanted a "simple quilt, just squares, for a boy."  Believe it or not I have never actually made just a plain old patchwork quilt...weird huh?  They just sound boring to me, especially since there would only be 3 colors in this quilt.  The birthday in question was being celebrated on March 17th.  So, being that I'm a procrastinator and I was waiting for inspiration to strike, I only started on the quilt around March 9th.  I cut out the pieces, made some four-squares and log cabin blocks, and put them on the design wall while the dogs were outside.  Yep, the tail of the big one can make a mess of a design really quick, plus the crazy freakin' wind blows everything around.  I got the top together, and then stalled a bit when my cat got so sick.  I basted late on the 14th-thank god for spray basting-and quilted, bound, washed, dried and over-nighted on the 15th.  Whew!  Why do I do this?  Everyone out there who is more mature than me, feel free to share your secrets.

I'm pretty please with how it turned out, mostly squares and a few other blocks to add some interest.  Then some loopy all-over quilting.  It's pretty big, 60" x 80" before washing.  I was in too much of a hurry to get it in the mail to measure afterwards.

I'm told the room will be re-decorated in an all-Gators all the time theme after he gets the quilt.  I really hope he likes it.

One for ME?

So, where were we?  At last count, we had Brownie and babies, and Blynken, right?  Well, in the meantime, we had Scarlett (who was adopted out as Wreath) for a week.  She was adopted out in January and returned to the rescue on March 2nd because one of her new parents was severely allergic to her.  It sounded like they had made a sincere effort to overcome this problem, but her doctor eventually said that she just couldn't live with Scarlett.  Scarlett looks a LOT like Blynken, just a tiny bit bigger.  In the week that they lived together, Scarlett and Blynken got on like peas and carrots.  They played, they wrestled, they tumbled, they chased, they collapsed and slept, they played some more.  I wish I had photos, but I was too busy enjoying their antics to search for the camera.

Isn't that ear adorable?

I mentioned that I think the adopters made a sincere effort to keep Scarlett, so perhaps their hearts were in the right place, but they returned Scarlett to us with some problems.  She is a submissive/excitable pee-er, is not socialized well with other dogs or with people (though she is young enough that we can probably remedy this), is majorly food-aggressive, and is cat-aggressive.  These all could have been easily nipped in the bud by the adopters, because she was a tiny baby when she went out, but it just goes to show how little most people know about dogs, and how little effort they take to learn.


We can begin to deal with these fairly easily in a short time at our house, with the exception of the cat aggression.  We will not risk the safety of our cats to foster dogs.  One of our cats, while she can probably take most dogs, gets pissed and disappears, which makes us worry, and one is (well, was, she passed today and I will dedicate a post to her soon, but I am not ready to talk about it right now) too old to have to deal with that kind of shit.


So, Scarlett was with us a week and left 3/10 to go live at another foster house; one with no cats.  However, also on 3/10, Blynken FINALLY GOT ADOPTED!  Remember, she had lived here since January 4th, so we had grown quite attached to her.  I knew someone was interested in her, and when I found out it was a 21 year old guy, I was all set to dislike him.  However, he came in with his mom and the new pup was to be a birthday present.  He had lost the dog he'd had since was was 6 in November, and it was time for another one.  He had found Blynken online, driven over an hour to get to the event, didn't want to look at any of the other puppies, didn't care that I really didn't know what breed she is, and promised all on his own to send me photos, since I'd had her so long.  He also said he was all about positive reinforcement and said hands were for affection, not hitting.  I think she went to a great home, and I can't wait to get updates on her life.

You may have noticed, though, that it's hard for me to come home from an adoption event with fewer dogs than I went with.  So, Starla and Pepper Jack came home with me.  We brought in 11 new dogs from 2 different places during the adoption event on Saturday.  It was a long day, to understate things.  I don't have a picture of Starla, but she is a small dog, maybe a chihuahua mix? who has a cough and sneezes frequently, and may be pregnant (Shhh...I haven't shared that with Tony yet, so don't tell him).  We are having to keep her separated from the other dogs, since she might be sick, but she is a sweetheart.  She loves to cuddle and is very bouncy.  She's also house-trained!  Hooray!  That doesn't happen often.  This...

Is Pepper Jack, otherwise known as Fluffbutt!  He is 9 weeks old and weighs 13 lbs.  He also (knock on wood) has not had any accidents in the house.  I think he is St. Bernard and Border Collie.  I want to keep him.  Tony does, too, but he is fighting himself.  He's probably wise, and says we don't "need" a dog.  But what a thing to base getting a dog on.  Who "needs" a dog?  Especially if they already have one.  Maybe a blind or disabled person, I guess.  Anyway, he was a little shy at first, but he has made himself right at home over the past few days.  This is last night.

He's taking up Tony's entire side of our very colorful bed.  He also likes his new "siblings".

One of these doesn't belong.

Brownie even lets him nurse with them.  She is such a pushover when it comes to other dogs.  Anyway, I need to go work on a quilt, but I will keep you updated!

Comes with fur sewn in!

We're coming down to the wire people, and I have another project finished and ready to be mailed!  Three to go?  In three days...hmmm.  Oh, well.

The pattern is Anna Maria Horner's Sidewalk Satchel, and I made it with an Art Gallery print on the outside and plain cream on the inside.  I am not wonderful at sewing things that aren't quilts (you know, straight lines, very little pattern-following), but I like this bag a lot and it's worth it even though it takes me forever.  I hope my sister doesn't mind that her Christmas present is a lot late and a little bit used.

I don't know where they are headed, but they will get there in style!  

Dogs are much better models than children, from what I understand.  All you need is roasted chicken, and they will do anything you want, provided you can get them to understand what that is :-).  They never get embarrassed or roll their eyes.

I feed my dogs (and cats) raw, prey model, specifically.  I'm sure I'll write more about this later, but for now suffice it to say that after much research and thought, I am absolutely positive that it is the healthiest way to feed them.  I have a local source for grass-fed beef, pork, lamb and llama/alpaca.  I am working on a source for poultry, but for now Whole Foods provides my sourcing, because I can choose animals that weren't factory farmed.  This is important for health and conscience reasons.  I eat the same meat my critters do, by the way.  It's good stuff.  So, anyway, in prey model you give your pets large pieces of meat and let them rip and tear and chew and gnaw.  This is all well and good for 103 lb Daemon, you say, but 6 lb Sirius?  Surely not.  He's so dainty!  And fluffy!  And cuddly!

Well, as it turns out, he is the less picky of the two, always ready to tear right in.  Here is a progression of tonight's dinner.

Is that Daddy getting dinner ready?  (Notice Loki in background and painting of 21-year-old Tiger on the wall-crooked of course.  We are very animal oriented around here).

Yum, turkey neck.  I am a good boy and will stay on my towel.

Open wide!  And Crunch-lots of bone in there, good for bones, teeth and making firm poops.

"Grrrrr!  Sirius' turkey!"

Even though we are right there, he is very concerned that someone else, Leda in this case, might want his food.  He is doing well here, protecting it with a paw on it, but usually he leaves his dinner and darts towards the offender, leaving it wide open for a co-conspirator to abscond with his treasure.

He's finally learned to use his paws to stabilize his food, the better for him to rip and tear.

The end of this, which I did not get a photo of, is at least half of that turkey neck still left, "buried" in the towel, with Sirius napping, but still on guard, beside it.  Meanwhile, Daemon whines at him and us..."please, brother, pleeeeeeeease.  Daemon still hungry.  Daemon always hungry."  I wish I could come up with the letters to put his whine into print.  It is hilarious, and always the same three syllables.

Escape Artist! (Caution, poop is mentioned far too many times.)

So, Brownie, being basically feral, has probably rarely or never been inside before, and clearly is not house-trained.  She has no idea that while we humans do our business inside, we really prefer that our critters keep it in the great outdoors.  What she did know however, from thousands of years of evolutionary training, was that she must not soil the "den" (a plastic baby pool inside a crate) where her babies were.  This would attract predators and risk disease.  In fact, momma dogs eat their puppies' poop and lick up pee, keeping their puppies and the immediate surroundings immaculately clean.  Brownie is great at this, and the pen stayed pristine.


I was letting her outside regularly during the day, but who knew what she was doing out there, since she immediately removed herself from my sight by going behind Tony's detached office, or, if I walked back there, to the side of the office.  OK, yes, we went in circles and she never stopped to potty at all unless I gave her some privacy.  Dogs really can control our behavior.  So, I would leave her out for 5-30 minutes, and then let her back in, hoping that she had emptied herself out.  Umm...this wasn't working too well.


Dogs who are feeding seven puppies must eat and drink a lot.  Since kibble is mostly fillers, which the dog cannot use, it just...passes through.  Thus, they poop a lot, too, and these are not firm, small, innocuous poops. They are the exact opposite, and that is all that needs to be said about that.  Brownie and the babies were in a two and a half foot tall pen.  Brownie would jump out to go potty elsewhere in the office, and never on the newspaper or puppy pads.  Luckily, the floor is concrete, so it was easy to clean up, not a huge problem, at least while Tony was out of town.  The main problem at this point was that Brownie could not seem to get back into the pen after she jumped out, there was too much risk of her landing on the babies, maybe?, and the babies should not be without momma for so long at this age.  I figured if I could keep her in the pen, she'd hold it and we wouldn't have a problem.


The first thing I tried was covering the pen with a tarp and zip-tying it on.  Yeah, she tore a hole in the tarp and escaped, probably right after I closed the door behind me.  More poo to clean up.  Thank god for Nature's Miracle.  So, I stepped it up, and got a cover for the pen-it's made of the same type of mesh, and just lays on top.  I used some clamps to attach it to the top of the pen.  Nope, she jostled the pen around and got a corner loose that she could escape through.  So then, I tried two pens, attached to each other, one for the puppies and one for pottying in.  Nope, jumped out of there, too.  Last try, I put her in one pen and zip-tied the top on.  (I had moved them into the kitchen at this point to get them out of Tony's space and into a place where she'd be around people (well, me) more.)  Anyway, I thought "ha, I win-she'll just have to hold it."  Oh no, that was a huge mistake.  I went to work and Tony was out in his office.  When he came in to check on Brownie, she had jumped around and jostled the pen so much that she had lifted it up and set it down on one of the pups.  That girl was squealing her head off, so luckily she was alive.  Tony rescued her, and though she was totally freaked out, she walked and pooped and ate, so everything appeared to be OK.  We are taking no chances of that happening again.  The current (and possibly permanent while she lives with us) solution is to put her and the puppies in the kitchen at night and leave the door to the pen open so the puppies stay in and momma can potty in the kitchen.  Not the best for us, and none of you will ever! foster a dog, but I just do a lot of mopping and keep those babies alive.  We will continue to work on her socialization, leash training and house training in the hopes of making her adoptable.


To end on a more fun note:

Puppy in a can! 

(Sorry about the poor photo quality, but you can't stage these things in good lighting)

It took some doing to get her out of there, her head was really wedged in!  She wasn't at all concerned either, just licking away.  We have better secured the recycling bin to keep this from happening again, even though it was the highlight of my day.

Updates for February

Ok, so first order of business...projects.  No real progress there except I have been cleaning and organizing my sewing area, which is a step in the right direction.  Surely you all have experienced how difficult it can be to work in an area which is piled high with other crap.  So once I do that, it will be time to buckle down!  9 days left in the month.  The dress is supposed to be for my sister and she is refusing to send me her measurements.  So the ball is in her court on that one.

Second, Brownie and her babies. Picking up where we left off...when I got home from work that night, Jan 25th, Brownie was in the pen nursing her babies.  Good.  One week old puppies need a lot of nursing, and I don't want to be the one to do it!  I like to sleep.  There are 7 puppies, 2 boys and 5 girls.  I stepped into the pen, careful not to make eye contact with Brownie (that is very aggressive in dog language and I didn't want to intimidate her) petted the babies and held out my hand hoping Brownie would sniff it.  She cowered and looked away.  I gave up for the evening, but I had to force Brownie to go outside, in hopes that she would potty.  I opened the door to the office, left the door to the pen open, and got behind her and lifted her up.  She made no aggressive move toward me, but headed for the door as that was the easiest escape route.  As far as I know she just cowered behind Tony's snowmobile, but I knew she wouldn't move if I watched her, so I went inside to play with the puppies-well, played is a strong word, they are basically furry lumps at that age, so I cuddled and baby-talked to them for a while, then I cracked open the door to the office, left the door to the pen open, and went inside the house.  As I watched from the back door, the cries of her kiddos drew her back to them.  I went back out, gave her more food and water, shut the door behind me, came inside and took care of the other 5 dogs and 3 cats in my care and went to bed.  

The next morning when I went out, the food was gone, the water was dumped, and there was poop and urine all over the office.  OK, so this is good in some ways, bad in others.  At least she isn't too traumatized to eat, but thank goodness Tony is out of town.  I let her outside, cleaned everything up (thank goodness for Nature's Miracle), then went inside to get some canned food while she got back in the pen with her babies.  I climbed in the pen with them and, with my body and eyes turned away from her, offered her a scoop of the canned food on my fingers.  It took her several minutes and a few false starts, but she finally took it, and quite daintily, too.  Again, no hint of aggression.  Goals for that day were: bath, getting rid of ticks and fleas, worming and figuring out how to keep her from shitting all over Tony's office!

First, I went over momma closely, removed several ticks and saw no fleas.  I gave her strongid (a de-wormer) by syringe, and again, she let me do it with no protestation other than a wild look.  Then I picked her up and carried her into the house and put her in our tub.  Luckily it has sliding doors as opposed to a curtain, so dogs can be contained.  I have learned though experience that the easiest way to bathe a dog who doesn't want to cooperate is just to get in the shower with them.  Brownie curled up against the back of the tub, acting like this was another new experience, but let me manipulate her to enough to wet, wash and rinse her.  She was still covered with the messiness of birth, and of course, still bleeding, so there was quite a bit of washing to be done.  I dried her off as best I could, and put her back with her kiddos to settle down.


For the next two weeks we were in a holding pattern, trying to accustom Brownie to our presence, entering the pen to feed and pet her, handle the pups, take photos and doing a complicated dance to get her in and out of the office to potty outside (well, ideally, anyway).  Next time, the complicated process of trying to house train Brownie or at least not give her the opportunity to potty in the house or office.  Sounds thrilling, huh?

One Down

Ok, so I listed things to get done in February.  The first one was the mug rugs for my sister.  Sooo...here they are!

She lives in St. Croix with 3 roommates, so here is a mug rug for each of them.  I wonder if they'll fight over which belongs to who.  Gotta love Valori Wells, huh?  Those elephants are awesome.

Enjoy, guys.