Beginning Quilting Tutorial--Log Cabin style

I believe quilting is part of homesteading.  Being frugal certainly is, and quilting to me is the epitome of frugality.  I'm not a Fabric Snob, and let me just say, there are NO Quilt Police! No one is going to look at your creation that you made with your own hands and tell you that "this is wrong, or you didn't match that, etc. etc."
If they do, let them go, you don't need that kind of negativity in your life!

 

 So, to get started, you've got a pile of scraps. Maybe someone gave them to you, maybe you saved them from some crafty project, maybe they are clothes that you no longer wear.  Whatever the reason, this is where we begin.  I find it easiest to work with small squares and strips.  I cut my scraps into usable sizes.  I think of them like building blocks, or Legos. You are just going to take a small piece and sew it together to make a bigger piece, and so on, and so on.

 

 Begin by finding a strip, and a handful of squares. Lay the strip face up, and the squares on top, facing down.  Line them up in front of your needle and stitch, using the edge of the presser foot as a guide.  We aren't going to be really persnickety about a 1/4 inch seam allowance.  This is scrappy quilting!

 Butt the next square up against the edge of the last one. In our example, lay the floral up against the bottom edge of the red. aligning that right raw edge. Stitch down the strip.

 

Continue on until you have stitched all your squares down to the strip.  Remove the units from the machine.

 

 "Finger press" them to one side.  And cut in between each set using a rotary cutter or scissors. 

 Any of these blocks can be made with just scissors.  Our ancestors didn't have cool tools like we have now, but they made some gorgeous quilts!

 Lay your next strip out and lay your units from the previous set face down on top of the strip, aligning the raw edge on the right.  If you have some bump-outs from previous seams, just trim those off.  Eye-balling is fine.  Accuracy is not an issue here.

 Stitch, repeat.  Laying each unit onto the strip as before. 

 Remove the piece from the machine and at the ironing board, press the piece with the seam going towards the strip you just stitched. 

 Cut this strip apart between each "unit."

 If you happen to have a angled piece that needs squared up, fit the triangle in, making sure your triangle is BIGGER than the chunk that needs filling to allow for a seam allowance.

 Lay it face down, matching the raw edge.  Leave a "dog-ear" on each end of the seam.

 Run your stitching line in the "valley" where the two pieces meet.

 Fold the triangle back and press, finger press or press with an iron.

 As you build your blocks, feel free to trim and straighten each building block as you go.

 Again, with rotary cutter, ruler and mat or with scissors.

If you want to create a diagonal corner to create interest, lay your triangle piece on top and scoot it to the right to allow for a seam. 

 Cut off the triangle section of your block and remove.

 Lay your new triangle piece on top, right sides together and make sure you allow for those dog ears on each end.

 Stitch as before, fold back, press and trim off the dog ears.

 Continue in this manner, adding strips, and making your block larger and larger until you are satisfied with the size.  I'm cutting mine here at 6x6" square. Lay your ruler, or your square template if using scissors.  Cut to size.

 When using your rotary cutter, cut two sides and then turn the piece, and cut the other two sides.

 

 Be sure to carefully line up the cut edge when moving your ruler.

 Voila! Your finished block!

 I piece these when I'm bored or when I just have a few minutes to sew.  They are stacked in a drawer in bundles of ten.  I safety pin them together to help me count. 

 You can piece these together side by side or add solid colored squares.  The possibilities at this point are endless.

Thanks for reading.  I'll be posting what to do with these in an upcoming tutorial.  Keep building those blocks and we'll create something useful and beautiful!

MaryLu at Able Farm!

If you have any questions, post a comment here and I'll answer as quickly as possible! Thanks!

The Duck Mystery Continues...

For the last five days we have gotten a duck egg.  Ducks don't lay as frequently as chickens do and I consider them to be a real treasure. Duck eggs have twice the nutritional value as chicken eggs and will stay fresh longer because of their thicker shell.  I was so excited when I saw that my ducks were laying! Or rather, one duck was laying, but who?

 

The problem, there is a stinking rodent getting to the eggs before me! And that makes me mad.

 

I have six ducks, in order from left to right; the light brown one is a female chocolate Indian Runner named Cocoa, then my female Cayuga named Pepper, my new male Pekin named Soda, then next is a female black crested Swedish duck named Helga, the black and white one is a male magpie duck named Mangus and lastly, my male Pekin named Salt.

 

 

You can tell the males and females apart by their curly "Drake feathers." You can see Soda's curly feather on the left of the photo below.  It also looks as if Salt has a curly Drake Feather, though it is not as distinct. 

 

In order to figure out who is laying and who is not quite yet ready, I've been locking the females in an enclosure at night to see where the eggs are in the morning.

Cayugas lay very dark grey eggs when they first start to lay and then lighten up to grey as they mature, so my first thought was that the egg-layer was NOT the Cayuga.

So, the first night, Pepper, my Cayuga stayed out of the enclosure.  Only the Indian Runner and the Crested Swedish were locked in.  The next morning, egg on the ground outside the night enclosure.

So, I thought, "well, maybe my Pekin male is not a male after all.  So last night Salt went into the enclosure, to determine if he was a she--if he was a Saltine instead of a Salt.

 

 

This morning, another egg outside the enclosure, and nibbled on by that blasted rodent.

Tonight, I guess the Cayuga is going in and then maybe I'll know the "whodunit" of the Duck Egg Mystery!

 

More llamas.

When we first moved to this property I didn't have enough animals to "mow" down the field. I wanted to borrow my neighbor's llamas so they could graze over here but after chasing them around for two hours I decided to forget it. 

I searched Craigslist and found three llamas that had been rescued and couldn't live there anymore. They needed a good home and I needed animals to chew down the pasture. 

I paid $50 a piece for them. I was told at the time that the female was pregnant but I didn't know when she would birth. I didn't know much of anything about them actually. 

Mordecai is on the left, Freckles in the middle and Kuzco is on the right. Freckles gave birth on the 23rd of August. We were very surprised! She didn't look that big to me. Our new baby is Dolly. She is almost completely white with two little spots, one on her neck and one on her leg. 

Wow, our girls are growing up. Today we got 4 eggs. One white but small, one very large pinkish brown, one dark brown and one light brown. We know we have at least 4 of the 15 hens laying but we may have more.
We can tell which ones are the layers because if you go to pick them up and they do what we call the Chicken Dance then you know that that bird is laying. The chicken dance is a submissive thing that hens do when they are receptive to a rooster but for some reason they do it for a human  too. When you walk up to them they squat down and lift their wings without spreading them, kindof like when a human shrugs. Sometimes they also run in place. It looks funny like a dance, hence the name we gave it.
I decided to eat scrambled eggs for dinner tonight and when cracked the two biggest ones they were both double yolked. So that would be three doubles so far since we had one a week ago too.

Wow, I'm a blogger. I think. If this is the place where we talk about our own private Idaho then I am going to start. We were all raised on a hobby farm but back then we just referred to it as living in the country. Then years later someone started a magazine called Country Living when it became apparent to city dwellers everywhere that country living was something to be desired. My wife Pauline and I were both raised in the country and we decided early on that we wanted to have a house in the country. We almost made it with the first house we bought. We were only a few hundred yards from the edge of the city limits but on the wrong side. We had a small house on a sixth of an acre in a residential subdivision. We ended up stayiing there for 28 years. When we lost the house we had an opportunity to move to a 1 and a third acre on a county lot. This old house was built in 1940 or 41 and was the only farm house with a half mile or so at the time. We have been able to find a little history and we will add that stuff at a later time. That was almost 3 years ago and now we have added 6 fuit trees to the 3 that were already here and we also have 16 chickens and 14 turkeys not to mention the over 30 chickens in the freezer. Next year we want to add goats and maybe other small animals.
Below is a photo of the bare ground a few months after we moved in and started our garden in the space where there used to be a shed. You can see the old milk barn inthe back ground with the chicken coop and storage building on the left. This space is now full of fruit trees and we have started on building the grape trellis if we can actually get the grapes to grow.

A Dream Come True

My husband and I have wanted for at least 25 years to own a piece of land.  One in which we could grow what we wanted, hang a clothesline and spread out a bit. This blog will chronicle that journey.

Some members of my family have joined in this endeavor as well and so there will be posts and photos from our various lives journaling their progress as well.

I'll start with a bit of background about our hobby farm and how we have been blessed to call this place home.

My husband is a 23 year Army veteran and has recently been called to Shepherd a Lutheran Church in Pocatello, Idaho.  We found an almost 5 acre piece of property and we have been quickly settling in and filling it with animals.

We are boarding two horses that my kids get to ride.

 We added two pygmy goats named Bonnie and Clyde. This is Clyde.

 Then came 16 chickens, 13 of them were new babies and three roosters.

I bought three llamas off of Craigslist, one of them turned out to be pregnant and we now have four.

Lastly, we acquired a miniature horse named Acorn.

My garden has not done well this year, but this blog is about learning and growing.  Making changes and doing better.

Welcome! And thanks for reading!