Bizbee- Full Recovery! And a few bitties....

 The little guy is 100% back to normal, yay!  Thanks for all the comments and concern for his (and ours!) well-being.  He has now figured out how to get to the top of the computer armoire and he spends a lot of time napping up there.  The heat from the double halogen lamp attracts him, and Nosey Parker and Gravey, thankfully not all at the same time or I worry the top could collapse.  :)  I've had to move all the baskets off the top, though, because he thinks it's fun to knock them down onto me.  Lil' Brat!

 He and Parker on the back deck- I think there was a squirrel in the walnut tree and it got his attention.

 This month's Bitty Block Bee theme was "Hey, Cowboy!"  I made a brand of the initials of our "Queen"  and a little scene of a broken wagon wheel leaning on a cactus. 

 And in the BBC, the theme is Fall/Thanksgiving.  I'm making scarecrows. 

I am still spending a fair amount of time at my parents' house and this week is the big craft festival called "War Eagle" and I'm scheduled to work 2 days downtown for my friend that has a shop.  And the man who is doing most of the work there isn't feeling 100% himself, so I may be there more than I think.  And we need to get some of the animals to the vet for shots and a little problem with one dog, so this coming week is shaping up to be nuts with little to no sewing involved.  

I hope everyone else is having a nice fall.  Our colors are starting to show up and it's getting really pretty, if a bit messy.  Our back deck is leaf-covered and they are stuck down and wet because we got over 3 glorious inches of rain, woo-hoo!

Bizbee's been sick, but we think he's going to be OK!

 Last Tuesday night we realized that the baby, Bizbee, wasn't feeling too great.  We got him into the vet's office on Wed AM and he was running a high fever of 105º and they thought he might be a victim of what is commonly called "bobcat fever", aka cytauxzonosis, a highly-fatal illness that runs rampant around here.  It's a tick-borne illness and bobcats are the carrier of the tick.  

We had to leave him there and he was put on IV fluids and antibiotics.  He was one sick little cat.  Well, not too little, he weighed 7 pounds and they were pleased that he's a big boy and up to now, very healthy.  We visited him on Thursday and got him to eat for us, which was huge, and again on Friday.  Sat AM they called and wanted us to bring him home for the weekend and see how he does.  

We're giving him his meds here, 2 different things, one is 3x a day and one is 2x a day so we had to write it all down so we don't get it screwed up.  LOL

While his blood tests are not showing the cytauxz organism, they really think he has it and is fighting it off.  They've seen a lot of these cases and says he has the look about him, especially in his eyes.  We trust our vet completely and she has the nicest staff, they all love Bizbee to bits, he came from there and they know him well.  

We were SO worried, and our house felt really empty without him.  It's wonderful to have him home, even if we have to take him back tomorrow morning for more tests and treatments.  I hope they let him come home again, but we'll have to see what they say.  

Here he is last night, resting up for bedtime.  :)  He's guarding my little pile of fabrics that are waiting to be washed.

 And this is Bizbee this morning- see how he's working on that bandage?  Lil' brat!

 I just love when cats yawn.  :)

 Yep, we're all tickled that he's home!

 It's been a very unproductive week between running back and forth to the vet's office and spending lots of time with my parents.  I have absolutely nothing to show off that I've made. 

Lots to show- received swap items, weather predictions and more!

 First, the weather prediction- we cut open some wild persimmon seeds.  See the spoon shapes?  That means we're likely to have a very snowy winter.  If they were knives, it would mean cold, sharp winds.  Pretty cool, huh?  It's usually pretty accurate, too.

 I just recently received my FLiQS quilt from my wonderful partner, Jana/megmormel.  I just love this little circle/rainbow quilt, it's darling and so well made!  She also included a mug rug and some salt water taffy, she lives on the Eastern Seaboard.  It's delish and I just loved everything, thank you so much, talented Jana!

 Lovely, isn't it?  She pegged me very well, she knew I loved rainbow/bright colors and those lovely grays in the background are the perfect foil for the brights.

 The back is darling, too.  She embroidered and pieced the label. 

 In the Bitty Block Bee, bouncypoodle/Pattiann picked sunflowers for her theme.  I made her this screen door block with a view out onto a farm scene.  The cute fabric is by Wilson & Wilson Folk Art Co, here in Eureka Springs.  It's several years old and I've been hoarding it.  :)

 The door opens....

 A few little 3D touches...

 I let the fabric do the sunflower work for me this time.

 And the other block I made for Pattiann- the center is full of seeds, all outlined by machine.

 Since the FLiQS quilt I made has been delivered, I can now show off the label.  It's a kaleidoscope quilt so I thought I should make a kaleidoscope label.  My partner was mollyjolly/maria and it turns out, she's always loved kaleidoscopes, which I didn't know.  Lucky coincidence for us, I think!

 I used a piece of Kaffe Fassett fabric, embellished it with beads and covered it with heavy vinyl.  Added a tiny binding and then stitched it on to cover the end of the hand-appliqued base.  It will swivel up so she can see the words.

 This is the front of the quilt, almost all Kaffe Fassett fabrics. 

 And this is the wonderful mug rug I received from Jodie/jm1122 in the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap!  I love it, it's got 2 sea turtles on one side and a fun octopus on the other! 

 She also send me generous pieces of her background fabrics because she knew I really liked them and treats for the dogs and cats, how sweet was THAT? 

Bizbee highly approves of the treats and has taken over part of the computer armoire, 

I think he likes my mouse!

 

So it's been a busy few weeks around with great stuff arriving in the mail and ooohing and aaaahing!  I hope you've been having fun, too.  I'm trying to think of a project to get me going.  We're going thru some issues with my mom and her health right now and I could use a distraction.  I'm tossing around using some of my bitty blocks to make a perpetual calendar. If I can BEAR to use some of them, that is, and if I can make myself actually make a real decision, I'm turning into a waffler and I hate that!

Finished Doll Quilt- FLiQS and some cute Bizbee-ness!

Had to start out with a cute shot of the boy sleeping on the doll quilt before I got it quilted. 

And here it is, quilted..... I just enhanced the light circles by quilting inside them and carrying it into the border. 

Here it is all finished....

...with a hint of the back showing.  

For a change, the binding worked well with the front and the back, yay.  The backing is cool, looks great up close, click on the photo for a closer view.

I haven't made a label yet.

And here's Bizbee snoozing on the quilt in the rocking chair.  

He obviously doesn't appreciate the lamp being on and shining in his eyes.  :)

He got neutered last week and came home from the vet, same day, 

feeling fine and playful and full of beans!   We were glad to get him back, 

we missed him that day for the whole 6 hours he was gone. 

Happy Labor Day!  I hope you are all off doing something fun instead of reading this blog.  :)

Bitties, Mug Rugs and a Fab Little Quilt to Swap...

 The themes for August were cats and Halloween- So I made everyone in my group a miniature Nosey Parker.  :)  This is a 3.5" take-off from a mug rug I made a while back, in the spring.  I can't believe I forgot to add whiskers to them, though!  They've all been mailed out whisker-less.  Dumb butt! Oh, well, I guess everyone can add their own if they want them.  I spent a long time on the handstitching on these, I watched a lot of Olympics while I worked on them. 

 For my Halloween blocks, I made some mini Amy Bradley vampires!  I love how they turned out, and I only had to embroider his mouth, yay.  :)  The fangs are white paint.

 My 2nd group got these- I saw something like this in a new magazine and loved it- a couple of people didn't get it, until it was explained to them.  YOU get it, right?

The summer mug rug swap- my partner likes beach/ocean things and I found a cute clipart drawing of a turtle.  He translated nicely to fabric.  A little seaweed, some sand and water and he's good to go.  I hate to send him away, because I have a special place in my heart for sea turtles.  They struggle from the moment they hatch to survive and only one in 5000 makes it to adulthood, they say.
Those are horrible odds!

And I just recently sent off an angel mug rug to the UK- a lady that was in our spring swap never received her mug rug so I made her this using a birdhouse bitty I had, and some Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  I hope she likes it. Better late than never, and better than getting nothing!  :)

And speaking of Kaffe Fassett, I am using his fabrics to make a mini doll quilt for my partner in FLiQS, Fab Little Quilt Swap.  It's a kaleidoscope quilt, paper pieced, and gives great illusions of light and dark large circles, which you can see beginning to happen if you squint at this.  Here's a small sample of it, this is 6 blocks, there will be either 25 or 30 in the quilt.  Each block finishes at about 3.25", so it'll only be 16" x 20", roughly, without a border.  But I'll add a border to try to tone it down a little.  It's going to be wildly busy.  I've got 18 blocks done now, only 7 or 12 to go!

 

So that's I've been working on, while Bizbee continues to grow.  He's getting his adult teeth now, currently he has 2 fangs on each side, and he's so rambunctious, almost crazy.  He gets neutered next week, maybe that'll calm him down a tiny bit.   Or maybe it's the teething making him nutsy, whatever.  I just hope he doesn't stay like this, he's a real handful right now!  Cute when he's sleeping, though!

 

Have a great weekend!  Jim's at an all-day firefighter class, so I've got the house to myself, I'm going to go knock out some more little blocks for my quilt!  What are YOU doing today?

Star Wars bitties and Bizbee's into everything!

 This little guy is so funny and so BUSY!  He's at the stage where he's destructive and stubborn and getting into lots of trouble.  Dashing out the door when he gets the chance and just generally being a pain.  Then he gets sleepy and cuddly and all is forgiven.  :)

He's a great yawner, too. 

 I got done with my August bee bitty blocks early- the theme Kandra wants is Stars Wars so I made her a Death Star.....

 ...and Princess Leia.  I had some newsprint fabric and I wanted to make it look like Princess Leia was in the newspaper, but I didn't have enough room to pull that off.  So I spliced out some words and made an inspirational quote underneath her, instead.   It says "She Had Neither Fear Nor Doubt of Success".  That was actually referring to Amelia Earhart's Atlantic crossing, but I thought it worked well for this.   This block is 3.5" x 5.5", but Kandra can bring it back down to a 3.5" square simply by removing the black part, if she wants to.  I made a lightsaber out of a toothpick, red paint and gray embroidery floss.  And her belt is made from micro beads.

 My first plan was to make Jabba the Hutt and Yoda, but someone else beat me to it.  Star Wars is not my favorite series, so I had to do a lot of clipart searching and coloring book pages searching to get ideas.

Now it's time to start working on August's bitty blocks for the regular group, I signed up to do 24 Halloween ones.  I started those yesterday.  

I won't say what they are yet, but I vant to bite somezing right now!

Have a great Sunday, people!

Just a few bitty blocks to show...

  The theme this month for bitties was "dogs", so I used a clipart piece for inspiration and made these-

little pups in the bathtub.  The ears are 3D but I tacked them down because they had a tendency to flip up.

 In the Bitty Block Bee, Denise's theme is mushrooms, so I made her a faerie ring.  I love this one, it's different from what I usually make, I embroidered the tiny mushrooms onto the dark green.  I like the light green fabric with the rings on it with the birch/aspen tree trunks, looks really pretty. 

 And this is her other one- the magical musical mushroom!

 I stitched the lettering on by tracing the letters onto vellum and then laying the vellum on the dotted fabric and a piece of newsprint under the fabric.  Stitched on my lines and then had to pull off the vellum from the top and the newsprint from the bottom, then tie off all the threads.  That took a while! Then I sewed the top of the mushroom all the way around to another piece of dotted fabric, sliced the back piece open and turned it and pressed it.  Then slip stitched it down onto the background, after making and attaching the stalk, using the same method. 

Turned out good!  Reminds me of a place in Orlando I went to a few times in the 70's- The Infinite Mushroom.  It was a fun head shop full of wild and crazy and colorful things that came in pretty handy back in my youth.  *ahem* 

Bizbee continues to grow and now there is only one place in the house that he hasn't been to- the top of the computer armoire.  Oy.  It won't be long though- he saw Gravey jump up there from the rolltop desk and he's been plotting and scheming ever since!  This is the same launching area where he knocked over 2 lamps just a couple of weeks ago.  Kids. Sheesh.  And boy kids are even tougher than girl kids!  He's knocked over more stuff than Nosey Parker and Gravey combined.

We love him to bits, though.  He gives the best head-butts and rubbing smoochies on your face and nose and chin, then he licks you with the roughest little tongue ever.  We call him The Exfoliater. LOL