Goodbye Chloe - and Bonnie.

Sadly we had to have Chloe, one of our rescued, ex-battery hens put to sleep this morning.
She had almost two years of freedom since she left the battery farm in June 2008.
I have not been keeping you up to date with the chicken situation, Bonnie died a few weeks ago and we lost Maggie last September.
Here is a photo of Bonnie and Chloe from last Autumn.


This is not meant to be a sad post as all three girls enjoyed their freedom to the max and we were so pleased to have them as our pets.

I made a quilted piece last year to celebrate their freedom which I don't think I have shown on the blog but will be exhibiting at the FOQ in August. Perhaps you might see it there?

More Quilted Chickens!

I have been working some more on my samples of free motion quilted chickens. First I decided to do some experimenting on the piece I showed in the last post. I added more quilting and used different colours to see how they worked. I decided from this piece that I liked it better leaving some areas of the chickens without quilting and that colours nearer to the colour of the fabric worked better than using 'chicken' colours such as red or brown. So I made this next sample and I think that this is what I will be using for my finished piece. Although the fabric I will be using is an orange space dyed fabric.

This is a close up - ignore the pencil marks as they will be washed out!

Free Motion Quilted Chickens.

I am now working on my fourth City & Guilds piece which will be a sewing machine cover. One of the pieces has to focus mostly on quilting so I have been busy practising my free motion quilting. My theme is chickens and I wanted to include quilted words in the piece. I have used some basic chicken shapes and am experimenting with how I can decorate them with quilting.

I want to try to make the quilting look like stylised feathers.

I am quite pleased with how these are looking.

I have also been experimenting with words - I have found that these have been very difficult to do with some of the fancy metallic threads and that cheap 100% polyester gives the best results. Someone told me this is what Philippa Naylor uses so I could be in good company!

This sample has been very heavily quilted - possibly too heavily - but I never thought I would master this meandering type of machine quilting. It just goes to show that the advice on machine quilting is correct - you need to practise!

What a lovely day!

Today must have been the hottest day of the year here in Yorkshire. So how have we spent it? Securing our garden against chicken break out!


Maggie, the most cunning of the 3 chickens decided to introduce herself to the neighbours this morning. By the time they called me to catch her she had visited gardens three doors down from us!


So there was nothing for it - defences needed to be strengthened.


This is the naughty Maggie after capture!

Those of you who already have chickens will now be laughing as this was what we were using to keep them in the bottom part of the garden!
The next photo shows Chloe enjoying a dust bath she dug herself in the lawn.

Work was now underway on the new gate with the girls helping. The shed is the henhouse - it used to be the kids playshed.
Maggie and Chloe break off for another dust bath!
The third chicken has not been named yet but this photo shows how the feathers are regrowing on her neck. We wanted to call her after a famous persecuted woman but Joan (as in Joan of Arc) was all we came up with and Geoff doesn't like it. Any suggestions greatly received!
This photo shows the new gate in place with more netting to the side. The girls safely behind their new barricade - I decided to make it a bit more homely by painting on the gate!
The new view up the steps towards the house - just need to put more netting to the right hand side of the gate and that should then be chicken proof! Until Maggie works out another point of weakness!

General update!

Can't believe that its almost two weeks since I last posted!
It seems to me that the more free time you have - the less you do!
My youngest finished school for the summer yesterday - so 6 weeks of hanging out with his friends begin for him! We are not going away as a family this summer as we have lots of weekend events going on. This weekend he is at the local music festival Bomfest and later in the summer he is hoping to go to Leeds Music Festival. This weekend Geoff and I are going to a car rally at Nostell Priory . We will be spending the night in the old VW camper!

Here at home the chickens are now free ranging in the bottom of our garden. They have only escaped into next doors garden once!
The first photo shows Patches after she has checked out the hen house! Cats and chickens are getting on fine - the cats love to sit and watch the chickens!




A couple of photos showing them in their new territory! They are getting very friendly - always come to see you when you go down the garden! They are also starting to sprout new feathers and laying one egg each per day! We have only named one so far - the largest chicken who can be a bit of a bully - she is named Maggie (after Maggie Thatcher!)


The last two photos are of our very small pond - we have two fish and loads of frogs!

Sashiko Weekend

This weekend I did a Sashiko Workshop with Susan Briscoe which was very enjoyable and has given me lots of ideas of how to use sashiko in my quilts. The photos show the fan which I have completed using the double sided method of sashiko which means that it can be viewed from both sides. I am now thinking about how I can continue this piece.


I can highly recommend taking a workshop with Susan if you get the chance - there are more details about what we did on Susan's blog.
Just a quick update on the girls - they are doing well - the photos show them enjoying the sunshine in their run. However we have decided that they need more space because after the rain over the weekend the run is now more like a mudbath. So we are looking to fence in a much larger area for them. They are laying already - we have had approx 12 eggs in the first week! If you click on the last photo to enlarge it you can see her poor bald neck. Looking forward to when I can show photos of a full feathered neck!

Our rescued hens arrived today!

Today has been a day we have been looking forward to for a while. We have rescued 3 battery hens which were due to be slaughtered this weekend. They have come from a charity which rescued 500 hens this weekend which would have otherwise died. And the great thing is that they all got new homes. This is a view of their outside run.
This is their hen house which used to be part of the kids play shed. Their nesting box is an old toybox. Apart from the chicken wire we have done the whole thing using recycled materials. We transported them in a cat basket - here you can see how their neck feathers are missing from continually poking their heads through the cages they were kept in.

They seem to like their new home! They seem to be happy already and we are looking forward to getting to know them.