Small Steps, Big Decisions

Hello quilty friends! This week I finished up playing with my aqua and teal scraps, and boy did I knock them back! I trust that they’ll replenish themselves (don’t they always?) before next year’s round of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. But if they didn’t, I might be *forced* to go fabric shopping! Wouldn’t that be just awful? Hahahaha! 

First, let me make an announcement regarding the A Quilter’s Cove Quilt-Along. This is the “big decisions” thing that was referenced in my blog post title. The date for the start of the QAL has been moved to ….. January 2026. We will be running it in conjunction with the 2026 Rainbow Scrap Challenge! Angela was excited and agreed that it would be a good fit and she’d be happy to help. So, the pace will be more leisurely, and everyone is invited to join us through the RSC! . 

Naturally, we’ll talk about it more as the time grows closer. But in the meantime, think about if you’d like to make a quilt or a wall-hanging. I’m going to do both - a quilt with pieced little houses and trees in all the RSC colors every month. But I’ll also be doing a wall-hanging with piecing, appliqué, and embroidered details. In fact, this is the booklet I’ll be adapting for my wall-hanging minus the flowered block borders but adding my own details. 

I haven’t picked my pieced quilt pattern(s) yet, but I may just mix it up and do lots of variety. Anyway, I hope you’ll join us in 2026. Kat and I are planning to present bi-weekly “lessons” with samples, patterns and links as we go along. 

Moving on, the “small steps” portion of my post title refers to my scrappy sewing this week. My primary goal was to finish up my crumb blocks. I had eleven crumb aqua crumb blocks left over from the past two years. I sewed 8 more to end up with 19. 

Fifteen of them were pulled for our Quilts for Kids chapter - they make quilt kits with 15 solid-color string or crumb blocks in assembling certain kits. The other four will go into my block orphanage to await more brethren. As usual, I’m linking up to Angela’s Scrappy Saturday post for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I was also able to spend some time sewing together part of my Halloween quilt. The side blocks are attached to the main panel.

Obviously, I will need to add a couple 1” (1.5” before sewing) coping strips alongside each of the bat blocks to get everything to line up. The panel was 22.5” wide and I need 24.5” width there for accommodate all the 12” blocks. No problem - I knew this from the start of the project. The four blocks for the bottom row will get the same treatment. Hopefully I’ll have a finished flimsy to show next week.

I also layered and pin basted three more quilts this week, but didn’t get a chance to quilt them. Here they are, ready to be quilted. 

And that’s all I have this week. The next several weeks will be intense for me as far as our HOA goes. We are underway in the budget planning, and next week I have three meetings - our regular Board monthly meeting, our weekly Budget Planning meeting, and an evening community-wide input meeting. I’m getting through it only because there is an endpoint in sight for me - the end of the year. Actually, nothing much happens after Thanksgiving, so it’s really only three more months. I keep thinking about how much free time I’ll have (to sew and relax) when this is all over. But for now, I’m straight-jacketed into the commitments I made. Breathe, Cathy, breathe. 

xo, and make it a great week!

A Couple of String Quilt Finishes

Hello! I’m happy to share that I have a couple more quilt finishes this week. It’s been a long, dry spell for me between finishes. Well, I just looked back and it was mid-June when I finished the last three. I guess it’s not *that* long, but it seems like it to me. But summer is drawing to a close and I feel prime sewing and quilting weather coming around the corner!

As usual, I can’t seem to place blocks on the design board in a level fashion. If the truth be known, I didn’t even hang the design board evenly. But that’s a story for another time!

So, I sewed 30 string blocks in aqua, turquoise, and teal. It’s the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August, and I’m linking up, as usual, to Scrappy Saturday. These blocks finish at 6”. I give them to our local Quilts for Kids chapter, where they use both string and crumb blocks in sets of 15 to go into the quilt kits they check out to sewing volunteers. 

Maybe you have or have seen some of these prints. There is one interesting print in there that I got at the scrap tables at the last Worldwide Quilt Day in May. It’s a teal background with a sugar skull-like Darth Vader on it in black. Weird! Can you spot pieces of it? There are also some strings of the leftover panda print that I used in the flimsy I showed IN THIS POST. 

I also pin basted and quilted the first two of my quilts-in-waiting. These were both made from 8.5” string blocks, which I experimented with earlier in the year. After discussing it with the QFK ladies, we eventually decided that 6.5” string blocks work better for QFK quilt patterns, so I decided to finish these up myself. 

This first string quilt, which finished at 40x55” has a teal-colored floral print as the constant. It doesn’t photograph well in that it looks much more dull in a full shot.

Up close, though, it really is much more vibrant and happy. I did the standard diagonal line quilting, then stitched a half inch on either side of the seamlines.

The 42” width backing was supplemented by a strip of fabric given to me a couple years ago by a friend. 

The second quilt of 8.5” string blocks is also 40” across, but with only six rows down is 48” in length. Obviously, I pinned both quilts up sideways on the design board.

Oh look, another panda! 

This green fabric was a wider print, so I didn’t have to piece the backing. 

My sewing goal for the coming week is to layer and finish two more quilt tops and to sew up my aqua and teal crumbs. That will finish up my teal scraps for the month. If there is time, I’d like to sew together the Halloween quilt I’ve been working on all year, two blocks at a time. I’m more of a fall person rather than a Halloween person. But I have my reasons for making this one. Back in August of 2021, Cousin Kim and I and Cousin Carrie (Kim’s sister, who passed away last year) and Carrie’s daughter Jenny all took a road trip to Missouri Star Quilt Company. We stayed for a week and attended a fun workshop together. At the time, we all bought identical Halloween quilt panels. Cousin Kim finished hers in 2022, and I had a ball custom quilting it. I really want to do the same for myself. Cousin Carrie loved Halloween, so I know that putting it together and quilting it will bring back a lot of wonderful memories!

****************

I didn’t know whether I should bother to share these next pictures, but at least for my own personal records, I wanted to (finally) get a picture of our mostly finished master bedroom after the wall repairs, painting, new bedding and art, and new window coverings. When we bought the condo last year, the walls had cracks and small holes in its formerly-almond paint, plus white metal mini blinds at the windows with floor-length lace curtains. The former resident was 99 years old when she passed and had no desire during her last decades to update it. And who would blame her?

But we wanted to refresh and update it for us. The only thing we have left to do is replace the carpeting. I’m not sure if that will be next year or the year after, because our bathrooms need painting and some cabinetry overhauls too. Anyway, here is our bedroom. The color is Sherwin Williams Acanthus.

I was going to ditch the lamps, but once I removed the ‘90’s-vibe tassels from them, they looked so much cleaner that I decided to forego sconces. And this is Darla’s favorite spot - under the ceiling fan! I would like to make a bed runner for the bed at some point. 

And now for Truth in Blogging, the photo below shows the west wall in its real life messy state, our computers, an old IKEA table (used to be in my old sewing room), mismatched desk chairs and papers all over the desk. Just keeping it real!

Yep, that’s my exercise bike there in the corner. It won’t be getting any more use until I’m recovered from my knee surgeries this winter. 

That’s all I have for this week. I hope you’re enjoying the last few weeks of summer. Me, I’m so ready to be done with summer. And it occurs to me that I haven’t even been swimming one time yet this year. I’ll have to rectify that before the pool closes for the season in early September! 

All Jammed Up!

What a wild and crazy week! Honestly, I can hardly remember half the things I did or where the time went. But there were several highlights and lowlights. 

On the weekend, I was able to get some sewing done (photos below). On Monday, I visited my friend Ruby who is staying with her sister Cathy (who’s also a good friend). Cathy just had knee surgery, and Ruby jokes that she’s practicing her nursing skills on her sister so she can take care of me this winter. Haha! I took them a roast chicken and lots of veggies and salads, plus a succulent plant as a get well gift for Cathy. I challenged her to keep it alive longer than I would - about a month - LOL. Ruby and I also went out in Cathy’s garden to pick plums and blackberries. 

On Tuesday I went to Weight Watchers and it was good to see friends again. Lots of hugs going ‘round! That afternoon, Bruce’s older daughter Emily and the three kids came down from Idaho Falls and we got to take them to lunch, show them the condo, the grounds, pool and creek, and get a picture. Our son-in-law had to stay behind for work, unfortunately. Here’s a picture of all 6 of us. The kids knew how to set the timer on the phone camera so we could all be in the photo. 

L-R: Bruce, me, Gunner, Abbie, daughter Emily and Deacon

On Wednesday I made plum jam to go with the strawberry, blackberry, apricot and raspberry jams I’ve already made this season. Two batches of plum jam, and neither one set up. GRRR. I’ll be laid up with the knee stuff around the end of the year (depending on surgery scheduling), so I figured that jam would be a great food gift that I can make now and freeze for neighbors and friends for Christmas. No December marathon baking of biscotti like last year. 

Thursday morning saw us making a trip to Costco to stock up on all sorts of things, and then in the afternoon I played cards with my friends at the clubhouse. One friend had asked us a couple weeks ago (or whenever it was) if they wanted her brand new unused bread maker that had too many bells and whistles. Since mine is at least 35 years old and has long since seen better days, I offered to take it when nobody else wanted it. Woo-hoo! I spent that evening reading the manuals (yes, plural), and I understand my friend’s angst. It will be quite the learning curve, but I told her I probably would get into it this winter when things slow down. 

On Friday morning I had my final eye doctor happointment after having had my right eye cataract removed a couple months ago. The eye is now healed, and the doctor’s skilled incisions helped alleviate the astigmatism in my right eye. The eye exercises and drops, as well as the full healing from the surgery means I can now read again without double vision or “ghosting”. I still have the ghosting a bit while trying to read signs from a distance, but I don’t need glasses for driving or mid-range most of the time. Still, I have a prescription for eye glasses that will better match my eyes now, so I’ll get it filled and maybe it will make me feel more secure reading signs when driving. 

Anyway, after that appointment I went grocery shopping and spent the afternoon “fixing” the unset jam with a cornstarch slurry and boiling the jam in small batches. It’s soft set now, and maybe will firm up more. At least it’s a passable consistency, and it is really delicious. It *almost* reminds me of the amazing plum jam that we had in Kenya back in 2018. I keep checking that Kenyan company, but they still don’t export it to the States. Dang! And with the Orange Idiot levying tariffs on anything that moves, who knows how much a jar of imported jam from Kenya would cost, anyway.

Plum freezer jam with new bread maker behind

Aaand, that brings me to the meager sewing I did get done this week. These are all the RSC (Rainbow Scrap Challenge) blocks I sewed. 

Four flying geese 6” blocks (above) and 12 Switchplate blocks (below) at 3x5” (finished sizes)

Other than that, absolutely nothing was done in the sewing room. I didn’t even have time to sew on a button I need to! (But then, just about anything comes before doing mending, right?)

So, I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This morning is the final round of jam-making for me: raspberry-peach. And then, I’ll clean off my big kitchen island, drag out the big roll of batting, and proceed to start pin basting quilts. If I have the energy. If not, I’ll just curl up and read. Sounds good to me either way!

Have a great week!

Welcome Aqua August!

With a new month, it’s time for another color of the month in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The month of August was declared by our leader Angela to be dedicated to sewing aqua, teal, and turquoise scraps. Don’t those colors make you want to jump into a pool? They sure do to me! 

Well, thankfully my knee is not fractured, and I’m back to walking without assistance after that fall last week. Unfortunately, my orthopedic surgeon says both my “extremely” arthritic (bone on bone) knees need to be replaced. Yikes. I was hoping I could get by without facing that. But, I’m going to go ahead with it. I’ll do my right knee first sometime in late December or January, and then the left knee six weeks later. It’s going to be tough, but we’ll manage. The silver lining (well, beyond the obvious new knees) is that it will probably give me a lot of extra sewing time!

And speaking of sewing time, I was surprised to realize that I didn’t get all that much sewing time in this week. But I do have several things to show you, so let’s get started.

Last week I mentioned that I’d sewn the last two blocks for my Halloween Quilt. But I saved them for this week to show you.

This first block is the third or fourth time I’ve used this same fabric that’s the center section. I got a chunk of it who-knows-where, because I can’t remember all the scrap origins of my stash. (Is this my personal shame, or are there others of you who forget scrap origins too?)

The final block was this simple block below. It has partial seams, but they’re easy. Sewing this block was like sliding into Home for a baseball home run.

At some point in the next couple weeks, I’ll begin assembling the quilt top, which I believe is going to involve some fabric “shims” or coping strips.  And the quilting will be a marathon! But it will be finished for use this fall!

The primary sewing I did for the RSC this week was this aqua Weathervane block. I love that mouse fabric in the center. I buy it from Spoonflower online, and keep ordering a FQ here or half-yard there. I’ve got more still in a quilt kit I’ve made and hope to get to in 2026. 

Oh heck, I remember even making myself a mask out the mouse fabric five years ago during the pandemic.  

The Panda scrappy quilt was webbed and sewn last weekend, and I pieced a backing for it as well this week. This 42x49” quilt top is now hanging in the Sewing Closet of Shame with an ever-growing line of quilts to be basted and quilted. I will be able to start on some of them in the week ahead,. 

Have a great week everyone!

Fall Was in the Air. Actually, it Was in the Courtyard

Last Monday, around noon, I was rushing off to our monthly HOA Board meeting around noon. I usually walk the two short blocks with my armful of reports and binders and…. Well, I was be-bopping through my courtyard and tripped (on a cement seam? On air? Yes, I am capable of tripping on air). Landed face first on the cement and everything went flying. Bruce had just gone into the bathroom to shower and didn’t hear me yell for help. My phone was in my pocket, so I called my neighbor Andy, who was already at the Board meeting, and he and another guy hopped in a car and were with me in 2 minutes or less. Long story short, I ended up at the emergency care clinic with a face full of bruises, lacerations, punctured gums and a possibly fractured right knee (the two doctors reading the X-rays disagreed about whether it was fractured). My face looks like I went a couple rounds with Rocky Balboa. I’m in a knee brace and using a walker until I can get in on Tuesday to see my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Nikolaus, who did my hip replacement in 2023. I’m pretty sure I won’t need surgery and that I can just wear the brace for awhile and avoid putting weight on it, but we’ll see. 

But other than that it’s been a good week, LOL. Seriously, you never really know how much people care until you injure yourself. Flowers, cards, food, errands, visits and gentle hugs. I’m staying upbeat, and Bruce has really been there for me all the way. He took one of our collectible teddy bears (our favorite) and “fixed him up” for me, complete with bandages and a “leg brace” (sock). My sweet kitty Darla has been with me all night every night, giving me IPT (Intensive Purr Therapy). How lucky can I get?

In the meantime, I had luckily finished all my purple Rainbow Scrap Challenge sewing on the weekend before the fall, so I do have things to share today. And after a couple days of total rest, I was ready to try some sewing with my left foot on the foot pedal. I can do it, and I have a small footstool on which to rest my gimpy right leg. I got the last two blocks for my Halloween quilt sewn, but I’ll save those for next week. Let me show you the rest of the purple scraps for July this week. I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s So Scrappy blog.

Here are nine crumb blocks that will finish at 6”. They’ll be put away for next year when we once again work on purple, because I need 15 to make a set for QFK. 

And then I sewed five Paint Chip blocks, which finish at 8”.

Notice how the columns are randomized between the darks and lights? I do that on purpose to vary the ups and downs. Here’s a picture from back in May with only five of the colors. It gives an idea of the look I’m going for. 

When I finished the purples, I only needed one more Paint Chip block to complete the set.. So I whipped out my aqua/teal scraps and made the very last block. 

So, these are all done and will join my RSC block collections to be sewn into tops. Finishing up all the RSC block sets will be my focus for the remainder of this year. Well, that and the QAL (more on that below) and starting on a wedding quilt for my grandson. 

While I had my aqua/teal scraps out (hopefully Angela will announce it as the August color of the month) I found about three dozen little squares of a pale aqua fabric with pandas on them. So I decided to use my teal and aqua 2 ½” strips to make Happy blocks. I did have to add a few 7.5” solid green squares and strips in to round it out. That green shows up - minimally, but it’s there - in the panda print. 

I’ll get it webbed and sewn, and a backing made this weekend. Then it can be added to my ever-growing group of tops to be pin basted and quilted. I had hoped to start on those this week, but it’s hard to stand one-legged for too long. Plus I had to elevate my right leg for several days. But the quilting will all happen in time. 

**************

I’ve mentioned in the past, and talked about to many of you as well, Kat Scribner (Scrapbox Quilts) and I are going to be hosting a house and neighborhood-themed Quilt-Along beginning in mid-September. We’re calling it A Quilter’s Cove QAL. We will each have a post and a joint linky party every Saturday. We plan to run it through the fall, then break before the Thanksgiving and December Holidays. We anticipate having another few linkups in January to round things out and present our finishes and/or progress. 

Kat created this delightful logo for us. Isn’t it adorable? Feel free to add it to your sidebar. Both Kat and I have the linky on our blog sidebars that you can copy. If you click it, it’ll take you to our A Quilter’s Cove page on our blogs. Once the QAL goes live, we will house the links to all our QAL posts there. Additionally, we both have our A Quilter’s Cove joint Pinterest Board, where you will find hundreds of ideas, photos and links. Our Pinterest Board link can also be found on our blog sidebars. 

So, start thinking about what YOU would like to do, as this will NOT be a one-size-fits all. Do you want to make a full-sized quilt? A wall hanging? Rows or medallion-style or free-form? Will you buy and sew an existing pattern? There are so many cute patterns out there! Or would you rather use a favorite block pattern to sew and build your own neighborhood?  Do you like improv style? Traditional piecing? Appliqué? Or a combination of all of them? The sky is the limit! And, speaking of the sky, it can be any color, time of day or night, or season you choose! 🤣 

If you have questions, do write to us! We’ll have more details for you as the time draws closer, and we hope you’ll join us in this fun Quilt-Along!

*****************

Have a great week!

Digging into Purple Strings

As quilters, many of us are pretty good at collecting scraps. Scraps actually happen as a by-product of our sewing adventures. And lots of us enjoy collecting scraps, even gathering them from others. But the Queens of Scrap Usage, a more elite (hehe) subset of scrap collectors, are those of us who participate weekly in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. We are very adept at coming up with ideas and blocks and even whole quilts made from our collected scraps. One month and one color at a time. We visit all our friends on the color wheel at least yearly and revel in their variety. 

This month of July 2025 is set aside by Angela, the leader of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, to pay homage to purple in all its variations. And we are all here for it. Visit our Scrappy Saturday link-up to see what I mean.

This week I got to play with my purple (lavender, violet, aubergine, lilac, amethyst, mulberry, plum, etc) strings. As usual, I set out to make string blocks that measure 6.5” size. I provide them to our Quilts for Kids Salt Lake chapter, where they are inserted into quilt kits for members to sew up into quilt tops. They are used in groups of 15, so I like to make 15, 30, or even more blocks if I can eke them out of my strings. If not, the leftover strings or blocks will wait their turn to be included next year. 

Here are the 30 purple string blocks I finished this week.

Here is each group separately if you want to see better detail. 

I actually did lots more sewing this week, mostly finishing up a couple quilt tops. I now have four quilt tops and backings ready to baste in the coming week. But first I have to get through Monday’s HOA Board meeting. Prepping for that will waste take up 2-3 hours today because I’m the treasurer. And it will only get worse as we head into budget season over the next 3 months or so. Oh, I am so dreading it. But in December my term is over and I’ll be free! And there is always sewing and music to return me to a calm state of mind! 

**********************

Several weeks ago I mentioned a quilt-along that Kat Scribner (Scrapbox Quilts) and I will be hosting. Well, we’ve been working on it and want to give you all an update! The QAL will be called “a Quilter’s Cove Quilt-Along” and will be starting sometime in September. For now, we’re collecting ideas and patterns and links, roughing out timelines and reading up on creating linky parties. There’s so much out there, it’s actually more difficult that we realized to narrow things down and come up with a suitable framework! 

We’d love to have you participate, one and all. But you’ll have to put on your thinking caps and begin looking for a style or pattern that you would like to work with. Scrappy? Color coordinated? A pattern or a kit? A row quilt? Medallion style? Improv? Wonky or wacky? Modern? Traditionally pieced? Paper pieced? Appliquéd? Mixed methods? Size - quilt or wall hanging? So many decisions! 

**********************

With that, I’ll leave you with a picture of “The Alfinator”, our cat Alfie, seen here questioning me why there have been no treats for him yet today. 

Feeling Purplish

How are you all faring in the heat of this summer? All I can say is thank goodness for air conditioning. We did have a couple evenings with some brief rain showers, enough so I didn’t have to go out and water the courtyard the next morning. We’re still waiting for the guy we contacted to install our drip irrigation to work down to us on his waiting list. Maybe by October? I already lost one hanging planter of flowers - I must’ve accidentally missed watering it one time, and it was pretty much toast by the next day. So it goes. 

The purple scrappiness continued in my sewing room this week, but I admit to doing my monthly goal of two blocks for my Halloween quilt before any Rainbow Scrap Challenge purple sewing. Appropriately, though, one of my Halloween blocks is purple.

I made a big misssssssnake as I cut this out and began webbing the block together. The block consists of 2.5” squares, and I cut out enough to make a 25-patch block. As I began webbing it, I realized it was only going to finish at 10” instead of 12”. Duh. So I had to stop and cut out more squares to make it a 36-patch. It changed the look of the block, giving it a 4” center instead of a 2”. But it’s fine. Looks like I could’ve pieced it better, but no more adjustments now!

The second block was fun to figure out. I’m just mostly selecting pictures of blocks I like and doing my own thing. Here it is, and it’s probably my favorite so far. 

That leaves the two final blocks for next month, and then I can begin assembly! It’s getting exciting. 

Then I started on my weathervane blocks - three of them. 

They’re true to color except the left-most one. It shows the largest area of purple being too bright when it’s actually less saturated. In real life, the three purples in that block look good together and have a more low-key blue-purple feel. 

I’m keeping it short today. It’s our anniversary (#22) today. We haven’t decided where we’ll go out to eat this evening, but I do know the morning holds a walk, some time in the garden for me, then a shower and possibly sewing this afternoon. All in all, a low-key, easy day. The best!