Time To Total the Teal (‘Till Tuesday)

I’ve finished with my teal scraps for February for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). Don’t forget, however, that we will be showing off our Rainbow Scrap quilt finishes (if any) on Tuesday, the last day of this month. In the meantime, however, check out Angela’s So Scrappy blog for the RSC work for this week - always lots of great eye candy.

As always, I make a collage of my blocks to make it easier on me and you. For Teal February, I made 13 Friendship Star variation blocks (big picture). Then, from top right down and around the corner: 2 Geese Migration blocks, 2 bookcase blocks, 13 plus blocks, 1 slab o’ crumbs (actually was 3 blocks, but I count them as one). Also in that picture are 2 nine-patches and a miscellaneous pieced block featuring an old fashioned telephone.

Moving along we have: 4 strip blocks, a crayon block, a teal column of selvages and teal pieces (8 separate little blocks, but I count the column as 1) and finally 20 bow-tie blocks.  That grand total for February is 60 blocks. My teal scraps are history.

Now, you may remember (or not) that I set myself a goal of making 6 kennel quilts (12x18” each, or larger) for our local Best Friends Animal Rescue, which uses them for cats and small dogs. In January I made 5, and I was able this month to make 7, totaling 12. So, I am back on track! One quilt has already been given to my cousin Kim, whose family owns (or is owned by) 3 cats. One of them is a wizened old senior who likes to lay on top of the water heater tank to keep warm. So, he got a quilt to soften his perch and ease his bones. Here is a picture of the remaining 11 quilts (they’re stacked somewhat, so you probably can’t see them all).

The blue fabric was part of a gift of cat fabric given to me by my friend Terri for Christmas. The gold stars (and you’ll be seeing lots more of that, I can promise) was a donation from a local quilt shop. The rest is from my stash; old small blocks and lots of other cat/animal prints. I shouldn’t have to buy any fabric for this project for the rest of the year. Or two.

Some of our grandkids came for a visit on President’s Day since there was no school.  I have a cute wooden wall hanging made by our daughter Emily that says GRANDKIDS, with clothespins below for clipping school pictures. Well, just try to get your adult kids to remember to give you school pix of the grands! Besides, several of the grands aren’t even old enough to be in school yet. So, I snapped some candids while they were here.

TOP (L-R): Deacon, Gunner      BOTTOM (L-R):  Hunter, Abbie  

Hunter is daughter Stacy’s oldest; the rest are Emily’s. Anyway, the picture board isnow well populated with current pictures.

So, time to show what I started this week - a new quilt for me. I fell in love with a relatively new line of fabric, Olive’s Flower Market, and fell into a beginner-type trap; I bought a FQ bundle and lots of yardage to make myself a quilt based on this Rose Cottage pattern.  I like the lattice pattern and the small green inner border, and decided to do my own thing regarding size of squares/quilt, borders, etc.

Once I got piecing it and began putting it up on the design board, it was just not working. I  was trying to use all the colors on the interior of the quilt (left) and didn’t like it. So I pulled out the black (see right pic) and it was much better. The camera doesn’t capture these colors correctly. The green is more yellowish in real life (a la Greenery, the Pantone color of the year) and the pinks are really softer and warmer.  Anyway, it’s better, but still rather matchy-matchy.

Four of these smaller blocks form an X, and I have enough fabric to do five across by six down. But I have opted to go with a 4x6 layout instead. Next will be a small green text inner border with this fabric. The pic below is a more accurate green and is what all the above really looks like. 

The final border will be a medium pink floral. And then there are scores of waste HSTs from making the blocks above. I have sewn them into flying geese or prairie points. I may incorporate these in another inner border, but have to get to that point to see if it will work or not. If not, I will use them, plus the leftover blocks, plus the leftover FQs to make a second quilt which I can donate somewhere.  

So, somehow this quilt isn’t going or looking as planned, and I am surprised that other than sewing full-speed-ahead on the blocks for one day, I am not enjoying this quilt either. But I think the reason is because I used one line of fabric. It occurs to me that I might have grown beyond that - using someone else’s color formula in the form of a single line of fabric. Lesson learned.  I have so been looking forward to Tula Pink’s new line Tabby Road coming out. But I am not going to buy a FQ bundle or any other bundle. I will buy the 2-3 prints in yardage that I really want, and supplement from my stash when it comes time to use it. By the way, the line is very Kaffe-like, in my opinion.

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Bruce (DH) is having surgery on his arm on Monday morning at o’dark thirty. The malignant lumps will be removed - and anything else that is involved - until they get “clear margins” (meaning that no cancer cells are found in the immediate adjacent tissues when an on-the-spot biopsy is done). Then the doctors will splint and pack his arm as part of a staged surgery. In other words, they will do no skin grafting or anything until the long-term biopsies come back, 7-10 days.  At that point, if the margins are clear, they can do grafts. That is the result we are hoping for. If not clear..... that’s the elephant in the room, but we aren’t worrying about that for now. Keep a good thought for us!

Have a great week. I will hopefully be back on Tuesday with a quilt finish. Do you think they will let me bring my sewing machine into the waiting room?