Rhythm of the Blues

With a tip of the hat to Mary Chapin Carpenter (listen to Rhythm of the Blues here), I’ve been sewing on my blue scraps at quite a clip. That song, with its understated guitar and her great voice and beautiful melody, has been my theme song this week.


The blue selvage column is on the left. Then I sewed together all the columns I could for the Rainbow Selvage quilt. All I have left are two orange columns and two pink columns when we get to those colors. The red column is already done. Oh, and I may add a brown, black or gray column to the very right. Depends.

Next up were my string blocks. I had a couple blue blocks from last year because I started them late in the summer. So, since they’re 8.5” each and will be sewn together into big blocks of 4, I had to make six of them this month.

And here are all 8 together. I still have quite a way to go on these blocks because I only have 4 (resulting in one large 16” block) of most colors. This will continue into next year as I accumulate more scraps and strings.

And then, of course, there are the bookshelf quilt blocks! So many good titles this month! We have that runaway bestseller (pun intended) “Embracing Horses” by Laurel Burch as well as Metro Cafe and Treasure Bay by Elizabeth Miles.
















EEEEEEEK! There is a mouse on the shelf!!  Thanks to my friend Mary Anne for suggesting it. Mary Anne and I used to work together on the staff of the Crazy Quilting Quarterly magazine and still keep up with each others’ doings.

This month I only had to do three blue blocks, so here they are, section by section so you can see them close up.

The blue blocks were added to the aqua blocks from February to form the blue shelf. Then I added the actual “wood shelves” themselves and sewed together three rows:

Yep, we are getting closer to having a finished library. I still need a whole shelf of orange, 3 blocks of pink to finish off the pink/red row, and one block of black or brown to finish off the purple row, which will go beneath the blue row. Progress!

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Last month it was my intention to dig into my yellow scraps and do a pineapple quilt. Although I did make a start (a lot of cutting), I was only able to finish one block. But the pineapple sewing will continue on the sidelines as I make my way through blue in July. Hopefully I can do one or two per week at least. Here is the first one.

There is no real pattern on this; I just eyeballed it and decided to use 2.5” strips of yellow to make the body of the pineapple and greens for the top. The 2.5” HST’s so far have come from my scrap drawers. I`ll have to break down eventually, though, and piece fresh ones as these blocks progress. I haven’t thought yet about quantity or settings. The pineapples will all be yellow, with the exception of one rogue pineapple that will either be aqua or pink. We will see when the time comes. I’m pretty laid back about this one.

And there is one final project that I haven’t introduced you to yet. But first, a little background.  As I’ve mentioned before, my husband Bruce is in a folk trio with two guys that he’s known since he was a teenager. Yep, back in 1964 they got together and formed the Muddy Gutter Boys, modeling themselves along the lines of The Kingston Trio. They’ve played thousands of gigs over the years. And, they are still friends, as are the wives and all the kids and now all the grandkids. Their gigs aren’t as regular now due to health issues, but we still get together to practice about twice per month. The three couples are Rob (upright bass) and Diane, Mike (guitar and banjo) and Terri; and Bruce (guitar and banjo) and me.  And as of this month, we are all retired. Diane was the last holdout.


Rob has been struggling with his huge upright bass, so Mike, who is a luthier (guitarmaker) in his post-retirement life, decided to make him a smaller base. Naturally, they wanted to amplify it, so that is where Bruce came in with his electronics experience. The group has quite the sound system when they perform. So, Mike and Bruce have been tinkering for weeks on the bass and amplifier as a Christmas present for Rob.

So then Terri and I decided we would collaborate on a big, comfy quilt for Diane. After finding out her favorite colors (another story, too long for here), we searched Pinterest and came up with the idea for a tulip quilt. It looks like others I’ve seen on Pinterest, but I just put together this test block from scratch rather than purchasing a pattern. It measures 8.5 x 16.5” (unfinished). We’ll be using our recently purchased pink and green fabrics as well as plenty of additions from our respective stashes. This is going to be so much fun!


I hope you have a wonderful summer week, full of fun, family and good health!