Onward and Orange-ward

Welcome to September!  It’s a new month and a new color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This month, Angela at So Scrappy has chosen ORANGE for us to work on. It’s the perfect color to get us in the mood for autumn.

Last year at this time we were just beginning the demolition of the living room for its remodel, so I never got to decorate for fall. This year I am so excited to get out my fall decorations. I’m not sure how they will work with the new furniture and decor; without my old antique sideboard, I have fewer places for bigger things. But it will be fun trying this and that. Some things may have to find new homes and maybe I will have to add a few choice new pieces.

First, let me do a bit of August recap before I get into Orange September.

I did finish 9 kennel quilts and one doggie bed as I had planned. Darla tested out the kennel quilts for me and  declared they were just right.  In fact, she wanted to fall asleep on them right away. But mom had to wash them all, so she was deprived of that privilege.

With all the flooding from Hurricane Harvey in southeast Texas, I believe I am going to package these up and send them off to Houston-area shelters. They are needing them badly there right now. If you have time, why not stitch up a few placemat-sized kennel quilts and join the effort? I always get a lot of questions about how you, the reader, can help the animals with shelter quilts. Here are some websites (just a few; there are so many more) that are helping out in Houston:

Best Friends Animal Society
The Quilt Pattern Magazine - they work with Petfinder. Great site!
Petco Foundation
There is an article on Today.com (link HERE) that lists many ways and sites to help animals

Also in August, I did 168 little (4.5” unfinished) neutral string blocks, finished my Pineapple Quilt and started the Groovy Guitars quilt for Bruce (more on that below).  On my personal weight loss journey with Weight Watchers, I lost 7-something pounds in August, for a total to date of 15.5 pounds or so. My clothes are looser and I already feel much better. My annual physical is in September, so I am hoping that my bloodwork and other numbers have improved correspondingly.

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I started my orange sewing as soon as I read Angela's color announcement. I was able to finish up the two orange columns for my RSC selvage quilt.

After sewing up the light orange and the dark orange columns, I added to add them and the previously-sewn red column to the quilt top. Now all that’s left is a dark column (gray? brown?) for the very right, and two pink columns - one dark and one light - for the left-hand side. The flimsy will finish at about 56x72”.

And then there is the Groovy Guitars quilt, which I am name changing to Damn Guitars. Enough said about that! I did let the quilt out of Time Out for a couple afternoons during the week, and in doing so was able to make some progress.

After re-doing the initial orange guitar, things have gone slightly smoother. I hung the black cotton background up on the design board and use my portable iron to fuse directly onto it while its hanging. Genius, if I do say so myself. The design board is flannel-covered board insulation panels, so it takes pins and heat like a champ. Doing it this way also allows me to fiddle a bit more than a horizontal table or (heaven forbid) an ironing board would allow.

The picture below shows where I am so far. There are several areas that need tweaking, but for now I am just lightly fusing them to the background. Once all the pieces are there, I will finesse and trim the seam overlaps, then machine appliqué all the edges.

And I can already see that the yellow rectangle on the orange guitar needs to be re-centered. That was the piece that made me think there had to be a better/vertical way to do this quilt instead of horizontal. There are still red and blue pieces to come as the quilt grows to the left. If I can tear myself away from my orange scraps this week, I may work on it some more.

In two weeks we leave for Colorado for a week, where we will be staying in Winter Park at Snow Mountain Ranch. We are meeting a few couple friends and sharing a cabin. I will also be meeting up with Diann of Little Penguin Quilts (and her hubby) who will join us for a couple days of sewing (Diann) and golf (hubby). I’ll take along plenty of sewing and hand stitching projects, but I haven’t figured out exactly what yet, much less prepare them. But other than a little walking/hiking and chatting with friends, sewing is all I plan to do....  That’s my idea of a vacation!