Goodbye Pink, Hello Aqua!

With the beginning of a new month comes another color to work with for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. But before we get into June’s color of aqua (or teal, or too-green-for-blue or too-blue-for-green), let me do my Pink May recap.  I finished sewing more birds for Birds in the Lattice. Here are the seven pink (or pink with another color) birds:

And then since I had birds in almost every color there will be in the quilt (except a yellow-orange pair), I sewed two of the Irish Chain “lattice” blocks to see how they would play with the birds.

I think I love it!!  The final quilt will have a total of 63 blocks, measuring 10” each when finished. They will be set 7 across by nine down (70x90”) before adding a stop border and then a large border of the main fabric, the blue floral print you see in the blue birds, the central square of the lattice blocks and on the wing of one pink bird. Queen-sized quilt.

For May my pink blocks were:
8 (4” finished) bow ties,
54 (4” finished) hearts, 1
2 (6” finished) quarter log cabins,
7 (10” finished) birds,
3 (16” finished) Linked Squares blocks,
4 (6” finished) blocks for the All You Need is Love quilt,
15 (6” finished) selvage squares,
3 (10” finished) Squared Away blocks, and
13 (6” finished) crumb blocks.
That’s a total of (wow, even I’m surprised...) 119 blocks. But that is all the sewing I did (other than to finish sashing the quilt top, above, at the last minute). So, there is progress, but nothing finished to show for it!!

And in the couple days since Angela has announced June’s color, I’ve managed to sew a whopping four bow tie blocks. But if you join us for Scrappy Saturday, you’ll see lots of other fun projects!

Today I’ll be spending the day with Cousin Kim and niece Jenny as we head on out to do another day of the Utah Shop Hop. It started Wednesday, and Kim and I had fun hitting the stores up around Park City and Midway. Then we drove the Alpine Loop down to Utah Valley (Provo/Orem area), passing Sundance, where the annual Sundance Film Festival is held. It was breathtakingly beautiful, reminding me of the Austrian Alps. I was driving, so I couldn’t get any pictures. However, we waved to Robert Redford as we passed by his place (wink!)

Anyway, today our quilt travels will take us north to (maybe) Logan, but definitely Brigham City, Bountiful, and finally a couple shops here in the Salt Lake Valley. We have been buying some fabric. Kim bought some old-fashioned purple fabrics to make a Hunter’s Star quilt for her son and I bought some Pepper and Flax fabrics (grays, yellow and greens) to make a quilt for our yellow guest bedroom. We are, however, suffering from sticker shock to see fat quarters priced at $3.50. Needless to say, we are mostly sticking to the sale tables.


And here are some pictures from our garden this week. Most were taken on a cloudy day, and the first three are along the back wall of the backyard garden.

The rose bush below (no filter or editing on the pic) has gorgeous magenta roses. This was the first one to open, but the bush is getting up to full bloom and should peak in the coming  week.

This is my favorite rose bush, in the front yard. The blooms are a lovely yellow-orange to salmon color. But some winter damage a couple years ago in the center has made the bush a bit lopsided. I’ve tried to prune it to compensate, but it looks best from this angle. This fall I’ve got more woody canes to get rid of and some more shaping to do.

And then I decided to cut some of the irises and roses to enjoy indoors in a bouquet. Before retiring from the workforce, I’d always bring flowers to have in my office and for the reception area.

Finally, a couple pictures from our Red Butte Gardens visit last week. The pictures didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, nor did I get many before my card filled up. But here are a few...

From the Xeriscape garden area, looking up into the canyon.

And then looking down and out west along the north half of the Salt Lake Valley.

The next shot is near the area where they hold weddings and is one of the few decent pictures I got.

By the next time we go, I’ll have a better phone/camera. And if Bruce takes the pictures, we’ll have a better photographer too!

Have a great week, friends. I miss talking to you and replying to your comments. But I hear that Blogger is hoping to have a fix to the problem this coming week. Fingers crossed!