Back from Colorado

This week we took a whirlwind trip to visit my brother Steve in Colorado. He bought a home last year in Montrose County, about a 6 hour drive from us. It’s one hour over the state line from Utah into Colorado - and it’s a gorgeous drive. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the time we traveled there (although the drive home was dry) and it was on/off rainy every day of our visit. I didn’t get any pictures because of that. But we are going back in August, so I didn’t feel too bad about that. This was mainly a working trip; I sewed new kitchen curtains for him and hemmed his living room and dining room temporary curtains (while he finishes painting then gets blinds ordered). Other rooms will be tackled in later visits.

So, all my orange Rainbow Scrap sewing was done on the weekend and on Monday before we left on vacation. I knew that by the time we got home late Friday, I wouldn’t feel like sewing or snapping pictures. We are unpacked, but Mt. Washmore awaits as does the grocery shopping. And I can’t tackle that today until after our morning dentist appointment to get the margins of our crowns filled in. One of the delights of aging.

But let me show you what scrappy sewing I did get done!

Twenty 9-patch variation blocks. They’re up on the design board but not sewn together. This is the layout I’m thinking of using - something I saw and fell in love with on Jennifer’s blog. 

Next is the Bitcoin blocks. I’m only doing these two columns wide instead of three because they’ll be used as a rainbow border for one of the RSC quilts eventually.

And some crumbs. Since I’m done with my Crumbcake blocks (quilt to be assembled in June), I am now using my crumbs to make both 5.5” and 4.5” crumb blocks.

The two different sizes are for two different projects, both of which will be introduced next month or after I finish Crumbcakes in June.

And on the OMG (One Monthly Goal) front, I did get the Stringy Starry Night quilt top sewn together. My goal is to get this basted and quilted over the next few days so I can call it a finish and link up to the OMG finish post before month-end.

Yes, it’s wonky. But that’s OK, because finished is better than perfect. My multi-colored scrap strings are once again manageable.

When we visited Steve, we were charmed by the rural area. There are no fancy stores, although there is a post office, a bank, a real estate office, a couple locally-owned grocery marts and burger joints, a nice little hotel and restaurant, a hardware store, a Dollar General, and a consignment/thrift store. We visited the consignment shop (from where Steve has bought some amazing furniture for next to nothing). What did I find? Six spools of new and partially-used Aurifil thread for 50 cents each, and fabric for $2 per yard.

So this haul of 9 yards of fabric was $18, plus $3 for the thread. Bruce got 26 jazz, blues, rock and classical CD’s for $13 (50 cents each). We listened to several of them on the drive home. What a score!!

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday.