True Blue

August is blue month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, my online sewing buddies. More specifically, the color is light to medium blue. And that is so appropriate because here at home we've been lightly blue because the sarcoma in Bruce's right forearm reappeared. But the surgery was last Wednesday and results are great news; the oncology surgeon was able to remove it all! We will meet with the plastic surgeon on Monday and closure and/or reconstructive surgery will be Tuesday or Wednesday. The plastic surgeon hasn't seen the wound yet, so until he does, we're not sure what the next step will be. Right now Bruce is home with a wound vac (negative pressure therapy) on his arm. That is light years easier than me having to dress his deep open wounds as we did two years ago.  

So, things are looking up! We had a "date" yesterday to our favorite place, Barnes and Noble (that's actually where we met on our first date years ago). We had coffee, read magazines, bought some stuff and chatted. It was nice, and a good first outing for Bruce after surgery. He's pretty much back to normal except for his heavily bandaged arm. But all things in time.....

And I did manage to get some sewing time in yesterday, as well as on Tuesday before the surgery. The first thing was this rather wonky-looking row of light blue tumblers. I'm alternating the fabrics with selvage tumblers. Not much to look at, really.

Here are all the rows to date sewn together. It looks a little better, but still wonky. The alignment of the tumbler die on my Go Baby cutter isn't straight. So unless I load my fabric in at an angle (which I forget to do at least a couple time for every color it seems!), the cut selvage tumbler (and the fabric ones too sometimes) comes out wonky. And it probably doesn't help that I pin it up on the design wall without even trying to straighten it... But the quilt police are going to have to take a chill pill, because I'm not going to fix it.

When the sides are chopped off to get a straight edge, the width will be about 41". The length isn't there yet, but this piece will still get a purple and a black/gray row, and possibly a brown row.  That should give it a bit more length than width, because I hate square quilts.  I may add a thin white stop border around it, then a top/bottom wider border in some fabric/color. Still evaluating. It's going to be a donation quilt, so I'm not going to wring my hands over it too much.

And here is the 8th of 9 selvage 16-patch blocks. It measures 16" square. I still don't like these any better than I did eight months ago, but it's eating up selvages and some background fabric scraps, so there you go. I'll do one more in purple, sew them together into a quilt top. A 48" square quilt top, no less. I'll be disliking it even more then! I may add a bitcoin border to it - those little tiny 1x2" finished strips I've been sewing all year. We'll see how crazy I get. Another donation quilt destined for Elsewhere.

And then I got down to some real, fun sewing. I only needed six light blue cracker blocks. This one will begin coming together after we do purple!

And things are back clicking along again at the Block Lotto. My friend Nann and I have volunteered to co-run the Block Lotto to allow its originator, Sophie, to retire from the responsibilities. Nann chose the block this month, State Fair. They will finish at 6 inches. These are the four I sewed, and I think it's a really cute idea.

I hope your weekend is as happy and peaceful as I know ours is going to be!