Days of Future Passed

When I was pondering what, if anything, interesting happened here this week to write about (the answer is: NOTHING), the phrase “Days of Future Passed” popped into my mind. Those of us of a certain age (*cough, cough*) may remember The Moody Blues concept album with that title. It was the album that contained Nights in White Satin. And indeed, the Moody Blues has been a major part of the music I stitched along to this week. Should’ve done that last month when we were stitching with moody blues! But a more contemporary version of the expression is spelled “Days of Future Past”, which is an X-Men story line. I don’t know or care about Marvel comics and X-Men, so I picked the older reference. All of that to say that we’re doing the same things over and over, like in the movie Groundhog Day. The future days and weeks will probably be much like the past days and weeks. Same old same old in the Time of Covid. 

But I did get some purple sewing done for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. August is purple month.  I’ll be linking up to Scrappy Saturday, so come check out all the purpley stuff.

First up: Two Scraptastic Stars; one in red-purples and one in blue-purples.

Fifteen Split Nine-patches:

String Blocks (6” finished): 13

In between all of those, I stitched my weekly batch of Zipper blocks. Eleven this time, because it was hard to stop. 

Some of the fabrics aren’t as interesting as when I started, because I’m nearing the end. After these, I believe I only have ten left to reach 99, the number I need for a quilt that will measure 66x81”.

This block is my favorite this week. I love that scrappy fabric that Nann sent me and have used it here as well as in the Tessa Quilt I cut out a couple months ago. I hope to get to that one before year end. Note that I didn’t have enough of any of those solid oranges, so I used them all in a gradient fashion. 

And the block below is interesting too. I bought a fat quarter of this marijuana fabric from Spoonflower last year (when I bought that Bob Ross fabric - remember?)  I used every single square centimeter of it cutting out a mask for my brother, a zip pouch for my brother, and two of these Zipper blocks - one for me and one for Cousin Kim. There wasn’t even a half inch left over!

And finally, I sewed up the last two blocks for my One Monthly Goal project quilt. Nothing too exciting here. I just tried to keep the blocks simple so that the blocks of color would be prominent, and then to round out the colors for the overall balance of the quilt. 

It’s now basted and ready to be quilted this weekend. I really have enjoyed working with that rather wild background print with all the US States listed in brightly-colored abbreviations. I think I’ll just call it the States Quilt (original, eh?)

We are going to head out to the local Farmer’s Market this morning to see if we can get some raspberries and peaches. I want to make more raspberry jam, and the peaches are for eating. It may be a little early for the local peaches, but we’ll see. Then I have to swing by our Quilts for Kids workshop. I am not going to stay and stitch (even though they are limiting it to 10 people), but I do have six finished quilts to drop off. And my friend Bonnae, who is out camping this week, asked me to pick her up some quilt kits to sew on. As for myself, I still have seven baby quilts for QFK that I checked out last month and didn’t get quilted. They were sewn by other people - too bad more of them don’t quilt their own quilts, but oh well. I’ll get to them eventually. For the rest of this calendar year, the priority for me will be getting Christmas quilts done - more on that another time.  

So, for the coming week I’ll sew the last of the zipper blocks, quilt the States quilt, make a little purple scrap fabric bucket and sew a purple Beachcomber block. If I finish those, maybe I’ll baste and quilt some QFK quilts and/or finish up the last half dozen kennel quilts I stared a couple months ago. There is never a lack of  things to do in the studio. 

We’re having my older son Ryan and our DIL Kim over for dinner tonight. Maybe the grandkids Lauren and Easton will come too if they don’t have to work. Bruce and I bought a misting system for the patio, but we need to go to Home Depot and get a short hose for it. My guess is that we won’t get it set up until it’s time to take it down in the fall. Anyway, we’re celebrating DIL Kim’s birthday, so I’ve got to make her Something Chocolate for dessert. Better get my rear in gear!

Have a good week, wear your mask in public and wash your hands when you get home!