Yellow Scrappy Progress, Vaccine and Batch Cooking

I hate to cook. Well, maybe that’s not 100% accurate. Most of the time I don’t want to cook, so I hate that I have to. Thirty-five years of working full time and then coming home to cook dinners just burned me out.  My ex-husband’s idea of fixing dinner (bless his heart) was cooking hamburger meat for tacos or spaghetti. After a couple times of him “getting gourmet” on us (to him that just meant slicing onions  in very large pieces, LOL), we switched up our shared chores. He got the floors and I kept the cooking. All three of my kids (Ryan, Shane and Megan) are all wonderful and adventurous cooks as adults. But back in the day, they were ravenous when they got home from school, so their “snacks” were frozen pizzas or nachos. I never had to worry about whether they would eat their dinner! But I digress....

So this week I did a lot of batch cooking. If I can make (for example) enchiladas in two large pans or a meatloaf that will divide into 5 meals, I’m all for it. Defrosting things and working the microwave are easy enough for me (or a one-armed Bruce) to do! So this week I got through three of the six batch-cooking dishes I usually do. Over the next week or two I still have to make chili, lasagne, and chicken tortilla casserole. For just Bruce and me, we’ll get 4-6 meals out of each. I love it when my freezers are stocked!!

The cooking took a couple afternoons of sewing away from me. Well, that and doing our taxes. But they were simple and I filed on the first possible day and we’re good for another year. Now we will just wait for the refunds to magically appear in our account!

The first thing I did this week was to add the next border - checkerboards - to my in-progress medallion quilt for the Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR). This week’s hostess was Roseanne at Home Sewn by Us, and I’m linking up to her sharing post. 

I had intended to add a colored stop border after the last round of red flying geese, but realized I could just do the checkerboard in navy and green and accomplish the same thing. So, this top now measures 30.5” across and 36.5” down, which is a great jumping-off size for the next round. We have three more rounds to go.

And then it was time to work on some yellow scraps, since Angela called yellow for February in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  First, I made three large (or 12 small, depending on how you want to count them) waffle blocks. Each quadrant measures 5.5”, so when 4 are sewn together, the unfinished block measures 10.5” square.  

And I sewed some more Wishing Ring blocks for my pink and yellow floral quilt.  This week I concentrated on getting some yellow ones done to add to the floral print blocks.  I have lots more floral blocks that aren’t pictured.  There are two shades of yellow. The yellow block in the bottom right may or may not make the final cut. Ditto that pink block. I’m just going to happily sew away until I’ve tried all possibilities. Then I’ll put my favorites on the front and the “rejects” on the back!

I was able to find a great print for the eventual border for this quilt - a lovely pink Grunge fabric with yellow accents. 

Last Saturday we had our first Quilts for Kids workshop of the year. There were less than a dozen of us in a large vaulted ceiling workshop studio, and we were all masked. I only stayed about a half an hour so I could drop off 18 quilts. Four of the quilts were sewn by others and quilted/bound by me. The other 14 are all kid-sized scrap quilts that I’ve been been making since October. It was nice to get them out of the house! The string quilts and the Scraptastic Stars were the favorites, of course. Now that we have enough members with longarm quilting machines, I don’t need to quilt the baby quilts for others. I am the designated scrap maven, so I can just play in the scraps to my heart’s content!

Here is a collage of some of the quilts I turned in. You may recognize some of them.

So then it was time to start putting together some yellow quilts from the scraps given to me by QFK, or from my own stash. Last week I showed the flimsy of Duck, Duck Goose. I think it turned out ugly, but I was limited in placement by the sizes of the scraps. My working title for this quilt was.... well, it wasn’t the word “duck”, which is all I’ll say.

Duck Duck Goose finished at 38.5” x 46”. I quilted it with a simple stipple. On the back I used the extra “Duck Duck Goose” name strip and the green fabrics (and some of the leftover blue pieces). If I’m being honest, I think it’s cuter than the front. 

Here is a close-up of my messy design board the quilting and back piecing. 

The only other thing I did in the way of yellow quilts this week was to piece a quick flimsy from some cute zebra fabric I’ve had for a few years.  I know there a lot more ideas that would’ve served this cute fabric better, but as I’ve said before, the name of the game for these donation quilts is quick and simple. When you’re trying to churn out 4-6 little quilts per month to use up the never-ending scraps of dozens of other quilting women, simple is best. 

The backing is more of the same, with a plain yellow cotton sheet extender piece for the last 18” or so. I’ll show it finished next week, and will hopefully have another flimsy (yellows and browns) to show as well.  I’m also getting ready to assemble these 4-patch posy blocks into a sashed flimsy. This week I auditioned two background fabrics. I’m leaning toward the lavender. Neither the lavender nor the blue are as dark and saturated as the camera shows - but most quilters understand how badly blues and purples photograph.

Which one do you prefer? Purple or blue?

Today (I’m writing this on Friday evening) Bruce got his first Covid vaccine shot! I am so relieved that it has finally started. He goes back for his second dose on March 12. I’m hoping that it won’t belong until they lower the age requirement because right now, I’m not old enough. *snort* I haven’t said that for a few decades!!