Friday, August 26, 2022

Happy Summer Days

It was the best of times. It was the worst … No. It was definitely the best of times!  This past week was just a fun ol’ week that passed by in unassuming perfection. Not too hot, and with delightfully pleasant  evenings. We had calls and visits from (and to) family, friends, neighbors; enjoyable work in the garden, cleaning, dividing and transplanting things; harvesting and sharing tons of veggies. Eating lots of them, too. I’ve lost almost four pounds this month and am within striking distance of my pre-Covid weight. I cooked a couple great meals (tomato pie, shrimp fettuccine), and our tomatoes tasted extra good in our Turkey BLTs! I’ve received generous donations of scraps and quilt tops for Quilts for Kids and spent some happy hours sorting and “filing” them. And I sewed and quilted this week, but more balanced time-wise and not at breakneck pace like last week. It was just a simple, happy week!

The color of the month for August in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been orange, and this week I finished up my remaining orange blocks.  First, six Bear Paw blocks that will finish at 9”, 6” and 3”.


I also did lots of crumb sewing, finishing the orange row for my rainbow tumbler quilt top. No picture of that. But I did get a picture of the two scrappy crumb placemats I made - one in bright oranges and one in peachy oranges. 


I usually make these placemats 12x18”, but the peachy one is 13” wide. I had the scraps and didn’t want to cut off a whole inch just for the sake of uniformity. I’ll be linking up to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and also to Joy’s blog for the August Table Scraps link-up

Next week I should have a bunch of finishes to share, but this week I only have two.  The first one is the one I call The Ugly Quilt. It came as a large top (with a slice out of it) in a box of estate sale fabric my friend Ruby gave me. Here it is, trimmed, washed, quilted and bound. It actually feels wonderful and might be deserving of a name change to simply “not so pretty”! 


It was quilted with a simple stipple and finished at 42x49”. And yes, I noticed the little pucker on the back as I edited the photo. I should be able to fix that!


The other finish was the quilt I made from the remnants and chunks of mermaid/octopus fabric (Mendocino and another line or two). 


Again, it was quilted with a stipple. I guess I was in a stipple sort of mood! Yes, I could probably come up with a cuter pattern and cut up the fabric more and sew it back together…. But then it would’ve been smaller. As is, it ended up measuring 41x47.5”.


And that’s it for the sewing! I did receive a wonderful - and I mean GORGEOUS - quilt top from McGill U. in South Carolina. But I haven’t had a chance to press it yet, so that will happen this week. I will blog about it and show a picture next week. I have three little community quilts that are waiting to be quilted, and I hope to do all four before month-end. I also have the salmon-and-sage quilt top done and waiting to be basted and quilted. So there will be some rapid-fire finishes this coming week before I dig in to the September scraps! 

And tonight, as Bruce was prepping the coffee pot for the morning, he looked over at the cats’ bowls and started laughing. Alfie had been playing with this toy mouse while we were eating dinner, but we didn’t think any more about it until we saw this…. What does it mean? LOL!!







14 comments:

  1. Love those pretty placemats--
    Mousey food bowl is a riot!! You have to wonder what in the world cats are thinking?
    Hope your weekend turns out as good as your week did.
    [Of course LG never got back to us --"..in 24 hrs you will hear from us"...right!! But Tom is still on the case] Hugs, Julierose

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  2. All around, great makes! And all useful and unique. That is so funny the cat left his mouse in his food bowl! Hahaha

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  3. Do you think Alfie is trying to tell you that the mouse is welcome to his dry food? Your two finished scrappy quilts are great and the placemats too!

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  4. Blocks, Two ORANGE placemats for the TABLE SCRAPS Challenge, AND a quilt for the RSC, too?!?! Go, you!!! Bonus points for finishing the Not So Ugly quilt, Cathy. Glad you had such a good (and productive) week!

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  5. Hi,
    I really like your table mats are so pretty. And your quilt is
    beautiful. Have a great day!

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  6. What does it mean indeed. Our cat Gemma often drops her soft little toys in the water bowl, usually at night. But we have watched her several times during the day, walk up with the toy in her mouth and deliberately drop it in the water. Its no accident, I can tell you.

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  7. Love your orange placemats. You are so productive, Cathy, More 2 quilts ready for donation and pretty bear paw blocks. Cats are so funny. Have a nice weekend.

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  8. ha! love the mouse, did it eat much?

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    Replies
    1. and this gives new meaning to playing with your food!

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  9. Sounds like a good week in every way, including pretty orange blocks and a couple fun finishes! I love your orange placemats - they'll brighten up any table. Even the ugly quilt is not so bad after all!

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  10. Sounds like you had a great week and balanced some fun outside activities with sewing.
    We've been enjoying tomatoes on a daily basis from Resident Chef's little balcony garden - yum. There's even been a few that found their way into the freezer for soups over the winter.

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  11. That octopus print is certainly interesting! Hooray for weeks of pleasant accomplishment. (And for weight loss.)

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  12. I am going to add a lot more yellow to my zipper blocks after viewing your daughter's Zipper quilt and how it truly glows...hope that is okay? [see today's blog posting] hugs, Julierose

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  13. Oops--I mean cousin Kim's quilt....mea culpa....

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