Sewing, Vegetables, Cortisone

Sewing, Vegetables and Cortisone - my week in a nutshell. Let’s back up to last Saturday and I’ll bring you along with pictures.

Our August Quilts for Kids meeting was held at a new-to-me shop in Riverton called Forget-me-Not Quilts. I brought in all the quilts donations quilts finished to date, including the three quilts that Julie K and I made for the Wrap Ukraine with Quilts drive. Forget-me-Not Quilts is a collection point, so those three are safely on their way (see the Community Quilts tab at the top of my blog if you need a refresher on those).  I brought my bag of multi-colored strings to sew on. My friend G made a quilt from a kit containing fabric and string blocks that I had previously assembled and donated.

It turned out so cute! Our chapter of QFK is always looking for fabric donations to make quilt kits. I figure I can help out twofold by (1) reducing their string and strip scrap stash by sewing string blocks and then (2) preparing kits for members to sew. I also assemble Zipper blocks and kits with strips and fabrics from my stash or donations. My goal is to donate at least 60-75 string blocks per month (we use them in sets of 15) and at least 3-5 Zipper quilt kits (including backings) per month. That’s in addition to personal quilts I sew for donation or family. 

This last week, starting on Saturday and finishing on Tuesday, I sewed these four 15-block sets of strings. I safety pin them together in sets.

On Sunday we had a family dinner with my son Ryan and DIL Kim. It’s her birthday this month, and we wanted to go out to celebrate. Also, DGD Lauren will be moving up to college in Logan in a couple weeks, so we added her and boyfriend Graham to the celebrations.

On Tuesday, it was Weight Watchers (no weight change, which was great after eating out three times last week and being very careful), and then a trip to my doctor for cortisone shots in my knees (bursitis). I can move again!  We spent a couple mornings out in the yard this week, beating back weeds and harvesting vegetables. The peppers, carrots, green beans and cucumbers are all going strong. The tomatoes have been ripening, too, so we’re loving our turkey bacon BLTs once or twice per week. I have started sharing vegetables again at my WW meetings, and a couple others are starting to bring some garden bounty too! It’s like a free Farmers Market.

And speaking of WW, my friend Ruby invited Bruce and I over last week one evening. You may remember that Ruby was the one that gave me that glorious roll of $400/yard Italian fabric.....  I’ve bought cork to go along with it to make us a couple purses, but I’m still searching for some classy backing fabric.

Well anyway, Ruby used to do sewing for Denton House (very exclusive) and her daughter has taken over the business. But Ruby had lots of fancy fabrics to give away, and gave them to a neighbor who runs a ceramic gifts manufacturing business. In trade, this friend gave Ruby hundreds - and I mean several hundreds (at least five large produce boxes full) of ceramic mushrooms. They are “seconds”, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell. So, Ruby wanted me to have first pick of the mushrooms before she took them to her knitting group or to Weight Watchers to give them out to others. She practically MADE me take a whole boxful so that I could share them with my DIL Kim, Cousin Kim and Cousin Carrie. And neighbors and friends (T - I have some for you). And to use in our own garden. Here’s a picture of a small fraction - these are just the ones that I have left to put out in the back garden and the flower pots.

Another cute Pile of Stuff! OMG, I love color!!!

So, it was a fun week, and I did manage to finally settle down and get some serious sewing done. The first thing I did was baste and finish the purple, pink and green elephant quilt.

As usual, it finished at 40x48” and was quilted in loopy swirls. The only semi-suitable fabric I had for the back was a too-warm pink, but I paired it with some gray and called it good.

I had planned to get all the rest of my orange elephants sewn this week, but I only did two more pair. Here they are. I’ve had some more orange scraps make their way into my stash (rejects from quilt kits I’m sewing up, more on that in a moment), so I will probably have another couple pair to show next week. But for now, here are these ladies:

Last week I showed you a peek of some fabric strips/scraps that I was trying to make some sense out of. You know, from the cast-off donations into a worthy kid quilt. This is the top that I finished, that now moves into the basting pile. It is straight, but looks a bit wonky slapped up on the design board. It will get trimmed after quilting to square it up!

And then I dug into some of the scraps that Ruby gave me a couple weeks ago from her estate saling. In one of the boxes was a quilt top that was quite large but it looked like someone had cut a big semicircle out of one corner. Think of a bite out of a cookie. Anyway, I trimmed it down into the usable part and the remaining size was good for Quilts for Kids. Then I threw it in the wash - which they don’t like us to do as our Board prefers to handle final washings themselves before donationing. But I didn’t know its provenance, and wanted work with clean fabric.

I found a relatively basic brown backing with tiny red and blue squares that will work with it, but I had to insert a row of rectangle blocks down the back to make it wide enough. Now, let me show you the quilt. I’m just calling it The Ugly Quilt. It is seven blocks across and six blocks down.

The fabric is only about 10 years old and the quilt has never been finished. The fabric you see to the right of the quilt (hanging on the hanger) is the backing. I didn’t have identical fabrics in my stash, but I pulled some pieces that were similar in color and type - a blue with white polka dots, a red quatrefoil-like print, solid brown, mint green. they work just fine. The plan is to also baste and quilt the heck out of this thing and see if it becomes Worthy.

And the other quilt top I’m working on now is another “kit quilt” assembled from more of the scraps from Ruby. Some of you may recognize some of these fabrics as being from the Mendocino line by Heather Ross about 8-10 years ago.  There are other fabric chunks in there too that coordinate nicely.

I’ve come up with a very basic design that will fit the scraps. I saw it somewhere online (probably Pinterest, but there is no viable link). But that reveal will have to wait until next week. 

And with that, I’m off to get started on my day. No plans, although a Barnes and Noble date sounds good. I surely don’t want to go to a Farmer’s Market and have to process more vegetables!

Have a great week!

Linking to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.