Welcome to the Jungle

Strange week. It seems as though there are so many family members (3) going through some serious or potentially serious health issues. Cousin Carrie (Kim’s sister) was diagnosed with liver and pancreatic cancer about two weeks ago. She’s had scans and biopsies, and the results aren’t good. I’m not going to go into details, but suffice it to say that we’re reeling.  Next,  my daughter Megan found a lump on her thigh. They did a scan of that this week and found out it was a benign lipoma, or fatty tumor. Thank goodness! Then my brother Steve is having issues with something in his throat affecting his swallowing. He was supposed to have that checked out, but somehow ended up getting a carotid artery ultrasound instead, which is just a baseline test for persons in their sixties. So, when I talk to him and start asking questions, he flew off the handle when I tried to clarify his conflicting statements. That’s so Steve. Arrrrghhh...   

But let’s talk about the sewing, because that is certainly much more cheery!

I finished the two quilts that I wanted to make out of the Happy Blocks I made as one of my Rainbow Scrap blocks this year.  My friend Ruby gave me some cute jungle fabric, and I planned to frame the 6.5” centers with 2.5” strips to make Happy Blocks. I chose 5 coordinating colors; red, blue, green, orange and yellow. When each color came up for its turn in the RSC, I made 10 blocks. I ended up with fifty blocks.

One quilt uses 20 blocks in a 4x5 setting, and the other uses 30 blocks in a 5x6 setting. 

Here’s the first one, measuring 40x50”. The color stripes are horizontal.

The backing is a cute multi-colored kid print, and my feeble mind cannot remember where it came from. Anyway, both quilts were quilted with a simple meander (stipple).

The second larger quilt measures 50x60”, and the color strips are set vertically.

The backing is this cute little multi-colored crayon print that I picked up from Hancock’s of Paducah last year (on deep discount).

In between quilting the jungle quilts, I was sewing the last of my yellow scraps into eight 6.5” crumb blocks. No plan for these yet....

I also sewed 15 more of these 8.5” Sawtooth Star blocks for the Christmas Stars quilt I’m making for my son and daughter-in-law.  I have nine left of this size and will get them polished off in the coming week. Then I can start on the 89 4” stars, which I’ve given myself September and October to finish.

In September, I’ll be tackling the Framed Four-Patch blocks which were a RSC’22 project. I have enough to make three quilts. Here is the first one slapped up on the design board. It’s using only the red and orange blocks.

I haven’t even started to work on the layout yet; in fact, some of the blocks haven’t even been trimmed yet. Hopefully I’ll have a top to share next week.

With that, I’m going to sign off. My friend Ruby and I are headed up to Park City to do some shopping today (retail therapy) - we both need to get out of the house and do something fun! Talk to you next week!

Linking to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.