Sewing the Blues

What a nice week! Not weather-wise, because it’s February. It’s cold and windy, rainy and snowy. But I got in a lot of fun sewing time, friend time and on Saturday both my sons and families will be over for an evening of Mexican food and fun. I bought some mini roses potted in cute ceramic ladybugs for granddaughter London (now age 15) and my daughter-in-law Kim. And chocolate too (naturally). 

So, let’s start off with this week’s round for the Stay At Home Round Robin. Our hostess for Round three this week was Gail, and she called STARS. This is where my quilt top was at the end of last week:

Last week’s progress

First I added another red stop border to separate this round from the spikey half-square triangles of the previous round. I decided to further lengthen the piece by adding a row to the top only. I sewed up my favorite Friendship Stars with flip corners because I love the pattern it gives. 

I know these photos look wonky. That’s because I’m in the (bad?) habit of pinning the four corners snugly and forgetting about pinning along the long sides. Really, it is not bowed. 

I will trim the spacers at the ends of the new row once I begin the next round. The top now measures 26.5 x 36.5” after three rounds. I’m really looking forward to the next round! If you’d like to see everyone’s creative progress so far, hop on over to Gail’s linky gathering for this round HERE. 

There was also a lot of therapeutic blue scrap sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this week. First I worked on these two Weathervane blocks - one darker and the other with light and bright blue scraps. These fun blocks measure 12.5”, unfinished.

And then I pulled out some of my blue 1.5” strips to make these Switchplate blocks. They are so quick and easy. I’m making lots of these as I go with no particular plan as yet. 

Next week I’ll be showing the scrappy blue string blocks I’ve already started on. I’ve got 45 so far and hope to get another 15 out of my remaining blue scraps or I may have to cut a few from larger chunks. I like to donate them to Quilts for Kids in pinned batches of 15 because that fits nicely into their pre-cut quilt kits that quilters check out to sew into little quilts. 

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Bruce and I took some nice walks this week as weather permitted. On Wednesday I went out with some new friends (and some old friends) to lunch, and on Thursday it was cards (Hand and Foot) at the clubhouse. When Bruce and I went grocery shopping at our usual store today, they didn’t have any wheat rolls - for the second week - in the bakery section. No wheat dinner rolls, ciabatta rolls or whole grain hard rolls. Only white rolls. So we went to another store and it was the same thing there. What’s going on? Bewildered, Bruce and I joked that Trump must’ve banned everything but white bread in stores now. Gotta make jokes to survive this embarrassing nightmare that’s befallen our country. 

Have a good week, my friends!