Basting Quilts and Sewing Red Scraps

Not much sewing happening here this week. I was busy with a lot of HOA business; monthly Board meeting, preparing the May newsletter for publication, and delivering safety pamphlets (furnished by our local police department) to the residents. It was nice to get out, walk in the sunshine and visit with friends. And I got to meet neighbors I hadn’t met before. Several homeowners in our 72-unit condo community are only here in the warmer half of the year. 

But there was some sewing, so let’s get to it. First up, I sewed five Paint Chip blocks.

Next, I tackled the red crumbs and came up with a few 6.5” crumb blocks.

Pretty slim pickings, eh? Nothing was done on the wrapped candy quilts, but I’ll start them in a week or so after I quilt the next two quilts that I basted this week (only one of which I remembered to snap a photo of).

Here is Purple Diamonds (above) on my kitchen island, about to be pin basted. I also pinned up my Nann’s Strings quilt. My goal is to have those two finished for next week’s post. 

I was one of the lucky winners in the Stay at Home Round Robin’s prize drawing this year - first time in four years of participation. But who’s counting, right? I won this beautiful Island Batik bundle of 20 fat quarters! It’s called Shadow Blooms. 

Oh, have I got plans for these! Thank you so much to the ladies who help run this sew-along. I can’t wait until next year!!

Here is Alfie (Sir Alfalfa) living his best life:

Not much else going on here. This morning Bruce has agreed to accompany me to our favorite nursery/garden center, where we are going to pick out some annuals and perennials for the garden. I also want to find some nice leaf mulch or rich compost to amend the soil in our courtyard. I’ve got to remove all the dang bark mulch first and hopefully the pinkish scalloped stone borders (circa last century). But the soil level is higher than the surrounding courtyard walkways, so that may require some work in the form of digging and hauling dirt or replacing the borders with a more neutral stone border. I also want to get lots of little potted flowers and veggie starts for the Greenstalk vertical planter too. 

Greenstalk vertical planter, photo from 2024

Last year I planted seeds in the Greenstalk, which didn’t do well with the light patterns in the courtyard and the deep planting pockets. Plant starts that rise above the top edge will capture more light and will make a big growth difference - at least I hope so! And I’ll be pruning the tree, too. 

T, you’re still in my heart and prayers. Get better soon!! 

Linking to Scrappy Saturday and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Seeing Red

I was seeing red this week - all over my sewing room. Red is the color we’re working with for April in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I have plenty of red scraps. Hopefully, by the end of the month I’ll have lots fewer red scraps and lots more red blocks to add to kid donation quilts. 

This month I made three Weathervane blocks because the reds in my stash have multiplied tremendously over the last year. 

The Weathervane below is my favorite of the bunch, but the camera could not catch the actual shade of the center square, nor could I manipulate the photo to get it to read correctly. In real life, it’s not bright, but rather close to the background color of the other two reds in the block. 

These blocks are so enjoyable to sew! Which of the three do you like best?

I also sewed thirty string blocks that will finish at 6”. They are pinned here in two groups of 15 for our chapter of Quilts for Kids to use in kit making. I figured you didn’t need to see every single block - they’re all pretty much the same. (You’re welcome!)

One of my monthly goals moving forward is to sew up one or two sets of Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks into quilts. This month I’m focusing on the crumb candy blocks I made as one of my 2023 RSC blocks.  There will be enough for two quilts if I sash them like this (pretend the sashing is pinned all round). I had a black background fabric that has various types of candies and other confections scattered over it, but I didn’t want that stark contrast with these blocks. So I went hunting for a cute rainbow-effect print that would tie all the colors together. 

 

Here’s a close-up of the print that I purchased from one of my favorite online fabric sources, Hancock’s of Paducah. They have a killer sale section. Anyway, it’s a Moda fabric that reminds me of Skittles or Chicklets. I’ll use it for the sashing, borders and binding on both quilts and for at least one of the backings. Both if I have enough. I think I bought 5 yards. 

Next week I have two quilts (Purple Diamonds and Nann Strings) that need to be pin basted and quilted. There is certainly no lack of projects and goals in my little sewing room!

We’re busy working with the VA again to get an additional (revised and updated) rating on Bruce’s CLL (leukemia). He is chronically fatigued, so after his May doctor visit, we’ll have a better idea where that all is headed. And we’ll be applying for caregiver benefits as well. Right now our biggest thorn is getting our hands on documents from previous marriages. But we’re working on that too. As if that weren’t enough, I’ve got a writing assignment to finish over the weekend for the HOA (long story, too boring). And then there is Easter. I’m fixing a turkey, making a pie - a semi-fancy meal for the two of us. I hope your celebration is however you want it - lively and fun or quiet and peaceful. Ours will be the latter. 

To my dear friend T - you are in my heart, my thoughts and my prayers. K is giving us daily updates. And I hope she brings you your Mountain Dew! xoxoxo

Adventures in Sewing and Representing

 It was quite a busy, even hectic week. As you may remember, Ruby and I planned to attend the Hands Off! Protest rally at the Utah State Capitol last Saturday. Well, we certainly did that, and I’ve got some pictures at the end of the post to share. It was an inspiring and long day!

But first, let’s tend to our red sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s color of the month for April.  I sewed ten of these 6.5” flying geese blocks. I’m loving that these are set against black - a great way to use some of the scraps that have been waiting patiently (for years,) for their turn under the needle. 

And since there are now four colors done, here they are for a group photo. I kept the number of pink blocks to a minimum because I’m wanting this to be a masculine or at least gender-neutral quilt eventually.

Last week I showed some half square triangles that had been donated to Quilts for Kids that they’d asked me (a year ago) to sew into a quilt. The 288 squares ended up making 72 blocks, which I alternated with the print on the inside for half and the print on the outside for the other half. It was a lot of repetitious sewing, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The HST’s were waste triangles that had been nicely sewn together and trimmed. I maintained their open-seam pressing and continued on that way. Before I knew it, the blocks were sewn, the blocks were put up on the design board and the top was webbed. It took less than a half hour to sew the last rows together, and it was given a good pressing.

Quilt measures 48.5 x54.5”

Today Cousin Kim and I are going to our Quilts for Kids workshop. I’m taking this as a top so they can perhaps find a backing for it. Ruby and her sister Cathy have a new longarm machine, and they’ve started quilting for QFK. So I have six of their quilts to take, along with several of mine. I’m hoping to get a nice backing for this so I can take it back to Ruby and have her quilt it. I want to see it completed! 

Next it was on to making two more blocks for my Halloween Quilt.  I have several 12” quilt block pictures I printed out from Pinterest, and these are the two I selected to do this month. I quickly graphed them out, created cutting sizes and quantities, and then had fun picking out the fabrics. The first one was rather complicated, but I was definitely up to doing all the HSTs after sewing the purple diamonds quilt top. 

The second block was so easy in comparison, it practically sewed itself. And then, since I’ve reached the halfway point of sewing the blocks that will surround the quilt panel, I had to see what it all looks like so far. 

This is not intended to be the final layout; the actual placement of the blocks will be determined once they’re all sewn. Except the bats. The four corners will each have a bat block. What do you think so far? I’m not totally in love with the batty background fabric - my preference would’ve been to have something slightly smaller in scale or with less contrast . But it is what it is, and there’s no going back now. 

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As threatened, or promised, here are some photos of the Hands Off! Protest rally that Ruby and I attended last Saturday. It was my first-ever protest (I was too young back in the sixties or early seventies), but Ruby had attended protests before. When we got there, she asked me where I wanted to be, and I said that I wanted to be right up in the thick of it. And so, over the first half hour, we wandered closer and closer to the Capitol steps, taking pictures and talking with a lot of people. 

This photo below is out of sequence, because it was taken while we were on the Capitol steps, behind the speakers. But I wanted to capture the scale. It was estimated that there were about 10,000 people there, but we both thought it was more in the range of 8,000. All the grass area in front was filled with people.

We asked someone to take our picture, and she graciously did so. The speaker at this time is standing behind the red poster just above my head. (Below). It was a beautiful, perfect sunny and warm spring day!

Everywhere, people had brought signs - some clever, or artistic; others were professionally produced or even a bit provocative. Lots of poop emojis (or costumes). People were there to advocate for their pet concerns - Medicaid, veterans, Social Security, USAid, health and science, public lands, and on and on.

I sat and talked with Lou, the veteran in the bottom left of the photo below. He served in Vietnam in the Army Intelligence just like Bruce, he was there about four or five years before Bruce, so they didn’t know each other. But we had a great conversation and I thanked him for his service. 

And I talked to the lovely Canadian woman in the picture below. She also carried a Canadian flag, but it’s not visible in the picture. She said the Canadians know that the American people are not being accurately represented by the current Trump regime. “We Canadians know you hate him as much as we do!”

And then there were the “Special Attendees” (wink), like the slightly battered Statue of Liberty…

And “Jesus”, who was doing an interview in this photo…

Yep, we made good trouble, with lots of great speeches and cheering and booing and chants…

When it was over, Ruby and I waited for the crowds to dissipate before we began driving off. We had parked her car behind the Capitol ahead of time early in the morning. On our way out, I snapped this picture with just a few people still milling around the grounds. And then it occurred to me that there was NOT ONE piece of trash on the lawn or grounds anywhere. Come to think of it, there were no misspelled signs, either. 

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that!! Have a great week, friends! 

Hands Off!

Today my friend Ruby and I will be attending the Hands Off! Rally in Salt Lake City. We’ll be joined by thousands of people there and at 9 other venues just in the red podunk State of Utah. Rallies will be held today in hundreds of locations throughout all 50 states in the USA. The link above to Hands Off! Is where you can check to find a location near you. These rallies are meant to be peaceful protest gatherings to tell Trump and Musk to keep their hands off…. you name it: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, HUD, CDC, NIH, NPR, PBS, HHS - a whole alphabet of departments and agencies that affect our daily lives. Oh heck, can we add the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P to it? This Administration Regime is a total clusterF**, or as Bruce calls it, a “Cluster Foxtrot”. It will take this country years, if not decades, to recover from the damage that those two blackguards have wrought in the last 75 days. The world’s trust in the USA will take well beyond our lifetimes to rebuild. It’s a pitiful state of affairs. 

Despite the train wreck that this week was nationally, I managed to get some sewing done. Not as much as I’d hoped, though, because I had an HOA newsletter to get out, a dentist appointment (semi-annual cleaning and check-up; no cavities for either of us!), some sewing for a friend (long story that I won’t go into, but I did get a wonderful new houseplant in thanks), lots of errands, and a deep cleaning of my sewing studio. Oy! 

The month of April will be dedicated to sewing our RED scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). I did get to spend some time on Wednesday afternoon sorting scraps and cutting pieces for my RSC blocks this month, and even managed to sew up the easiest ones, the Switchplate blocks. Here are the twelve I finished.

These will finish at 3x5”, and with these twelve I now have a plan to sew a total of  117 for a 13x9 layout that will measure 39x45”. A small child’s quilt. My total so far for the year is 48 sewn. I should hit the halfway mark next month, a good pace.

There was no string sewing for me this past week (See? I told you the world was going nuts!). But in cleaning out my sewing room, I unearthed a bag of  3.5” half-square triangles (HST’s) given to me by my friend Sandy, who is President of the Salt Lake Quilts for Kids chapter, about a year or so ago. I decided to sew them up and donate it back to QFK as a top. I matched the HST’s up into sets of four to make a square-in-a-square block. There are enough HST’s to make 72 blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. I managed to get 36 of them sewn, so I’m halfway there. What I’m doing is alternating the prints and solid fabrics in the blocks. The solid is a shot cotton of blue and red threads that make a purple. I have always strongly disliked shot fabrics - I avoided shot silks altogether when I was a crazy-quilter - but this time we’re getting along OK. Here are the blocks so far:

I’ll donate this back to QFK as a top, not a finished quilt. I want these off my plate and I have no appropriate fabric for a backing. I have to say, though, that I have enjoyed the repetition of sewing these; very Zen-like (along with the music of Dan Fogelberg in the background) as I zone out of the world issues and zone into my sewing. The finished top, which I hope to complete this week in time for our QFK workshop on the 12th, will measure about 48x54”. 

That’s all I have for this week, friends! I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday, where I’m going to go check out what red blocks the other scrappers have sewn up. Also sharing at Sew Preeti Quilts this week for TGIFF - Thank Goodness it’s Finished Friday! Have a good week!