Gardening and Sewing

 Well, my photos loaded in the exact opposite order that I thought they would (why can’t Blogger be consistent?), so this post is titled Gardening and Sewing instead of Sewing and Gardening. . 

We have two tomato plants this year, one regular and one cherry tomato. There are six tomatoes on the regular plant, and my mouth is already watering for BLT sandwiches with fresh garden tomatoes!

The Asiatic and day lilies are blooming their little heads off right now. They were here when we moved in, but it is clear to me that they need to be moved a bit to give them both more “elbow room”. The Greenstalk planter is also blooming profusely with white petunias. The hydrangea in the foreground is being timid. 

Most of my sewing this week was done in the early part of the week. After Tuesday I never really made it back to my sewing room except to pack up everything I’m taking to Quilts for Kids today. 

The color of the month for June in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is orange. I had so much fun sewing these 30 orange string blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. They are shown here in two sets of 15, which is how our chapter of QFK likes them.

The first set of string blocks have a common center string - the orange check. But with the brightness of all the orange, they don’t really register as a pattern to the eye. But that’s OK.  It was the largest in quantity of all the orange strings, so I wanted to get at least one piece in each block.

The second set of string blocks is more random. Do you see any fabrics that you have (or have had) in your stash?

I will also be doing 6.5” crumb blocks for the kits in addition to the strings. But crumbs are usually among the last blocks I sew of any given color each month to maximize the scraps I have from sewing other blocks. So we’ll see if there are enough crumbs to sew 15 blocks. 

Actually, I sewed my two remaining bat blocks before I did the string blocks above. I have to thank Past Cathy for having cut out all the pieces about 3 months ago when I sewed the first two. It saved me so much time and worry this week! Surprisingly, they were a breeze to sew this time. 

The photo below shows everything just placed willy-nilly (a technical art term haha) on the design board. The center panel will need to have a black border added to match up to the four blocks that will run along each sides. The four bats will to in each corner of the quilt top, leaving two blocks left to sew for the remains spots along the top and bottom edges. I have the blocks selected and will do two in July and two in August. Assembly will begin after that so it will be ready for use this year. 

And here’s a teaser: Kat Scribner (Scrapbox Quilts) and I are working together on a developing a Quilt-Along that we’d love for you to join us on. More details will be forthcoming from both of us in the coming weeks. It’s even something that could be done in conjunction with the RSC. Stay tuned!

Three Quilt Finishes!

It’s been a great week for sewing. With no HOA stuff other than a few phone calls, and Bruce’s help with some chores, the week just sailed by. My eye is healing well and I don’t go back for three weeks. All restrictions are lifted with the exception of heavy lifting and swimming. I can live with that. You’ll find me out in the garden later today, planting all the rest of my groundcovers. And I do believe a celebratory trip to the garden center will be in the cards next week!

But let’s get to the quilt finishes. First up is Rainbow Candies I. Yep, I finished RCI and RCII in reverse order. So this is the second of two, but it was the first one sewn into a top. Who cares now, though, right? Regardless, these were made from blocks sewn in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2023.

It finished up like the last one at 42.5 x 51.5”. This one, though, has the same bright fabric for the sashing and border (and backing and binding). 

The second quilt finished was the beauty from Susan L that I showed last week being pin basted. It measures approximately 60x72” and will be heading to the women’s shelter here in the valley. I had to pin it sideways on the design board for its final photo.

The quilting was done with a serpentine stitch in the ditch vertically and horizontally and then diagonally as well. Thank you, Susan, for donating this quilt. I really enjoyed working on it!! 

The third finish, which happened yesterday, was Green-Eyed Monster. It was so named because despite green being my favorite color, I do not like this quilt. But it used up a lot of ugly scraps and orphan blocks, so it does have that going for it! I sewed up the top last month when the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color was green. It looks crazy wonky in the photo, but that’s my pinning skills (meaning lack thereof) for you…

I sure do love the woodland-themed backing fabric, though. I forgot to measure the finished quilt, but I’ll be sure to do that and record it before it’s donated next Saturday at Quilts for Kids. 

And there was even more sewing. Here are 12 flying geese blocks (inspired by Cathy at Sane, Crazy and Crumby). They will finish at 6x6”. 

In the coming week I’ll be focusing on sewing up the final two (of 4) 12.5” bat blocks for my Halloween quilt-in-the-making. I’m doing two per month and will only have four blocks to go after these. I’ll also tackle my orange strings as a reward for every half hour spent on the fiddly bats. Those darn bat blocks have a bazillion pieces (only a slight exaggeration) per block. I’m hoping to preserve my sanity by alternating between bats and strings.

I’ll leave you with a couple pictures of the Little Cottonwood Creek that runs through our little condo complex. We are so blessed to live in this beautiful place! The creek is at peak level now because the snowpack is coming down fast due to the recent extreme high temperatures. So far, though, I haven’t heard of any flooding. 

Have a great week, my friends!

The Eyes Have It!

On Thursday I had a cataract in my right eye removed. YAY! My vision is still blurry, as I was told to expect, but in my follow-up visit on Friday, everything looked great. There has been no pain and only minor discomfort on the afternoon of the surgery. And other than a few annoying restrictions, it’s been smooth sailing. I’m officially able to drive again beginning today, although I’m not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds or bend down to pick things up (or do any gardening). I’m mindful of keeping my head above my shoulders as instructed, so deep knee bends get things done in a pinch. Well, that and Bruce helping out. I have another post-op re-check next Friday.

So, ahead of the procedure on Thursday, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday preparing for my forced downtime. I did the weekly grocery shopping and hauled a load of stuff to the Goodwill store. I had originally planned to participate in our community-wide yard sale today, but realized I really didn’t have that much stuff AND I wouldn’t be able to unload it all anyway. So a preemptive donation was the best solution. But the most fun preparation during those two days was pin basting four quilts all on Tuesday afternoon. 

I didn’t snap photos of all four, but I did snap a picture of the one I haven’t shown you yet. This is a large lap quilt donated by my friend Susan L in Iowa. It will go to our local women’s shelter because it’s more appropriate for that in addition to exceeding our Quilts for Kids size limits.

After completing the top, Susan wasn’t enamored by it, so she sent it to me to complete. I have to tell you that I really enjoyed basting this one. The fabrics are not my usual style or colors (I try to do bright kids quilts, after all), but it was fascinating to me to study these interesting fabrics and how they were combined. It’s such a peaceful, low-key quilt, which I’m sure will be greatly appreciated by a woman in the shelter! 

I also basted the two Rainbow Candies quilts and the green column monstrosity quilt from last month. Anyway, here’s the first quilt finished; finishing the other three are my highest priority for the coming week.

This is Rainbow Candies II. I ran out of the sashing fabric (since it’s the sashing and backing for both of the candy quilts) so had to add the bright chartreuse outer border on this one. I quilted it in quick loops and it finished at 42.5x51.5”. Below is the backing and label.

Last Sunday, when Ruby, Kimmie and I were sewing (have I told you that we call it The Church of Bernina?) I finished fifteen of these Switchplate blocks. They’ll finish at 3x5”.

Here’s something else I haven’t talked about or shown. Beginning last March when several of us attended our local Worldwide Quilting Day event, I began sewing multi-colored string blocks in an 8.5” size.  I usually sew them at 6.5”, but my string stash had (has?) been multiplying faster than I can deal with. I figured the larger size block might eat up strings faster. The jury is still out on that, because before I knew it, I had enough strings for two kids’ quilts. 

This is not a sewn top; the blocks are just slapped up on the design wall. I have another one just like it with a small navy and white print as the “solid”. Both will finish at about 40x56” - a good size for a kid. And I can use a 42” wide backing when I machine quilt them eventually. I can get 4 solid blocks from an 8.5” WOF strip. With a little piecing of WOF leftovers, it takes about 34” for the solid accent.

But I’ll be going back to my 6.5” block size. Quilts for Kids has a lot of solid fabric donations, so from now on I can just turn in 6.5” multi-colored string blocks (in groups of 15, like I do for the solid-color string blocks) for them to put into kits for other sewists. 

I think that’s about it. Bruce wants me to take him to the grocery store to get some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, his favorite. They didn’t have them when I shopped on Wednesday, and he’s going through cookie withdrawals! 

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Have a great week!