Squirrel in the Strings!

This week a “squirrel” got into my sewing room and so my sewing plans for the week took a bit of a detour. That means there was absolutely no quilting on my Halloween quilt, which puts it at the very top of my priority list for the next few sewing sessions until it is finished. But in the meantime, there are a few things to share.

My daughter Megan called and asked me if I’d sew a couple little kitty quilts for their new furbabies, Laszlo and Nadja. The kitties are named after two “funny vampires” in some TV series that Megan and Ted watch. 

Nadja and Laszlo (with crossed eyes)

So, naturally, I dropped everything to start on these, and a squirrel was born. But before I began sewing, I needed to sort through all the cat fabric and scraps that I was given last year when my friend Pat was destashing. (See that post HERE). I had a whole drawer of cat fabric, much of it cut into squares (4.5”, 5”, 6”) and 2.5” short strips. The rest was large chunks and yardage. It was a great way to spend a morning. 

Once I picked out squares and matching fabrics, it was quick work to plan out, stitch, and then pin and quilt the two little quilts. The binding was just the back folded over. 

Both quilts are in the neighborhood of 24x24”, although the pink one for Nadja is a little longer because that’s the way the fabrics worked out. 

Nadja’s quilt is in hot pink and a variety of bright squares. The batik on the back rather looks like paws, but I think they’re just meant to be dots. It’s purrfect anyway!

Laszlo’s quilt in blues and greens fits perfectly with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s colors of the month, a redux of blues and greens. 

A scrap of batik (thanks, Nann!) on the back for the win!

So those will be packed up and sent off to Megan and family, along with an older human-sized quilt, Starry, Starry Day.

Once the squirrels were vanquished, I did sew 15 multi-colored string string blocks and 23 brown crumb blocks. 

Strings and crumbs

That brings my string block total up to 195. I didn’t take a picture of them all pinned up in groups on the design board because I already took 60 brown string bocks (4 sets of 15) and matching boy’s football fabric to Quilts for Kids to make into quilt kits.  I figure it’s better to get them out into the world sooner rather than later since it is football season. I’ll still be counting them toward my total goal (600 blocks by year end), even if they aren’t here. 

Yesterday afternoon I was able to pin baste three little quilts in order to get them moving along. You may recognize them.

Bright Animals Strippy

little Bricks Pastel

Little Bricks Bright

These will await their turns under the needle until after I finish quilting my Halloween Quilt. My goodness, October is next week! 

This morning I’m headed off to a very sad funeral. Our former neighbor Doug, who lived across the street from us in our old house, passed away last weekend. He was only 61 and died in his sleep. His daughter Mary, the youngest of their 4 children, used to work for me after school when I had my Etsy shop. They are such a wonderful family and Doug and Lynda were just beginning their lives as grandparents. In fact, Mary is now married and pregnant with a grandchild that her dad will never meet. 

There will definitely be some calming music and quilting when I get home from the funeral. Have a good week everyone!

 

More Strings and Things

Hello friends! Welcome to another weekend (hallelujah!). It’s crazy that even when you’re retired, the weekend always seems to be the best time to relax and spend time with family and friends. And this is going to be a great weekend. Later this morning I head to the closest fabric shop to me (five minutes away), where our monthly Quilts for Kids workshop will be. I have five of my own little quilts to take, as well as about 11 from my friend Ruby who started quilting quilts for them on her longarm. 

The fabric store, Nuttall’s (a local chain of 4 stores from along the Wasatch Front), is also where I agreed to accompany Ruby last night, along with her sister Cathy, as well as Cousin Kim and niece Jenny to a year-long quilt class. We will meet once monthly, but from now on we’ll be going on Saturday mornings. One big happy group of family and friends. 

This past week I didn’t work on my Halloween quilt at all, but I will be focusing on it heavily this coming week. I’ll be able to get a lot of sewing time in, and I’m looking forward to it. I did, however, sew the remaining Little Bricks blocks into a quilt top, and made a backing for it. The one I did last week was in pastels, and this one is all brights. These were also blocks that I did for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge back in 2023, so they are sufficiently “aged”, LOL. 

So now I have three more little quilts waiting to be pin basted, and I’d love to get them done in the next week. But I do have a lot of batch cooking planned for the week. I do it (batch cooking) to some extent every fall. But with me facing knee surgery in a couple months, I’m particularly interested in making ahead and freezing lots of dinners. This week I’ll be focusing on lasagna and chicken enchilada casserole. The following week I’ll make chili and start on some soups. After that, I’m not sure. But I’ve got time.

And then there were the strings. Lots and lots of those. First there were three sets (of 15 blocks each) in brown, to finish off all those. My brown scrap drawer is breathing a sigh of relief!

And then I did two 15-blocks sets of multi-colored strings.

I’ve started pinning the sets up on the very left area of my design board to keep track. I’ve now completed  180 blocks of my goal of 600 blocks by year-end. 

And yes, I know I need to take a lint roller to my design board. That will be the first order of business when I get back to my sewing room after my Quilts for Kids workshop today!

Darla was rolling around on the floor by my chair yesterday morning, meowing away and generally just being a happily little girl. I couldn’t resist snapping some pictures. She is usually so refined and elegant, but she is still a cat, and sometimes a girl just needs a good back scratching. She also has a very fine and fuzzy tummy, and you can easily see the orange undertones of her coat. 

Tomorrow for our weekly “Church of Bernina” sewing day, Bruce’s daughter Stacy will be coming down (she lives about 40 minutes away) to hang out. She already knows Kim, of course (they are actually true cousins) and she knows and really likes Ruby too. We’ll chat all morning and have pizza for lunch. Then Stacy will probably head out and Kim, Ruby and I will sew away the afternoon. 

That’s it for me this week. I’m off to QFK - the car is already loaded up. Like I said, it’s going to be a great weekend. I hope yours is too. 

Better Late Than Never

Oh man, I was so sick last night and this morning (nothing major - just something bad I ate) that I couldn’t even begin to think about doing a blog post until almost this (Saturday) afternoon. But I’m here now.

This week, my sewing time was grabbed in bits and chunks and a brief hour here or there. My first priority was to get my Haunted House Halloween quilt basted. And I did. No pictures of the fully pinned quilt, but here’s a quick shot of the spiderweb, which was my first quilting priority.

I’ve also started stitching on the house and tree branches, but there’s not much to see yet. I will do a more thorough job of picture-taking next week. My goal is to get this done and bound by the end of the month so that I have all of October to enjoy it. 

Naturally, I did some string block (6.5”) sewing. I got 45 done this week - three groups of 15. As you can see, I did one group of brown strings. I have plenty brown strings left to sew at least one, and maybe two, batches of 15-block strings. Then I’ll pair them with matching novelty fabrics and donate to Quilts for Kids for kits. 

For my “Fall Finishing Frenzy” this year, I’m keeping my string blocks until the end of the year. My goal is to do 600 by December 31, and I want to see how tall that string pile will be! In the meantime, I have 105 blocks sewn so far, and I’m pinning the sets up on my design board to keep an easy tally. I’ll show a picture of that next week as well.

Finally I had time to tackle the Little Bricks blocks that I made as part of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks back in 2023. I made one entire kid quilt with green blocks back then, but I have enough blocks to make two more little quilts. I laid out, then webbed this first top of mainly pastels. 

The Little Bricks blocks pattern comes courtesy of Sylvia at Treadlestitches. They measure 6”, finished size. Next week I’ll sew together the bright Little Bricks blocks. Then I can sew up a backing and have three more little quilts to layer up and finish. 

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That’s all I have sewing-wise from here. but I have to take a moment to comments of the shooting that took place this week here in Utah. 

It’s so gut-wrenching when another horrific shooting takes place, especially when it’s in your back yard, so to speak. (My daughter graduated from UVU and we are familiar with the campus). While I had no agreement with or anything but disdain for most of Charlie Kirk’s beliefs, I certainly believe in his right to express them without fear or retaliation. He was a human being with an adorable little family, for heaven’s sake. Then some whack-job just snuffs him out because he could - he owned a gun and possessed a lot of anger. This type of slaying will continue until and unless we realize we have to put sensible controls on firearms. The type and quantity even allowed should be limited, ownership should be strict and registered, and penalties for abuse need to be swift and permanent. But I’m just one helpless voice shouting into the wind. 

PS - my comments on the blog are no longer being sent to my email (this just happened out of the blue). I didn’t realize that I’d even had any comments on last week’s post until I physically checked the blog. Does anyone know how to correct this? 

Slinging the Strings

It seems the heat has finally broken here in the Salt Lake Valley. Autumn is on its way. This born-and-raised California beach girl who has loved summer for decades once denied that summer was over (jokingly) until the last leaf fell from the big pear tree back in our last house. And that was in January. But now I’ve become a bigger fan of autumn. Let the celebrations begin! Give me falling leaves, cooler days, and pumpkin spice. It’s not sweater weather yet by any stretch of the imagination, but next week is our Closing-of-the-Pool community party, and I’m bringing Caramel Apple Salad. Yum. Have the leaves started turning color yet where you are? They haven’t started turning yet here in the Salt Lake Valley, but they have up in the mountains. It won’t be long!

As my blog title suggests, I was playing with strings this week. But it didn’t start out that way. I couldn’t resist sewing one of those quick Strippy donation quilts of which I cut out five kits, if memory serves. It took me less than 30 minutes to sew up. 

I let the fabric strips (all width-of-fabric) dictate the size and number of strip panels. These scraps came from my friend Wanda. Here’s a better closeup where you can appreciate the vibrancy. 

I had to just sew one up quick, but made myself move on to something else once the top was sewn. I’ve begun my Fall Finishing Frenzy. I have some loose goals. First I’d like to sew 600 string blocks between now (beginning of September) and the end of the year. Since I safety pin them in groups of 15 for Quilts for Kids kits, that would be 40 sets of 15. It’s an ambitious goal, and honestly, I’ll be happy with anything over 418. That was how many I sewed in 2023, and I started those in October. I didn’t do string blocks in the fall of 2024. 

In addition to strings, I’d like to finish up at least a half dozen of my RSC block sets into quilts. But first I’ll work on my Halloween quilt for this year. I’m planning to baste it this week, just have to finish a couple seams on the backing. Maybe that will happen on Monday or Tuesday. 

But I do have some string blocks (6.5” unfinished) to show for this week. Sixty of them. I love that little mouse in the corner of the block in the bottom left stack. Do you recognize any fabrics you have or have worked with in the past?

After I baste my Halloween quilt this week, I plan to switch colors on the strings and sew up a bunch of brown blocks. I’ve got a few fabrics that I can pair them with (like football 🏈 fabric), and they’ll make a couple cool boys’ quilts. 

That’s all I’ve got for this week. I am anxious to see if you all have begun your finishing frenzies. Have a wonderful week! Linking up to Scrappy Saturday/Rainbow Scrap Challenge.