Steady as She Goes

Ok, I confess. I spent so much time this week doing Other Things that I didn’t get much sewing done. But I got of loose ends tied up that were beginning to weigh on me; appointments made, a couple details handled on my brother’s estate, phone calls and meetings and the installation of a new furnace and air conditioner. Everything is so new and clean and efficient! Oh, I also had my physical therapy sessions. Whoa, they really worked my legs (and knees) good this week. If by good you mean having sore thighs. But it’s a good sore and it’s to help me rebuild my leg muscles to stay ambulatory. I’m here for it! Four more weeks of PT to go… I can do hard things!

On Sunday, friend Ruby brought over another little Strippie quilt of mine that she’d quilted. It was just a lot of pieces and strips that I threw together, and I love it! I trimmed and machine-bound it.

Here’s a close-up of the quilting. 

The backing was made from a couple pieces in the stash. I believe that cute jungle print came to me either from Wanda or Nann (sorry, I can’t remember). But I felt it was so happy and perfect!

My other sewing was mostly strings. I never showed the strings I did last week, so here is a picture of those (15 multi-colored string blocks on top) along with the two sets of strings (15 blocks each set) that I did in blue this week. 

Pastels are the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but there was so much blue in the load of scraps that Quilts for Kids gave me to work on last month that I had nowhere to store them - the blue shelf was overflowing onto the floor! 

I also tried out a couple “prototype” blocks courtesy of Cathy L at Sane, Crazy & Crumby. I did them in two sizes: 7” finished block (3.5” squares with a 1.5” divider) and a 10” block (4.5” squares with 2.5” divider). What I think I’ll do is a row quilt or column quilt and make enough of each block to fill a row/column. I’ve also got a few blue orphan blocks, so there will be a row/column of framed 4-patches, some string blocks, some rail fence blocks, maybe some snowballs and maybe some crumb blocks. I’ll make them into a larger-than-little-kid size to maximize the use of scraps. Maybe 50x60” or even larger. Then I’ll sew lots of chunks and fat quarters, etc, for a backing. Take that, blue scraps!

Sorry for the wonky picture!

I also finished sewing this little top together. I had 3 fat quarters of the elephant print to use, then just added solid pinks and yellows. Don’t cringe at the way I pinned this up. I can’t pin a quilt on the design board decently to save my life. But it’s square and will look fine when Ruby quilts it.

This one measures 40.5 x 46.5”.

We had deer walking through our condo property this week. We have a creek they traverse, as well as a meadow and a lot of green space. But they came up to the houses. 

There were three deer that day. We also get foxes and an occasional raccoon. 

The garage on the very right is our place. 

That’s all I have this week. We’ll have some Father’s Day doings over the weekend, but mostly it will just be quiet and peaceful. Life is good!

Lots of Finishes

It was a busy week, and I’m pleased to say that my energy and stamina are returning. And I’ve been sleeping a lot better now that the first three painful weeks post-surgery are past. 

Last Saturday our air conditioning unit went out (it was 97 degrees F outside). Luckily, the weather cooled down substantially for the rest of the week. On Monday we had the heating and air specialists out and we are getting a new furnace and AC unit (to be installed on Monday). We had planned to replace them this summer anyway, but I was just hoping to be a little more healed. While the AC guy was here, he noticed our hot water heater was leaking, too. So, we contacted Cousin Kim’s son Nick, who is a plumber, and he was out on Tuesday and installed a new one. 

It’s said that bad things come in threes, but this was 1-2-3, at the same time! The good news is that we were prepared, and the total cost of all units was about $5K less than what I had budgeted for just the furnace and AC alone. We are anxious to get it all done, but have been comfortable with fans and the fact that it cools down every evening and we can open windows to let in fresh air. The place is well insulated, so we haven’t been uncomfortable. But the summer heat waves are around the corner, and we’ll be ready when they do!

I had hoped to get more sewing done than I did, but between physical therapy, errands, HOA activities (a meeting, a luncheon and preparing for today’s yard sale), I didn’t get done as much as I would’ve liked. There were the usual weekly batch of 15 string blocks (no picture, because they all rather look the same). But, Ruby brought me a batch of little quilts she’d quilted for me (for Quilts for Kids) on her longarm, so let’s have a little Show and Tell, shall we?

This quilt was a bunch of mostly-assembled blocks when it was given to me with the big scrap load last month. I finished assembling the final 4 blocks, then sewed the top together. There was enough matching fabric to add a little width to the sides. It measures 39x46”.

Ruby quilted hearts on it. 

Next up was this group effort quilt. I had the cute dragonfly fabric, and cut out and briefly wrote a little pattern. Then Cousin Kim sewed it up into a little Strippie. 

Then Ruby quilted it, and I bound and labeled it. A fun collaborative project that we hope to do more of for Quilts for Kids. 

The quilt label lists all of us! Dragonflies measures 41x47”. And the backing is a lovely pastel blue that fits right in with this month’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge color assignment of pastels. 

Finally, I have this Strippie that I don’t think I showed before. It’s nothing special, but it was all leftover fabric - the two larger green sections were leftovers from the backing of the Bonnet Girls quilt I showed last week. The rest were just miscellaneous green and purple strips, and the binding, which I found in my Orphanage binding drawer was perfect to bind it with. It was about 6” short, but that was easily remedied with another scrap. 

Not a stunner by any means, but a good, serviceable quilt that measures 38x46”. 

I have at least one more quilt that will be finished next week and two tops that will be done, too.and then I hope to find a project to sew as I go through my abundant blue scraps. I’m sure I can come up with a couple things. Stay tuned.

Now I’m off to load up the car and haul myself and my Stuff out to the Main Street for the community-wide yard sale. I’ll be glad when *that’s* over! Have a good sewing week!

I’m Baaaack!

After three weeks of hell (ever had a knee replaced?) I’m finally well enough mentally and physically to start returning to regular routines. That includes my weekly blogpost and participation in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s Scrappy Saturday. I’ve got six more weeks of physical therapy ahead, but I realize how much I need and appreciate that. My left knee is still painful and uncomfortable, but I know it gets better. I’m off the heavy drugs and am using a walker probably for another week or ten days. I can do light activities in spurts of 15-45 minutes, then I need to just lie down, elevate and ice the knee. I’m hanging in there. But thank heavens there are no more knees left for me to replace!!

In my last post about three (four?) weeks ago, I showed you a load full of scraps that were dropped off to me by our Quilts for Kids chapter. Here’s a refresher for you:

I’m proud to say that over my convalescence, I was able to go through all these scraps and get them sorted by color and size. I did have some help from Cousin Kim and Ruby one morning to finish off the green-lidded bin, but other than that, it was all me. My string bin is overflowing once again, and I have two new bins (in addition to one I already had) for 2.5” strips and lengths. One bin is for WOF (width of fabric) strips, another houses 2.5x4.5” chips, and a third has the 2.5” width strips sorted into 6.5 and 8.5” lengths. I have a lot of squares of various sizes in still another bin, and am further sorting other chunks down into bricks of varying sizes. If scraps or strings were a predominantly one-colored piece, they went into my RSC scrap bins. But if it was multi-colored or there were lots of duplicates, they joined the multi-colored string bins or pre-cut size bins.

There were also at least 2-3 block sets in the boxes and bags. One set needed a couple seams to finish the last three blocks, which I did. Then I sewed them into a top, made a back, and it is in my lineup of flimsies that Ruby is quilting on her longarm for me. I’ll show those quilts upon completion. Another set of 12 blocks were Dresden blades. They weren’t quite 90 degrees, so I added another blade to each and can now trim and machine appliqué them to a background. Sorry for the lousy picture.

These bright and dark saturated arcs will be appliquéd to a neutral tan background squares. I’ll add a border to bring it up to a larger (older kid) size, like 50-something by 60-something inches. I have a great print I bought from Missouri Star Quilt Company for the backing. It’s a print of library books and matches these colors perfectly. 

Here are the sixty (4 sets of 15) strings I’ve sewn over the last three weeks from the QFK strings: 

No, there’s no hint of a dent in the string box, so I’ll happily stitch away at these for the remainder of the year!

Another idea I had was to use the 2.5x8.5” strips with 2.5x4.5” black accents. Here’s the mess up on the design wall. The first three columns are webbed vertically; my goal is to finish webbing the top this week. It only used (less than) half my longer strips, so I’ll do another one in sets of three strips with white accent bricks of 6.5”x4.5”. 

Another project I’ve started from the scraps - because my attention span is all over the place - is these dark and light potato chip blocks. Cousin Kim just recently finished a flimsy of these, and I believe someone in the RSC (Sara?) is doing these too. 

They’re a good thing to sew when I don’t have the energy or stamina to put in some real thinking-type sewing. I’ll just let them accumulate for now. 

And finally, I did bind this little quilt that I sewed before the surgery. Ruby quilted it for me. I fell in love with the little bonnet girls when I saw a smallish chunk of it in Ruby’s stash. Then, before we went to the Worldwide Quilting Day event in March, Cousin Kim brought over a sack of fabric donations to take there. In the sack (because I had to look through it, right?) was another piece of the same fabric. Between the two pieces, I was able to eke out these blocks and create a simple and sweet little quilt. The pink is not as bright as it looks in these pictures. 

The backing was a soft green print, and after I backed this quilt, I sewed a Strippie top using the remainder along with some green and purple accents. That quilt is in the To Be Quilted lineup. More (many more, actually!) to come.

I’ve missed you ladies! I’ve tried to comment on a blogpost here and there, but mostly I was lucky just to manage my daily affairs for the first couple weeks (with a lot of help from Bruce, the family and a few  special friends) . 

Have a wonderful week! And join us at Scrappy Saturday to see what other quilters are up to!