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!