March Quilt Recap and April OMG

Before March, with all 147 of its days (didn’t it seem like the.longest.month.ever?) ended, I was able to finish up two more small quilts. That brought my total to 5 for March. First to be finished over the weekend was the Seeing Stars wall hanging. This was a sew-along with my friend Diane Knott of Butterfly Threads Quilting. Here it is up on the design wall. I debated awhile about that red and white striped binding, but I’m glad I used it - it’s so cute!

I was never crazy about the fabric I selected, but I do LOVE how this wall hanging turned out. I’ve got plenty extra blocks (in greens and pinks) that I’ll be able to use to make a table runner or topper. That will happen probably this month, because they’ll definitely have a spring feel. Seeing Stars  finished at 30.5” x 36.5”.  And as you can see, Sir Alfalfa supervised and approved of this new burst of color in  the living room. Yes, he’s a Sir now; the Queen knighted him in March, did I tell you? For meritorious service to humankind because of his extreme cuddliness and care of Bruce.  :-)

But as this is an equal opportunity blog, we can’t leave out Princess Darla. Here she is doing what she does best. What you can’t see (or hear) is that she is snoring.  She’s such a dainty little cat, but man can she SNORE! Maybe I need to get her a CPAP. Or would that be a CCAT?

Moving along, the second finish in the last few days of the month was my small version of Bonnie Hunter’s On Ringo Lake pattern, which I call On Ringo Pond. It finished at 45” square and will be a donation quilt for Quilts for Kids.

Here is a collage of the five quilts I finished in March.

Top: On Ringo Pond; Teddy Bear Sailor Quilt (panel for QFK)
Bottom: Turtles and Frogs (panel for QFK)  (oops, I didn’t put the finished quilt picture in the collage, but it is done and posted on my 2020 Quilts Page, link under header); Seeing Stars; Creature from the Aqua Lab

I’m also going to take this opportunity to declare my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for April. The 9-patch variation blocks shown below in light blue were a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project that I sewed throughout 2019. I have 120 9-patch blocks to sew into a top. There are 2 extra pink blocks that will go into the block Orphanage.

So, I’m linking up to Patty’s OMG goal-setting post at Elm Street Quilts. My goal is to get these blocks not only sewn into a top, but quilted and bound and FINISHED by month-end.  Whereas March felt like it was 147 days long, we all know that April is a shorter month. Still, 96 days in April should be plenty to finish the quilt - and lots more too!  :-)

The new Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for April is light and bright blue. I say “new”, but my brain is screaming that light blue is just a blink away from March’s color of aqua/teal. I do have some things to sew in light blue, but I probably will wait until we get to the darker blues to make a Creature Quilt. And I don’t need more light blue International Sister blocks, or Beachcomber blocks (both projects continuing from last year). I plan to make a blue scrap bin, but it will combine all blues, so that may or may not happen this month. Instead, I’ll work on red and yellow garlic knot blocks, since those are the two remaining colors I need to be able to assemble all those blocks into a quilt top. I also have lots of selvages to sew up, and quilts to finish; On Ringo Lake (the bigger quilt of the two I was making) and an International Sisters wall hanging to quilt and bind. There is no shortage of projects, that’s for sure.

Bruce is currently in the hospital. His surgery is today, as I write this. I’m waiting for a call from the doctor once he’s in recovery. There was no waiting allowed in the hospital. He will have to remain in the hospital for 5 days so they can monitor the circulation of the blood vessels in the tissue they transplant to his wrist/forearm area. And because of the coronavirus, there are no visitors allowed in the hospital. So that means that Bruce and I will communicate by video chat. Yeah. This first week of April alone will feel like 34 days...

When Your Brain Goes on Vacation

To be honest, I don't know if my brain has been on vacation or if it was kidnapped. Of course, that would beg the question "Who would want to kidnap it?", which pretty much answers the dilemma. I just wish it had taken me along wherever it went. But it's back now, and apparently ready to get on with blogging and life in general. So I've got a few catch-up things to share.

First, I sewed up my December blocks for the Butterfly Threads Seeing Stars Sew Along over at Diane Knott's blog. This month we're doing pinwheels, which were fun. Here are my blocks:

This is the 4th month of the Sew-Along, and I'm really enjoying it. I originally started out with busy backgrounds for my blocks.  The more I used them, the more I hated them. So this month I re-did a few previous blocks - the worst offenders - using plain Kona white as a background. Much better. Here are the first three months with busy backgrounds.

Before, with too-busy backgrounds

And here are the four months' worth, having replaced a lot of the square-in-a-square backgrounds with plain white and adding this month's pinwheels:

After, with mostly-fixed backgrounds

Four of those churn dash blocks (two in the bottom row and the two blue ones in rows above them) are likely candidates for some plain white background transplants next month! 

This past weekend I also finished my Block of the Month for December for our local quilting shop's (Nuttall's) BOM class. This used a Mini Quick Curve Ruler for the petals, and I really enjoyed making these. The right one was made with the fabrics they gave us, and the left one is made from stash. 

These are all four of my BOMs with their fabric so far:

And these are my extra blocks, which will eventually make a kid's quilt for donation. Note that there was no way on earth I was going to do all those little half-square triangles again. I did a giant red nine-patch instead.

I also wanted to show you the quilt that Cousin Kim made for her son-in-law for Christmas. He is a graphic designer by trade and a disc jockey by hobby. This was a pattern from our local Shop Hop from a few years ago. The pattern had a lot of mistakes that Kim had to puzzle out and fix. You can see some spacers she had to add to the center of the two side borders.

I had the pleasure of quilting it: a cross-hatch in the center portion and a basic stipple in the outer border. 

My Christmas sewing is mostly complete; I just have to sew up a back for the quilt for Cousin Kim, then baste, quilt and bind it. I'll have a progress report on that this weekend. It's really the only thing left on my Christmas list. How is your Christmas sewing and shopping going? 

This week is mostly free of obligations, other than a doctor check-up for Bruce's arm. It's probably too early to get all the stitches out, but at least he may progress out of the monstrous splint he's in.   

Stringing in the Rain

I had hoped to finish my dark neutral-colored string quilt this week, but too many other projects and responsibilities prevented that. However, I was able to play with the rest of my strings and eke out enough more squares to total 42 (7.5" unfinished). Here they are set horizontally on the design board.

After the blocks were done, I had three quilts to quilt (two for Quilts for Kids and one for Cousin Kim's daughter). But then I came back to the strings and decided it needed a better name than its working title, November Strings. The colors reminded me of a quilt that I made for my son Ryan about 3 years ago, which we called November Rain (a reference to a Guns 'n Roses song that Ryan has always liked. So do I, come to think of it). And somehow, with all that swirling around in my brain, the name Stringing in the Rain came to be.

The flimsy has a 2" inner border and a black outer border that measures 4" on the sides and 6" on the top and bottom. Although it looks wonky on the design board because the top is pinned and the bottom is just hanging (the design board isn't long enough), it is perfectly rectangular at 54.5 x 65.5". I will get it layered, quilted and bound in the coming week.

This is the first of two quilts that I plan to make from my dark neutral scrap stash for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Today I'm linking up with Scrappy Saturday, where many of us are beginning to finish up and share our rainbow scrappy projects for this year.

I also managed to sew up eight cute blocks (6.5" each, unfinished) for the second step in the Seeing Stars Sew Along, hosted by Diane Knott at Butterfly Threads Quilting.  Check it out! I've really enjoyed it, and there is so much room for variety and personal interpretation - a super sew-along that's just getting started.

Alfie had a dental appointment this week, and came through just fine. Just a cleaning with no cavities extractions or other work needed. My pocketbook is grateful for that. But Himself was a bit put out that the bandage they put on his foreleg (the IV site) was PINK. Sheesh. But he recovered his dignity soon enough. And when Bruce turned on the fireplace that evening, the cats curled up in spots to contrast their furs to best advantage, and took a nice evening nap.

Life is good.

Seeing Stars. And Quilts. In a Barn. Oh My!

It's only been about 3 days since my last post, but I have so much to share, so why wait?

I'm participating in the Seeing Stars Sew Along with Diane Knott of Butterfly Threads Quilting. Diane is the author of two of my favorite books, Scrap Quilt Secrets and Strip Quilt Secrets (link here), plus I had the opportunity to meet her when she was in Utah this summer. Oh, and she did the faaaaabulous quilting on my Lattice Birds quilt too. Wow, I guess that makes me an official Fan Girl, haha!

Anyway, I had taken a picture of my fabric pull for this sew-along, but can't find it on my camera or my phone. So, we'll just move along to Step One, which was published this week on Diane's blog. The really unique thing about this sew along is that the pattern will be constructed in panels. You can decide how many panels you want to make ahead of time, like one for a table runner, two for a wall hanging, or more for a small, medium or large quilt. I've decided to do 8 panels for a nice lap quilt for myself. So, that means for every monthly block released, I will make 8 - one for each panel. Diane also gives lots of ideas for variations to personalize the various steps. It's a sure bet that there will be no two alike - and I really love that idea!

Here are my first 8 blocks for Step One.

The fabric I selected was Flower Garden by Nadra Ridgeway (Ellis and Higgs) for Riley Blake fabrics. I had a layer cake (a pack of 10" squares) of this fabric line. I omitted the oranges and beefed up the reds, greens and yellows with other pieces from my stash. I love this fabric line so much because it reminds me of a summer in Austria going to summer school when I was 16. We took a day trip by train to Innsbruck and I bought some lovely floral print fabrics. That fall back home, I sewed myself a couple dresses for school. I still have some of those fabric scraps, and this line really reminds me of them.

You can check out some of the other participants and their blocks on Instagram or Facebook using the hashtags #seeingstarssewalong or #butterflythreadsquilting

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My friend Bonnae and I went to a quilt event on Saturday called Quilts in the Barn. It is put on by a local quilt group and is held at a very exclusive estate the east side of the Salt Lake Valley. From the parking area, the visitors are shuttled to the estate, which is in a (my pinkie is up when I say this) "veddy, veddy EXCLUSIVE" neighborhood. Electronic gates to get into the neighborhood and also the estate.  Oh, and did I mention that this is put on only every 2 years?


Our driver was full of historical information about the area and the Walker Estate as he drove us through the acres and neighborhood lanes. The ladies in our van were so sweet. I didn't realize HOW sweet until Bonnae and I got up to the registration table to pay our entrance fee and found out that we were the victims of a true RAOK - random act of kindness. One of the ladies on our shuttle had paid our fees for us! Whoever you are, dear friend, THANK YOU!

Bonnae is on the left (with the pink purse) in this picture. Cousin Kim couldn't come with us, but the three of us do stitch together every Wednesday at my house.  But I digress...

Here is the "Barn".  It truly is a barn that houses animals, although they were outside in the pasture for this event. The barn was designed to resemble a European-style barn. The quilts were outside and inside on all three floors.

Let me show you a few of my favorite quilts.  Many of the pictures aren't good because the lighting was not really very good. I did take pictures of the cards, but I'm not going to post them here. I do remember that this was a pattern by Lisa Bongean done by one of the local ladies.

I loved this red sampler. Such a great variety of blocks!

Those two quilts above were on the main floor. Then we walked up the stairs to the second story and I took a picture of the view out the front barn window. It was a gorgeous day with temperatures in the mid-seventies.

This tree quilt is from a free tutorial by Amy Smart (Diary of a Quilter).

One of my favorite quilts was this one done by the wife of the gentleman who was our shuttle driver. They lived in Austria for more than a decade, and this was her tribute quilt to the landscape, people and places of Austria. It was called "Land der Berge" (Land of Mountains).

 This next quilt had assorted cute baskets and yo-yo flowers.

Close-up of a flower basket:

And then we went up to the third floor, and here is the view from that window (same view, higher up!)

The lighting on the third floor was particularly problematic, but I did want to share this picture with you. The pattern is called Laundry Day by Sandra Workman (who owns a local quilt shop called Pine Needles here in the valley). I know all this because I've got this pattern and actually started hand sewing some of the little clothing about 3 years ago.

I don't even consider it a UFO because I'm not sure if it's something I really want to finish. Except that it's So.Stinking.Cute.  *Sigh*

Then we walked back downstairs and took a quick look through the items for sale.

While we were waiting our turn for the return shuttle, I snapped this picture of the Walker mansion. It is over 150 years old and the 4th owners just moved in about six months ago. You can see it is in the French Provincial style.

The most impressive thing on all these manicured grounds (there must be a team of groundskeepers!) was this giant, stately willow tree. See the woman in the picture for scale.

Once we got back to our car, Bonnae and I went out to lunch and just sat, relaxed and gabbed. It was such a fantastic day!