Tomatoes, Onions, Squash and Orange String Quilt Blocks

Actually, I don’t need to write a blog post today, because the title pretty much sums up my week. OK, OK, it’s not everything that happened, but it’s not far off. There were also friend visits, family visits, and we’re going out to eat outdoors again this evening with family. I’ll be attending another Quilts for Kids workshop today (masked and socially distanced). I’ve been asked to be prepared to demonstrate quilting with a domestic sawing machine if any newbies join us, but other than that I’ll probably just work on strings. 

The great news here at Chez Kizerian is that the carpet installers will be here at 8:00 a.m. sharp on Monday to trim and re-stretch the carpet in my studio. YAY! Then we can shampoo the carpet and move back my furniture and sewing stuff and finally put the storms and flooding of Summer ‘21 behind us. We’ll have to hang the wood blinds and shop for storage pieces, but at least I’ll have my Stuff back where I can see it and get to it!

This was The Week of Strings. Orange is a color that I love and use a lot in my quilting. It’s also a great gender neutral color and I get a lot of donation scraps to work with from the Quilts for Kids members. So I decided I would make one orange string quilt to use up a bucketful of strings and strips. I sewed 56 blocks (6 ½” unfinished) for a 7x8 layout that will measure 42x48” when finished. 

The center strip of each block is an off-white strip that I cut from a piece of yardage. It lends (or will lend when it’s all sewn up) a subtle lattice design to break up the orangeness. I couldn’t fit them all up on the exposed portion of the design board, so the remaining blocks are pinned up in clumps on the left. But you get the idea. The design board will be re-covered with fresh new flannel probably on Wednesday when Cousin Kim comes to sew. 

Then I sewed up 16  5.5” waffle blocks, which in turn were combined into four larger blocks of four each.This completes all the blocks I need for this Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) quilt. Although next month’s color will be lime green, I don’t need any more green blocks, so I can assemble this quilt  sometime over the next 2-3 months.

But that’s wasn’t all. I also stitched up these “chips” blocks (4.5” unfinished), which I am SO not crazy about. These 17 blocks bring my total to 180, which is thankfully all I need. 

I don’t have a setting plan for these yet, but they’re now in the stack of RSC blocks to be finished into quilts, along with the waffle blocks and the kitty blocks from last week. 

Kat of Kat and Cat Quilts has called out this block and these colors for the September-October block drive  for Covered in Love.  So since I have lots of orange scraps, I made four 12” blocks (finished size). They will be sent off to Kat this coming week.

I still have some four patches and crumb blocks to work on, to say nothing of assembling the orange string quilt and another orange-and-yellow quilt from scraps and orphan blocks. Once the studio is up and functional again, it will be pedal to the metal to finish up as many quilts (and use as many scraps as possible) until the end of the year.  To that end, I’ll be joining Devoted Quilter on Instagram for her WIPS-B-GONE 100-day challenge.  (WIP = works in progress). I’m going to shoot for 20 finishes in the 100 days between September 23 and the end of the year. Wish me luck!

That about wraps it up for now. This coming week will be another busy and exciting one here. I hope yours is a great one too!

I’m linking to Scrappy Saturday.

Quick Update

I had hoped to do a quick, pre-surgery update post on my quilting projects before going in for carpal tunnel surgery (both hands) on Thursday. But Wednesday was sewing day here with Cousin Kim, Bonnae and new friend Shanna. It was a busy, chatty day and by the time dinner rolled around, it was all I could do to get the final preparations done for Bruce to handle things around here post-surgery.

The carpal tunnel surgery was routine and we were home by 11:00 a.m.  Having gotten to the surgical center at O'dark thirty, it wasn't surprising that I had a piece of toast when we got home and then took a 3-hour nap. I've been following doctors orders by keeping my hands iced and elevated, and the surgical numbness is mostly gone and there has been no swelling. There's a bit of pain (more of a dull ache), but it's a piece of cake compared to what the pre-surgery pain was. We took off the gauze and ace wraps yesterday afternoon, and under them on both hands are the water-tight bandages covering the wrist where the arthroscopic incisions were made. I can shower with these with no problem. I go back the day before Thanksgiving to have the stitches out. In the meantime, I can't lift anything heavier  than a couple pounds. I think I'll be able to start sewing this weekend, but using the rotary cutter is probably out for a week or two.

So, let me show you what I got accomplished between last week's post and Wednesday, before surgery.

Not much to see here. This simple blue, navy and green quilt is for the grand-kittens. It's pinned on the design board over another quilt, so just ignore that pink. I will be sewing up a backing for this later in the month and then probably spray basting and quilting it. At least, that's the plan.

Next up are four blocks I made for this month's Covered in Love drive.

And I managed to add a border to this quilt top that I found at the estate sale last month. Then I basted and quilted it. I'll have to have Cousin Kim trim it for me when she's over on Sunday!

I quilted it with light pink thread in a blowsy floral design. 

Once the batting is trimmed away and the backing is trimmed down to a 1" border around it, I can sew the all-in-one binding over and attach a label. This will be my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for November, so it's looking likely that it'll be done easily by month-end.

Finally, I stitched up my blocks for Step #3 of the Seeing Stars sew-along at Butterfly Threads Quilting. This month's blocks (8 for me) were simple hourglass 6" blocks.

And here are all the blocks together so far. We will have larger blocks coming, and rectangular blocks of flying geese and checkerboards coming as well. Those lighter greens don't photograph well, but they do look nicer in real life.

I've got several easy sewing projects lined up for this week, beginning in a day or two when I start feeling like myself again. Yesterday and today were dedicated solely to rest and recovery and being lazy; napping, watching movies, reading, taking care of my hands, and getting lots of loving from Bruce and the kitties. Darla has been by my side consistently for two days.

I'll link up to Scrappy Saturday when I get back from my Block of the Month Club on Saturday morning.

Blue Birds of Happiness

I am so loving these pieced birds for a new quilt I’ve started. And since this month’s color for our scraps is blue, these are blue birds. Of happiness, naturally. They do make me so happy! But first ....

My dear fur daughter/sewing supervisor Darla got an email from Molly (Sally’s supervisor) suggesting a minor modification to the bird wing to make it, um, more “tasty”.  Well, I knew I’d get no peace from Darla until I tried it. And I LOVED it! Thanks, Molly!

Left:  Before                                                  Right:  After

With the new wing more visually pleasing TASTY, I decided to make one bird in the reverse direction. We will have another blue month later in the year, and I will another two blue birds then, but I have to show off the “mate” of the new bird (left, below) that I finished this weekend. 

Again, these are 10.5” blocks.  I have had a couple questions about how I did the beak. You will notice that there aren’t any seams around them. For such a tiny piece, I figured why bother? So, I took a 1.5” brown square and folded it diagonally, twice. The raw edge is sewn into the seam to align with the head. Think of a prairie point. When the block is done, I just topstitch the beak with brown thread and a very short (1.5) stitch length. Blurry closeup below (sorry, it’s the best my old camera can do....)

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Over the weekend I also stitched up four 10.5” scrappy string blocks for Covered in Love over at Kat and Cat’s blog.

They will be winging their way (sorry, couldn’t resist) to Kat this week.  And I’ve continued to work on my brother’s Hot Rod quilt. The top is slightly past the halfway point, thank goodness. I hope to have that top wrapped up by the weekend. But first, I’m going to quilt my Autumn Sampler quilt so I will have enough safety pins, because I’m too lazy to go out and buy more today. More pictures on the weekend.

Have a great week!