A Pain in the Neck

With the title of this blog post, you might think I’m talking about either the cats or some local teenager, but this is actually a literal pain in my neck. It’s getting better now, and I’ll talk about it later in the post, but first let’s move on to something more interesting....

I was able to baste and finish the Squared Away quilt, and it turned out nicely. Squared Away was the challenge quilt that Mari of Academic Quilter and Angela, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge hostess, set out for us this year. This finish happened BNI (before neck issue).

It finished at 56x56” and is my 19th quilt finish this year. That’s how many I did in all of 2017, so any finishes from here to the end of the year will go toward a personal best. You can see my quilts on my quilts page, link below the header. Anyway, this one will go into the donation pile after it gets laundered.

Squared Away is Goal #6 in my 4th Quarter Goals for the 2018 Finish Along. My list is HERE.  The 4th quarter finish linky party is HERE.

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And if you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you have probably seen this picture of Darla and Alfalfa.

Well, I had heard that Melissa Averinos, an accomplished quilter, did kitty portraits. Barbara over at Three Cats Ranch had a picture of Smitty (and later Sadie) done by Melissa. So, I posted the above picture on Instagram with the tag #melissapaintmycat and she did!

Isn’t it adorable??  When she paints the picture, you have the option to purchase it at a greatly discounted rate from her normal prices. Naturally, how could I resist?  The picture arrived this week and Bruce and I love it!  I’m going to get it framed and hang it in the kitties’ bedroom (formerly known as the guest bedroom, LOL).  Check out @melissaaverinos on Instagram, or @wierdcatsforever.

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Here is where my next quilting project stands (or hangs) for now. It’s the California Poppies quilt blocks that I won from the August Block Lotto.  The top is all pieced except for the outer border with cornerstones.

I won 40 blocks and added eight more for a total of 48. Then I did a traditional setting and added sashing and cornerstones.

I hope to get California Poppies finished this week, if my neck and arms cooperate and continue healing. I’ve been resting for a couple days and want to get back into sewing very gingerly, avoiding any repetitive movements (like pin-basting a quilt). Time to try out my quilt basting spray!



OK, so the neck..... Last Monday Bruce and I worked furiously in the garden to prepare for winter. While he pulled out all the vegetables plants (after we’d harvested the last of everything), I trimmed the grape vines and climbing roses in the backyard. Then he began mulching everything (he has a chipper) and I cleared the yards of remaining decorations and moved in all the patio furniture. Then I swept. His part took about five hours, mine only about 2 1/2.














But by the next day, my neck (I have TOS or Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) and shoulders were hurting and starting to swell. My right hand was numb on-and-off, which spread to my entire right arm. And the back of my neck was numb. Obviously, there was a pinched nerve there, too. I couldn’t get in to my doctor (out until Monday, when I have an appointment anyway), and his replacement was double booked. I got on a waiting list, but knew I’d have to figure it out myself.

So, it was several days of rest, lots of Advil and Tylenol (great together), and a heating pad.  Rinse and repeat. And it is getting better. I even managed some grocery shopping today (Friday as I write this) and some laundry.  But I tell you, the gods are having a field day with me this week. My shower wouldn’t drain this morning, so I bought some Liquid Plummer and took care of that. Then the clog must’ve moved down the line to the laundry room, because as the washer drained during the third and final load of laundry, the overflow pipe spewed water all over. I’ll let Bruce deal with that when he gets home......

Let’s end this post on a good note. One day this past week we went up to Bountiful to visit our friend Terri (the widow of Bruce’s lifelong best friend Mike, and one of the band members of their group The Muddy Gutter Boys, who performed together for over 50 years).  We went to lunch and gabbed and got caught up with the family happenings. Absolutely delightful, as always. Terri has been on a pumpkin-making binge, as well as crocheting little blankets for the local mortuary to use for infant angels. Way to go, Terri!  Here are the three pumpkins that she let Bruce and I pick out from her Pumpkins for Friends Stash. I posed them on the floor in the living room....  And of course, Darla was right there to see what was happening.

What have we here, Mom?

Hmmm.... this pumpkin stalk smells more like a cinnamon stick

Now, doesn’t my face impurrove the picture??

Orange Birds

I didn’t get too much orange sewing done this week because I really didn’t start on it until Thursday. My energies prior to that were focused on garden veggies and finishing a quilt. First, the vegetables. Bruce, for some reason, thought it would be a good idea to plant three yellow crookneck squash plants. Suffice it to say that besides eating it and freezing it, we’ve been passing it out to the neighbors and I’ve been taking a basketful (15-20 pieces) to Weight Watchers every week. Our WW leader even called me the Vegetable Queen, lol.

And speaking of Bruce, he loved his Groovy Guitars quilt that I finished this week. Thank goodness and hallelujah!!  You can read about it in the previous post, or click HERE. But I’m ready to talk about sewing on my orange scraps, and there are a lot of others who are too. You can check out their work at Rainbow Scrap Saturday over at Angela’s blog.

It’s been about 3 months since I’ve worked on my birds. That’s because the colors I’ve chosen are that of the focus fabric; rich blues, greens, pink, yellow and orange. My notes told me I needed to make four of these 10” (finished size) birds; two facing right and two facing left. I cut the pieces on Thursday and then set out to work yesterday, listening to my Aretha Franklin tunes in memoriam of the Queen of Soul.

Each bird is different, not only in the fabrics, but in little piecing variations. The pattern I’m using is my own adaptation of Margot Langedoc’s Feathers pattern, which makes an 8” block and a free online pattern here, which makes a 12” block. My birds are 10” (finished size) and have a rounded wing (suggestion from Sally) and a haphazard way of adding partial triangles at the bottom of the forewing.

When I do birds of a given color, some are all in that color, like the two orange birds above, and some are mixture of two of the main colors. I’m hoping this will help tie all them together. The bird below is the first one in which I used four different fabrics.

I will probably have one or two leftover birds (that sounds funny....) and if so, will use them on the back.

Here are all the birds of an orange feather, flocking together as they do.

And then I sewed up a couple more of the Irish Chain (“lattice” blocks) so I could lay out all the different colored birds. More than anything, I wanted to see how the spacing around the birds worked with the lattice blocks.

Hmmm.... yes, I like it. No, I LOVE it!!  There will be a total of 31 bird blocks and 32 lattice blocks. Next time we have a blue month, I’ll be sewing up the remaining 28 lattice blocks. And there are lots more blue (7) and green (4) birds to sew. This is on track to become a 4th quarter finish, at least the top.

Oh, and we had some orange interest in the garden this week. Sunflowers!!

These were taken earlier in the week; we have at least 5-6 open now and they’re always covered in bees. YAY!

We also have lots of pumpkins (large and Jack-be-Littles) turning orange already. I guess they want to match the still-smoky skies.

The front planters are looking pretty good these days....

And the flower pots along the front walkway are really doing well. You can click to enlarge... That little rose tree was planted just this spring and has already had two flushes of yellow roses. I’m sure we’ll have at least one more before the cool weather sets in.

Also new this year was this coneflower. We used to have these all over the garden, but the last few years they went away. So I’ve been adding them back in here and there.

Pretend you don’t see the weeds in the above picture. It’s been too hot and smoky to work outside any longer than necessary (to pick vegetables). Today our lawn guys, who are also arborists, are coming to trim the apricot tree, a couple trees in front, remove a few problem things and that da** umbrella tree that you can see two pictures up beyond the flower pots.  My roses and hydrangeas, among other plantings there, need more space and sunshine.  After they’re gone, I’ll be making plum jam and a huge triple batch of chili, using garden tomatoes, onions, peppers, etc.  And then I can sew all afternoon!!

Just Call Me “Farm Girl”!!

Yehaw!  It’s been a hot and busy week here, and the theme around our little homestead (all .25 residential acres of it, LOL) has been farming.

Let’s start inside where the air conditioning belies the heat outdoors. I got a wild hair this week to pull out a well-aged UFO and stitch it up. Don’t ask me why - I guess I’m just sick of my UFOs nagging me.  These Farm Girl Vintage blocks date back to 2015 (I could’ve sworn it was longer....) when Lori Holt published her Farm Girl book. Anyway, I have way more blocks than would ever fit in a single quilt, so I picked my 30 favorites that were left (some I used in my Autumn Sampler quilt) and finally tackled this beast.

I call it a beast because I’ve been dreading putting it together. All I can say is that my piecing accuracy has greatly improved over 3 years. These blocks that were supposed to be 12.5” unfinished, actually ranged from 12” to 12 1/2”. I had to sew little strips on a couple to make up the difference that I couldn’t cover with the sashing. But I did it, and I can’t even say it’s even close to the worst quilt top I’ve ever pieced, LOL. Seriously, it measures 70x84” consistently. Whew, I dodged a bullet. It also helped that I decided to forgo cornerstones...

The backing is a cute farm-y print that I picked up from Connecting Threads for $2.76 per yard about 18 months ago. The five yards were the perfect amount that enabled me to sew a backing with just one vertical seam. Now, both the top and back will go onto hangers in my stitching room closet until next quarter.

Part 2 of this Farm Girl saga is a tour of our South Forty. That’s the south 40 square yards of our backyard, LOL. I may have mentioned that we’ve been feasting on spinach and lettuce over the last couple weeks. This week we’ve added peas and yellow crookneck squash to the mix. We could add apricots if there were more than 23 on the entire tree, LOL. No, I didn’t really count them....  But the birds are getting most of them because they are too high up for us to reach, even with the ladder.

I was hoping we’d get enough so that I could make one batch of apricot jam, but at this point we’d settle for each munching on one unblemished apricot that falls to the ground without bird pecks on it. Yeah, that one above looks nice, doesn’t it? But you ought to see the reverse side....

So, look at the growth! Those in the front left are tomatoes. The early girls are in the lead, naturally. They’re about the size of a small plum, but still green. That’s OK. I’m hoping they hold off until I get back from Kenya around the 21st of July. Maybe, maybe not.

The grape vines have covered the trellis nicely, giving us lovely deep shade on the patio. Of course, most of the time it’s too hot now to be out there between 11am - 7pm. But we do have the occasional cooler morning or evening, and we love to eat out on the patio when we can.

Here is a picture of the crookneck squash. There are three in the picture below, and they will be the next ones to be ready, probably in 2-4 days. We are having the very first one, already picked, with our chicken mole’ (the Mexican dish, not the varmint, LOL) for dinner tonight.

And here are the peas and the Tom Thumb butter lettuce. We get our seeds from Cottage Grove (Oregon) Seed Company, and they say this lettuce is their staff favorite. It withstands the heat well and is mild and delicious. For many vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, tomatillo, onions, potatoes), we use starts from local nurseries.

The spaghetti squash are already growing like.... squash. Since scale isn’t obvious in this picture, you’ll just have to believe me when I say this one is already about 7” long. Most of the other ones are smaller, which is good. I’m hoping that they too will hold off for 2-4 more weeks.

My newly-planted coneflowers are blooming. The picture below should be considered proof of Truth in Gardening. See those weeds all around the rock? They were not there when I pulled weeds on Monday, three days ago. I shudder to think of how many weeds I’m going to have to pull when I get home from vacation...

And here are the flower pots along the front walkway. Someone asked me (when the comments feature was broken) what Talavera was. These pots are Talavera - Mexican folk art. I love the bright colors patterns.  In the neighborhood, we are known as “the house with the colorful flower pots”.

And here’s a view that shows all the pots, the walkway, some newly spring-planted perennials to fill out some of the front beds, and the green (some) and parched (some) grass. Again, Truth in Gardening.

And speaking of parched, I’m going to go treat myself to a diet root beer float (a glass of Diet A&W root beer with a scoop of Halo vanilla ice “cream”). Two Weight Watchers smart points.....  I’ll see you back here on Saturday for my scrappy sewing June roundup.

Teal Zeal

I guess I could’ve titled this post Aqua-something or Turquoise-something, since those are all the colors (not blue but not green) that we’re working with for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month. But it’s summer and I’m lazy, so there you have it. Teal.

My scraps this month are tamed as much as they’re going to be. Lots of nice chunks got put away to use for next year or for when I decide what other teal/aqua/turquoise blocks I’ll need for other WIPs.  For now, here’s what I finished up this week to share.

I made 13 - 6” (finished size)  quarter log cabin blocks. It always seems as though I have an odd number of these blocks when I make them. 

This month there will be no birds sewn because that color is not represented in my Birds in the Lattice quilt. So, the final blocks for this month (unless I begin a new project) are my 6” (finished size) crumb blocks. I got seven of them before the smaller scraps ran out, and really didn’t want to cut down any bigger chunks.

So, that leaves me a couple weeks to twiddle my thumbs sew on other things. So, just for the sheer joy of piecing (because I already had all the orange lozenges and a large pile of black and another of white 1.5” squares), I worked on these lozenges.

I was sewing these into 3x2 blocks, then sewing those together. Only I kept going and somehow got the starting colors reversed. But this is still early days in this quilt top, so it will be easy just to add to the bottom part before proceeding. And that little lozenge in the second row, fourth from the left - that has got to come out. That fabric needs black corners. But that, too, is an easy fix. Anyway, I’m liking it. I don’t know when we will have orange month for the RSC - hopefully not next month when I’m gone for half the month - but I plan to work on this pretty heavily this year in order to finish it up by Christmas. It’s already 2 years old. At least 90% of the cutting is done. 

And then, guilt struck. Bruce’s poor Groovy Guitars flimsy shamed me mercilessly (“Having fun piecing, are you? What about me? I need to be appliquéd!"). And finally when I found one of the tiny purple circles that represent a tuning peg, I caved and switched gears yet again.

You may recall, the top looks like this:

After reattaching the errant purple tuning peg, I began hand sewing those down. That was no fun. Well, it was, but the other larger pieces are not taking well to being scrunched while I hand sew. So, I actually began machine appliquéing them down. All the blue parts are done, and now I’ve started on the yellows. They’re done with the exception of one seam.

The very fine thread I bought for the appliquéing of Groovy Guitar didn’t work out. It was just too fine. Originally this was meant to be a wall hanging, but Bruce wanted a useable quilt. So I expanded the edges and filled out the guitar shapes, adding headstock motifs, etc. to make them all float on a larger black background. The fusible, per the instructions, was not lightweight, but a lighter medium weight. It has changed the hand of the pieces and I hope it will soften after washing. But at this stage, using a fine thread was not cutting it. So, I’m back to my 50-weight Aurifil and it is behaving admirably.  

Today I’ll finish up the yellow and do the orange and perhaps move on to the green and purple. I’d like to be able to sit down and enjoy some slow stitching of all the tiny dots once everything else is secure. Then I’ll probably add a red border. My goal is to get this ready to be basted by the end of July. 

This garden photo was taken last Monday, and the garden has grown even since then. The various squash plans (left side, middle area) all have blossoms now, as do the tomatoes and the tomatillo. We’ve finished up the radishes (“we” meaning Bruce, because I hate them) and are feasting regularly on spinach. And I’ve been making lots of rhubarb-strawberry compote for the freezer to enjoy during the off-season.  

And the white climbing rose in the middle on the back wall is now blooming mightily. It’s lovely to sit out on the patio and see it all!

Goodbye Pink, Hello Aqua!

With the beginning of a new month comes another color to work with for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. But before we get into June’s color of aqua (or teal, or too-green-for-blue or too-blue-for-green), let me do my Pink May recap.  I finished sewing more birds for Birds in the Lattice. Here are the seven pink (or pink with another color) birds:

And then since I had birds in almost every color there will be in the quilt (except a yellow-orange pair), I sewed two of the Irish Chain “lattice” blocks to see how they would play with the birds.

I think I love it!!  The final quilt will have a total of 63 blocks, measuring 10” each when finished. They will be set 7 across by nine down (70x90”) before adding a stop border and then a large border of the main fabric, the blue floral print you see in the blue birds, the central square of the lattice blocks and on the wing of one pink bird. Queen-sized quilt.

For May my pink blocks were:
8 (4” finished) bow ties,
54 (4” finished) hearts, 1
2 (6” finished) quarter log cabins,
7 (10” finished) birds,
3 (16” finished) Linked Squares blocks,
4 (6” finished) blocks for the All You Need is Love quilt,
15 (6” finished) selvage squares,
3 (10” finished) Squared Away blocks, and
13 (6” finished) crumb blocks.
That’s a total of (wow, even I’m surprised...) 119 blocks. But that is all the sewing I did (other than to finish sashing the quilt top, above, at the last minute). So, there is progress, but nothing finished to show for it!!

And in the couple days since Angela has announced June’s color, I’ve managed to sew a whopping four bow tie blocks. But if you join us for Scrappy Saturday, you’ll see lots of other fun projects!

Today I’ll be spending the day with Cousin Kim and niece Jenny as we head on out to do another day of the Utah Shop Hop. It started Wednesday, and Kim and I had fun hitting the stores up around Park City and Midway. Then we drove the Alpine Loop down to Utah Valley (Provo/Orem area), passing Sundance, where the annual Sundance Film Festival is held. It was breathtakingly beautiful, reminding me of the Austrian Alps. I was driving, so I couldn’t get any pictures. However, we waved to Robert Redford as we passed by his place (wink!)

Anyway, today our quilt travels will take us north to (maybe) Logan, but definitely Brigham City, Bountiful, and finally a couple shops here in the Salt Lake Valley. We have been buying some fabric. Kim bought some old-fashioned purple fabrics to make a Hunter’s Star quilt for her son and I bought some Pepper and Flax fabrics (grays, yellow and greens) to make a quilt for our yellow guest bedroom. We are, however, suffering from sticker shock to see fat quarters priced at $3.50. Needless to say, we are mostly sticking to the sale tables.


And here are some pictures from our garden this week. Most were taken on a cloudy day, and the first three are along the back wall of the backyard garden.

The rose bush below (no filter or editing on the pic) has gorgeous magenta roses. This was the first one to open, but the bush is getting up to full bloom and should peak in the coming  week.

This is my favorite rose bush, in the front yard. The blooms are a lovely yellow-orange to salmon color. But some winter damage a couple years ago in the center has made the bush a bit lopsided. I’ve tried to prune it to compensate, but it looks best from this angle. This fall I’ve got more woody canes to get rid of and some more shaping to do.

And then I decided to cut some of the irises and roses to enjoy indoors in a bouquet. Before retiring from the workforce, I’d always bring flowers to have in my office and for the reception area.

Finally, a couple pictures from our Red Butte Gardens visit last week. The pictures didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, nor did I get many before my card filled up. But here are a few...

From the Xeriscape garden area, looking up into the canyon.

And then looking down and out west along the north half of the Salt Lake Valley.

The next shot is near the area where they hold weddings and is one of the few decent pictures I got.

By the next time we go, I’ll have a better phone/camera. And if Bruce takes the pictures, we’ll have a better photographer too!

Have a great week, friends. I miss talking to you and replying to your comments. But I hear that Blogger is hoping to have a fix to the problem this coming week. Fingers crossed!