Cats and Red Scraps

Another busy week here, how about with you? If you have kids in school (online or in person), you’re probably way busier than you want to be. For us retirees, that’s not a factor. But this week did have us running errands (as usual), picking and processing garden vegetables (as usual, but the end is in sight), and going to appointments. Bruce’s myo-electric arm needed some adjustments, and they’ll have it for four days next week to work on an issue.

The highlight of the week, sarcastically speaking, was the annual visit to the vets for Alfalfa and Darla. Bruce and I dread it from the moment we make the appointment; the cats only dread it from the moment the cat carrier comes out a day or two beforehand. Darla is a cagey one, no pun intended. If you even look her in the eye while the carrier is out, she’ll run and hide under the bed. Alfie isn’t as spooked by it. But on the day of their appointment, I couldn’t find either one at lunchtime, and their appointment was at 4:00.  So at about 2-ish I laid down for a nap on the bed, and sure enough, my feline napping companions joined me. And they were still zonked out at 3:40 when Bruce and I each grabbed one and lowered them into their carrier. We turn the carrier upright so we can just lower them into it, using gravity to our advantage. We took the Little Rascals to a new vet clinic because the old vet we went to for years moved away and we’re not going to hoof it across town to follow them. And I didn’t care for one of the doctors at the old place, so it was time to make a change. We’re really glad we did.  The people at the new clinic were wonderful and friendly. Alfie has gained over a pound in the last year, though, so I had to have a talk with him about not wanting to grow into a pony, like Buddy. Alfie pointed out the irony of me telling him to lose weight. Both kitties got their feline leukemia shots and a clean bill of health. 

After we returned home, Alfie decided he liked the new rug at the front door, which was also a purchase on one of my errands this week.  The wind storm of last week tore apart the back door mat, so I needed to replace that. While there, a few little rugs jumped into my cart to replace some of the older worn ones in the house. It’s a nice little refresh for autumn. 

Darla decided to take a nap.  That girl can sleep... and snore. I got the cutest video of her sleeping and snoring, but I’ve been unable to upload it to Blogger. *sigh*

This week in my red sewing, I first tackled the International Sisters blocks. My friend Preeti had sent me several blocks that she’d sewn with a dark gray background. We both agreed that the color and the angles of the background pieces were distracting from the Sisters. So, she sent me the blocks as a gift and I frogged them, replacing the dark gray with Kona Snow which is the background color I’m using for all my International Sister blocks.  

The red sister on the left, below, was made from African fabric sent to me by my hilarious friend (Hurricane) Sally . The fussy cut dress turned out so cool. The Sister on the right was made from my red scrap stash. 

The next three Sisters were all made from African fabric remnants brought over to me from Kenya by my Kenyan friend Marilyn, who runs Harambe Humanitarian. 

I’m particularly pleased at how the following block’s fabric placement worked out.

And here are all seven Sisters for this month.

I have dozens and dozens of these blocks made, so I need to start assembling some of the wall hangings if I can spare time away from Christmas sewing.

But I did take time this week to try out the waffle blocks that I saw on Nann’s blog.  These aren’t even trimmed yet, but I think they’ll work nicely as one of my Rainbow Scrap projects for 2021.

Each 5.5” quadrant is made with three 1.5x5.5” strips and ten 1.5” squares. I have a ton (well, maybe only a half ton) of those 1.5” squares, so this will be a great way to use them up. Obviously, the four quadrants need to be sewn together to yield one 10.5” (unfinished size) block.

And here are the four Tyrol blocks I sewed during the week. 

That brings my total to 16 of the 20 blocks needed. I want to get those done in the coming week and begin the sashing process. My daughter-in-law Kim and I will be shopping next week for the backing fabric. 

Last but not least is my progress on the red Creature quilt. I always save these quilts until I’ve done all my regular block sewing so I know what scraps and orphan blocks I have to play with. Most of this is just pinned or slapped up on the design wall at this point. There are a few blank spots to be filled in and at least a couple more horizontal strips to add some length. All I know at this point is that the width will be 42 inches. 

I ended up making one more cracker block for a total of 8. That gave me two of them for each corner, so I played with them and came up with this (below). I had to add 1” strips to the corner strip blocks to bring them up to size, but I love the serendipitous play of the angles and colors in this top right corner. 

That's it for this week, but I would like to remind you that the Fall 2020 Quilty Orphan Adoption event is going on over at Cynthia’s blog, Quilting is More Fun Than Housework. I have an orphan up for adoption which you can see there (or in my last blog post). I also have a large batch of selvages to give away, and we’ve added those to Cynthia’s selvage giveaway. She’ll be selecting TWO adopters, so if you’re interested in those, please check out her blog post there and leave a comment on her post. 

I think that just about wraps it up for this week. Please stay safe and remain vigilant about masking up, washing hands and keeping your distance from others while in public. 

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Hustle and Bustle

We had so many things on our plates this week that the word “busy” just didn’t cut it. Luckily, a lot of that busy-ness was time spent with friends and family. 

In my last post, I showed what happened to our ornamental pear tree in the front yard. One of its main limbs broke off (Bruce says he relates, LOL). That happened before the damage of Hurricane Isaias on the east coast, so I’m not complaining about our minor mishap. It’s nothing compared to what so many thousands are going through now, and my heart goes out to them.

Our lawn guys moved the downed branch out of the way to mow and edge the lawn. They gave us a very reasonable bid for pruning our trees and bushes, clearing the grapevines off the patio roof, and going through our flower beds (front and two side yards) and removing all the weeds and grass, plus trimming down all the spent perennials. All that work took place yesterday (Friday). We were up at 7am to put in a morning of work in alongside the guys. I deadheaded roses and tended to my flower pots and Bruce weeded the garden and harvested vegetables. Then we got our showers, had lunch and spent the entire afternoon at two different appointments for Bruce. Well, he did. I drove, then napped in the car with the air conditioning on. Our vehicle is a hybrid, so it doesn’t idle. The engine comes on periodically to recharge the battery, but that’s it.

Cousin Kim came over to sew last Sunday. We decided that after 4-plus months of both our families isolating, practicing stringent social distancing and masking up, that we could safely merge our two family bubbles. Her granddaughters will be going back to school online, so once that was decided, we all relaxed.  Kim fell in love with the Zipper blocks, and has started making some. She’s addicted too!  I made ten more blocks this week. The first six are the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month - purple.

And here are all ten of them together. That brown guitar fabric also became additional masks for Bruce and our granddaughter Lauren, who plays the guitar. I made another nine masks this week for various family members. With school and autumn coming, and no end of Covid in sight until next year at the earliest, it seemed like a good time to supplement everyone’s supply.

On Thursday we got to visit our long-time family friend Terri, who recently had shoulder surgery. It was heartwarming to see her again as it’s been 3 months. She visited us out on the patio shortly after Bruce’s arm was amputated. It was beyond great to catch up. Terri and Mike (her late husband who was Bruce’s lifelong best friend) are about as close to being family as anyone can be, and we’ve missed our visits. 

In between visits and yard work, I did get time to sew more purple stuff. Here are my selvage half-hexie blocks along with some fabric half hexies (maybe I should just call them trapezoids?)

I’m not sure if I’m going to sew them in horizontal rows like this or whether I’ll do them in vertical rows. I think I’ll just wait until I’ve been through all the selvage colors, and then play. My guess is that there might be enough to make two or more quilts.

Moving along, I also sewed some Twin Sisters blocks. Have I mentioned how much I love these? Yeah, probably every month! Twelve blocks made in purples.

I also had some time to make three blocks for my August One Monthly Goal quilt. I sewed the yellow spinner block in the top right, the red folded box block in the second row (leftmost), and the aqua block at the bottom. And I played with red for the sashing. What do you think? I like its bold brightness. It really amps up the youth feel, which I like for this donation quilt. Here are things just pinned up on the design board. The red sashing will also be used for an outer border. Just two blocks left to sew. Their designs and colors are already selected.

Also this week, our toaster and my portable small iron died. I guess if we count the fallen tree limb, that makes three bad things this week, so I have high hopes for a quiet week next week. We had replacements in hand the next day thanks to Amazon Prime. Here is the new iron, posing with my new (last month) wool ironing mat (I love it) and my newest little furry squirrel friend. 

That cute little squirrel panel came from Sally with the scraps I won a couple months ago. It will become a wall hanging before fall. But isn’t that plushie CUTE? I saw it at the grocery store in the gift section and couldn’t resist. The cats’ reaction? Totally uninterested. 

I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog. Today Blogger isn’t letting me center my pictures in the post. It’s always something with them, isn’t it? 

One Monthly Goal for August

Time to get a move on and declare my OMG for August. 

This project is a partial set of blocks that I was making as a supplement to a local Block of the Month class I began last fall.  The class continued as usual until everything shut down in March because of Covid-19. Then it continued for three months virtually. But in July they decided to meet in person. That’s when I said Adios! 

The actual class blocks were done in solids, while these supplemental blocks use a busy bright colored text print with the state abbreviations as the background. From that print I’ve been pulling bright colors to play with it and simplifying the blocks. This will eventually be a kids donation quilt. So, this is where the project is starting at the beginning of August:

Seven blocks are done, but I need to make five more 12” blocks to have a 3x4 setting. These are 12-inch blocks (finished size) and I’ve decided to sash and border it in bright red. The resulting quilt should measure approximately 44x58”, which is a good size for a youth donation quilt.  So that’s my goal - to finish the 5 blocks, assemble the top, baste, quilt and bind this donation quilt by month end.

I’m joining Patty at Elm Street Quilts for the goal setting linkup for the August OMG.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This is what we woke up to this morning. Our Bradford Pear Tree (ornamental) in the front yard lost one of its main branches sometime during the night. We’re grateful that it didn’t happen during the day when there a lot of walkers and bikers active in the neighborhood.

Our lawn guys are also arborists. They actually come on Tuesdays, so I texted them a picture of this to give them a heads-up. When they got here, they dragged it off to the back of the driveway and were able to do the usual mowing and edging.

Apparently, Bradford Pears are known for shedding large branches like this, and he said the tree should be fine. It will look a little naked from the above angle, though.  Our trees are normally pruned in late summer/early fall, but apparently this tree didn’t want to wait another month.  

They’ll be back on Thursday to chop up the branch and haul it away and give us a bid for trimming some of the other large outreaching branches. We also have some other things that need to be trimmed, and we’ll just get all the big fall stuff done early. 

Starting tomorrow morning at VeryVeryEarly O’Clock, Bruce and I will be out in the garden  cutting back and dividing our irises and daylilies. And weeding. Then we can empty our compost/mulch bins into the beds before the fall chores start.  It’s always something!

Happy Independence Day!

For those of you living in the USA,  Happy Independence Day! Things are rather subdued at our house and around the country due to the pandemic, although some overzealous neighbors have been shooting off fireworks for a couple nights now. i’m pretty sure it will continue tonight as well. I’ve never understood, even as a kid, what the attraction is to lighting things on fire and blowing things up. Fireworks scare the hell out of me, and I know that at least 90% of cats and dogs agree. (Alfalfa is among the 10% of cats who enjoy fireworks, though. He sits in the window and watches as long as there are no thunderous bangs). I do enjoy a nice fireworks show put on by professionals at a city event or a ballgame, but I’ve seen too many fires (houses, trash cans, hills, etc) from neighborhood fireworks to think they are anything but pure lunacy (my blog, my opinion). Perhaps someday we’ll convert to more peaceful patriotic celebrations and give up the “bombs bursting in air”. 

For the month of July, we are focusing on dark blue for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I was hoping for yellow, since I’m working on a mostly-yellow quilt anyway, but oh well. Yellow’s time will come.  I did get some blue scraps sewn this week, namely my selvage half hexies. Eighteen of them.

And then I finished off my dark blue selvages by stitching them together into columns for a future coin quilt. I’ve got quite a collection of these going now...

My One Monthly Goal (OMG) for June was to finish my pineapple quilt. For the first time in eighteen months, I did not make my goal. Progress was made, however, and I’m going to call it as my OMG for July. A totally finished pineapple quilt before month-end. It will get done! Here are 9 of the 10 blocks I’ve sewn so far. I’ll need a total of 24. I’m linking up to the OMG goal-setting post for July at Elm Street Quilts. 

I’m aiming to sew 2 pineapples per day. If I can stick to that, then I’ll be ready to begin assembling the quilt top by this time next week. other than sewing blue blocks for the RSC, I shouldn’t have too many distractions. Except those zipper blocks that Sally got me hooked on. I made another 18 of them this week. They are soooo much fun to sew. Quick and easy. Like Sally mentioned, it takes longer to select and cut out the fabrics than it does to sew them up.

Our vegetable garden seems to be well established now and growing nicely. We had another spate of cool weather earlier in the week and I took advantage of a cool, cloudy morning to go out and snap some pictures. 

Below is the carrot bed with a decorative metal carrot stake for size reference. Later in the summer, that stake will barely be visible. Beyond the carrot bed to the right is the spaghetti squash bed. You can also see the back wall and the pollinator habitat in the background. Oops - and an old seat that we sometimes sit on with some pumpkins growing beyond the carrot bed.

We planted one crookneck squash plant this year, and it’s already going gangbusters. You can see the blossoms giving ‘way to the squash.

This is the onion bed with the tip of my shoe for reference.  

Next up are the beans. To their left you can see an Armenian cucumber struggling with its huge cage and beyond that a tomato. Way in the back is the bed with the peas.

Next up is the bed of spinach (left), which we’re already harvesting and giving away and the lettuce (right).

This is a better view of the peas. Bruce went a little crazy with the twine, but he’s like that sometimes. The rhubarb on the left is about done for the year. I’ve frozen a lot of wonderful strawberry-rhubarb compote this year to enjoy during the winter.

That about wraps it up for this week. I’ll be linking up to Scrappy Saturday this morning and sewing away the afternoon today. We have no plans for the day, and for this year that’s just fine by us! 

Tickled Pink

It’s Saturday again, and do you know what that means? Trick question with a trick answer. I have a dentist appointment later this morning to get a crown put on a cracked molar. We went a few days ago for our semi-annual cleaning and all is well there. But my tooth had cracked a couple months ago. I know right when it happened, but I couldn’t see or feel anything except a crunch in what should have been soft chocolate chips. *cough* (Those chips were probably pounds #7 and #8 of my Covid Plus Ten Gained. Six of those are now lost again). But anyway, it’s nice that I can go and just wait at the dentist while they make the crown right there. I’ve got a good book I’m reading (American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins), so I can be doing two things at once.

So, today is also Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). We’re linking up, as usual, over at Angela’s So Scrappy blog and sharing our progress in knocking back our pink scraps.

First up for me this week was making four Zipper blocks. I had two from last week (the top two) that I changed the accent colors on and I like them better. I plan to do a few of these every month, following along with the RSC color of the month. Since they’ll finish at 6x9”, I plan to make a quilt that’s 10 blocks across by 8 down for 80 blocks and a quilt that’s 60x72”.

Next up were the 6” Twin Sisters blocks - 14 of those.

Then one Scraptastic Star, which is 16.5” unfinished.

Here are the six Scraptastic Star blocks so far. I’m liking this! By the way, this is a free pattern at Melissa Corry’s blog. You can find it here.

And like the Energizer Bunny, I just kept on going. Here are my Split Nine blocks for June. There are 12 of them at 6.5” (unfinished).

And in case that’s not enough pink, I also worked on my Block of the Month block for June at the local quilt shop. Coincidentally, it was also pink.

And here are all of those BOM’s together so far.

That’s not intended to be a final layout. There are three more blocks to go (they measure 12” finished each). I’ll probably add a bit of sashing and use it as a donation quilt because I’m not crazy about it. 

There is plenty more pink to sew - a quilted scrap bucket in pink, all my string blocks and then a Creature quilt. I have started gathering all my pink scraps and pink orphan blocks and miscellaneous pieces. First stop is to pin them up on the design board to see what I have and what size I’ll be working toward. This is going to be a big one. That print on the right below will be the backing. 

In looking at the photo, I think I want to surround that star with those hot pink cracker blocks somehow to make one central medallion/focal point. I’ll also add either hot pink or white strips for the purpose of dividing sections and giving the eye a place to rest. That’s all part of the process, and I’ve got a couple weeks to play with it. This should be a fun one. 

I’ve read that a lot of bloggers are not enjoying the new Blogger changes. I’ve had absolutely no trouble with the new format. Everything is pretty much the same for me (I’m on a one year old iMac) except the initial dashboard. Some buttons are a bit different, but I find them pretty intuitive. And I’ve had no changes or issues with the way my pictures upload. 

Now I’ll finish off the blog post today with some pictures taken a couple days ago. My roses are going gangbusters (except one bush, which is sitting its May bloom out for some reason....). So I’ve got more pictures, just to make Sally jealous. 

Backyard climber with irises

Rose Tree at the front porch

Miniature rose in front planter

Orange Asiatic Lily just opening up

More roses near the front porch

Delphinium in front flower bed

Pink roses, hostas and delphiniums in front planter

It’s going to be another sweltering day here (like yesterday; in the mid-seventies F at 9am). So after the dentist there will be no yard work - just sewing the day away in my cool basement studio. 

Our Late May Garden

I like to do an early garden post almost every year. So I figured I’d better get to it. We’re way behind our usual schedule this year, so a lot of the weeding/grooming and mulching haven’t been done yet. But hey, it’s reality and not an audition for a garden magazine, LOL.

The vegetable garden is planted. That was the first priority once Bruce was able to work outside and the weather cooperated enough to allow it. Here you can see the onion bed (foreground) and the potato bed behind it.

Along the wall, the irises were beginning to open up, but the roses not so much.

Here are some closeups of the irises along the back wall.

 This one is my favorite. I wish it were as prolific at reproducing as some of the other ones!

Also in the very back, the pollinator habitat that we built last year is beginning to “wake up”. Our trumpet vine was planted in the corner so that it could climb the metal trellises to its left and the telephone pole behind it in the neighbor’s yard. It looks like the neighbor’s ivy (full botanical name: Damn Ivy) has beat it to the pole. I have hope, though. I read in our Neighborhood App a couple days ago that our neighbor is looking for a couple kids to help him work to clear out his ivy. I sure hope he means this ivy! I try to kill any ivy that encroaches on our yard from that side or from behind the gray wall.

The stump of the apricot tree is rather forlorn. Our lawn guys are going to cut off about another foot off the stump and level it so that I can display a flower pot or bird bath there or something. He’s waiting for his chain saw to be repaired. With the apricot tree gone, that corner is much sunnier, and the hollyhocks are loving it (and so are the two irises I tucked in there last year, apparently!)

Here’s another hollyhock planted in that same corner. And Boomer’s headstone. 

And my Chihuly rose is really blooming nicely and finally growing a bit this year.

I think the fiery yellow and orange roses of Chihuly bush perfectly evoke a sense of his unique glasswork, don’t you?

We have little grapes forming on the grape arbor, but the picture I took was backlit terribly, so I’ll try again with those another time.  But these snapdragons came back with a vengeance this year, which is surprising. They’ve never acted like a perennial for me before! There is a glass pelican hanging nearby, plus the woody bases of the grape vines. You might also notice some un-pulled grass *cough* in the bottom left corner. What can I say? It’s a process.... that bed is only about two thirds done.

Moving to the east side yard, our poppy has opened. I used to have a monster bush here on the side yard, but I think I tried to do something dumb like divide it and ended up killing it or something. At any rate, I immediately replaced it about 3 years ago with this poppy, and it’s just now finally condescending to bloom for me.

I think there were a total of about 5 or 6 flowers this year.  Sorry the picture’s not too great.

The bump-out on the brickwork of the house is the chimney. We used to have a snowball bush planted there, but it died and we had to have it pulled out last spring. We replaced it with a burning bush (small green clump on the very right); it will take time to grow. In the meantime, we have plenty of spring color there with the irises and the yellow stuff. Usually I know my flowers, but this one has slipped my feeble mind.

Moving on to the front, there’s not much to show because we are still working on getting the grass out of the flower beds so I can plant the rest of the annuals. But I can show you my lovely rose at the corner of the front walkway and the driveway.

Every year we get two great shows from this bush.

You’ve already seen our front walkway lined with the Mexican Talavera flower pots we like to collect. But here is a shepard’s hook on which I hang a pot of store-bought petunias to give a little height to this front bed. Behind it are irises, a lily and in the very lower left is - goldenrod?? There is a small lupine in there somewhere too.

Our house faces north and this portion of the bed doesn’t get too much sunlight. So the hostas, irises and brunnera (with little blue flowers, below) love it.

Below is another hosta and one of the delphiniums that has grown and spread. It already needs to be re-staked. I’ll show pictures again when these beds are weeded, mulched and the flowers really come into bloom.

As for the west side yard, move along folks, there’s nothing to see there. Except more irises and grass up to our knees. We’ve already removed a couple wheelbarrows-ful of weeds and grass. If you listen, you can probably hear us crackin’ the whip as we get that yard into shape!

And last but not least, here is the revised fabric pull for the new project I hinted at in my Saturday blog post. I’m joining in with Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting for the Tessa Quilt Quarantine-along.

I’ll be making a lap-sized quilt. Today I made time to color in my coloring sheet and figure out fabric placement and yardages.  Woo-hoo! Now to begin the cutting!