A Good Week

This was a good week on so many levels, but a hard one as well. Hard in that we’ve been in the middle of having the condo painted - well, the living room, entryway and master bedroom, which together encompass about half the square footage of the condo.  But it looks so clean and fresh now! Now that it’s done, we’ve been unpacking All The Things we boxed up over the last two weeks. The new blinds for the back half of the house will be installed on Monday, so I’m going to wait for that before I take pictures. Oh, and we need to rehang everything, just like when we first moved in. So I need to get my sons over here to do most of that because we have some heavy pictures and mirrors or things that need a stud finder and laser level. I’ve also been updating switchplate covers and rearranging furniture. Where’s a darn magic wand when you need one? 

And speaking of switchplates (couldn’t resist that segue), here are my switchplate blocks for July. The color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is purple, and I got a good start this week on that color. 

These 15 switchplate blocks will finish at 3x5”.  After that I moved on to my flying geese blocks, inspired by the blocks that my friend Cathy of Sane, Crazy and Crumby made last year.  They’re a great way to use up miscellaneous black print scraps. 

One of my very favorite things to do at the start of every month is to sort through the scrap basket for the new color of the month. Last weekend as I was sorting through the purples, I found a baggie of 50-some cute novelty squares measuring 4.5”. Well, I opened the bag and out popped a SQUIRREL! It took no time to find three matching fabrics to use in large chunks or minimal yardages. I cut out the needed 4.5” squares, and in roughly an hour, had this cutie of a top up on the design board. 

Then Cousin Kim came over on Wednesday, and we spent some time sewing. I got it fully webbed vertically and the first three rows done horizontally. I looooooooove this happy little gem! 

It may get a solid border - I’ll just wait until it’s completely sewn before I make a decision. I do know that the blue will also be the backing and binding. I have 8.5 yards of it from an estate sale and will be using it to back several quilts this month and possibly into next month!

Yesterday was an interesting 4th of July. It started off hot, then at about 1pm a rain, hail and thunderstorm rolled through. Although it measured less than a quarter inch total, it was a fierce storm for about 10 minutes. Two minutes later, the sun was out, and I snapped the picture below from our front door. I can see that the wind blew one side of the bunting off the front gate (left side).  Bruce and I did go out for awhile, and when we got home an hour later, the rain picked up again. At least things were damp, and that allayed my fears of fireworks starting a brush fire in our parched area. 

I did run to the store in the morning yesterday to do some grocery shopping. They had the most beautiful (and delicious) apricots there, so I bought these to make some apricot jam today! 

I’ll leave you with pictures of Darla and Alfie snoozing away in the living room. They are very happy that the Strange Mans who were here moving furniture and painting are gone. Obviously, the whole process of supervising exhausted them. (Ha! They found excellent new hiding places for the duration). 

Darling Darla (whom I also call “Darlicious”)

Alfie (AKA “Mr. Cat”) in his best shrimp pose

Please tell me we’re not the only ones who have several nicknames for our cats! Darla is DarDar, Darlicious, Darling Darla, and Miss Kitty.  Alfie (Alfalfa) is Mr. Cat, Himself, and Al. 

On that note, I’m off to go make some jam. I also have some raspberries to make raspberry jam, so my morning is spoken for. But the afternoon will (hopefully) see me in the sewing room! Have a great week!

Gardening and Sewing

 Well, my photos loaded in the exact opposite order that I thought they would (why can’t Blogger be consistent?), so this post is titled Gardening and Sewing instead of Sewing and Gardening. . 

We have two tomato plants this year, one regular and one cherry tomato. There are six tomatoes on the regular plant, and my mouth is already watering for BLT sandwiches with fresh garden tomatoes!

The Asiatic and day lilies are blooming their little heads off right now. They were here when we moved in, but it is clear to me that they need to be moved a bit to give them both more “elbow room”. The Greenstalk planter is also blooming profusely with white petunias. The hydrangea in the foreground is being timid. 

Most of my sewing this week was done in the early part of the week. After Tuesday I never really made it back to my sewing room except to pack up everything I’m taking to Quilts for Kids today. 

The color of the month for June in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is orange. I had so much fun sewing these 30 orange string blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. They are shown here in two sets of 15, which is how our chapter of QFK likes them.

The first set of string blocks have a common center string - the orange check. But with the brightness of all the orange, they don’t really register as a pattern to the eye. But that’s OK.  It was the largest in quantity of all the orange strings, so I wanted to get at least one piece in each block.

The second set of string blocks is more random. Do you see any fabrics that you have (or have had) in your stash?

I will also be doing 6.5” crumb blocks for the kits in addition to the strings. But crumbs are usually among the last blocks I sew of any given color each month to maximize the scraps I have from sewing other blocks. So we’ll see if there are enough crumbs to sew 15 blocks. 

Actually, I sewed my two remaining bat blocks before I did the string blocks above. I have to thank Past Cathy for having cut out all the pieces about 3 months ago when I sewed the first two. It saved me so much time and worry this week! Surprisingly, they were a breeze to sew this time. 

The photo below shows everything just placed willy-nilly (a technical art term haha) on the design board. The center panel will need to have a black border added to match up to the four blocks that will run along each sides. The four bats will to in each corner of the quilt top, leaving two blocks left to sew for the remains spots along the top and bottom edges. I have the blocks selected and will do two in July and two in August. Assembly will begin after that so it will be ready for use this year. 

And here’s a teaser: Kat Scribner (Scrapbox Quilts) and I are working together on a developing a Quilt-Along that we’d love for you to join us on. More details will be forthcoming from both of us in the coming weeks. It’s even something that could be done in conjunction with the RSC. Stay tuned!

Another May Comes to a Close

May has been a lovely month here in the Salt Lake Valley and in my sewing room as well. Plenty of sunshine outside and sewing progress inside. It’s been fun working with green scraps, and I was able to finish the last of my planned Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for the month. Let’s dig in. 

Green is a color I have a lot of, so I decided to make 8 Paint Chip blocks this month instead of the usual 4-6. These are just 8.5” blocks sewn with 2.5” squares and an occasional 2.5x4.5” rectangle thrown into the mix. The pattern of colors and neutrals, at least for me, is deliberately varied. Here are my green blocks for the month.

I love playing with the different greens like mint, olive, forest, etc. and coming up with different blocks within a given colorway. Admittedly there are some squares that could be at home in a different block, but overall it seems to work. 

Here are all my Paint Chip blocks so far for this year.

Naturally, I’ll keep going. I’m going to need a total of 48 blocks. Right now there are 28. I may go back and do a couple more pink and yellow, but we’ll see what the scraps yield with the other colors first. I’m just having fun and enjoying this process. It’s such a simple block. I only saw a single picture of an unnamed block like this on Pinterest last year. I have no viable link for it, nor any idea of what the original creator’s plan was. So this has been a fun romp through colors and patterns for me. 

That finished up my green blocks, so I moved on to the 12.5” Halloween blocks. I’m trying to do two per month through August. At that time I’ll have enough to assemble a quilt top around my chosen panel. This month, I inadvertently chose two rather similar blocks in that they both have black and neutral little four-patches in the corners (different sizes, though). They won’t be placed next to each other in the quilt. 

In June I’ll be doing the third and fourth bat blocks for the corners and will show everything together at that time. 

I didn’t get any quilt tops finished this week, although Rainbow Candies II only needs a few more seams to attach the rows together. That will be done today. 

My friend Susan L from Iowa sent me another lovely quilt top to quilt and donate. I did get a backing made for it, so that will join these candy quilts (and my green column quilt top) to be basted early this week. Four of them, yep. Hopefully I can get those done on Monday and Tuesday (just the basting part, not the quilting and binding. I’m not *that* delusional)  because Wednesday is an all-day infusion for Bruce - the last one, thank goodness - and on Thursday I have my right eye cataract removed. Not sure what Friday will bring except another eye doctor post-surgery appointment for me, so I’m not planning any activities that day. 

Last week at the quilt expo I bought some pale pink Kona fabric, so here are all the fabrics I’ve gathered for my grandson’s Storm at Sea wedding quilt. I still think I’d like to replace the one second-from-left with something a bit more green. And that steel blue may be jettisoned too. Or instead. But it’s better to have more colors to play with, even if I have lots of leftovers. (Muahahahaha!)

Cutting for the Storm at Sea will begin in June after I finish the four quilts mentioned above. 

With the long weekend last week, I was able to get most of the work done in the courtyard for this year. I hired a wonderful hardworking couple for a few hours, and they came on Friday to dig up two old shrubs, limb up the Japanese Maple, haul out the old bark mulch, straighten out the stone flower bed borders and spread the new topsoil. 

On Saturday I went to the garden center and bought lots of annual flowers and a couple tomato plants. I planted them in my flower pots, my revolving grow tower, and in the beds. And I finished planting all the perennials except for some ground cover. I think I’ll go back sometime soon to get a few more annuals to fill in this year until the new perennials grow and fill out the beds more

The brunnera from last year is quite a bit bigger than the two I added this year (with broad silvery-green leaves), but they’ll catch up in a year or two. The hosta in the back corner is a new addition as are the delphiniums, calla lily, astilbe and groundcovers of lamium and ageratum. 

I like adding pots into the beds for height and color. The white pots are filled with my amaryllis bulbs, and they’ll enjoy the summer outdoors until it’s time to bring them inside in late summer and begin prepping them for the winter. 

The photo below is the same basic view only shifted up so you can see the tree canopy. 

Looking at the tree and beds from the other side. 

It’s a small courtyard, but I love making it my own. And aren’t the edging pavers nice and straight now? They looked like crooked teeth before!

I decided to leave the barberry bush above because I do enjoy its color and height. We have a new blue patio umbrella to set up as soon as our family members come get the older white one and its little table. It’s too heavy for Bruce and I to move, and the big umbrella opens like a small rain umbrella - you have to push it up and place a pin through the pole to hold it up. It takes both Bruce and I to open and close it. With Bruce only having one arm, it’s just not practical. So we bought a big new blue umbrella with a crank mechanism. Who’d-a thunk?

This year I took one tier off my vertical planter because the top tier was too high and heavy for me to lift in place. So there are only four tiers and the top water reservoir. I’ll fill in more of the planting pockets with annuals, but maybe not all of them. I don’t want to worry about having to rotate it all the time, so I may keep sun-loving petunias on one half and shade-loving impatiens on the shade side. We’ll see. I want to rest, not work, this weekend! I took these pictures early in the week, and it’s already amazing how much these white petunias (a first for me) have grown since these pictures were taken. 

Here’s a different view of the same bed. 

Below: tomatoes, roses and lilies reaching for the morning sun. 

Have a good week my friends. I’ll meet you back here next week!