Little Quilt Finishes to Share

Hi friends. Not too much to report on this week, because I know you don’t want to hear about our budget process here at our condo HOA. Heck, I’d rather be doing anything else, but here I am, serving out the last  few months of my sentence term. Three meetings this week, two of which I shared leadership on. This long weekend is totally free, though, and I am taking full advantage of it. Bruce and I will have have a coffee date at Barnes & Noble today (among other things, like swimming), Church of Bernina on Sunday (friend Ruby and Cousin Kim come over for a day of sewing and fun), and dinner party with the whole fam-damily to celebrate granddaughter London’s 16th birthday on Labor Day. The closest I will come to anything responsible will be making the bed. 

On the sewing front, I finished up the remaining three little quilts I had layered up for Quilts for Kids. That makes for a total of five finishes this month. First was this string quilt number. I usually turn in my string blocks to Quilts for Kids to make into quilt kits, but these 15 string blocks were pieced on an old sheer fabric, and our coordinator said its lightweight nature confused the newer sewists. So instead I just finished them into a quilt myself with some old yardage. It’s quilted with a basic stipple.

It finished at 38.5x42.5”. The back is an old cotton sheet from a set I’ve been cutting up for a couple years. It’s gone now except for a few scraps. Thank goodness - it was cheap (yard sale find), but I thought it would never end. I bet I’ve used it on the back of four quilts now!

This next quilt is my favorite of all five quilts I’ve finished this month. 

This little purple, lavender and tealish-blue number measures 36.5”x48” and was quilted with a straight-line diagonal grid. 

And finally comes the teal and green panda quilt.

Measuring 42x49”, it was quilted with serpentine lines. These little bears were so cheery, and I was happy to use up every bit of the scrappy panda squares. 

In addition to finishing the quilts, I cut out 5 Strippy quilts from scraps and yardages given to me by friends Ruby and Wanda. I watched this video from my fellow Utahn, Merry, from Merry Mabel Market. Honestly, I already had about 40 kits to make into quilts in 2026, but I was so inspired after watching her video. So now I have 45! 

For the rest of this year, my goal is to finish all or most of my RSC block sets into quilts, which I call my usual Fall Finishing Frenzy. As well, I’ll be finishing up my Halloween quilt (no progress this week) and sewing eleventy bazillion string blocks for a change of pace. 

So, I’ll surface every Saturday to do my weekly “accountability” post (kidding/not kidding) and update you on the “A Quilter’s Cove Meets the RSC” 2026 quilt-along coming in January. Today I’m linking up, as always, to Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend (for those in the States), and just a great week overall to everyone!

The Eyes Have It!

On Thursday I had a cataract in my right eye removed. YAY! My vision is still blurry, as I was told to expect, but in my follow-up visit on Friday, everything looked great. There has been no pain and only minor discomfort on the afternoon of the surgery. And other than a few annoying restrictions, it’s been smooth sailing. I’m officially able to drive again beginning today, although I’m not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds or bend down to pick things up (or do any gardening). I’m mindful of keeping my head above my shoulders as instructed, so deep knee bends get things done in a pinch. Well, that and Bruce helping out. I have another post-op re-check next Friday.

So, ahead of the procedure on Thursday, I spent Tuesday and Wednesday preparing for my forced downtime. I did the weekly grocery shopping and hauled a load of stuff to the Goodwill store. I had originally planned to participate in our community-wide yard sale today, but realized I really didn’t have that much stuff AND I wouldn’t be able to unload it all anyway. So a preemptive donation was the best solution. But the most fun preparation during those two days was pin basting four quilts all on Tuesday afternoon. 

I didn’t snap photos of all four, but I did snap a picture of the one I haven’t shown you yet. This is a large lap quilt donated by my friend Susan L in Iowa. It will go to our local women’s shelter because it’s more appropriate for that in addition to exceeding our Quilts for Kids size limits.

After completing the top, Susan wasn’t enamored by it, so she sent it to me to complete. I have to tell you that I really enjoyed basting this one. The fabrics are not my usual style or colors (I try to do bright kids quilts, after all), but it was fascinating to me to study these interesting fabrics and how they were combined. It’s such a peaceful, low-key quilt, which I’m sure will be greatly appreciated by a woman in the shelter! 

I also basted the two Rainbow Candies quilts and the green column monstrosity quilt from last month. Anyway, here’s the first quilt finished; finishing the other three are my highest priority for the coming week.

This is Rainbow Candies II. I ran out of the sashing fabric (since it’s the sashing and backing for both of the candy quilts) so had to add the bright chartreuse outer border on this one. I quilted it in quick loops and it finished at 42.5x51.5”. Below is the backing and label.

Last Sunday, when Ruby, Kimmie and I were sewing (have I told you that we call it The Church of Bernina?) I finished fifteen of these Switchplate blocks. They’ll finish at 3x5”.

Here’s something else I haven’t talked about or shown. Beginning last March when several of us attended our local Worldwide Quilting Day event, I began sewing multi-colored string blocks in an 8.5” size.  I usually sew them at 6.5”, but my string stash had (has?) been multiplying faster than I can deal with. I figured the larger size block might eat up strings faster. The jury is still out on that, because before I knew it, I had enough strings for two kids’ quilts. 

This is not a sewn top; the blocks are just slapped up on the design wall. I have another one just like it with a small navy and white print as the “solid”. Both will finish at about 40x56” - a good size for a kid. And I can use a 42” wide backing when I machine quilt them eventually. I can get 4 solid blocks from an 8.5” WOF strip. With a little piecing of WOF leftovers, it takes about 34” for the solid accent.

But I’ll be going back to my 6.5” block size. Quilts for Kids has a lot of solid fabric donations, so from now on I can just turn in 6.5” multi-colored string blocks (in groups of 15, like I do for the solid-color string blocks) for them to put into kits for other sewists. 

I think that’s about it. Bruce wants me to take him to the grocery store to get some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, his favorite. They didn’t have them when I shopped on Wednesday, and he’s going through cookie withdrawals! 

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Have a great week!

Green Springtime

Hello friends, how was your week? I think it’s always fun to arrive at Saturday, when we scrap quilters can share our weekly playtime results with scraps. In May, we are working with all shades of green for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

It had been a couple weeks or more since I’d sewn any string blocks, so that was my primary focus for my sewing time this week. You know, scratch that sewing itch! I truly wish I could’ve had more time to sew and foregone all the doctor appointments, errands, shopping and chauffeuring as well, but yeah… no. Life doesn’t work that way. But on the bright side, I’ll be having a cataract removed in a few short weeks, I bought a couple dozen luscious perennials to plant in the courtyard, and I’ve got loads of strawberries in the freezer just waiting to be made into jams and strawberry-rhubarb compote. 

The week started out with me tackling my largest string pile of all the colors - greens. It ended with 52  6.5” green string blocks. That will give me three 15-count batches of green strings to take to Quilts for Kids this morning, along with the red ones I sewed last month. The extra seven will either go into the Orphanage to wait until next year or may find their way into a green scrap quilt I’m working on for Green May. 

Once the green strings were sewn, I began piecing together the first of the Rainbow Candies flimsies. My original plan was to sew all the blocks in the same orientation. However, I messed up when I sewed row 2, so I had to pay extra close attention as I sewed each subsequent row to maintain the pattern. And paying attention is not my strong suit. But I actually like it better! I think alternating the direction adds more movement to the top. 

I’ll sew the other blocks into the second Rainbow Candies top this next week, sewing gods willing. 

I’m sewing 48” columns from my green scraps. The column on the very left, given to me as 4-rail blocks, are about an inch short. But I have a couple more strips of those fabrics to even it out. It’s been fun  planning out this green top, and the tentative plan is to make it 40x48”. But I’m toying with the idea of turning it 90 degrees making it a 48x54” quilt of green rows! We’ll just have to see what the fabrics determine!

It was a crazy-busy day yesterday (Friday), and I wasn’t able to sneak any sewing time in until almost supper time. In my sewing room as I waited for the chicken to finish baking, Alfie joined me feeling very needy for attention. So when he insisted on helping me plan out my two Halloween blocks for the month, who was I to argue?

Alfie, helping

I’ve got to get moving along this morning. Quilts for Kids starts soon. I’m already packed up but it will take me about 25 minutes to drive to this month’s location. Later this afternoon and evening, we’ll be at my son and DIL Kim’s place where my son Ryan is cooking birria tacos. We are belatedly celebrating my granddaughter Lauren’s birthday (last month), Bruce’s belated birthday (last week) and Mother’s Day for Kim and me. The whole fam-damily will be there. 

Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who celebrate. Have a great week!

Adventures in Sewing and Representing

 It was quite a busy, even hectic week. As you may remember, Ruby and I planned to attend the Hands Off! Protest rally at the Utah State Capitol last Saturday. Well, we certainly did that, and I’ve got some pictures at the end of the post to share. It was an inspiring and long day!

But first, let’s tend to our red sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s color of the month for April.  I sewed ten of these 6.5” flying geese blocks. I’m loving that these are set against black - a great way to use some of the scraps that have been waiting patiently (for years,) for their turn under the needle. 

And since there are now four colors done, here they are for a group photo. I kept the number of pink blocks to a minimum because I’m wanting this to be a masculine or at least gender-neutral quilt eventually.

Last week I showed some half square triangles that had been donated to Quilts for Kids that they’d asked me (a year ago) to sew into a quilt. The 288 squares ended up making 72 blocks, which I alternated with the print on the inside for half and the print on the outside for the other half. It was a lot of repetitious sewing, but I enjoyed every moment of it. The HST’s were waste triangles that had been nicely sewn together and trimmed. I maintained their open-seam pressing and continued on that way. Before I knew it, the blocks were sewn, the blocks were put up on the design board and the top was webbed. It took less than a half hour to sew the last rows together, and it was given a good pressing.

Quilt measures 48.5 x54.5”

Today Cousin Kim and I are going to our Quilts for Kids workshop. I’m taking this as a top so they can perhaps find a backing for it. Ruby and her sister Cathy have a new longarm machine, and they’ve started quilting for QFK. So I have six of their quilts to take, along with several of mine. I’m hoping to get a nice backing for this so I can take it back to Ruby and have her quilt it. I want to see it completed! 

Next it was on to making two more blocks for my Halloween Quilt.  I have several 12” quilt block pictures I printed out from Pinterest, and these are the two I selected to do this month. I quickly graphed them out, created cutting sizes and quantities, and then had fun picking out the fabrics. The first one was rather complicated, but I was definitely up to doing all the HSTs after sewing the purple diamonds quilt top. 

The second block was so easy in comparison, it practically sewed itself. And then, since I’ve reached the halfway point of sewing the blocks that will surround the quilt panel, I had to see what it all looks like so far. 

This is not intended to be the final layout; the actual placement of the blocks will be determined once they’re all sewn. Except the bats. The four corners will each have a bat block. What do you think so far? I’m not totally in love with the batty background fabric - my preference would’ve been to have something slightly smaller in scale or with less contrast . But it is what it is, and there’s no going back now. 

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As threatened, or promised, here are some photos of the Hands Off! Protest rally that Ruby and I attended last Saturday. It was my first-ever protest (I was too young back in the sixties or early seventies), but Ruby had attended protests before. When we got there, she asked me where I wanted to be, and I said that I wanted to be right up in the thick of it. And so, over the first half hour, we wandered closer and closer to the Capitol steps, taking pictures and talking with a lot of people. 

This photo below is out of sequence, because it was taken while we were on the Capitol steps, behind the speakers. But I wanted to capture the scale. It was estimated that there were about 10,000 people there, but we both thought it was more in the range of 8,000. All the grass area in front was filled with people.

We asked someone to take our picture, and she graciously did so. The speaker at this time is standing behind the red poster just above my head. (Below). It was a beautiful, perfect sunny and warm spring day!

Everywhere, people had brought signs - some clever, or artistic; others were professionally produced or even a bit provocative. Lots of poop emojis (or costumes). People were there to advocate for their pet concerns - Medicaid, veterans, Social Security, USAid, health and science, public lands, and on and on.

I sat and talked with Lou, the veteran in the bottom left of the photo below. He served in Vietnam in the Army Intelligence just like Bruce, he was there about four or five years before Bruce, so they didn’t know each other. But we had a great conversation and I thanked him for his service. 

And I talked to the lovely Canadian woman in the picture below. She also carried a Canadian flag, but it’s not visible in the picture. She said the Canadians know that the American people are not being accurately represented by the current Trump regime. “We Canadians know you hate him as much as we do!”

And then there were the “Special Attendees” (wink), like the slightly battered Statue of Liberty…

And “Jesus”, who was doing an interview in this photo…

Yep, we made good trouble, with lots of great speeches and cheering and booing and chants…

When it was over, Ruby and I waited for the crowds to dissipate before we began driving off. We had parked her car behind the Capitol ahead of time early in the morning. On our way out, I snapped this picture with just a few people still milling around the grounds. And then it occurred to me that there was NOT ONE piece of trash on the lawn or grounds anywhere. Come to think of it, there were no misspelled signs, either. 

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that!! Have a great week, friends! 

Hands Off!

Today my friend Ruby and I will be attending the Hands Off! Rally in Salt Lake City. We’ll be joined by thousands of people there and at 9 other venues just in the red podunk State of Utah. Rallies will be held today in hundreds of locations throughout all 50 states in the USA. The link above to Hands Off! Is where you can check to find a location near you. These rallies are meant to be peaceful protest gatherings to tell Trump and Musk to keep their hands off…. you name it: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, HUD, CDC, NIH, NPR, PBS, HHS - a whole alphabet of departments and agencies that affect our daily lives. Oh heck, can we add the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P to it? This Administration Regime is a total clusterF**, or as Bruce calls it, a “Cluster Foxtrot”. It will take this country years, if not decades, to recover from the damage that those two blackguards have wrought in the last 75 days. The world’s trust in the USA will take well beyond our lifetimes to rebuild. It’s a pitiful state of affairs. 

Despite the train wreck that this week was nationally, I managed to get some sewing done. Not as much as I’d hoped, though, because I had an HOA newsletter to get out, a dentist appointment (semi-annual cleaning and check-up; no cavities for either of us!), some sewing for a friend (long story that I won’t go into, but I did get a wonderful new houseplant in thanks), lots of errands, and a deep cleaning of my sewing studio. Oy! 

The month of April will be dedicated to sewing our RED scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC). I did get to spend some time on Wednesday afternoon sorting scraps and cutting pieces for my RSC blocks this month, and even managed to sew up the easiest ones, the Switchplate blocks. Here are the twelve I finished.

These will finish at 3x5”, and with these twelve I now have a plan to sew a total of  117 for a 13x9 layout that will measure 39x45”. A small child’s quilt. My total so far for the year is 48 sewn. I should hit the halfway mark next month, a good pace.

There was no string sewing for me this past week (See? I told you the world was going nuts!). But in cleaning out my sewing room, I unearthed a bag of  3.5” half-square triangles (HST’s) given to me by my friend Sandy, who is President of the Salt Lake Quilts for Kids chapter, about a year or so ago. I decided to sew them up and donate it back to QFK as a top. I matched the HST’s up into sets of four to make a square-in-a-square block. There are enough HST’s to make 72 blocks at 6.5” each, unfinished size. I managed to get 36 of them sewn, so I’m halfway there. What I’m doing is alternating the prints and solid fabrics in the blocks. The solid is a shot cotton of blue and red threads that make a purple. I have always strongly disliked shot fabrics - I avoided shot silks altogether when I was a crazy-quilter - but this time we’re getting along OK. Here are the blocks so far:

I’ll donate this back to QFK as a top, not a finished quilt. I want these off my plate and I have no appropriate fabric for a backing. I have to say, though, that I have enjoyed the repetition of sewing these; very Zen-like (along with the music of Dan Fogelberg in the background) as I zone out of the world issues and zone into my sewing. The finished top, which I hope to complete this week in time for our QFK workshop on the 12th, will measure about 48x54”. 

That’s all I have for this week, friends! I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday, where I’m going to go check out what red blocks the other scrappers have sewn up. Also sharing at Sew Preeti Quilts this week for TGIFF - Thank Goodness it’s Finished Friday! Have a good week!

Worldwide Quilting Day!

Today, March 15, is Worldwide Quilting Day! It’s as popular in my book as yesterday, Pi Day, was! We will be celebrating the latter on Sunday with a slice of Cousin Kim’s Coconut Cream Pie, which she makes every year. But today, Kim, Ruby and Cathy (who is Ruby’s sister) and I will be attending the Worldwide Quilting Day festivities at the Sandy City Senior Center. It’s our third year going, and there are always more than 100 people there - men and women of all ages. We’ve got our potluck dishes all prepared, our sewing projects for the day ready to go, and our machines packed. Hopefully I’ll remember to take pictures so I can share them next week.

I had a lot of good time to sew this week. I really enjoy doing these little switchplate blocks, which finish at 3x5”. It will like take a gazillion to make a kids quilt (OK, I’m exaggerating slightly). If I make enough small ones this year, I may try them with larger scraps next year. 

And knowing me as I do, I’ll probably lose patience before hitting the gazillion (actually 170) mark and I’ll end up cutting some fun fabric into alternate squares of 6.5x10.5”).  I’m linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

In my quest to finish my first-ever Halloween quilt for myself, I’ve set a goal of making two Halloween blocks for each of the first 8 months of the year. The blocks for March are two of the four bat blocks that will grace the corners. This is my adaptation of a bat block by Nadra of Ellis and Higgs.  I adapted her pattern to fit into a 2.5” grid. My bat has more zig-zaggy underwings than hers. My arms probably do too! 🤣🤣

I did finish up the yellow string blocks I started last week. There are 32, pictured below in two pinned groups of 15 (on the left side, fanned out) plus two singles. 

The two pinned groups of string blocks are packed and coming with me this morning to WW Quilting Day, where our chapter of Quilts for Kids will also hold a workshop. I can turn in the strings and the little quilt shown below to QFK. 

So, I finished this quilt. It was donated, along with two others still to be quilted; by Susan L from Iowa. She sent them to me in the fall of 2023 (just before we began packing for THE MOVE) last year as part of the Community Quilts program run by Jo of Jo’s Country Junction. I hope to have the next ones finished later this month. 

Thanks for your contribution, Susan!! 

Well, it’s time to get ready to leave for WW Quilting Day. My right eye has gotten wonky (blurry) lately.  I’m thinking it may be a cataract forming. I hate to drive with my eyes like this, but luckily Ruby will be driving us today. However, I’m doing all the driving for Bruce and me because the Utah DMV took away his license. We got a letter this week saying he failed to come in to a meeting (annual requirement for amputees).  But, we didn’t fail to come in - it’s just that the earliest appointment they would give us is on the 19th! Right hand, meet left hand. We’re hoping it’ll all be straightened out at that appointment. And when that’s settled, I can go to the eye doctor to see (no pun intended) what’s going on with my eye. Wish us luck.

Blue February, SAHRR Round 2 and a Finish

Well, we’ve made it through another week of cold weather. At least (or maybe unfortunately, depending on your perspective), we’re getting another abundant snow storm. A couple of my friends and I were planning to drive up to Park City (40 minutes in good weather), but the snowstorm has forced us to postpone our Girls Day Out for the time being. But there’s always plenty of sewing to keep me out of trouble (theoretically), so I’ll take solace in that!

Let’s start with the pink scrap quilt that I quilted this week. I had to make an emergency run to JoAnn Fabrics to buy some sewing machine needles before I started because I was down to my last 80/12 needle in the machine. And let me tell you, that place might as well shut their doors. Yes, I know they’ve filed for bankruptcy again; this time liquidation instead of reorganization. Our store had removed fully half the lighting. Every other fluorescent tube was gone. Try looking for needles sizes in a half-lit store with wonky 70-year-old eyes. Talk about a needle in a haystack. I did manage to buy two packs, but wow, their shelves already looked meagerly stocked, yet unopened cartons were everywhere. Obviously not enough staff. And their ridiculous sales still continue (Buy 2 get 3 free on thread). What numbskull thought *that* was a good business practice? No wonder they went bankrupt. I got my needles (and some backing fabric for my SAHRR quilt) and was glad to leave. 

Anyway, I finished quilting the scrappy pink Midnight at the Bubblegum Factory hodgepodge quilt. It finished at 39x43”. It was my last finish for Pink January in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

For February, Angela has called blue as the color of the month. I figured I should get started on my blocks, as February is a short month. I spent a pleasant afternoon on Thursday sorting all my blue scraps. There were a lot of fresh new blue scraps in there from various sources since the last time we worked on blue back in June of last year. 

The first scrappy blue blocks off the needle for February are these seven “Paint Chips”. That’s my working name for this block found on Pinterest without attribution. 

Because I have so many blue scraps, I ended up doing some color play to come up with these. It was rather fun - navy, bright, pastel, grayed-blues, etc.  They're generally alright, although I did mix up placement on a couple columns, and the camera doesn’t accurately reflect all the colors. But oh well.

I spent a couple afternoons playing with my Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) quilt top. This is what the project looked like at the end of Round 1 last week: 

I hadn’t decided whether to add the chains on the side, preferring to wait until Round 2 was called by this week’s hostess, Anja. When Anja called half square triangles for Round Two, I sewed the chain on and added a little red stop border to bring the size up to 20.5 x 26.5”.  Here’s what it looked like at that point.

One of my goals for each round is to incorporate all four major colors (red, orange, yellow and purple) as well as the coordinating print fabric. Now this may change in future rounds, but for now that’s what I’m trying to do. So I made six half-square triangles of each color to embellish each corner, and cut squares and rectangles of the print fabric to incorporate. This is what I came up with.

OMG, I’m loving it so far! It measures 24.5 x 30.5” at this stage. Here are some close-ups. 

The camera keeps making the purple look like black, but I can assure you that in real life it’s a very rich royal purple. 

And that’s it for this week’s SAHRR Round 2. The linky party is HERE if you’d like to see how others are interpreting this week’s prompt. It’s a lot of fun to see what others are doing! I love the creative challenge that this round robin offers every year!!

I’ve been doing some string sewing here and there (mostly on Sundays) over the last couple weeks. This block idea came from my friend Nann. My blocks measure 8.5” when two (a right and a left) are sewn together. I’m trying to make ten blocks per month, and in January I sewed fifteen. Now, I dropped one on the floor and didn’t find it until after I snapped the photo. 

So, I already have a head start on February’s blocks! But no matter, once I sit down to sew strings, I can go on and on and on and…. I loves me some string blocks, and I think this is a stunning pattern. 

 

Winter Adventures

Let’s pretend that sewing and quilting are adventurous, OK? That’ll keep me honest for using the plural “adventures” in the title instead of the singular “adventure”.  

In my blogpost last Saturday I mentioned that my friend Ruby and I were going over to her sister Cathy’s house to learn to load and operate their new longarm machine, and indeed we did just that. I hope there’s not going to be a quiz, because this pea brain will take more than one session to “learn” how to operate it! But I’m pretty confident about loading it now, and I at least understood what each step we took was doing and how it fit into the whole process (like marking the beginning and ending of each row). The machine had some bothersome quirks, and the woman who was training us said that those little quirks were not acceptable. It turns out that the manufacturer replaced the whole machine this week (well, the whole computer and arm). Aaaanyway, I’m still relying on my own machine for quilting my smaller donation quilts, but I look forward to another longarm training session soon.

The real adventure this week came in the form of a day trip with my friend Ruby up to Crystal Hot Springs in Honeyville, Utah. It’s an hour drive north of us, north of Ogden and Tremonton. The Hot Springs have been there forever. In fact, the information placards said the springs had been used and enjoyed by over 450 generations of Native Americans before the white settlers came along.

According to the following placard, Crystal Hot Springs has the highest mineral concentration of any place on earth.  I hope the information in the sign is readable - if you care to read it. 

Here are some (poor) pictures of some of the pools. It was a cloudy day, but that didn’t dampen our spirits. 

The Springs open right at noon, which was when we got there. The crowds grew as the afternoon developed and it got downright busy once school let out. That’s when we went on our way and had a nice lunch/dinner combo ar a locally renowned restaurant, Maddock’s.

A single visit to the Hot Springs is $18 per person, but you can buy a 10-visit pass (good for 2 years) for $50. Bruce is anxious to try it, so we’ll be buying that pass, you can bet on it!

So that was my non-sewing adventure, and we can turn to my Adventures in Scrap Wrangling next!

For Pink January, I sewed some string blocks (6.5”)

And some crumb blocks (also 6.5”). 

I finished sewing the pink Midnight at the Bubblegum Factory quilt top together. It will get basted and quilted in the coming week - at least, that’s the plan - and I should be able to show it next week. But this week I did finish up another donated quilt top into a quilted and bound little number. 

I used a backing that Jo (Jo’s Country Junction blog) sent me for these community quilts. I’m not crazy about (in fact, I greatly dislike) the light backing with the dark, bright front, but it’s all I had that would work. The binding is the folded-over backing, not a great look in this instance. At least the thread tension was good so that the light bobbin thread and darker front quilting thread played nicely together. 

I’ll be taking this quilt (plus the 13 others I’ve finished since Thanksgiving) to Quilts for Kids this morning.

Back in my post of December 21, I talked about a Halloween quilt I’m going to make this year; sixteen blocks (12” each, finished size) surrounding a haunted house panel. I’ll be doing 2 blocks each month for 8 months, giving me all of September to sew it together and custom quilt it. Here are my first two blocks for January.

I was a little disappointed that the above block didn’t have better contrast between the oranges. But it will remain as is. The following block is actually a lot like the first one, at least with general layout and component sizes. I’ll be using Halloween fabrics in oranges, purples, black and gray - the colors of the panel. I’ve already cut out and kitted up the two blocks for February, so this project is on track! I’ll share more about it as the year progresses. 

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Today, Saturday, Cousin Kim is coming over and Bruce and I will take her to lunch at this cute little cafe and gift shop nearby. Then she’ll be giving us haircuts (she’s a licensed cosmetologist). My hair needs 2-3 inches chopped off to restore its “perkiness”. Kim will be back over on Sunday to sew (Church of Bernina, LOL) with Ruby and me. The adventures never end here at Chez Kizerian.

Oh! My amaryllis finally opened this week! It has FOUR blossoms! 

And you can see the swelling of a bloom-to-be on the adjacent stalk. What a treat!

The Stay at Home Round Robin actually begins on Monday with our first round design/motif assignment. That will give me several days to work on it before next week’s RSC and SAHRR post. 

Have a great week. Linking up to Scrappy Saturday.