Some Pink Sewing

Hello friends! I was happy to finish up two of my chosen monthly blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this week. For the month of May, we are focusing on beating back our pink scraps. My pink scraps somehow manage to multiply when I’m not looking, so there’s no chance of clearing them all out this month! But I did manage to sew up:

Three Color Sticks Blocks:

and two Windmill Blocks:

This week was once again filled with errands and gatherings and contractors. I’ll spare you all the details, but the highlights included Bruce’s birthday (we had a lovely dinner at a fancy restaurant), my annual physical (all is well), a visit from family who helped us hang the last of the pictures and things (until after the remodel, anyway), more contractors - plumbers, landscapers (checking out the sprinkler system valve), and a coffee date with a new friend. And several walks around the lush, green condo grounds. 

Next week we meet to finalize plans with one of the bidding kitchen contractors and possibly sign a contract if all goes well. Fingers crossed! I have two gatherings with women friends next week, plus a couple of friends (a couple we used to pal around with) from the old neighborhood are coming over one evening to see the new place. 

Friend Ruby and I will be taking a public tour of the new Mormon Temple that’s been built here in the Salt Lake Valley. The LDS Church always lets the public tour (much of it) before a new temple is officially dedicated. Ruby has been once already and says the paintings, stained glass, woodwork and sheer artistry throughout is incredible and awe-inspiring. And this morning (Saturday) Bruce and I spent a couple hours with the young couple who bought our old home to give them a crash course on drip irrigation and help them out. They also invited us to come in and check out some of the changes they’ve made. They’re such sweethearts, and we had a good time. They don’t have any local family, so we feel good about being a safety net and source of information to them on the house and yard. 

Our grandson Easton - the one who’s a Nuclear Engineer in the Navy - got home from a duty assignment a couple weeks ago. Here’s a picture of his submarine coming in to port. 

Easton and Madalyn driving home after being apart for a few weeks. I love this picture!!

This weekend I begin sewing sashings and cornerstones to the Anne of Green Gables quilt blocks I’m making. Hopefully I can get the quilt top partly or even mostly assembled this coming week. 

Oh! Bruce and I took a couple hours to assemble a new cat condo for Darla and Alfalfa one afternoon. The cats were good inspectors, and promptly took up residence. They seem to really like it. Darla insisted that I get some pictures of it and them next week. Who am I to refuse a direct order from our feline overlords?

Linking up to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Have a great week!

Thankful

I hope my American friends enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving. And for those of you outside the US, I hope it has been a wonderful week. We had a small gathering at our house - just Bruce and myself, my brother Steve and my son Shane and granddaughter London. The turkey was huge, and the appetites matched it. London, who is 8 now, helped me by setting the table and making a centerpiece of Thanksgiving decorations. I had made two pumpkin pies, then our wonderful neighbors brought over a huge Costco pumpkin pie as a “just because” gift. Needless to say, Shane and London went home with a pie and lots of leftovers. The weather was beautiful - clear and about 60 degrees, unseasonably warm. Just a great day all around!

I didn’t get much sewing done this week, but it was productive.  First, I finished Rainbow Selvages.

It finished at 60x72”. The backing is a piece of Tula Pink ponies fabric in gray and teal, and the binding is the same gray woodgrain fabric that I used on my Reading Rainbow quilt. I’m glad to have another Rainbow Scrap finish!  You can see other great work and finishes at the Scrappy Saturday linkup at Angela’s blog.

Reading Rainbow was also a Finish-Along goal of mine for 4th Quarter 2017.  It was #4 on the list published here.

And then I got Tulips basted. No quilting yet. With the Thanksgiving prep and celebration, I didn’t even get into the sewing room after Tuesday.

Yesterday, Black Friday, we took down and put away all the autumn decorations. But our first errand was to go to Costco, thinking we would be fighting crowds, to pick up a couple Fitbits (wristwatch-type fitness bands) for daughter Megan and me. We arrived 25 minutes early, thinking there would be lines for the 9:00 opening. But there weren’t. We sat in the car for 5 minutes, then did stand by the door for another 5 (third in the short line that was now forming), and at 8:45 they let us in. No mad rush. We got our 2 Fitbits, plus a couple Christmas movies, and there was not waiting even to check out.

So, we came home and moved the furniture out of the living room and then I vaccumed and we rolled up the big rug. I cleaned hardwood floors underneath and did a deep clean in the living room - shelving, windows, shutters.  Next, we rotated the rug, and then rearranged the furniture to make room for a Christmas tree. The guys brought up the boxes of decorations and the tree.  I did get all the decorations out, but lost steam and took a nap after that! Today I can set up and decorate the tree after I do some grocery shopping.

And then later today I will begin sewing the first clue to the On Ringo Lake mystery quilt from Bonnie Hunter. Fifty nine-patches. Christmas music is now allowed, and I’m excited to welcome back Michael Buble, Andrea Bocelli, The Chieftains, and Amy Grant (among others) to serenade me.

Have a wonderful week!

Two Flimsies and Some Dark Blocks

Ok, don’t tell me. You want to see the flimsies first. I know I would want to if that was what you posted on YOUR blog. So without further ado, here they are. (For the uninitiated, a flimsy is just a quilt top before it is sandwiched with batting, backing and quilted). 

This is my Rainbow Selvages quilt top. It was originally going to contain just 14 columns, but I added the brown column, extreme left, after adding the planned black and white (polka dot) column on the right. It measures 60x72”.  I like this so much more now that the top is complete. The texture is so much fun!  I have a couple choices for a backing, but have made no decisions yet on that or the binding. I think a fun scrappy binding might be the ticket if I have enough leftovers. Must go stash-diving!

The second flimsy is my autumn farm girl type sampler. Please excuse the distracting blue low-tack tape holding it up (in addition to pins); it is too large for my design board.  I probably should have just let it hang, but it makes it look wonky. 

I am pretty amazed at how this turned out. You see, some of the original blocks were made 3 (or was it 4?) years ago during the Vintage Farm Girl Quilt-Along. I was learning as I went, and the block sizes ranged from 12 1/8"  to 12 3/4”. They were supposed to be 12 1/2” unfinished. So first, some blocks had to be added to and of course everything trimmed. There went some points. And the 1” sashing didn’t leave much wiggle room. But it got done, slowly, imperfectly. Not a competition-level quilt by any means, but not bad.

Then, since I wanted the leaf fabric of the outer border, of which I only had one yard, to orient with the leaves falling down, the cutting was a challenge. That’s why there are cornerstones - there was not enough fabric without them! And then, when it was all sewn up, I measured the top. And nearly fell over. And measured again. The width at the top and bottom were exactly - EXACTLY - the same. Not an eighth of an inch difference! The length at the two sides had a 1/8" difference, which I don’t even care about. How the heck did THAT happen??? Anyway, if it looks wonky now, get over it. It isn’t!  YAY!!!

My plans are to get these two tops basted this weekend and maybe even quilt one. They are both on my Finish-Along Quarter 4 list, so they will get done before the end of the year!

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I want to thank you all for your thoughtful comments on my post last week about gathering and saving ideas for quilting projects (for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and quilting in general). And there were many great ideas and comments about scrap and fabric storage, settings, and organization. Thank you all so much!  And be sure to check out the rainbow lineup over at Angela’s So Scrappy blog. It’s Scrappy Saturday, and there are always great ideas and eye candy over there!

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By early in the week, I was digging into my scraps. Since Dark Neutrals (gray, black, brown) are the color of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I sorted all the colors and decided to play with the browns first.

First I made twelve 4.5” (unfinished) bow tie blocks. This brings me to 214 made of 304 needed. I’ll probably do a few dark gray and black ones, but these will carry over into next year.

And then I whipped out the brown strings and made four 8.5” string blocks and sewed them together.  

In fact, I sewed all my string blocks together into foursomes (like above) and took an inventory. It appears I have 12 more 8.5” string blocks to make: 2 orange (to finish up an orange foursome), 2 blue (to finish up a blue foursome) , then two more foursomes out of any of either red, green or purple, depending on what the scraps dictate. It would be quick work to finish this by year-end if I didn’t have so much ahead of it in line. But I may get to it by the end of the year. If not, it will finish up in the first quarter of 2018.

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And how fun is this??  Bruce had the day off Friday and we went grocery shopping together. I spotted these Lehi Roller Mills (a local Utah mill and bakery that makes great breads and mixes, etc) items on an end display at our local (Harmon’s) grocery store. What caught my attention? They are all in sacks of Lori Holt Vintage Christmas fabric! Lori, of course, is a local sew-lebrity fabric designer (for Riley Blake fabrics, also a Utah company). So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the collaboration. 

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Finally, I asked last week if any of you were participating in the Bonnie Hunter annual Mystery Quilt-Along, On Ringo Lake. It appears that several of us are!  Here is my fabric pull. I decided to go with grays instead of the browns that Bonnie suggested, mainly because I have grays. I could’ve gone out and bought some chocolate brown, but I’d rather use my stash. The grays look good with the colors, and it will all look better in our newly-remodeled living room.

Have a great week, and stay warm!

Rainbow Scrap Saturday

Last week I didn’t recap my pink scrap progress for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Saturday link-up because I wanted to work right up to the month end.  In the final few days I sewed together my small scraps and crumbs and made 5 blocks of 8.5” (unfinished) which will be saved for use in a future project.  So, now I am ready for my October pink scrappy recap.

The top row upper left is a quilt top I made of 6” vintage sheet squares. It will be finished for donation at a later date.  Then, the RSC pink blocks I made were: 24 Friendship Star variation blocks, 2 selvage columns, 3 bookcase blocks, 21 Plus blocks, 11 string blocks (on was from last year), 5 crumb blocks, 25 bowtie blocks (4.5”) and 3 Geese Migration blocks. My notes also say one miscellaneous block, but I can’t figure out what that is. But no matter, because I’m not counting the vintage sheet quilt top anyway. Total was 95 blocks. Remember, it was a long month!

I also finished two quilts:

READING RAINBOW

Pink Baby Donation Quilt

Then I made 2 doggie pillows for Best Friends Animal Society plus 14 kennel quilts for cats and small dogs. They will all be donated next week. Well, I am holding one back for Darla as she insists that she needs an “office” from which to supervise my work.

October was also good for me in my weight loss efforts. I lost 5.8 pounds, bringing my total to 26 pounds lost since mid-June. It’s slow, but then the weight didn’t appear overnight either. And this is a comfortable lifestyle change, so I am happy with my progress. I overdid it in the exercise department, though. Sheesh, you lose 20-something pounds and think you’ve lost the years along with it! Riding scooters and bikes, mountain hiking and pulling wagons full of kids and pumpkins are things I ought to work up to gradually. My back is taking longer to recover than I’d like, but it’s nothing some ibuprofen and a heating pad won’t fix.

And that brings me to November and our dark scraps. All I’ve managed to do with them so far is get them out and begin sorting. I will be making the final column for my Rainbow Selvages quilt, and maybe some string blocks. And then I’m going to have to find some use for these - maybe just piece something that could be used as a backing for a future donation quilt. We’ll see.

My brother and I scattered my mom’s ashes up in the Wasatch mountains near where we used to picnic when my kids were little. She loved it there. It was a cool but clear day, just beautiful. October 31 - the 11th anniversary of her death. It was also the day of one of my dear friend’s memorial service (in Nebraska). We had just vacationed with her and her husband in September in Colorado, so Colleen was on my mind and in my heart that day too.

Finally, for those of you who visit mostly on Saturdays for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I have a link for you HERE to a post I wrote earlier in the week about my process for collecting ideas and sorting through them and my scraps. I hope we all share a curiosity about where others get their ideas and how they select their projects. To say nothing of scrap storage. Anyway, I’d love to have you take a hop over to that post to read not only the post but the comments. And please leave your comments, too!

Have a great, scrappy week!  Is anyone else planning to participate in Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt this year? Are you going to stick with her color scheme or make changes?

Reading Rainbow Quilt Finished!

I am so thrilled that I finished my Reading Rainbow quilt this weekend! It has been 10 months in the works - since we started with purple in January for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Every month I’ve added blocks of books in the color of the month according to a plan I drew out ahead of time.

The quilt was constructed with 5 12” blocks per row. Some rows, like green, orange, and yellow are all one color - because I had more of those scraps in my stash. Other rows combine colors like purple and black, red and pink, and teal and blues. And here and there I tried to add in little whimsical bits of interest; a mouse, a fishbowl, a globe, flowers, etc. All designs were pulled from my warped own imagination except that awesome Laurel Burch cat on the yellow row.

The “wood” shelves are 2” (finished) wide and the outer borders were cut at 3”. Even the back has the same Joel Dewberry woodgrain fabric, except where I had to supplement with a plain Kona gray. My husband Bruce was kind enough to haul a chair out to our colorful flowering pear tree in front. He graciously stood on the chair holding the quilt so I could snap pictures.

The finished quilt measures 66x86”. The batting is Warm & Plush cotton (my favorite), and I used a basic stipple quilting pattern. No surprise there, but there was a method to my madness. Let me show you.

The book titles were taken from fabric selvages. Most of the time, but not always, selvages are woven more tightly than the fabric itself in order to prevent fraying on the bolt. And that is one of the reasons we trim selvages - they will shrink (or not) at different rates than the main fabric. When I sewed on the selvages, I reduced my the stitches on my machine to a 1.0 length - very tiny. That doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be fraying; I fully expect that there will be fraying over the first couple washings to those seam lines.

So that’s where the stippling came in. It was another opportunity to go over the selvages with more stitches, as Alfie points out here...

And here....

And.....whoops!

It appears my Supervisor got a bit sidetracked with the camera strap ....

Now, where were we? Oh yes..... stippling. So, all in all, it seemed to make the most sense and give me the best maneuverability to get everything secured as best I could.

Reading Rainbow will be my own quilt to “read” and cuddle with this winter. It also represents a finish for the 4th Quarter 2017 Finish-Along. It is my goal #3. The link to my list is here. 

Thanks for dropping by! I will show another finish (a pink baby quilt) on my next post and catch you up with my other works in process.