TGIJ - Thank Goodness it’s June

The ark we’re building is coming along nicely. Bruce has decided that a cubit is roughly equivalent to a rock (as in “whiskey on the rocks”) and we’ve been measuring our drinks with those in mind. Our ark(s) look suspiciously like our bicycles, however, and that’s probably a good thing. The weather is finally forecast for some days without rain this week. Looks like we may be pedaling instead of paddling in June.

This week was a crazy one again, and I am dead pooped. The Utah Shop Hop (quilt shop visits all up and down the Wasatch Front) has been going on, and I am the designated driver. Not because we drink (except coffee), but because Guy Smiley (our car; don’t ask) is much more youthful than Cousin Kim’s car (which is, sadly, nameless).  I have to show you a picture from one of the shops on the Shop Hop, the theme of which was Fairy Tales this year. This was a cute display at Little Red Riding Hood’s place.
 

It didn’t seem as crowded to us this year, and we only visited about half the shops we usually do (and that took two whole days). However, the bargains were good. One shop had FQs at 10/$20, another had them 6/$13.50 and still another had them for Buy 3 get 1 free (at $3.50 each, so that was 4/$10.50). Normally I don’t go wild with fat quarters, but since I’m looking for some fabrics to use on some of the collage quilts I’ll start working on soon, that worked out well. Plus, there’s always that one fabric you can’t resist, you know?

Also, last night we attended the first outdoor concert of the year at the amphitheater at Red Butte Gardens. I wanted to go last summer to see Jackson Browne, but he was scheduled there while I was in Africa). This time we went to see one of Bruce’s longtime favorites, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. And we got lucky; the rain held off until we got home (late).

It’s not a very good picture, and you can see some of the lights and smoke effects on the stage. But it was really fun and a great concert. Next time we’ll know to bring our own wine.

On the sewing front, I sewed up three new-to-me blocks, the International Sisters. These are the three I came up with. They are so easy and much larger than I anticipated (unfinished size is 10.5”, and they will be set on point like this):

The middle one is a Kaffe Fasset fabric, and the other two are from my (authentic) African fabric collection. I plan to make these in mostly (but not wholly) African fabrics for a quilt for myself. I also want to begin making these from some of the other African-like fabric that was generously given to me by my friend S (I need to ask her if it’s OK if I mention who she is and the generous gift she sent me). They will be used to make wall-hangings (back to back with some authentic African fabric from Kenya) to make double-sided African wall hangings as a funding source for Harambe Humanitarian.

I love these blocks so much!!

And, as always, I have to tally up my Rainbow Scrap Challenge for the month. I’m linking up (late) to Scrappy Saturday and also to Oh Scrap! on Sunday.

So, in addition to the three International Sisters blocks, I made all the blocks you see in the picture above. I’m not going to list them all because I know you don’t need to read all that. The blocks for May (sometimes a “block” is a row, a chunk) numbered 79.

I also finished two quilts in May (see my Quilts 2019 tab just below the blog header) and am about two thirds done quilting Good Fortune. I expect that will finish in the coming week and be my first finish of June. So now I’m gearing up for a Blue June (medium to dark shades). Bring on the scraps!

But first let me catch my breath and get a good night’s sleep.... AAAAAAND just as I go to post this, I hear the rain starting again....

Teal Time

Hi! I can’t believe another week has rolled around this fast. Summer is in full swing here, with temps in the nineties and the flowers and veggies all snug and happy in their warm beds. We’ve already been eating rhubarb (a spring harvest) and radishes and spinach. The apricot tree keeps dropping occasional green apricots to the ground, so it gives me hope that there are some where I can’t see them and they will eventually ripen. Then I may need to fight the birds to get any, but I guess we’ll see how that goes. Just my luck they’ll ripen when I’m in Kenya in a month....

But for now, let’s talk about the color teal (aqua, blue-green, turquoise, etc). I got lots of sewing done this week on my Rainbow Scrap color for June. I’m joining up with Angela’s Scrappy Saturday and look forward to seeing what other quilters around the world are making with their teal scraps!

First we have three Linked Squares blocks (16.5” each, unfinished)

And next up are the selvage squares. I made 17 in the 6.5” size and then with the remaining scraps made 6 in the 4.5” size.

And this month’s Squared Away Sampler, courtesy of Mari (Academic Quilter), is this lovely little number. They actually remind me of the Irish Chain blocks I’ll be doing for my Lattice Birds Quilt. Anyway, I made two of these that will finish at 10” each.

I did some other sewing this week, but nothing exciting. I added some lace to the hem of a blouse I recently purchased in order to make it longer. Then on a pair of cargo shorts I have, the pocket tops kept flipping up. Since I don’t need the pockets on the legs to be useful, I stitched them closed. And finally, I did some mending for my DDIL. All of the clothes stuff was in preparation for our Kenya trip next month. Later in the week I’m going to do a separate post about the humanitarian group we’re going with, some of the things we’re collecting to take along, and all the other preparation going on. It’s been crazy!

But I’ll leave you with a picture from the Shop Hop that cousin Kim and niece Jenny and I joined in on last week. The theme was Party Time, and each shop had a different party theme, like Girls Night Out, Slumber Party, Halloween Party, Luau, High School Reunion, Hootenanny, etc. These pictures were taken at the Slumber Party at Pine Needles quilt shop in West Jordan - one of our favorites. We thought this was a cute idea for photos....

Jenny and Kim

Kim and Cathy

That’s it for now. I do check in daily on my Blogger dashboard and read your comments. They are always appreciated. I know we’re all still waiting for Blogger to get their act together and solve the commenting email issue. You’d think that something as big as the implementation of the GDPR would have been planned for. But obviously they didn’t. Anyway, I will make time this week to go hunting through my old files to dig up email addresses and cut/paste/reply manually where I can.

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!

Sewing a Yellow Brick Road

This past week has been so crazy busy, but delightfully so. It started off with Memorial Day on Monday. Bruce worked at the museum and I worked out in the yard. On Tuesday I basted my flag quilt (picture later in the post), but I had to clean the floors first, of course. I also stopped in at at 2 local quilt shops and spent the $20 (plus $5 of my own money) that was given to me last week by Jannis for the kennel quilts. They are pictured here, and the plaid (2 yards) is a flannel. The rest will mix and match nicely with my existing gold-starred backgrounds and other assorted cat-themed fabrics in my stash.

Wednesday was daughter Emily’s visit with her kids, as they are moving to Colorado this weekend. It’s hard to see them leave, but at least we will be visiting them in September.

Then on Thursday was my grandson Easton’s high school graduation. They held the ceremonies about 40 minutes south of us down in Utah County (in Orem, next to Provo). Let me tell you that someone screwed up badly when they set up the bleachers in the auditorium. I am all of 5’5”, and my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me. Plus the seats were all inclined forward. It was torture, literally. I lasted an hour before I had to get up, creaking and numb, to stand in the aisle instead. As soon as Easton was handed his diploma, I was OUT OF THERE. But the freeway onramp was shut down due to an accident, so I had to kill some time. Can you say SHOP HOP???  American Quilting was right a few blocks away, and so naturally I had to visit. They had a great sale room where fabrics were $4.99 per yard. And they were part of our annual Utah Shop Hop, which ran from Wednesday the 31st to today, June 3.

Finally, on Friday my sweet friend Terri and I officially went shop hopping. We visited five stores and had lunch at Gardner Village.  I’ll show you my treasures momentarily, but first, let’s talk Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I am linking to Angela’s Scrappy Saturday, so hop on over to see all the rainbow goodness. Our color for June is Yellow!

    

So, here on the right are my two “yellow brick roads”. Actually they are the gold and the yellow columns for my selvage rainbow quilt.  On the left, they are stitched in color order with last month’s two green columns and the teal column. That should give you an idea of what the quilt is going to look like. There will eventually be 2 orange columns, a red and 2 pinks on the left of the gold, and then a blue, 2 purples and one other dark neutral - either brown or gray - on the right. A total of 14 columns.

OK, so here are my Shop Hop treasures. I still get occasional commissions as a lace broker, and this week my biggest client placed an order, so part of it funded my fabric purchases (shopping spree!) and the rest went in the savings. Yay!

Above: Free patterns from each shop, plus collectible pins. I bought 4 yards of the crayon fabric to use as a background for the crayon quilt I’m making. Then the blue cat fabric was in the sale room at American Quilting.

In the picture above, the green is much brighter/richer than the picture shows. It’s 4 yards of flannel for an autumn quilt I’m planning.  The stripe is a large piece for the back of Bruce’s guitar quilt, which I am busy planning out. It will begin this summer. The floral will just go in the stash and the Christmas fabric (I’m such a sucker for holly fabrics) will be pillowcases or a quilt back or something. Oh, and the wild blue one is another Tula Pink "Tabby Lane" fabric, the last one I wanted for my next personal cat quilt, whenever that happens.

Kaffe Fasset fabrics, above: Only the FQs along the top were purchased during the Shop Hop. The Layer Cake (also in the top row) was an order from Missouri Star Quilt Co, and the yardage was from early in May when I took advantage of a sale at one of the LQS’s.

   

The above pieces and FQs are random purchases, but some are intended for future projects. And I couldn’t resist the Florence Flamingo pattern. My DGD Lauren loves flamingoes (who doesn’t?) and may get a quilt for Christmas.

Finally, here is my in-progress Flag Quilt. I am just doing “organic” wavy lines. “Organic” here means not measured; random. Once it’s washed, who will notice or care?  I’m about three quarters done, so it will finish up this weekend and I’ll have a full reveal next week.

So that, my friends, was my week. Last year for the RSC, yellow month was later in the year and I started and made my yellow crayon and yellow strip blocks. So, after I do the yellow bookshelf and assorted other smallish blocks for this year, I may start on an all-yellow quilt. I have been planning a pineapple quilt for awhile, so we’ll have to see how that goes. I may finish up my crayon quilt instead, or my Farmgirl quilt. So many choices!

Have a great week!


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Catching Up (or....Seduced by Instagram)

Hi all,  it has been a busy month for all of us I am sure. Here we saw school get out and the garden go in.  We have had family gatherings, a day spent at Plant Con (the local water conservancy district has wonderful gardens, displays and classes) and helped our grown kids move into new digs. As well, I did the local Utah Shop Hop with my cousins (nieces, really) and have been sewing my brains out.  Aha! you say..... that is where they went....

First, a couple pix from the Utah Shop Hop, where the theme this year was Quilts Over Broadway. Each of the 13-14 shops were themed after a Broadway play, like West Side Story, Grease, Paint Your Wagon, Wizard of Oz and Little Shop of Horrors.

Here we are (L-R: Kim, me, Jen) as Oz characters:

The highlight of our 2-day trip around the state to visit the shops was seeing lots of Lori Holt’s quilts displayed at Thimbles and Threads. And in fact, I will be attending a 3.5-day retreat there next week with Lori herself...

And, it’s time to post the Farmgirl blocks (from her book and above quilt) that I have worked on, two per week, for the last three weeks....

Churn Dash

Corn and Tomatoes

Cool Threads

Country Crossroads

Crops

Egg Basket

I have learned (from Crops, above) that these photograph much cleaner (straighter) when laying down rather than being hung by pins from my design board....

I’ve also sewn, but have not pictures of, a small ironing pad for my travel iron and a quilted mat for my sewing machine with pockets for scissors, etc.  Both of those will be used regularly here at home and also at the Retreat next week.

Garden News:  Two pix of my back yard showing our climbing roses and our garden grow boxes.  You can see how small the garden was about 3 weeks ago when the roses peaked. Then, how much the garden veggies grew by the time the roses were waning. Now, with the roses needing deadheading so they will re-bloom, the garden is even bigger, but no pix of that for now.

Rose glory

waning roses, growing veggies

Lately I’m feeling so discombobulated because I have been taking some pictures with my camera, some with my iPad and some with my iPhone. The latter two I can, and do, use for Instagram, where I seem to keep more up to date with my sewing postings. The camera pix are mostly for my Etsy and sometimes the blog.  But sometimes I need my iPhone/iPad pix here on the blog, then I have to email them to myself, and they will not save in the new Photos section on my iMac (thanks a lot, Apple). In short, I have pix scattered about here and there..... *deep sigh*

By the way, you can follow me on Instagram. I am   @cathy_k_in_ut
I have more to blog about, including a quilt finish, but I am going to put that in a separate post.  Also, I have NOT given up on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but hope to begin working with my light blue and aqua scraps (June`s monthly color) this weekend....

Finally, I am closing out most of my Etsy Shop (see link at right). As soon as I get back from the Lori Holt retreat next weekend, I will begin a 20% off sale on all merchandise; lace, fancy fabric packs, vintage patterns, vintage sheet fabrics, etc - even clearance.  The percentage off may increase as time goes on (and inventory decreases).  The plan is to convert the shop to vintage sheets/fabrics, vintage sewing patterns, and vintage linens only. Lace will always be my special love, but I have commercial clients now that I must focus on instead of the shop.  So, watch for that sale!!!

Whew!  See you soon!

Hugs,