Fall Cleaning

Did you feel the earth rumble or hear the angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus? This week I began my fall cleaning! And by Fall Cleaning, you’d think that would be an annual event, like, um, every fall or something. But you’d be wrong. This is actually more of a periodic purging, a dynamic decluttering or a kool KonMari kaper.  I think we can all be grateful at this moment that my alliterator has conked out. Mary Anne, I’m looking at you when I say this is all your fault! (wink)

Actually, we’re beginning The Official Downsizing of the Aged. Specifically, this weekend we’ll be getting rid of an old beat-up computer work station and a double bed. My two sons are coming over to do the actual work. My computer work station in our downstairs office will be replaced by an old desk that is currently situated in my sewing studio. The desk is in its fourth life now and is a beastly heavy solid maple thing. It was my son’s desk in its third life, my desk in its second life, and my mom’s desk in  its first life. Yeah, it’s almost a hundred years old. After the desk shuffle, there will be a bed shuffle upstairs. Our old double bed (mattress, box spring and frame) will join the battered work station outside where they will await re-homing by 1-800-Got-Junk. The guest room daybed (with pop-up trundle to make a double bed) will move into the master bedroom. That will leave the guest bedroom almost empty so I can shampoo the carpet and set up the kitties’ own lair. There are a couple old armchairs in the downstairs bedroom that may join them. I’m torn between getting rid of everything now or waiting until spring to have a monster huge yard sale. We’ll see...

But in between emptying drawers and removing a foot of dust off the old junk, I did manage to get some stitching done. I quilted two kids’ quilts for Quilts for kids, so they’ll join the five other donation quilts that I’ll be dropping off this morning before The Great Reshuffle begins. I made a serious dent in my yellow scraps this week sewing blocks and things for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s yellow October. 

First, here are 27 yellow string blocks (I had a lot of strings) at 6.5” unfinished size.

Then I began tackling the little scraps, sewing them into panels to make another scrap basket.

Here it is on the shelf with the yellow and orange fabrics and the orange scrap basket. 

When that was done, I made three Beachcomber blocks.

That completed all the blocks I need to assemble this Rainbow Scrap quilt top. It will be waiting its turn in  the assembly line, probably in December.  But here is a sampling of some of the blocks that represent all the colors.

Also, with Cousin Kim’s help, we got a better picture of Tyrol, the quilt I finished last week.

And just for a laugh, I have to share this picture. When I was clearing out the old clothing storage under the bed, I found my old majorette costume from high school. We were the Royal Oak Romans (Royal Oak High School, Covina, California, Class of ‘72) and our school colors were blue and gold. This was a halter style, backless and left virtually nothing to the imagination. 

And my Letterman’s (Letterwoman’s?) Sweater

These are going to the thrift store, because I know my kids will have no interest in them (and who can blame them?). They may just make a funny Halloween costume for someone...

Tyrol Quilt Finished!

Hooray! I put the last stitches in the binding of Tyrol yesterday late afternoon. It was too late in the day to take any nice photos outdoors, but that will hopefully be something that Bruce and I can figure out today. I have to be the holder-upper while he photographs (since his arm surgery). But that’s OK if I can find a good place in the yard to photograph. In the meantime, though, these pictures taken in my studio will have to do.

Tyrol finished at 67” x 82”, before laundering. 

The focus fabric around which the color scheme was built, is an old Amy Butler print from her Lark fabric line some 6-8 years ago. The camera sees it as more blue than the jade/teal it really is.

For the quilting, which was done on my Bernina, I chose a loopy design that included three-petal leaf (or petal) motifs scattered throughout. The outer border was done in a double-loop vine. Nothing too fancy, but the curves were a nice contrast to the angles and points of the pieced flowers. It took me three sessions of quilting on three different afternoons to get it done. 

The backing is a two-toned orange print that my DIL Kim and I selected together. The binding is the same jade focus print. 

I washed the quilt after these pictures were taken, so any subsequent pictures from today will show the quilt as more soft and crinkly. 

Tyrol will go to Paula, who is my DIL’s mom. It was a pleasure to sew this as a Christmas present for her, because we all adore her (me, Bruce, and my son Ryan - she’s his MIL). 

Next I’ll be sewing a few borders on this Christmas truck panel quilt for my brother. I’m keeping it really simple with no additional outer blocks. I’ll just add plain borders to bring it up to a good size, then back it with a closely-matching print of tossed trucks.. Badda-bing, Badda-boom. Done before you know it. 

I’m hoping to show this quilt as a finish next week so I can get on to the next Christas quilt, which will be for Paula’s husband Bill (AKA my son Ryan’s father-in-law). 

But there was plenty of Rainbow Scrap sewing this past week. My yellow scraps had really accumulated because I sewed a lot of quilts with yellow and/or gold in them over the last year. I’m linking to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s So Scrappy blog. 

16 Twin Sisters blocks at 6.5” (unfinished) each. 

After sewing them, I had 113 out of the 120 I needed to make a quilt measuring 60x72”. So I just pulled some mixed-color fabric chunks and sewed the remaining 7 blocks. 

The block on the top left was made from four little remnant strips I had from a border I’d sewn for Quilts for Kids. So all those blocks are done! Now they'll join their brethren - oops, I guess they’ll be joining their “sisters” since they are called Twin Sisters blocks - to be stitched into a quilt top after the Christmas obligations are sewn.

And then I moved on to the Split Nine blocks. They, too, are a 6.5” size, and I sewed 18 of them.

Of these Split Nines, I’ve sewn 104 out of the minimum 120 I’ll need. However, I may need to sew more depending on how I decide to set them. At any rate, I started these in March, so I still have a couple colors to add to them next year, most notably orange. I’ll probably also add a few light greens. We’ll see what the setting design dictates.

On a personal note, there’s not much new here. The weather is still warm (too warm for autumn), but the leaves are changing. Bruce is still going weekly to the occupational therapist and learning more fine motor skills with his bio-mechanical arm and hook. I had a mammogram that came back fine, but now I have to schedule my annual physical. Ugh. We are digging up the last of the garden - the tomatoes - today. Actually, Bruce is doing that and I’m bringing in yard decorations and the remaining flower pots. Many of my roses are blooming again so I’ll cut some and make an indoor bouquet. Have a great week!

Pedal to the Metal

It’s been a busy week of sewing for me as I ramp up to finish at least four good-sized quilts by mid-December. I also finished sewing up all my remaining selvages, which kinda-sorta just happened. I had gone through all my selvages and added a large bag of them to Cynthia Brunz’s selvage giveaway for last month’s Quilty Orphan Adoption. (And speaking of that, I drew another name - Karen T. - for the other quilt pieces I was giving away. We got all the particulars arranged and they’re on their way to her now). 

But getting back to the selvages, I sewed up all the yellow and gold ones to make 10 half hexagon blocks. The leftovers that were too narrow were sewn into columns of varying widths. I just tried to keep them as wide as possible for now.  That was my start on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month for October. I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog. 

After that, I thought I would tackle the brown selvages since there weren’t too many. But many of them were really long, so it made 15 half hexies and a couple pieced columns.

On Monday, I decided to keep going with the gray selvages. Seven half hexies and two little columns.

Well, that hardly took any time, so it was on to my black selvages.  8 half hexies and a small column.

Where there are black selvages, there are most certainly white and black selvages. Yeah. A LOT of white and black selvages.....  Yawn. These were pretty boring. But wow did they ever clear out my selvage storage! The result was 12 half hexies and two little pieced columns.  I think that did it for Monday.

But on Tuesday, all I had left were the multi-colored selvages.  By golly, I was going to empty that selvage bin if it killed me.  It didn’t. I made THIS MANY:

OK, OK, I’ll count them.... 37. And the smaller bits sewn into the three columns below.

If you heard me whooping and hollering on Tuesday, it was because I was either doing the No More Selvages Happy Dance or I was watching the Un-Presidential “Debate”.  No, I’m not going any further with that. 

The selvages are all gone. But it will be 2021 before I start planning and figuring out how to sew them all together. My guess is that I have enough for at least two quilts - and three or more if I combine them with regular fabric. Stay tuned for that.

On Wednesday, I realized I had enough scraps in my yellow bin to make two Scraptastic Star blocks, so I did just that. Here’s the yellow one:

And here’s the gold one.

That brings me up to the 12 blocks I needed for a complete quilt. Here they are slapped up on the design wall. They will be sewn together after all the Christmas obligations are done. The blocks aren’t trimmed up yet - I prefer to wait until just before sewing them together. 

My personal goal for September was to finish the Tyrol quilt top, which I accomplished on the 30th. Whew! I forgot to link up to the One Monthly Goal linky party, but I still accomplished my goal, which is the point. Here’s the Tyrol top.

I just LOVE it! 

Yesterday I sewed up the backing for Tyrol. My first and primary order of business today is to get everything pressed, layered and basted. The hardest part for me will be narrowing down then deciding on a quilting design (and practicing it on a practice piece before committing to the quilt). I’m going to try to force myself to stretch a bit with this. Wish me luck. I don’t want to have to come back next week and report that I chickened out and did my default loops or stipple! 

End of the Red, Red Road

 Hi all. I hope you’re all recovering from the sad news of the week. We are still reeling and feeling all the emotions - sad, angry, hopeless, determined. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an icon and champion for equal rights for women. There are so many adjectives to describe her life, her work and her spirit. She will be sorely missed and greatly mourned. I don’t have the words to even begin to describe what her loss means to women and girls and open-minded and fair people of all genders. So I won’t even try.  Yesterday I went through my collection of vintage lace collars and pulled a half dozen that are good RBG reminders. In addition to wearing one often between now and the election (especially in public in this red state), I’m going to offer them to my family and friends who have a daughter or granddaughter who may want to dress up as RBG.

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This past week I finished up my red Creature quilt, Creature With the Ruby Shades. See those cracker blocks, two in each corner? They rather look like sunglasses to me. Yes, I know I have an overactive imagination.

This quilt polished off all my red scraps, including those two red squares with a surfer and shark that Sally sent me. In fact, this quilt was almost named Creature From the Red Surf. Also, I should point out that I see the misssssnake I made with the placement of the bottom right corner strings block. I noticed it when I had laid out the pieces in last week’s picture, and I thought I had fixed it. But noooooo..... Alas, it will remain misssnaken for life.  Creature finished at 42.5 x 50” and was quilted with a simple stipple.

The background and binding is this delightful red gingham print. I have lots more of that and look forward to working with it again.

At month-end I usually do my roundup of Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks in the color of the month. I know it’s not month-end yet, but this is the last Scrappy Saturday of the month, so here goes.

Top Row: Scrap Basket, 7 International Sisters blocks, 1 Waffle test block for 2021 RSC

Middle Row: 19 selvage half hexies (I don’t count the solid pieces), 24 strings blocks, 13 Twin Sisters

Bottom Row: 14 Split Nines, 1 Scraptastic Star and 2 Beachcomber blocks

That’s 82 blocks, plus the red Creature quilt. Oh! and I’ve finished all the Tyrol blocks too. Here are the last four. They now total 20.

I will try to finish sewing the top before the end of the month (four more days!) I have all the sashing and cornerstones cut, so it’ll be pedal to the metal time for the few days. This is a sample - just pinned up on the design board - of what the blocks will look like with the sashing and cornerstones.

My daughter-in-law and I went shopping yesterday and picked up some nice orange print fabric for the backing. So this quilt will be entering the Serious Construction phase soon! And that’s good, because there are three more Christmas quilts waiting in the wings for their turn under the needle.

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QUILTY ORPHAN ADOPTION - WINNER!

On Thursday morning as scheduled, we drew the name of the winner of my Quilty Orphan Adoption giveaway. (The event coordinator was Cynthia of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework). The winner is NIKKI. I have sent her two emails at the email address she gave, but have not heard back from her yet. I’ll give her until Sunday evening to contact me. If I don’t hear from her by then, we will draw another name. Nikki, if you’re reading this, check your spam folder and contact me immediately! Thanks! 

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Finally, how about a cute cat picture? Because cute cats make everything better. At least that’s what Alfie says!

Linking to Oh Scrap! At Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.

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. 

Red September Sewing

Another week has flown by and all I have to show for it are a bunch of vegetables in the freezer (and in our tummies) and some quilt blocks. But it was really an interesting week. 

The hot Labor Day long weekend (during which we had some family and grandkids visits) gave ‘way to cold temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday. Our temperature variation wasn’t as drastic as Colorado’s, but we did go from mid-nineties (F) down to the low forties within 24 hours. Horrendous winds (up to 100 mph) on Tuesday left thousands without power in Salt Lake City and areas north. Hundreds of trees were torn from the ground and branches snapped. We had a little damage in our neighborhood (not us personally; thankfully we’d just had all the trees pruned), but Cousin Kim in SLC lost a huge tree and a major branch on her apricot tree. Her whole yard, front and back, was littered knee-deep in branches blown in from all over the neighborhood. We had friends without power for a couple days as well. 

As scary as all that wind was, it’s nothing compared to what is happening in California, Oregon and the entire West with all the devastating fires. I grew up in Southern California and remember some scary fire seasons (1962 and 1977), and even remember, as a child, seeing the mountains north of us in the San Gabriel Valley - the foothill cities of Azusa, Monrovia, Arcadia, Sierra Madre and others - glowing red in the dark. Now some of those same areas are on fire again - and, unfortunately, many more. Those fires of decades past, however, were nothing compared to the devastation of 2018 and now 2020. Every year grows hotter and deadlier. Currently California is dealing with huge and deadly infernos, which include three of the four largest fires in California history. And prime fire season in Cali goes through October because of the warm autumns and the Santa Ana winds. My heart goes out to those who are dealing with the fires in the West, even if it is “only” the smoke and orange skies. Be safe, people, and know that the rest of us will do whatever we can to aid you in getting through this.

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Ok, so after that, having a counter-ful of tomatoes to make into sauce seems like a breeze! I don’t have any pictures, but there was also a lot of yellow squash, spaghetti squash, green beens, carrots, onions and grapes to deal with. I think the neighbors draw the blinds when they see me coming, LOL. Seriously, I’m so glad that one of our neighbors has rabbits - because we grew enough carrots to feed all the humans AND rabbits on the block!

But there was plenty of sewing, too. It’s my sanity. I just dug into those red scraps and didn’t come up for air until I had made lots of progress this week. I’ll be linking up to Angela’s blog for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge’s Scrappy Saturday. 

Fourteen Split Nine blocks (6.5”):

Two (11.5”) Beachcomber blocks:

And one red Scrap Bucket:

That was going to be all, but then I got going on my red strings and just couldn’t stop.

Twenty-four red string blocks at 6.5” (to finish at 6”). Some of these will probably get used in my red Creature Quilt (single-color quilt that I’ve been making every month). I don’t have that much red in my block orphanage, so this is what the makings of the Red Creature quilt is starting with:

There’s an 8.5” string block from last year that may get cut down. We’ll see. I also have a few more scraps that I’ll be cutting into more 3.5” squares to take up some area. So with that, the additional string blocks and possibly some of the red selvage half hexie blocks, I should have enough to do a small donation quilt. I’ve got a couple weeks to work on it. I also have some red International Sister blocks to sew. 

Darla wanted to help me with the red scraps, but she was too busy watching Kitten Academy on You Tube. We are really big fans of little Bessie, the wobbly kitten. Here’s Darla engrossed in the kitten tunnel antics. Notice that the tunnel is red! 

Finally, I didn’t forget my Tyrol blocks. I’ve been challenging myself to finish four of these every week so that once I get all 20 sewn, I can stitch up the flimsy (with sashing and cornerstones and borders) by month-end. Here are my four for this week.

Yep, they’re starting to look like repeats because, well, that’s the idea. But I can prove to you that I’ve now sewn 12 of the 20 needed.

Of the remaining 8 blocks, all are repeats of the above colors with the exception of one block in dark pink. 

We had a visit to the prosthetist for Bruce to get his arm adjusted. It sounds funny to say that, but most of you know by now that I mean his prosthetic arm. Tweaks and adjustments. It’s a process that will continue until his stump is done stabilizing (shrinking). And I got a fun fabric order from Connecting Threads for a quilt for my son Ryan for Christmas. I’ll show that in a couple months when I start on it - I have three other Christmas quilts to finish first. 

This morning I’ll be preparing the meat and marinade for fajitas tonight. I also bought strawberries at the store yesterday so I can use them with the last of my frozen rhubarb chunks to make strawberry-rhubarb compote. We’ll have that with the fajitas tonight because the freezer is already filled with gobs (technical term) of compote. And I’ll also be prepping a batch of six Egg McMuffins (English muffins, Canadian bacon, eggs, cheese) to freeze for Bruce’s lunches as needed. I like having them on hand for him. And I’m getting a real hankering for baked apples and some zucchini bread so I’m sure they are in the weekend cooking forecast, too.  All that plus some sewing on Sunday should keep me out of trouble. Ha! We’ll see.