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! 

Hustle and Bustle

We had so many things on our plates this week that the word “busy” just didn’t cut it. Luckily, a lot of that busy-ness was time spent with friends and family. 

In my last post, I showed what happened to our ornamental pear tree in the front yard. One of its main limbs broke off (Bruce says he relates, LOL). That happened before the damage of Hurricane Isaias on the east coast, so I’m not complaining about our minor mishap. It’s nothing compared to what so many thousands are going through now, and my heart goes out to them.

Our lawn guys moved the downed branch out of the way to mow and edge the lawn. They gave us a very reasonable bid for pruning our trees and bushes, clearing the grapevines off the patio roof, and going through our flower beds (front and two side yards) and removing all the weeds and grass, plus trimming down all the spent perennials. All that work took place yesterday (Friday). We were up at 7am to put in a morning of work in alongside the guys. I deadheaded roses and tended to my flower pots and Bruce weeded the garden and harvested vegetables. Then we got our showers, had lunch and spent the entire afternoon at two different appointments for Bruce. Well, he did. I drove, then napped in the car with the air conditioning on. Our vehicle is a hybrid, so it doesn’t idle. The engine comes on periodically to recharge the battery, but that’s it.

Cousin Kim came over to sew last Sunday. We decided that after 4-plus months of both our families isolating, practicing stringent social distancing and masking up, that we could safely merge our two family bubbles. Her granddaughters will be going back to school online, so once that was decided, we all relaxed.  Kim fell in love with the Zipper blocks, and has started making some. She’s addicted too!  I made ten more blocks this week. The first six are the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month - purple.

And here are all ten of them together. That brown guitar fabric also became additional masks for Bruce and our granddaughter Lauren, who plays the guitar. I made another nine masks this week for various family members. With school and autumn coming, and no end of Covid in sight until next year at the earliest, it seemed like a good time to supplement everyone’s supply.

On Thursday we got to visit our long-time family friend Terri, who recently had shoulder surgery. It was heartwarming to see her again as it’s been 3 months. She visited us out on the patio shortly after Bruce’s arm was amputated. It was beyond great to catch up. Terri and Mike (her late husband who was Bruce’s lifelong best friend) are about as close to being family as anyone can be, and we’ve missed our visits. 

In between visits and yard work, I did get time to sew more purple stuff. Here are my selvage half-hexie blocks along with some fabric half hexies (maybe I should just call them trapezoids?)

I’m not sure if I’m going to sew them in horizontal rows like this or whether I’ll do them in vertical rows. I think I’ll just wait until I’ve been through all the selvage colors, and then play. My guess is that there might be enough to make two or more quilts.

Moving along, I also sewed some Twin Sisters blocks. Have I mentioned how much I love these? Yeah, probably every month! Twelve blocks made in purples.

I also had some time to make three blocks for my August One Monthly Goal quilt. I sewed the yellow spinner block in the top right, the red folded box block in the second row (leftmost), and the aqua block at the bottom. And I played with red for the sashing. What do you think? I like its bold brightness. It really amps up the youth feel, which I like for this donation quilt. Here are things just pinned up on the design board. The red sashing will also be used for an outer border. Just two blocks left to sew. Their designs and colors are already selected.

Also this week, our toaster and my portable small iron died. I guess if we count the fallen tree limb, that makes three bad things this week, so I have high hopes for a quiet week next week. We had replacements in hand the next day thanks to Amazon Prime. Here is the new iron, posing with my new (last month) wool ironing mat (I love it) and my newest little furry squirrel friend. 

That cute little squirrel panel came from Sally with the scraps I won a couple months ago. It will become a wall hanging before fall. But isn’t that plushie CUTE? I saw it at the grocery store in the gift section and couldn’t resist. The cats’ reaction? Totally uninterested. 

I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog. Today Blogger isn’t letting me center my pictures in the post. It’s always something with them, isn’t it? 

Attitude is Everything

My friend Terri keeps reminding me of what her grandmother used to say:

This has come to pass, not to stay.

I love Terri! Those words are helping me keep my attitude positive during these trying times. You know, these “fun" times when we’re all quarantined to avoid a killer pandemic while our husband is hospitalized from a major cancer surgery and we can’t visit.

But Bruce is doing very well and will be coming home on Monday. The surgery was 8 hours long and the three surgeons took veins from his left leg to transplant to his right forearm where they removed two cancerous nodules and an artery. He has good blood flow in his hand, no blood clots (they’ve monitored him closely) and a top-flight medical team. The floor he is on is dedicated to post-op recoveries; no Covid-19 patients or staff. We talk twice daily by video chat, and he is back to his silly, wise-cracking self. I miss him and so do the cats. Alfie lays in Bruce’s recliner regularly, keeping it warm for him. And both he and Darla sleep with me at night to cuddle and protect me.

But let’s talk about sewing! There was some of that going on this week, although (understandably, given the above), not as much as usual. I posted a couple finishes mid-week. Since then, Angela at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge posted our April color, light blue. Too close to March’s aqua for my personal preference, but I can do this! We’re used to the days running on and on in sameness, so this actually fits right in! We all have those scraps that need to be sewn, so let’s buckle down and get to it!

I did whip my way through all my light and bright blue selvages and tamed them into a lot of half hexagons. There are about 16-18 of them, plus one long strip of leftover bits. I’ll count them before month-end.

The rest of the scraps have been sorted and I’ve got a nice big pile of light blue strips to make blocks out of. The Twin Sisters blocks have been cut (no picture) as well as lots of 2.5” squares for my Scraptastic Star and Split 9 blocks. There probably aren’t enough leftovers to make a Creature (single color) quilt, but I have a plan. Stay tuned.

I’ve been sewing ma*ks (who hasn’t? yawn...). They're for my daughter-in-law. She’s a physical therapist, and their office has run out of masks. This is just a few of those I’ve sewn.  There are more with elastic and a bunch with ties. She is doing a drive-by visit today to pick up a couple dozen.

On the design board are the 9-Patch Madness blocks. I’ve tweaked the arrangement a bit since this picture and will begin sewing these into a flimsy today. These bright, bold colors make me so happy! And I can’t wait to see what others are sewing over at Scrappy Saturday.

Well, I’ll keep this post short. I have a busy social calendar today. First I plan to play in the sand, then head to the local water park (scoop the kitty litter box and take a shower). Then I’m going to visit the local wildlife refuge (fill the bird feeders). Next I’ll be visiting friends from all over the US and the world (via their blogs), time travel to solve a murder mystery (read in my current book). When I get back from that, I’ll probably go tinker with my favorite machinery (sewing machine) before heading out to an exotic restaurant for dinner (leftovers in the refrigerator). I’ll cap the day by cuddling with the remaining wildlife (Alfalfa and Darla) in front of a roaring campfire (the fireplace).

Try not to be jealous.

Green Scrappy Sewing

This was a good week for staying indoors to sew. We had several snowy episodes throughout the week, although down here in the valley it doesn’t accumulate much these days. Along the foothills and in the mountains, though, they’ve had a very white January. So, sewing it was! I did break for laundry, housekeeping, errands and our weekly date night out to eat. Oh, and to pay attention to the poor neglected cats. As anyone who is owned by cats knows, one must pay proper homage to the royalty.

I started the Rainbow Scrap green month of January working on my selvages. My plan was to make some wonky selvage log cabin blocks, and I showed one of those last week. I ended up sewing 8 of them at 6.5” each, but they took absolutely forever. And my selvages looked like they hadn’t been touched. Oy.

I would’ve had to make 2,354 log cabin blocks (that may be a *slight* exaggeration) to use up my selvages. So, I switched to Plan B.  Perhaps using one of my Accuquilt dies like last year, when I did tumblers, would be the ticket. So, I tried some circles.

Nah..... What the heck am I going to do with a bunch of circles besides appliqué them to blocks. And I don’t like appliqué. Plus they didn’t use any selvages to speak of, so Plan B was a bust. Those circles have made some new friends, however, in the scrappy block orphanage. On to Plan C.

Now we’re talkin’! These are half hexagons that measure 4.5” across the top and 8.5” across the bottom. Lots of straight sewing and cutting, and a super selvage eater!!  They will be sewn in rows either vertically or horizontally (no inset seams), so there’s lots of potential here. That left me with just some smaller selvages, which necessitated Plan D.

Columns of 4” wide selvages. These can be added in to an orphan block quilt down the road, or whatever. Again, lots of possibilities. And that finished off all my green selvages, at least for 10 minutes or so... which brought me to the firm decision that this is the LAST year I’m going to sew selvages. I have to tell my friends at Quilts for Kids (who save them for me) to stop. There are just too many and I don’t want to spend a week every month sewing selvages together.  I’d rather be digging into my fabric stash and making a major dent in it.

So, I’ll continue just this year with my selvages every month; 8 log cabins, lots of half hexies, and then the rest in 4-inch columns. What I accumulate (inevitably) between now and the end of October, along with what doesn’t get used, will go to some unsuspecting person who might like to play with selvages themself. I’ll mention it again toward the end of the year and you can speak up then.

So finally I got to sew with fabric instead of selvages. What a concept! First thing I made were these 8 Twin Sisters blocks, which measure 6.5” unfinished.

And then I made a 16” block called Scraptastic Stars, which is a pattern from Melissa Corey at Happy Quilting. I have to confess, however, that I didn’t buy a pattern because it’s so basic - I just figured it out and sewed it on my own. I’ll make one of these blocks for 9 months, and that’ll be large enough for a kid’s quilt.

After all that green, I needed a break. So, I finished sewing the blocks together for this Little Orphan Scrappy quilt.  Can I say how much I love this? It measures 42x50”.  I’ve also cut the backing for it, so now it’s ready to be basted. Quilting will have to wait until my regular machine returns from the spa.

About that time, another Squirrel project scampered across my path. One of the shelves in one of my fabric storage bookcases came loose and fell off its supports (it has been fixed). But I had to take all the fabric off the shelf and fondle stack it up to fix the shelf. I found some already-cut brown polka dot 5” squares and matching fabric that one of my Weight Watcher friends gave me a few months ago. It was buried there with some matching turquoise fabric I’d pulled. What was I to do? I cut all the turquoise scraps there and tried to come up with a a quilt top using only what I had. It’s not a real looker as far as quilts go, but it’ll keep some kid warm and use up some unloved fabric.

It took less than 90 minutes from start to completed top. And I had a blue fabric that will work for the back and some that will work for the binding. Bam! (I love saying that, you may have noticed that recently). So that is the second quilt in line to be basted and quilted. It measures 39x51”.

Cousin Kim and friend Bonnae came over on Wednesday for sewing and we’ve all decided to sew on some Farm Girl Vintage blocks together. Bonnae started the house block and I started the hand mixer block. Kim hasn’t quite decided where to start yet, although she wants to do the animals, truck, barn, flag and a few others. She wants it all in her head and planned out before she starts. I get it.

Have a good week, friends! I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s blog.

Kicking off 2020 with some Creative Goals

Forget the usual New Year’s Resolutions!! Why bother? With anything that has worth on a long term basis (spending time with family and friends, losing weight, becoming more active, eating healthy, giving of one’s time or talent to charity), most of us do our best to incorporate those things into our daily lives anyway. At least, I do. I may find new way to do something occasionally, or perhaps to tweak routines with aging or the seasons, but basically those priorities form the framework of my life.

So since this blog is mainly about my creative pursuits, with occasional sharing of family and other personal stuff, let’s get right back to the nitty gritty.



Once again, I’ll be participating in One Monthly Goal (OMG), a year-long creative online link-up run by the talented Patty Dudek of Elm Street Quilts. Each month we set ourselves a goal of finishing up some old project, and then post again at month-end to show what we’ve completed. This is my third year participating. Last year in 2019, I set a goal every month and finished each one. Twelve for twelve! Woot!

For my January 2020 goal, I would like to finish this “UFO” (unfinished object, for the uninitiated). It’s another kitty quilt for the grandcats. They got a similar one at Christmas, but this one has aqua stripes in place of the lime green.

As I write this post, it’s already quilted but doesn’t have binding. My Bernina 550QE (“Bernadette”) needed to be taken in for its annual spa treatment, so I got all the quilting done on these three small quilts. Now I can finish up the bindings and start the January Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks on my backup machine, “Bob”, the Brother Innovus. There is a method to my madness.

The other two quilts (in front) are just small kid quilts for Quilts for Kids. I didn’t sew them, but I’m one of the ladies who does the quilting and binding. You can see that these have the backs cut 1” larger all the way around. We just fold over the backing and do a self-binding by machine. In 2020, I plan to continue quilting and sewing for our local Quilts for Kids group. I enjoyed learning to load and quilt on a longarm quilt machine last month, and when the opportunity arises to use one, I will. However, most of the time I’ll just be using my trusty little Bernina to quilt.

While waiting for Angela to announce the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month on January 1, I decided to trim my low volume scrap strips into widths of 1.5”.

The strips are in preparation for joining in with Scrapbusting Star challenge over at Em’s Scrapbag. I’ll be working to reduce some of these low volume strips over the next few weeks.

FINALLY January 1st arrived. No partying here. We stayed up until midnight, hugged and kissed in the New Year, then went to bed. End of story!

Light and bright Green is the January Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month. We’re saving the darks and drabs for later. When working with selvages, however, I combine all greens. Anyway, my first block is a selvage log cabin.

Because the strips in the block will be determined by the width of the selvages, the block isn’t  intended to be perfectly symmetrical. I’m just going with the flow. And this time I’m trying the regular method of joining fabric strips; that is, flip and stitch. Usually with selvages I join them by topstitching them together and leaving a raw edge. This time I want more of the color to show. I’m still using a very short stitch length (1.5), however.  There will be many more of these blocks to come!

The contrasting light portion of the log cabin blocks will be drawn from my bags of white and black or gray selvages. I have a few. Here are some with the greens for this month. The mini-iron is shown for scale.

Next week I’ll introduce more of the RSC blocks I’ll be working on over the course of the year. I haven’t had time to make them yet. But I did get my green scraps sorted (and a bazillion little half-square triangles sewn together), which is a feat in and of itself!

Finally, I want to show you another Rainbow Scrap project I’ll be working on this month in between RSC blocks and other things.  I’ve had this piece of fabric in my stash for a couple years. Although the colors matched the recent Newport Butterflies quilt that I made for Kim, and I considered using this 2-yard piece for part of the backing, the style did not match. What to do? I decided to use it to pull from my stash of orphan blocks and put together a scrappy quilt.

I had one lone 10” Geese Migration block left over from the Geese Migration quilt I made a couple years ago. That seemed the logical place to start.

I also had 80 Cracker blocks (at 7.5”) from last years Rainbow Scrap Challenge. My first intention was to sort the blocks into 2 separate color ways to make two quilts for Quilts for Kids. But no matter how I played with them, they lacked pizzaz; I was not feeling the love. So, I pulled the Cracker blocks in red, pink, purple and aqua to match the fabric above.

After adding a white 2” strip around the center block, I grouped the Cracker blocks in the four corners, and this is what I got.

Yes, this is feeling better! By adding another white strip around the perimeter, it brought the measurements up to 30x30”, which meant I could then work with my 6” orphan blocks for the next step. So I pulled all my purple, red and aqua orphan blocks. I left the pink out, because actually the pinks are more just the shaded reds in the fabric. I have plans for them later.

Hmmm..... putzing around on the design board. I obviously need to distribute those blocks better. And it looks like I’ll be a few blocks short.

The four red blocks were moved to the corners. And then I cut a few blocks from the focus fabric to fill in the missing spaces. Yes, this will work....

And this is where I am right now.....

When sewn as shown, it will measure 42x42”. I may add some of those bitcoin strips (at the right edge, and the red strips are not shown). If I do, I’ll add them at the top and bottom only so that the little quilt will measure approximately 42x50”. A good size for a kid donation quilt. The backing will  be the matching fabric. I’d like to get this top done this month.

And that catches us up on the sewing front. Cousin Kim and friend Bonnae and I went to see Little Women on New Year’s Day and had a blast. I’ve been eating too many French fries and too much popcorn over the last couple weeks, and will be so glad when my Weight Watchers meetings resume next week and I can restore some routine into my eating habits. And then I must begin preparing projects to take along on our annual Arizona trip next month. More about that later in the month...

Gumdrops and Strings

With the vegetable garden put to bed for the winter (wish I could say the same about all the weeds and yard clean-up yet to do before the snow flies), there is a substantial increase in my leisure time (sewing) this month! YAY!

This week, in addition to finish Gumdrops (later in the post) and basting several kids quilts in preparation for quilting them next week for Quilts for Kids, I got to play in my scraps. Our Rainbow Scrap color(s) for October is dark neutrals, which for me includes my drawer of grays and blacks as well as my drawer of browns and beiges. This week my focus has been strings.

So far I've stitched 24 string blocks. They measure 7.5" (7" finished), and I probably have enough strings to get another 12-24 blocks, depending on how large I want to make the eventual quilt. Each block has a black strip in the center diagonal, although not overtly pronounced. These have been a blast!! My goal is to get this one finished (and quilted) during this coming week so I can turn my attention to the dark neutral patchwork quilt I'd like to make of squares and half-square triangles (HST's) in the latter half of the month.

But I have just finished up a Rainbow Scrap quilt and am sharing it over at Angela's blog for Rainbow Scrap Saturday. Here is Gumdrops (perfect name courtesy of Mari), hot off the press. Or machine. Whatever. 

Gumdrops measures 40.5" x 47" and was quilted with a tight stipple to give additional security to the selvages (something I always do).  

Here are some detail shots so you can see some of the fun fabrics and selvages.

That purple paisley fabric below dates from the 1980's.

The oldest fabric in the quilt, however is the green-orange-yellow paisley fabric (1960's) in the picture below.

My friend Diann will recognize these Little Penguins!  The blue fabric is the backing and binding.

This quilt was #1 on my Finish-Along 4th Quarter goal list. You can see that list HERE.  Gumdrops will go to Quilts for Kids. Our next meeting (next Saturday) is a special one to teach some scrappy quilting techniques.  I will be demonstrating the String Stars and showing Gumdrops for selvage use ideas.