Sewing, Vegetables, Cortisone

Sewing, Vegetables and Cortisone - my week in a nutshell. Let’s back up to last Saturday and I’ll bring you along with pictures.

Our August Quilts for Kids meeting was held at a new-to-me shop in Riverton called Forget-me-Not Quilts. I brought in all the quilts donations quilts finished to date, including the three quilts that Julie K and I made for the Wrap Ukraine with Quilts drive. Forget-me-Not Quilts is a collection point, so those three are safely on their way (see the Community Quilts tab at the top of my blog if you need a refresher on those).  I brought my bag of multi-colored strings to sew on. My friend G made a quilt from a kit containing fabric and string blocks that I had previously assembled and donated.

It turned out so cute! Our chapter of QFK is always looking for fabric donations to make quilt kits. I figure I can help out twofold by (1) reducing their string and strip scrap stash by sewing string blocks and then (2) preparing kits for members to sew. I also assemble Zipper blocks and kits with strips and fabrics from my stash or donations. My goal is to donate at least 60-75 string blocks per month (we use them in sets of 15) and at least 3-5 Zipper quilt kits (including backings) per month. That’s in addition to personal quilts I sew for donation or family. 

This last week, starting on Saturday and finishing on Tuesday, I sewed these four 15-block sets of strings. I safety pin them together in sets.

On Sunday we had a family dinner with my son Ryan and DIL Kim. It’s her birthday this month, and we wanted to go out to celebrate. Also, DGD Lauren will be moving up to college in Logan in a couple weeks, so we added her and boyfriend Graham to the celebrations.

On Tuesday, it was Weight Watchers (no weight change, which was great after eating out three times last week and being very careful), and then a trip to my doctor for cortisone shots in my knees (bursitis). I can move again!  We spent a couple mornings out in the yard this week, beating back weeds and harvesting vegetables. The peppers, carrots, green beans and cucumbers are all going strong. The tomatoes have been ripening, too, so we’re loving our turkey bacon BLTs once or twice per week. I have started sharing vegetables again at my WW meetings, and a couple others are starting to bring some garden bounty too! It’s like a free Farmers Market.

And speaking of WW, my friend Ruby invited Bruce and I over last week one evening. You may remember that Ruby was the one that gave me that glorious roll of $400/yard Italian fabric.....  I’ve bought cork to go along with it to make us a couple purses, but I’m still searching for some classy backing fabric.

Well anyway, Ruby used to do sewing for Denton House (very exclusive) and her daughter has taken over the business. But Ruby had lots of fancy fabrics to give away, and gave them to a neighbor who runs a ceramic gifts manufacturing business. In trade, this friend gave Ruby hundreds - and I mean several hundreds (at least five large produce boxes full) of ceramic mushrooms. They are “seconds”, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell. So, Ruby wanted me to have first pick of the mushrooms before she took them to her knitting group or to Weight Watchers to give them out to others. She practically MADE me take a whole boxful so that I could share them with my DIL Kim, Cousin Kim and Cousin Carrie. And neighbors and friends (T - I have some for you). And to use in our own garden. Here’s a picture of a small fraction - these are just the ones that I have left to put out in the back garden and the flower pots.

Another cute Pile of Stuff! OMG, I love color!!!

So, it was a fun week, and I did manage to finally settle down and get some serious sewing done. The first thing I did was baste and finish the purple, pink and green elephant quilt.

As usual, it finished at 40x48” and was quilted in loopy swirls. The only semi-suitable fabric I had for the back was a too-warm pink, but I paired it with some gray and called it good.

I had planned to get all the rest of my orange elephants sewn this week, but I only did two more pair. Here they are. I’ve had some more orange scraps make their way into my stash (rejects from quilt kits I’m sewing up, more on that in a moment), so I will probably have another couple pair to show next week. But for now, here are these ladies:

Last week I showed you a peek of some fabric strips/scraps that I was trying to make some sense out of. You know, from the cast-off donations into a worthy kid quilt. This is the top that I finished, that now moves into the basting pile. It is straight, but looks a bit wonky slapped up on the design board. It will get trimmed after quilting to square it up!

And then I dug into some of the scraps that Ruby gave me a couple weeks ago from her estate saling. In one of the boxes was a quilt top that was quite large but it looked like someone had cut a big semicircle out of one corner. Think of a bite out of a cookie. Anyway, I trimmed it down into the usable part and the remaining size was good for Quilts for Kids. Then I threw it in the wash - which they don’t like us to do as our Board prefers to handle final washings themselves before donationing. But I didn’t know its provenance, and wanted work with clean fabric.

I found a relatively basic brown backing with tiny red and blue squares that will work with it, but I had to insert a row of rectangle blocks down the back to make it wide enough. Now, let me show you the quilt. I’m just calling it The Ugly Quilt. It is seven blocks across and six blocks down.

The fabric is only about 10 years old and the quilt has never been finished. The fabric you see to the right of the quilt (hanging on the hanger) is the backing. I didn’t have identical fabrics in my stash, but I pulled some pieces that were similar in color and type - a blue with white polka dots, a red quatrefoil-like print, solid brown, mint green. they work just fine. The plan is to also baste and quilt the heck out of this thing and see if it becomes Worthy.

And the other quilt top I’m working on now is another “kit quilt” assembled from more of the scraps from Ruby. Some of you may recognize some of these fabrics as being from the Mendocino line by Heather Ross about 8-10 years ago.  There are other fabric chunks in there too that coordinate nicely.

I’ve come up with a very basic design that will fit the scraps. I saw it somewhere online (probably Pinterest, but there is no viable link). But that reveal will have to wait until next week. 

And with that, I’m off to get started on my day. No plans, although a Barnes and Noble date sounds good. I surely don’t want to go to a Farmer’s Market and have to process more vegetables!

Have a great week!

Linking to Scrappy Saturday for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

It Feels Orange This Month!

It’s Orange August for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! I’ve dug around and pulled out all my orange scraps, my orange orphan blocks, and the quilt “kits” I’ve made out of scraps I’ve gathered over the last couple years. When I can find enough scraps, chunks and pieces that might play well together, they go into a 9x12” (-ish) baggie until their color month comes up. But I’ve got at least five orange “kits” for this month, so some may have to wait their turn!

Before I get into my sewing recap, let me show you the fabrics and scraps that my dear friend Ruby (we met at Weight Watchers) has given to me over the last two weeks. Ruby likes to shop estate sales and yard sales, and she’s been snatching up boxes of fabrics for a song. 

Some of these fabrics go back to the 1970’s.  See that brown fabric on the lower left? The TAN fabric underneath it is the same exact print I made a maternity top out of back in 1977! All of these are clean fabrics in excellent condition. We sifted out all the junky fabrics and “other” fabrics to donate back to a thrift store. There are solids, retro and modern fabrics (Patrick Lose, Amy Butler). I’ve spent way too much time this week sorting and petting and playing with the fabric. My studio storage needs some serious rearranging and organizing.

But naturally I did get back to my sewing machine. The first order of business was to baste another batch of quilts. I only got one of them quilted this week, but it’s a lovely finish, even if I do say so myself! That’s because the quilt in question was a top, backing and binding donated to me by Julie of Quilts and Costumes. It’s an adorable stack ‘n whack quilt of silly aliens with a light confetti-like print for the background.

I selected a bright blue thread and quilted it with parallel vertical lines in a serpentine stitch. As I stitched, the confetti print background was so cheery! It was so delightful!

Julie even provided the binding fabric. The finished quilt measures 47.5x64”. I’m calling it Confetti Aliens, although donation quilts don’t generally get an “official” name. 

Here is the Quilts for Kids label I added.

And just so you can see more of Julie’s meticulous work, here is the backing she pieced. Isn’t it just adorable too?

So, I’ll update my Community Quilts tab this week to include all three quilt tops that Julie donated. Thank you once again, Julie! You’re so appreciated! 

I finally turned to my orange RSC blocks, and don’t you know I had to start off with a couple pair of orange elephants. 

There will be three more pairs coming later this month. This is from the pattern Stomping Ground by WendySheppard. 

Next up, two Antique Tile blocks that will finish at 12”.

And also 8 Framed Four Patch blocks that’ll finish at 8” each. 

So that’s about it for now. Here’s a sneak peek of some of the mess of scraps that constitute one of the quilt tops that I’ll have sewn into a top by next week. Prayers may be in order for this one, LOL!

So this morning I’m off to our August Quilts for Kids workshop. Time to go load up the car! Thanks for dropping by!

Quilt Finishes and Blackberries

July has been busy, hot and purple this year. I’ll get to the last of my purple sewing momentarily, but since I’ve got a lot of pictures to share, we’re going to get right down to business here, starting with blackberries. Blackberries are really dark purple, you know. And we have a very prolific bush to prove it. 

Look at the size of some of the berries!  We’ve been eating them for most of July. Purple was certainly the most appropriate color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for July for me. And the Rainbow Vegetable Challenge too! (Hehe - I just made that up …)

There’s been blackberry jam, blackberry shortcake, a rhubarb-blackberry pie (so yummy!) and lots of good ol’ plain sweet blackberries just to snack on by themselves.

We baked with them, froze them, shared them and we’re still not done. Well, almost, but not quite. 

And now raspberry season is here, so I see more fruit in my future. 

OK, *now* we can talk about sewing. Last week I showed the first four of these Little Brick blocks designed by Sylvia of Treadlestitches. At that time I had two blocks going in one direction and two blocks going in the opposite direction. I decided I’d make them all with the same orientation, so I corrected two of the first ones then a sewed up seven more for a total of eleven. They’re 6.5” blocks (unfinished size).

And then I finished up two purple crumb placemats. Um, exCUSE me, Mr. Cat!

Ok, this is better.  I’ll be linking up with Joy’s Table Scraps monthly Linky party (I typed “tinkly" party first, hahaha!)

Last Sunday, Cousin Kim and I changed up our usual sewing day. Since she was dog-sitting for her daughter’s family, we sewed at her house. The easiest thing for me to pack up to sew was my multi-colored string bag.  I made sixteen 6.5” string blocks before we switched to puzzle-making!

I continued my personal string party the next day, making 17 more, for a total of 33.

Next it was time to get serious about quilting the four small-ish quilts waiting in line. And boy, were they ever nagging me to quilt them!

First up, the quilt top made with the red, pink and purple Bullseye Courthouse Steps blocks that I’ve been making for this year’s RSC. Julie K of Julie’s Quilts and Costumes sent me the coordinating fabric for the border as it needed to be widened just a bit.  Thanks again, Julie! 

There was enough of the fabric to use (with red and purple inserts) for the back and binding, too. I just love how this quilt turned out. It measures 39x48.5” and was quilted with a basic stipple.

Next up was the Purple Windmills quilt. The dotted fabric (a scrap of an oldie designed by Kate Spain) was the color inspiration for this quilt. I noticed that she is a designer/seller on Spoonflower, and this fabric is now available again from her there. Notice that I snuck in some old selvage scraps in white.

Purple Windmills measures 40x48”, and was quilted with a basic vine loop design. The backing was a 2-yard piece that I picked up a couple years ago in Nucla, Colorado (verrry rural) at a consignment store for $2.  

Then I decided to tackle the two tops that Julie sent me to finish and donate. We agreed that a Ukraine charity was most appropriate, and they will be donated to Wrap Ukraine with Quilts (by Hello Cottons) in early August. 

This first quilt was my favorite. It measures 39” square, and Julie’s piecing is immaculate. I decided to quilt it a little more densely than I usually do, so I made a little loop in every square. I was able to quilt all the yellow squares in one continuous pattern, with yellow on top and in the bobbin. Then I did the blue squares in one continuous pattern, but had to backtrack once to get a few missed squares when I lost my concentration. For the blue squares there was blue thread on the top but I stayed with the yellow on the backside. 

Julie’s second Ukraine quilt, also a stunner, measures 48” square. I had ordered special backing for this, but when it came it was turquoise instead of dark blue. So, I reverted to Plan B, which was a lighter blue backing. 

I’m afraid I didn’t do this quilt justice with the basic stipple. Hopefully, the eventual recipient won’t care.  :-)

By then, my brain was pretty much fried for the week. I did manage to sew the elephants and border fabric for the pink, purple and green elephant flimsy. But then I ran out of week. 

It may be a couple days, but I’ll update my Community Quilts tab and my 2022 quilts tab to add all the July finishes. Today, Saturday, we’re going to clean up the patio - blow it off and put things away. Shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes. There’s also the pull of the Farmer’s Market and the in-season raspberries. Then we may head over to Barnes & Noble for a coffee and book date. 

Life is Good!

A Predictable Week

Predictably, it has been hot as Hades. Predictably, if it rains (and it did, twice this week) it’s just enough to wet everything down and mess up the clean car. And predictably, you can find me in my sewing studio every afternoon, sewing away on my weekly goals. Bruce is either reading or playing in his workshop, and the cats are taking their afternoon naps (not to be confused with their morning naps or their evening naps or . . .)

This week I played some more with my purple scraps, turning out 6 Bear Paw blocks. It’s purple month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. 

The bigger one will finish at 9” and the other five will finish at 6”.  I decided it was time for all the Bear Paw blocks to have a family reunion on the design board. My secret objective, of course, was to see what “family members” needed to be constructed, and in what sizes and colors.

This not a final layout by any stretch of the imagination. I want the quilt to end up roughly 42x48”, so I’ll be needing several orange blocks, a bright blue to replace the lighter blue just right of center, and some more red. And I may replace those dull pink 3” blocks and the dark greens. A couple months, at least, to go on this.  In fact, several blocks may get replaced with brighter colors. Or, I may just expand the size. Who knows?!?

I also made a row of crumb tumblers (alternated with simple cut purple tumblers) for my Rainbow Tumblers quilt. I didn’t get a picture of it before sewing it to the dark blue row.  Sorry about the vertical picture; it will be a row, not a column in the quilt! 

On Wednesday, I spent a lot of time basting quilts - three of them, in fact. Of those those 3, I can show you one now. This is one of my purple quilts, from scraps I kitted up at the beginning of the year. The picture is just the flimsy.

The blocks measure 8”, so this will finish at 40x48”. I hope to get this quilted along with three others in the coming week so that I can show them to you before the end of the month. 

But I do have a finish to share - my Hearts for Ukraine quilt. Finally!

This fun quilt was a Bonnie Hunter free pattern. I changed the border so I could use up most of a blue and yellow jelly roll I’ve had in my stash for a couple years. The quilt finished at 54x62”. I quilted it with loops and hearts, except for the border which utilized the pieced squares as guides for crosshatches and loops. 

The backing is a chambray from a gently used cotton sheet. Below is a closer shot of the border and binding.

Of course, no quilt is really complete until it’s been inspected by one of the feline overlords. Here you can see Darla, carefully attending to her work. 

And how exciting to capture the *exact* moment that she purrnounced it worthy!!

Since I still have so many purple scraps, I thought this would be a good month/week to test out some new blocks for RSC2023. I’ve had my eye on several blocks, and keep potential ideas in a personal file on Pinterest. 

This first block is Overlapped Nine Patch, from Lynn Dykstra of KleinMeisjeQuilts. I believe Cathy L of Sane and Crazy is making these as well. I love these blocks. The top one doesn’t have enough contrast between the fabrics. But in the grand scheme of an entire quilt, it hardly matters. Lots of quilt makers do that intentionally.  However, I’ve decided this will not be an RSC project for me, but eventually a personal quilt down the road.

The second block, Little Bricks, was designed by Sylvia at Treadlestitches and introduced earlier this year during the Hand2Help drive. I had it saved in my idea file, but when I saw the cute blocks that Jenny  made, it moved its block to the top of my list. Here are my four.

Starting now, this is another RSC project that will continue through next year.

But wait, there’s more!

I pieced two elephants this week. Only one is shown below in the closeup. These wild print elephants serve as Color Coordinators (an official position!) for the elephant quilts I’ve been making.

Here are the blocks slapped up on the design wall. I haven’t sewn the sashing yet, but the elephants and borders are cut. 

This is one of the quilts I’m hoping to get sewn, pin basted, quilted, etc. before month end. So, I’ll be predictably in my sewing room for the foreseeable future!  Have a great week!

Community Quilts

I’ve decided to start an occasional mid-week feature on my blog highlighting Community Quilts that I’ve finished. What is a Community Quilt? Well, it’s when someone sews up blocks or even an entire quilt top, then donates it to some person or organization (usually a charity) to be finished. That finishing may include everything from sewing blocks together, to basting the quilt (putting together a “quilt sandwich” with top, batting and a backing), to quilting the quilt, to trimming, binding and labeling the quilt. 

A recent quilt I made with donated scraps (not a Community Quilt)

Through my work with Quilts for Kids, I have done a lot of finishing in the last several years. Most of our group’s finishers own long-arm quilting machines, which can do large quilts manually, automatically with the push of a pre-programmed button, or something in between. I have a small Bernina domestic (home) sewing machine, so I only quilt small to medium quilts. Once we got enough volunteer long-armers in our  Quilts for Kids group, I switched from quilting to being the Scrap Lady, because we get as many scrap donations as we do fabric donations. Now I’m one of 2 or 3 scrap ladies, but I have a lot of online friends (through the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and other link-ups) and generous donors who send me scraps, blocks and quilt tops. Additionally, I signed up with Jo Kramer of Jo’s Country Junction to help with her Community Quilts program. Jo and her daughter Kayla are prolific published designers and quilters. They usually have something featured in one of the popular print quilting magazines at any given time. 

Back at the end of February, Jo sent me 21 quilt tops to finish and donate. The only stipulation is that I provide her with pictures as they’re finished so she can share on her blog. One quilt top was too big (at 54x72”) for QFK, so I separated it into two quilt tops of 36x54”. I’ll add a border on each side of the 36” to bring them up to a workable youth size. So, that makes 22 quilts in this first batch. Today I’m showing quilts #1-3.

This cute little top was made by a wonderful group of women in Cresco, IA.  In fact, all three of them were. The batting, backing and binding all came from my stash. The green polka dot backing (picture below) matches the front better than the camera makes it appear. The binding is a cute red polka dot. The quilting is a basic loop. Because I’m all about KISSing (Keep It Simple, Silly!) 😘

Quilt number 2 is perfect for an older boy. The theme is motorcycles and it uses a plethora of scraps in a very creative whole!

I made the quote backing with two pieces that match the colors of the front. Quilted with a large stipple.

The third and final quilt of this first group is another one with animals. You can click on the picture to enlarge it. It’s just a basic large patchwork of two fabrics. But isn’t it cute? 

The backing was some yardage that my friend Claudia in Washington sent me. The theme and colors are perfect!

These have all been donated to the Salt Lake Chapter of Quilts for Kids. 

Thanks for stopping by!