Slow Sunday Stitching

 Here's our view outside on Saturday morning - cold and snowy!

And here's the view inside - appropriate, right?!  This is Melisa at PinkernPunkin's Winter SAL.  I thought it would be fun to work on right now.  Turns out it may take me until next winter to finish this one!

I still have more of the individual borders to do, 

but wanted to work on the header a little, too.

Melisa has released five of the little stamps, and they are so cute!  I can't wait to stitch them.  Check out her latest post about the project here.

On Thursday I spent some time at a friend's house where we had some crochet lessons from another friend who is quite accomplished at it.  We've done this before, a couple years ago, but neither of us could remember what to do and lost any skills we might have had!   This time around I'm going to keep practicing!

So I've got plenty to do for some slow Sunday stitching, and

I'll be linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

Playing with pink...

After finishing my Pathways quilt earlier in the week (see this post),  I had some time to just play in the sewing room, and that is what I did!

First I decided to do a little sorting and reorganizing.  Since moving my sewing up to a corner of our master bedroom a year ago or so, I've been using these plastic baskets from Dollar Tree to hold what I am currently working on right now.   Right now it is the supplies for the Stay at Home Round Robin, which has just started.  And my pink scraps and blocks for January's Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks are in the other basket.

Of course, doing that sort of thing gets you thinking about cutting and sewing, so I had to make a few pink blocks!

If I could get two inch squares, I made some four patches.  These are 3.5 inches.

Or maybe they will turn into 16 patches???

2.5 and 3.5 inch squares can make more quarter square blocks.  These blocks are 4.5 inches.

And 3.5 inch squares turned into a sixteen patch star block.  I've been wanting to make this block for awhile, and I like how it turned out!  These finish at 12 inches.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

It's a Finish!

Pathways of My Life (a design from Melva Loves Scraps which she calls Pieces of My Life) is finished!  I put the last hand stitches in the binding on Tuesday evening, and then hung it up for some beauty shots.  I really wanted to take it outside for photos, but the light was never quite right - I think it's the time of year.

This quilt journey began in March of 2024 when Melva introduced the idea of making a quilt to tell the story of your life.  Since I was going to be celebrating my 70th birthday in September of 2024, this seemed like the perfect project for the year.  And I enjoyed it immensely!

57.5 x 61.5

I loved making each and every block in this quilt - 

not a one of then gave me any trouble.

Thank you, Melva, for great instructions for each block and section, plus

the how-to for finishing this in Quilt As You Go style!  

It all worked out well!

I've been trying to decide if I have a favorite block - and it could be this one, the large spool block.  It represents my wedding dress - read more about it here.

In particular, this one is special to me because my mom made my dress and I included this photo in the post.  A memory of happy times!  What girl wouldn't remember her wedding dress as her favorite dress ever?!

The backing for Pathways of My Life is this pretty yellow with floral wreaths on it.

I quilted each block a little differently - some stitch-in-the-ditch, some topstitching, some grids, some gentle curves.  It was fun looking at the blocks and figuring out what might work in each one.

To bind it, I used the same blue Grunge, called "Sea," that I used for the sashing throughout the quilt.  As I put the quilt together, I had an up and down relationship with that sashing color - questioning my decision-making in choosing it, since it's pretty dark.  But it came to symbolize the pathways that life takes you on - meandering all around the quilt - just as through life - and I grew to like it.

A lot of you have followed along all the way through this project, and I thank you so much for that!  As much for myself as for any other reason, I'm going to list all the previous posts about making this quilt in this post, but if you're curious about any of them, you can click on the links below.

1.  Bow block:  March 12, 2024

2.  Friendship Stars: April 2, 2024

3.  Bachelor's Puzzle: April 14, 2024

4.  Ohio Star and Bow Tie:  May 21, 2024

5.  Love and Friendship - Heart block:  June 18, 2024

6.  Steps to the Altar:  July 2, 2024

7.  Wedding dress (spool block):  July 23, 2024

8.   Wedding Ring (Day):  August 18, 2024

9.  Chimney and Cornerstones:  September 1, 2024

10.  Early married years (first post about the house):  September 9, 2024 

11.   Who taught you to sew?/ parents:  September 24, 2024 

12.  Family and travel (block - Rough Road): October 8, 2024

13.  More about the kids (block - Broken Dishes):  October 22, 2024

14.  Maple Leaf block/Fall/work:  November 5, 

15.  Jacob's Ladder - Mike’s family, kids, work life: November 19, 2024

16.  Final blocks - home and family, friends and activities: December 8, 2024

Thank you, Melva, for all the inspiration, memory ideas, 

great instructions, and beautiful quilt blocks!

Sharing at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for TGIFF

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

I Like Thursday #420

Happy Thursday!

I saw this online somewhere the other day, and liked it.  

I'm thankful for soft quilts, warm mugs, and kind friends!

When it snows here, the juncos show up, and we enjoy seeing them.  They are such pretty birds - but very active, so hard to get many photos of them.

After looking through my stash for coordinating fabrics for this year's Stay At Home Round Robin project, I decided to go shopping at my LQS.  This is what I brought home - 

Definitely a feeling of Spring here!

Younger son decided to bake bread the other day.  He used a yeast bread recipe from my old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook for "Cheese Bread" and it turned out to be really good!  We decided to do smaller loaves just to make sure they baked all the way through.  I don't always trust my oven temperature - does anyone else have trouble with that?  Some things bake just fine - other things can be way off and under done.

One of our favorite PBS shows came back for a new season this past Sunday, "All Creatures Great and Small."  We enjoyed the first episode!

PBS

Hope you're having a great week!  I finished the Pieces of My Life quilt - that's a big celebration - I'm working on a finished post for tomorrow.

Joining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

 

Midweek Update

I'm joining in again with the 2025 Stay At Home Round Robin!  This will be the fifth year that I've participated and it's always fun.  This year's center block and plan for the project is following along with what I did the last two years - I am using a finished embroidery piece in a seasonal wall-hanging.  In 2023 I made a winter wall-hanging; summer followed in 2024.

For 2025, the theme will be Spring!  This is a Kathy Schmitz design that I stitched a couple years ago and haven't done anything with.  

Spring colors will make the pieced blocks around it - pinks, blues, and greens.  Plus there is quite a bit of the floral left that I used in Pieces of My Life to add in, too.

Looking forward to getting started with the first round next Monday!  

Linking up with Quilting Gail for the SAHRR 2025 Center Block.

And at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Slow Sunday Stitching

 I finished up the Woven Wreaths quilting earlier this week, and zigzagged around the edges just to hold all the layers together.  I'm still debating how to completely finish this - I could add binding to it just as is, or I could make it into a pillow cover.

I stitched my initials and the year of the project - 2024 - into the bottom small square.

But before I do anything more with Woven Wreaths, I have some binding to stitch!

This will keep me busy for a day or two!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Almost there...

On Thursday, I was able to finish up the last long seams that connected the top and bottom sections of Pieces of My Life - these are sashings on the front and back with a strip of batting in between.   Some curvy lines of quilting hold all the layers together.

I was going back through all the posts I've shared about this project and saw that I originally planned to use the floral inspiration print that's in most of the blocks for these long sashings.  But when I saw how the blue sashing around the blocks stands out, I decided to continue with it to connect all the "pieces of my life" together.   

The final step of sewing the two sections together with their sashings was actually pretty hard work!  Lots of layers and heavy/awkward to muscle through the machine and keep everything straight and lined up.  But - I did it!  Although Melva's design calls for borders, I think I'm ready to stop here.  This weekend's job is to get the binding sewn on.  I plan to have a finish to share by the end of next week!

I bet you can tell in this photo where I got the idea for the blue and pink combination in last week's quarter star blocks!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

And at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.