Getting started with Green

This week I had a chance to get out my greens and do some sorting...

These are the smallest pieces - hopefully there will be enough to make a crumb placemat.

I think this month I'll combine the dark greens and the bright greens.

Some of the others will be used when we have a light/pastel green month.

I also had some time to make one Jacob's Ladder block and pick out the colors for a second.

And then I got distracted by a "Drop Everything and Make It" project!  Older son requested some soup bowl cozies for himself and his girlfriend.  I can never turn down a request from family, so I ordered some Wrap and Zap batting, and as soon as it arrived, I got to work.  I decided to make three because I realized we could use a new one, too.

In keeping with February being green month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I found a piece of this Baby Yoda/Mandalorian print on green and used it for two of the cozies.

I made some of these several years ago, but it's been awhile, so I thought I'd better find a tutorial to remind me how to do them.  I found this one at All People Quilt, and it worked.  

It took me about three sewing sessions to get these made this week, but they turned out nicely, and I sent two of them off to older son this morning.  I'm so used to sewing things for guys, and rarely things for women, but he has told us that his girlfriend loves pink, so...  

I made one in pink!

I know they'll get a lot of use out of them, because we certainly do!

And that was my sewing week.  How was yours?  

Sharing at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday and at 

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

I Like Thursday #469

Good morning, and Happy Thursday!  We like Dad jokes at our house...

😊

I went to a concert the other night!  A friend had an extra ticket and invited me along.  These gals are a BeeGees tribute group.  It was fun!  

I have been reading (and enjoying very much) Miss Morgan's Book Brigade.  It is historical fiction set in France in WWI, about Anne Morgan (daughter of J. P. Morgan) and a group of women who go to war torn France in 1918 to help the people whose villages were destroyed by the Germans as they retreated.

Goodreads.  

LeeAnna's question of the week is about Valentines.  Do you remember the tiny little cards and envelopes from elementary school?  I sure do, because I also did them with my own kids (it was great practice for writing your letters!), with the preschoolers I taught, and all the way up into 5th grade.  And, yes, the rule was not to leave anyone out!  Shopping for Valentines was very important - my boys always liked the box sets that had robots or something space-aged on them.  Something like this, probably!

Those were the days! 😊

Hope you're having a great week!

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

Stay at Home Round Robin - Round 2

Our host for this week, Kathleen McMusing, suggested double blocks for the next round of the project.  Her post includes lots of ideas, and I thought a long time about trying for some kind of double star design.  But I couldn't come up with one that would be doable within my (self-imposed) 3 inch size - the pieces would just be too small and fiddly.  So - on to the next idea - something I'm calling "Double Slice."  I played with these blocks once before, and made a small piece with them.

As you can probably imagine - you start with a square, slice it once diagonally and add a narrow strip, then slice it again through the opposite corners, and add a second narrow strip.

You can square them up straight - 

Or wonky - 

Which I thought was a fun look!

I haven't decided yet where these blocks will end up, but I did do the measuring and sewing needed to finish the first border from last week.

This measures 15.5 x 16.5 right now.

I might add a very narrow solid border first, and then see what border #3 brings before making any more decisions!

Linking up with Kathleen McMusing for the SAHRR Round 2,

and at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

                            

Hello, February!

The Valentine bunnies are finished and ready to be on display for February.  Pink and green make me think Spring could be on its way.   We all need to think that in February, right?!

I think this green is prettier in person than in the photograph - 

not sure why, but I can't seem to get a good photograph of it.

It does go nicely with the variegated green I used to embroider the bunnies.

I got out all the heart decorations and changed out the chest top display for February too.  

And I've been stitching on Sweetly Saying from Primrose Cottage.  It has such sweet little motifs in it.  Flowers, hearts, strawberries - very fun to stitch!

And lots more to do for Slow Sunday Stitching- 

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

A blue and orange house...

To finish out the month of January, I made another house for my "Year in the Neighborhood" project.  I mostly worked on this last Sunday afternoon, when the Denver Broncos were playing in the AFC Championship game for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.  (Unfortunately,  the Broncos lost the game, but I still had fun making this house!) 

My husband has been a fan of the Denver Broncos since before I met him, so I cheer them on, too, and so does our older son.  Some people might say we "bleed" orange and blue! 

💙🧡💙🧡💙 

When I decided to make this house, I wondered how I could show this is where Broncos' fans live with fabric from my stash.  I don't have much novelty fabric, and definitely nothing with footballs or horses.  But I did have an old t-shirt!

I made the center section (what I consider the front door) out of a Bronco logo cut from the old t-shirt and backed by some fusible interfacing as you would do if you were making a whole quilt out of t-shirts.  There are blue curtains in the windows and orange shutters.

Once that decision was made, the rest of the block was pretty simple.  

Even though it was snowing like crazy that day, football is usually played on a grassy green field, so I gave it that for the yard.  

This house needed a tree, so it got one with snow on the ground.

And here is the neighborhood so far!

In other sewing-related news, I was sorting through my thread yesterday and was surprised to see how many partials spools of thread I have collected.  These are the spools that don't have enough left to fill a bobbin with, so originally I began saving them for sewing bindings.  

It's too embarrassing to show a picture of the whole bunch, so I'll just share what I'm planning.  I'm starting with all the partial spools of Gutermann Sew-All #22 (Eggshell).  I can't fill up a bobbin with these, but I can put them in the top thread holder and use them up that way.

I bet I can get a few blocks sewn up with 

these scraps of thread in the next few weeks!

Sharing at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday

and at Melva Loves Scraps for TGIFF

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Also at Quilting and Learning Combo for the Quilter's Cove QAL link-up

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

I Like Thursday #468

View out our window on Sunday afternoon:

Winter came back!

In case you wondered what our local wild turkeys do when it's snowing - 

So it's been good sewing and reading weather!  I decided on this border for the Valentine bunnies.  It's quilted now and binding on, ready to sew down.  I'll share the finish on Sunday.

This brightens up the cold gray days!

I recently finished this book.  It's the most recent in the Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny.  At the end of the previous book, The Grey Wolf, she had left us on a cliff hanger, so I'd been anxious to see what happened.  I have to admit it wasn't my favorite of the series, but I enjoyed being back into that world anyway.  Isn't that why we read book series?

LeeAnna's question of the week is about what games we like to play.  I am a fan of word games and play quite a few.  In fact, as I was trying to list them for this post, I was surprised at how many there actually are!  😆  Words with Friends, Word Chums (very similar to WWF), Wordle, Quordle (instead of one word to guess like Wordle, there are four words and nine chances), Crossword Master, and our latest favorite is Waffle.

In this game you swap letters to move them to where the words are made correctly.  

All these are available as apps, and except for Words with Friends and Word Chums which are played with partners, you can play one time each day.  These are what I do when the news comes on at 5:00 before making dinner!

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

Stay at Home Round Robin - Round 1

For the last four or five years in January, I have been excited to begin the new Stay at Home Round Robin, and this year hasn't been any different.  Every Wednesday, a new border prompt comes from one of the hosts, and this past week it was from Brenda, at Songbird Quilts.   Brenda called for hourglass blocks and linked to some tutorials, which were really helpful.  Thank you, Brenda!

I started off my week by adding a straight border all the way around the center embroidered block.  I'm working with a bundle of pretty fall-themed batiks that I won in last year's SAHRR.  

Then, using the tutorial from Julie Cefalu, the Crafty Quilter, I started making hourglass blocks.  I ended up with eight of them and left a few HSTs, too, and you'll see why a couple photos down!

I laid them out in the corners, and used the HSTs to create a sort of frame around the center.

Now that looks a little weird because I use the back of an old quilt to lay things out when I'm working on something like this, and it makes it look like there are green sections separating the hourglasses.  But no - so I added some neutral strips to get more of the look I hope to achieve.

This looks better!

Nothing is sewn together yet because I reserve the right to change my mind at any time during this process, lol!  That's a big part of the fun of this QAL!

Now I'm looking forward to the next border prompt, coming Wednesday!

Linking up with Songbird Quilts for the SAHRR Wk 1

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss