Hello, March!

The gals at my mom's place have been decorating for St. Patrick's Day this last week.  They have the cutest things placed here and there!  

So I thought I'd join in with Mr. Lucky Leprechaun - a St. Patrick's Day stamp design from Melisa at PinkernPunkin.   I've been enjoying all the green!

I did finish up the Winter snowman embroidery, too.

This is from a Gail Pan book, and is a set of four seasonal designs.  I'm planning to prep the Spring one sometime this week so I can get started on it.  These are meant to be finished separately and hung on a little background during the corresponding season.  I haven't quite decided if I'll do that or make them into a little quilt.  For now I'm just going to enjoy the stitching!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

One more green project...

February really sped by, and I wasn't sure I would be able to finish the scrappy green placemat I started earlier in the month, but I did!   I originally shared my green crumb blocks a couple weeks ago, but at that point they were just sewn in twos and threes.  Inspired by Judy's post last week, I dug into my orphan block drawer and pulled out two green quarter star blocks left over from last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge project and added them into the mix.  Eventually I had two crumb strips that were 4.5 x 16.5.

I mixed bright greens and dark greens 

so that I could get enough scraps for a whole placemat.

Then I just needed to fill in the center to get a piece that measured 12.5 x 16.5.  

Little penguins, stars, hearts, grassy swirls, leaves

Some serpentine quilting, a dark green Grunge for the binding, and the green placemat is finished!

So far, so good on my goal to make a rainbow of scrappy placemats this year!  

Blue ✔️   Green ✔️

These crumb blocks made good leader/enders for sewing a couple of star blocks for Carole's QOV block drive.  I sent these off to her this week, too.

Sharing at:

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday 

Soscrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday

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

 

I Like Thursday #472

Good morning, friends!  How's your week going?  We have had a week without many commitments which is always nice, so I've been reading, and sewing, and going for walks, even getting some housework done.  😆

Right now I'm re-reading a book I read back in 2024 because it is my book club's choice for our March discussion.  Sometimes I only need to skim through to review the story before we discuss it, but this time I'm completely re-reading.  And liking the story just as much as I did the first time around! 

Screenshot from the Libby app.

We found a tasty new snack at Costco the other day.  It has dried blueberries in it.  I hadn't tasted those before and they are yummy!

I've been sticking with my plan to use up all the partial spools of thread I found hiding in my sewing room back in January.  It has turned out that some of them even have plenty of thread to fill a bobbin.  Since January 29th, I've emptied four spools of thread, out of the nine I started with.  This is just the Gutermann Eggshell color.  There are many, many more to go in several other colors!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about the most adventurous thing you've ever done.  And I have to admit - I'm not very adventurous!  But when I was 16, between my junior and senior years in high school, I was an exchange student, and that felt pretty adventurous.  Rennes, France, is a sister city to Rochester, NY, where I grew up, so I went there for the summer on a sister city exchange for high school students.

I lived with a French family and they were very kind to a homesick teenager!  They took me lots of interesting places, introduced me to French food (crepes! Yum!), and helped me become much more fluent in French.   I visited Mont St. Michel and spent a week in Paris.  Pretty cool for a teenager!

I'm joining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

Two QALs!

Quilting Gail gave us our prompt for week 5 of the Stay at Home Round Robin this week, and it was to use two colors for our blocks.  I chose these two fabrics - one which is predominantly gold (with green accents on it - like batiks always have!) and a neutral.

Then to choose a block... My project has hourglass, double slice, birds in the air, and applique pumpkin blocks so far.  What else does it need?

What I made was Friendship Stars, which I hope will represent the sunflowers in the center block's verse.

Still contemplating the final layout, which I'll decide on after the 6th border prompt, coming up on Wednesday!  But here is everything I've sewn up for my SAHRR so far:

In the Little House Sew-along, hosted by Melva Loves Scraps, I finished up block 1 - the Maple Leaf.  Using the jelly roll I have for the log cabin surround is going to result in a very orange quilt!  I'll have to see what else I can add in to tone it down a bit! 

Block 2 for this project is called Native Star, and when I discovered from Melva's post that it is made from quarter star blocks, I went digging in my orphan block drawer and found some of these blocks that I had made last year when I started thinking about the Starburst quilt.  These ended up being rejected in favor of the blue background I decided to use for Starburst, but are perfect for this one. 

This isn't exactly the same layout as Melva's Native Star example, 

but hopefully it fits the spirit of the project.  

Plus I loved being able to use some orphan blocks up!

This week I'll add the log cabin sashings to this block.

Linking up with Quilting Gail for the SAHRR Round 5

and Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

And at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

 

Slow stitching this week...

I put the last stitch into Sweetly Sayin on Friday evening!

I didn't have time to fully finish it yesterday, but I did back it with some fusible interfacing and trim to size.  Now it can hang out with its February friends until next weekend when I change everything out for March!

Next up to finish the stitching on is the Winter snowman embroidery.  Not much left here except that mitten, a snowflake, and some umbrellas.

It won't be long until I can start something new.  I've enjoyed the cool blue and white of the snowman, and the sweet pink and turquoise of the Valentine stitch, but I think my new start will be something green!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

A February House

February in the neighborhood is all about Valentine's Day!  Living in a town named Loveland, you can see how that would have to be so.

And, with February being the month for green in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, this house needed some green in it, too.  I just happened to find the perfect scrap to use for parts of the house.

Green with hearts!

So, the February house is all about green, and hearts, and giving flowers!

I made a new tree for the neighborhood, too.  I've been making the trees with stitch and flip flying geese, instead of the no waste method where you can make the geese a bit big and square them up.  Unfortunately, that's causing my trees to be a bit wonky!  

Hopefully, I'll be able to square things up with some sashing!

But this method does give me some bonus HSTs, so I like that.

The neighborhood is growing!

Sharing at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday and at 

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Quilt and Learning for the Quilter's Cove link-up.

 

I Like Thursday #471

Good morning, friends, and Happy Thursday!  And a hello from my mom, too, on Valentine's Day.  I found this sweet bouquet of flowers at our grocery store for only $12.99!  (Not that I want to be cheap when it comes to my mom, lol!  But the price makes it easy to pick up a little bouquet and take it to her every now and then.)

For myself, I chose a bouquet of daffodils, my favorite flower!  I was glad to see them at the grocery store, too.

We've been enjoying Season 5 of All Creatures Great and Small on our PBS channel 6.  I like the addition of young Jimmy who likes to go along with his dad and "help out!"

PBS site

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our favorite subject in school.  And thinking back - I liked them all!  Maybe I was not quite so into science as all the rest of the subjects, but I did end up liking teaching science when I taught 5th grade.  But my most favorite classes in school were music classes.  I was in choir, band, orchestra, and lots of other music related activities when growing up.  Here's a picture of the choir from my senior yearbook in 1972.  Can you find me?

Hope you're having a good week!

I'm oining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.