I Like Thursday #486

It's the "yard work" time of year and we always take our grass and tree branches to the city recycle center to be mulched.  Every time we go, I see something interesting there!

Things are growing, too.  I planted two tomatoes in pots this year - one for slicing and one cherry tomato.  The cherry tomato is the one farthest over in the photo - and it has blossoms on it already!

This dianthus is looks happy!

We've had some extended family coming through town and some of the kids went to visit my mom.  Mom has three grandsons and three granddaughters.  These are the sweet granddaughters who all paid her a visit together!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about insects.  Do we have a favorite?  I'm not a big insect fan, unlike my college roommate who is an entomologist and loves all bugs!  But I did have an interesting experience with this beautiful praying mantis who showed up in our garden several years ago.

She lived in the ground cover garden by our front step, and

everyday when I watered it, she would climb up from underneath the plants.

Eventually we saw her mate, and then we never saw anything more after that.

I had hoped to see some babies hatch from there, too, but never did.

Fascinating experience anyway, though!

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

Midweek Update

This week I got my Lyra tablerunner top sandwiched for quilting and it is in progress!

Meanwhile I've been trying to figure out what to do with the scraps from this project.  There aren't very many scraps, but even so I don't want to stick them in the scrap bins and have them just sit there!

Last year, after making Sandra's Glowing Hearts quilt, I went on a quest to use up the leftovers from that project and ended up making a tablerunner and a placemat out of them.

There's not near the amount of scraps from this year's project (because it was started from scraps!) but there was enough to make twelve little 3.5 inch four patches.  Since the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in June is pastels I'm thinking these will turn into my scrappy placemat for the month.

I still have to decide how exactly I'll use these four patches, 

but they'll turn into something!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Slow stitching this week...

Not sure why it took me so long, but I finally finished up the Gail Pan Spring embroidery piece this week!

Winter, Spring...

and I will move on to the Summer design, as soon as I find the background fabric that I had reserved for this project to trace the new design!  😜  Meanwhile I decided to prep a small quilt for hand quilting.  I sewed this up back in April.  It's made from a charm pack of Tilda and a Spool quilt pattern from Primrose Cottage.

About 15 inches square.

And meanwhile, I've continued to work on the Summer SAL from PinkernPunkin.  I stitched Stamp 4 this week - Sunflower Strut.  

Moving on to stamp #5!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Catching Up!

It's been nice to have a week to catch up on some quilting tasks.  Earlier in the week I finished the top for my Lyra tablerunner, and it's now layered and ready to quilt.

Then I got busy working on block 9 for the Little House sew-along at Melva Loves Scraps and it's now finished, too!  It started with a sweet center block that Melva calls Prairie Rose.  Choosing the fabrics for this one, using my fall-themed prints, was more challenging than sewing it up.  Of course this one looks like a sunflower rather than a rose!

Add the log cabin strips, and here it is.

Now all nine blocks are made, and we can start to play with layouts.  I think the finishing instructions will be out next week.

I can already see a block or two ⬆️

that I'm going to have to rearrange.

I fussy cut a favorite bit of orange from the jelly roll for this block!

Having a leader/ender block is helpful when sewing these log cabins together, so I was able to finish a gameboard block along the way, too.  It even uses scraps from the Little House project!

And there goes orange month!  I'm wondering what our next color will be.

Linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday 

and at Melva Loves Scraps for the Little House sew-along, block 9.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #485

We spent some time on Monday exploring a new park in our town that we hadn't been to before.  It has a little bit of everything - a great playground, sculptures, walking trails, and fishing areas.

I've been telling all my friends with grandkids 

that they need to bring them here!

The sculptures are fun - much larger than life-size - native animals.  Wild turkeys!

And prairie dogs!

That trail you can see back behind there is where we walked.  

You can go down to the river there and check out the fishing ponds, too.

It was a beautiful day!

This week's book was a good one - The Keeper of Happy Endings, by Barbara Davis.  It's my book club's June book.  It is historical fiction, taking place in the 1940s and the 1980s.

Goodreads

LeeAnna's question of the week is about perms.  Have we had one and how did it work out?  This one made me laugh!  I have very curly hair!  So curly, in fact, that people have asked me if I had a perm.  😄  When I was a teenager, some product came out that claimed to straighten curly hair, and my mom thought we ought to try it.  I think it was done much like a perm - you combed this stuff in, left it for awhile, and then pretended your hair was magically straight (as was the style in the early 70s when I was in high school).  I think it lasted at the most for a week or two.  

In college, I met Mike, whose hair was also curly back then, and our friends called us the "Brillo Pads!"  We even dressed up as brillo pad boxes for a Halloween party way back then.   I wish I could find a picture of that, but I'm not sure where it would be.

How's this for a 70s look?!

Have a great Thursday, everyone!

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

Midweek Update

Looking back at my recent posts, I realized that it's been a month since I last shared any progress on my version of mmmquilts' Lyra QAL.  I guess going on a trip in the middle of that month affected what I was able to get done, but I'm moving it along now!

Early in the QAL, I had figured out that the best way for me to make all the sections I needed was to paper-piece them.  The entire quilt is made out of these three shapes.

Based on my fabric choices and available time, I decided to turn Sandra's nine blocks quilt into a 3 block summer table runner, so I calculated how many of those paper-pieced sections I would need, and they turned into this design.

Getting it to that point was the hardest part!  And now it is sewn together.  In the above photo the pieces are laid out on the green backing of an older quilt.  In the photo below, the runner is on a blue sheet because I was pressing with some starch.  There are lots of bias edges in this one!

The last couple days I've been working on the borders.  Sandra's design for the full quilt calls for square-in-a-square cornerstone, which I made in a 2.5 inch size, using the same green as the star points.

And then here it is - the finished tablerunner top!

This measures 40 x 20, a good size for our table.

Time to layer, quilt, and finish this!

The final quilt parade starts June 15th.

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Melva Loves Scraps for TGIFF

Pink flowers and a watermelon!

I planted some pink petunias yesterday afternoon.  These are hanging off our back porch.  I hope they grow and fill in the pot!

I stitched some pink flowers, too!  Since starting Melisa's Summer stitch-along, I've been ignoring the Gail Pan Spring design that I had been working on.  This is from her book, Changing Seasons.  I've already finished "Winter," and eventually there will be Summer and Fall, too.  I've decided it really is time to finish up Spring!

Alternating with that each evening, I also stitched up stamp #3 for the Summer SAL at PinkernPunkin.  It made me crave some watermelon, lol!

On to stamp #4, which has sunflowers to stitch!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.