To-Do Tuesday #44

Good morning, friends! Can you believe it's the last day of June?  This year is flying by in all its strangeness.  Whether we are running around or staying at home, the days go by, don't they?

I'm checking in today with my weekly to-do list and linking up with Roseanne and friends for the To-Do Tuesday linky party at Home Sewn By Us. 

From last week's list, I finished a couple of things, and made progress on a couple of things.  

Finished - the June Color Challenge Block - 

and my two little squirrelly projects - 

Progress on:  the paper-pieced purple project 

and the doll-sized hospital gowns.

So, for this week: 

1.  I really need to finish up the purple project because it has a deadline that's coming right up!

2.  I'll also plan on making more progress on the hospital gowns.  I need the bias binding tape for the neckline/tie, and then they will finish up quickly!

3.  One last item on the list is to sew up the pink row for my rainbow zig zag quilt project.

4.  Oh, and I'm still stitching on the red and white quilt, too.  Until it's finished!

I know where I need to start!  What's on your list this week?

Still stitching...

My hand stitching right now is focused on quilting the red and white hand-pieced quilt from the Book Club QAL, sponsored by Patty at Elm Street Quilts and Kristin at Simple.Handmade.Everyday.  

I'm stitching around each square, plus following the seam lines for all the block designs.  Here's the block I finished most recently.

Cathy

Just two more blocks to go - here's the one I'm currently working on - Claire.

and then I'll quilt all the sashing and cornerstones.  I'm getting close to a finish!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Dueling Squirrels

Just like those squirrels, I've been going multiple directions in my sewing room the last couple weeks.  It's been a case of one thing leading to another, following inspiration from multiple sources!

After seeing Mari's Modern Blocks, I had to try some, too.  I chose a small piece of Kona Butter, and scraps in a dark pink/magenta, some bright yellow Grunge, a couple different dark turquoises, and purple to make 20 of these 5 inch blocks.  

I think you can also call this a Hatchet block.

After settling on a layout and sewing the blocks together, this week I finished up the tablerunner I made from these blocks.

This one measures about 18 x 23

It looks good hanging like this, too!

I quilted it in a diamond spiral following the shapes created by the blocks.  Binding is the same dark purple as in the block corners.  I had a lot of the purple left from my Beothuk Star quilt, finished up last year. 

Here's the backing - just something I happened to have enough of - but it is bright and sunny!

I thought it would be fun to use this tablerunner on the table out on our back porch!

Meanwhile, along the way, I got sidetracked by the bonus triangles left from those stitch and flip corners in the above project.  I almost never save those, but this time I did!  What could I do with them?

Enter the next inspiration, from The Joyful Quilter's Monday Mini post of a couple weeks ago.  She made an adorable mini quilt for her kitchen that involved a pink fairy!

I have a whole panel full of forest fairies that I won in a giveaway when I first started blogging (in 2013!) that  I've never been inspired to use for anything.

Why not play with one of these?

So I did!

The HSTs made kind of an off-center outer border for the fairy I chose, 

and again, the purple for binding.  This mini ended up measuring about 10 x 12. 

The Blackberry Fairy is now hanging with the International Sisters,  watching over my sewing room.

So, dueling squirrels?  Or maybe they're BFFs!  

Whatever you want to call them, they were fun to play with!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday 

Sandra's June DrEAMi link-up at mmmquilts and

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

June Color Challenge Block

Earlier this week I finished up this month's color challenge block designed by Patterns by Jen.  June's block was inspired by the Mountain Bluebird, which is a favorite bird of mine since I live on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado.

Image Source

I just happened to have the scraps left out from my Beautiful Blue batik quilt, so I thought they would be perfect for this month's block.

There are six color challenge blocks on my design wall now.  I like how these are looking!

Big thanks go to Jen who offers these block designs each month, 

and prizes, too, for linking up our blocks!

Sharing at the June link-up at Patterns by Jen.  

I Like Thursday #191

Happy Thursday, friends!  How's everything going?  I went to the dentist yesterday... Life is good.  (Glad to have that out of the way!)

We must have had a chickadee nest somewhere in our yard, because there have been a bunch of little ones visiting our feeders this week.   We sure enjoy watching them!

In the garden, my green beans are growing!  I haven't planted these for years, and I had forgotten that they have pretty purple blossoms, too.  Can't wait to eat some!

You might be surprised to learn that I like this place.

They are taking good care of Mike through his cancer treatment, 

and I am so thankful for that.

I can't go inside with him for his appointments, so sometimes I just stay out in the parking lot if it's a short one.  Last week, I brought along my embroidery to work on.  I thought this would be good to stitch on while waiting.

I was happy to find out that our library had opened for curbside pickup recently, and I had a book to pick up.  Here's how they handed it to me!

Inside the bag was this book, which I've been enjoying, after finishing my previous book that was kind of heavy duty.  This one's a political thriller with the whole world in jeopardy - definitely a page turner - and I know the good guys are going to win!

And how about a little treat?  We've discovered a small, locally owned donut shop near us, and it tempted me the other day!

Mmmm!

Joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color

For "I Like Thursday."

To-Do Tuesday #43

Good morning!  I'm checking in today with my weekly to-do list and linking up with Roseanne and friends for the To-Do Tuesday linky party at Home Sewn By Us.  

Here's what was on the list for this past week:

1.  Finish up my version of Centred from the QAL.  ✔  I renamed this quilt Beautiful Blue, and you can read more about it here.

2.  Get caught up on pink blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  ✔  Read more about them here.

3.  Keep quilting on the red and white Book Club quilt.  ✔  This will be a Work in Progress for awhile longer yet, but it's definitely progressing!  I've been stitching on it every evening after dinner while we watch NCIS episodes on Netflix.   It's a good thing there are lots of seasons of NCIS!  

For this coming week, I have a bunch of smaller projects on my list:

1.  I'm working on a paper-pieced mini quilt for a special event.  It's about 1/4 pieced.  I'm hoping to make progress on that this week.

2.  I've had on my "mental" to-do list for a couple of weeks to make some doll-sized hospital gowns to send off to A Doll Like Me.   The link will take you to a post at Needle and Foot.  Bernie has been encouraging readers to send off doll quilts and hospital gowns to A Doll Like Me, and I did contribute a quilt a couple of years ago.   I finally printed out the pattern and pulled some fabric for them.  I have some more doll quilts to send along with them, too.

3.  A couple of small squirrel projects have invaded my sewing room in recent weeks, and I'm ready to finish them up.  Today I found backing for both and got them layered for quilting.  It shouldn't take too long to finish them now!

4.  The last thing on my list for this week is actually already finished!  I needed to sew up the June Color Challenge Block from Patterns by Jen, so yesterday I cut out the pieces, and took this photo.

And then, about 30 minutes later, it was all done!  

But the finished block will get its own post later in the month when

it's time to link up with the QAL.

It's nice to have one item on my list already completed this week!  

Hope your week is getting off to a good start, too!

A little project...

almost finished!

The only picture I can find of this little embroidery design is from back in April when I had just started it.

It's a free Gail Pan design called "Bee Brave"  that someone pointed me to back then, 

and I sure enjoyed stitching it!

Fast forward to today, and I've finished up the embroidery and added some yellow borders, layered with batting and backing, and some simple quilting.

Here's the backing:

Today's slow stitching job is to finish up the binding and get this ready to send off to a special someone!

Meanwhile, my simple hand quilting is progressing on the Book Club quilt, too!

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

More with Pink

After finishing two quilts in the last two weeks, (here and here), it has been fun to get back to playing with my scraps again! 

Eight new trees in pink were made for the Rainbow Jungle:

My pink scraps range from that 70s "dusty rose" on the left 

to a really bright, almost orangey-pink on the right. 

 

I haven't gotten the jungle out of its project box since the end of April, so it was fun to put all the trees up on my design wall the other day!

40 blocks made so far!

A few pink four patches were made, too.

This one is also fun to play with on the design wall.

Lots more blocks needed!

HSTs for the zigzag quilt:

6 more of these needed before I can sew the row together.

And, finally, remember these blocks?  I decided on a layout for them, and sewed them together just yesterday afternoon.

17.5 x 23

Some bonus HSTs which came from the stitch and flip corners in the runner above are being used for yet another squirrel project, a hint of which is below.

Hopefully, I'll have more to report on these last two next week.

Phew!  Busy week!  Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and 

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Beautiful Blue

and batiks, too!

I've never made an all blue quilt, and seldom work with batiks either.  So when I won this beautiful blue bundle of batiks in Michele's giveaway last fall, I wasn't sure what I would do with it.

Thanks again, Michele!

Until I saw Sandra's Centred quilt and learned she was going to have a quilt along for this pattern!  Perfect!

A whole quilt of quarter log cabins, with a 3-D sort of effect going on in the center - I wanted to try that!

On the design wall.

And now, finished!

40.5 x 40.5 inches

The blue batik bundle worked great to make these blocks!  At first I tried to plan out which fat quarters would be the darks and the mediums, but I really just ended up making two blocks at a time and trying to make sure there was a good contrast between each round of strips.  This gave the design a "mirror image" look with blocks opposite each other in each quadrant.

I did have to buy an additional blue batik for the binding and ended up using some of it on the back, too.

These adorable lady scientists, 

found at Joann's, make up the rest of the backing!

Binding

I quilted Blue in a square spiral

 using a light blue Gutermann thread.

Thank you, Sandra, for a another great QAL!  This was my second year joining in, and you can be sure I'll look forward to the next one, too.

I love this quilt, and I have a special person in mind to give it to.  

I can't wait to surprise her!

Linking up with the Centred Quilt Along Parade of Finishes at mmmquilts and

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.