To-Do Tuesday #103

Good morning!  I'm checking in with Chris and friends at Chrisknits today to share my to-do list for the week. 

September is almost here!  It's my birthday month and fall is on the way, so always a favorite month of the year for me.  Something extra coming this month is the book launch blog hop for Kelly Young's new book, Scrappy Improv Quilting. Kelly blogs at My Quilt Infatuation.  You can find more info about the book by clicking the link.

I'm excited to be part of the blog hop for Kelly's new book, and happy to say that my quilt is ready to share!  I love being ahead on *something!* 😎

That was something from my to-do list last week that was accomplished.  Also on the list:

• Play with those leftover HSTs for a squirrel project.  Done!  Check out my tiny finish here. 
• Connect the five question mark blocks for the Full Stop sampler quilt with the background fabrics to make the row.  Done!  And you'll notice in the photo that I got back to work joining my Positivity blocks into rows,  too.  Whoop whoop!

On this week's list:

• Keep going on Positivity!
• September will have a new color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so it will be time to get out that color and work on my monthly projects.
• Finish up another one of my recent embroidery designs into a small wall-hanging.

Have a great week everyone!

Slow stitching this week...

 Making progress on my Wooly Ewe.  The basket weave stitch in the star points was an interesting one!  Now I'm working on her legs, which are done in stem fill stitch - kind of labor intensive, too. 

Meanwhile, I finished the quilting on a small quilt this week and have the binding all ready to machine stitch on.  The hand stitched finishing step will be my Sunday evening slow stitching.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

Baby squirrel

 I think the baby squirrels in our yard are all grown up now, but not the ones in my sewing room.  I didn't do much with aqua this week, just one Easy Breezy block...

That alphabet print is one of my favorite scraps!

It was a leader/ender block for these little guys, which are leftover bonus triangles from Follow the Garden Path.

These HSTs are 1.25 inches finished.

I stitched them together into a tiny rectangle.  It measured 5.5 x 6.75.  After that, I felt like it needed a small border to stabilize the tiny HSTs, so I chose this leftover yellow print that's also from the original quilt.

Some simple diagonal quilting and leftover dark gray Grunge for the binding, and ta dah!

Finished up at 7.5 x 8.5.

Perfect for my glass of iced tea out on the back porch!

A tiny Drop Everything and Make It!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap and at 

mmmquilts for the August DrEAMi link-up.

I Like Thursday #250

 It has been a busy week with lots to do for my mom, and I don't have a lot to show for it, so I am celebrating some little things in my I Like Thursday post.  Check out more positive posts at Not Afraid of Color!

I like these little orange cherry tomatoes that I'm starting to get from my tomato plant.  I thought I had lost this one earlier in the summer, but we transplanted it to a different spot and it survived!

Yum!

I like sewing tiny little bindings on tiny little quilted things.  More about this one in my Saturday post!

This week I've been working on the Wooly Ewe embroidery design in the evenings and this section is filled with the basket weave stitch.  It's an interesting stitch to do, and tiny, but looks neat!

Of course, when life gets crazy, I'm always happy to have a good book to escape into.  Thanks go to Susie from Knitty Quilter for introducing me to a new author!  This murder mystery takes place in Tasmania, an island state of Australia, also a new and interesting place to explore.

It has continued to be so enjoyable to have produce out of our garden to eat for meals.  Tonight's dinner is BLTs (with tomato from the garden) and a new cucumber salad recipe: Gurkensalat (German Cucumber Salad).

Happy Thursday!

To-Do Tuesday #102

Good morning!  I'm checking in with Chris and friends at Chrisknits today to share my to-do list for the week. 

It's been a busy week, with a long to-do list that didn't have anything to do with sewing.  We did move my mom to assisted living over the weekend as well as celebrate her 90th birthday.  Fortunately I had wonderful helpers for all of this - my sister and brother and our spouses - so the move wasn't overwhelming.  (And birthday cake was a fun treat after all the work, too!)

Consequently, my Positivity project still looks like this, and probably will for awhile longer.  

This week, I did get the last two question marks finished for this month's Full Stop row.

I also made good progress on my September blog hop quilt - just a peek here, lots of improv/crumb sewing!

So, what's going on this week?  

• Squirrel!  Playing with these tiny HSTs leftover from my Follow Your Own Path quilt.  Sometimes you just need a little something like that in the midst of all the tumult.

• I need to connect the question mark blocks with their background fabric to finish up the Full Stop row.
• Time to layer and spray baste the blog hop quilt and get started quilting it.
• I'll keep the Positivity project on my list just so it doesn't get pushed too far down in the line!

Have a great week, everyone! 

Bits and pieces of aqua and some slow stitching

Happy 90th Birthday to my mom!  Today (Saturday) is the big day.  Mom is still at the rehab center, but my sister, brother, and I are going to take a cake over there and celebrate with her a little bit this afternoon.  This is a picture of my mom from a couple years ago making our annual peach pie.  We haven't been able to make a pie yet this year, but I'm still planning on it!

Meanwhile, I've been able to sew a few bits and pieces of aqua scraps together this week, starting with some crumb hearts and a wonky star.  The bonus HSTs come from the stitch and flip corners of the hearts.

Pieces and parts of two more question marks for Full Stop are ready to sew together, too.  These won't take much longer to finish.

In my evening hand stitching time, I've finished up the two Scrappy Trips blocks for August.

The sixteen blocks I've made so far are looking so fun on my design wall!

My current slow-stitching project is "Wooly Ewe" from Kathy Schmitz.  You can see I'm just getting started on her!

Sharing at all my favorite weekend link-ups:

SoScrappy 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Kathy's Quilts 

I Like Thursday #249

Happy Thursday, friends!   I'm joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color to share the positive things from my week.

Inspired by the Orange You Glad blog hop that's been going on all week over at Creatin'in the Sticks, and in need of some fabric therapy,  I stopped in at my LQS on Tuesday and came home with this little bundle of Halloween fat quarters.

I don't even have any plans for these, 

but it will sure be fun to think about what I could do!

We're starting to get tomatoes from our one plant.  So yummy!

And lots of cucumbers, too.  I've been making a "salad" from them - really just a vinegar/sugar dressing that you put on the sliced cucumbers and then keep in the fridge.  Easy Cucumber Salad.

The tomatoes are really good sliced up in this dressing, too!

I had a few more volunteer sunflowers in the garden that were bending over because their blooms got pretty heavy, so I cut them and brought them in the house.  Perfect timing for getting out my August tabletopper made in 2019 from Carole's Blogger Bundle and even her design!

This week I've been reading my book club's September discussion choice.  Jenna Bush Hager writes about her parents and grandparents using their letters to her over the years and other things they've written.  It's a very enjoyable book and helps you see people you've only known as presidents as real people.

Goodreads

Hope you're having a great week!

To-Do Tuesday #101

Good morning!  I'm checking in with Chris and friends at Chrisknits to share my to-do list for the week. 

I did get a few things accomplished in the last week!  I'm very happy to have finished the last red plus blocks for my Positivity quilt.

I also finished up this month's Table Scraps placemat and a few other aqua blocks - the crumb hearts!

Progress is also being made on the September blog hop project.  Sorry, no sneak peeks this week!  

So, for this week... I'm going to put a few things on the list, but not expect a lot to get done.  It's my mom's 90th birthday on Saturday, and in an ideal world we'd be having a party.  But Mom is still at the rehab center, and they're in a Covid quarantine because of a positive case, so we can't even see her.  And, in the meantime, we may be moving her into an assisted living building because she's needing more help these days.  

So, you can see why I might not get much done in the sewing room this week!  Hopefully, I can get a little something accomplished, though.

• Get the plus blocks into a flimsy.
• Keep working on aqua blocks for Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.
• Continue to make progress on my September blog hop project.  

Fingers crossed for a little sewing time!

Slow Stitching this week

I finished up the watering can and flowers design from Kathy Schmitz.  This one was so fun and stitched up quickly!  I really enjoyed the different kinds of flowers.

And the sweet little bees, too!

Now I'm back to the hand-pieced scrappy trips blocks in aqua/turquoise for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.  One block is finished and one in progress.

This will be my Sunday stitching for today,

and I'll be joining in with everyone at Kathy's Quilts

who encourage each other to slow down and stitch!

Table Scraps in Turquoise

 This week I finished up my Table Scraps placemat for the month of August in shades of aqua, turquoise, and teal.  Like several others in my placemat series this year, I started with a few leftover charm squares.  For lack of a better idea, 😊, I sewed them into a big nine patch.

The nine patch itself was about 14 inches square, and I want my placemats to be 12.5 x 16.5, so a border was needed to make it wider.  How about a soft yellow?

I think that worked!  

Some simple quilting, including one of the decorative stitches on my machine, and a darker blue-green Grunge for the binding, and it was all done.

But wait, you have to see the backing!  The front of this placemat is kind of boring, but I thought this would be great for the backing!

So now there are eight!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap and at 

Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps link-up at the end of the month.

I Like Thursday #248

 Welcome back for I Like Thursday!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color to share the positive things from my week.

You know I like a picnic lunch in a pretty park!  Mike and I took a drive up in the mountains the other day and found a roadside park in one of the towns we went through.

We loved this view down the road!

A water feature and sculpture that represent the area.

My little flower garden is starting to look a bit like fall is coming, with more marigolds blooming.  I love the color and scent of marigolds!

This embroidered flower design from Kathy Schmitz is moving right along.  Just the bees to finish up now.

I've been working on this while watching a fun and interesting show on Netflix the last few nights.  It's a documentary, but with a storyline and narration that keep your attention.  Thanks go to Carole at From my Carolina Home for recommending this one!

It's about the Cape or African penguin.  According to Wikipedia,  it's the only species of penguin that lives in Africa and is only found on the southwestern coast.  Most live on islands, but a few small colonies have grown and thrived on the mainland.

"Two colonies were established by penguins in the 1980s on the mainland near Cape Town, namely Boulders Beach near Simon's Town and Stony Point in Betty's Bay. Mainland colonies likely became possible only in recent times due to the reduction of predator numbers, although the Betty's Bay colony has been attacked by leopards. The only other mainland colony is in Namibia, but it is not known when it was established.

Boulders Beach is a tourist attraction due to the beach, swimming and the penguins.  The penguins will allow people to approach them as close as a metre."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_penguin

The show, "Penguin Town," is about the colony at Simon's Town.

And finally, I read a good book over the weekend!  It was one I couldn't put down - I read the whole book in about 24 hours.  I've been recommending it to everyone I talk to!

Be sure and check out all the positive posts that are linked up at Not Afraid of Color!  There's always something fun to discover on Thursdays!

To-Do Tuesday #100

100 To-Do Tuesday posts!  That's a lot of lists.  It's been a fun community to join, and also given me a weekly goal to keep in mind.  Win, win!  I'll be joining in with the link-up at Chrisknits if she's hosting this week, or wherever we find ourselves.

On last week's list:

• Make progress on plus blocks for Positivity. ✔

Working on the red outside blocks for the center section.

• Play with aqua/turquoise/teal scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  ✔  See my post here for what I accomplished.
• Make progress on blocks for September blog hop.  ✔

Lots of neutral crumb blocks with a little cross-cutting involved!

So, on this week's list: staying the course and working on the same items.  Fortunately, these three projects give me lots of variety and I don't get bored!

• Plus blocks - just need three more red ones and I can sew the rows together.
• Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects - Table Scraps placemat for August and crumb blocks for hearts are in progress.

• Keep working on September blog hop project (and don't forget to document my process for the post!)

Have a great week, everyone!

Aqua for August

 It has been delightful to get out the aqua/turquoise/teal scraps to play with this week for August in the Rainbow Scrap Scrap Challenge!  I started the month with some question marks and chandelier blocks.  You can tell I had a few bigger chunks that worked for multiple blocks!

Of course, I had to look at all the chandelier blocks together on the design wall.

The Little Sisters fit right in, don't they?

Read more about them here.

My evening hand stitching has been this hand-pieced Scrappy Trips block in aqua.  I'll continue working on this over the weekend, as well as prepping squares for the second one of these for the month, maybe with a few darker turquoise fabrics.

I love those cats on turquoise!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.