To-Do Tuesday #114

 Good morning!  I'm joining in with Linda and friends at Texas Quilt Gal for the To-Do Tuesday link-up, sharing what I've been working on and my new list for this coming week.

With last week being Thanksgiving, and with our plans to spend some days away from home, I didn't have much of a to-do list.  We did have a fun little road trip, spent time with our kids, ate turkey and pie, and hope all of you did as well!

So, today I'm starting fresh with a new list - not new projects! - just an updated list.

When I left home last week, this is how I left my sewing table:

I was finishing up the final row for Full Stop, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2021 sampler, and starting to sew blocks into rows on my Crumb Hearts quilt.   Since we returned home, I've finished up the Full Stop row and set it aside.  More on that one later!

To focus on this week:

• Sewing the Crumb Hearts blocks into rows, and into a quilt top.
• Work on the layout for the Easy Breezy blocks, which I actually started on today.  Here's what I'm thinking:

 

Framing the blocks with neutral sashing and 

using a Kona medium blue for cornerstones.

For a 5 x 6 block setting, I need two more blocks.

So I pulled out some scraps, got the pieces cut, 

and started putting those two blocks together today.

(Along with those Crumb Hearts rows!)

• And you might have noticed something else on my design wall in the photo above - my not-so-secret (anymore) sewing project, Vicki's Welcome Frosty wall-hanging.  The basic piece is made, now it needs to be quilted, and Frosty's face added.  This is a gift for someone, but the get together is postponed until January.  Meanwhile, I'm keeping it on my list for finishing up!

I think that will do it for me this week!  What's on your list?

November Table Scraps in mini form...

You might remember that in October, I was working on a Halloween version of Carole's Autumn Jubilee quilt, and used a few of the scraps to hand-piece a little mug rug.

So then I thought, if that was fun in Halloween scraps, why not stitch up something in November/Thanksgiving scraps?  A few years ago I made this tablerunner, also during Autumn Jubilee,  and still have bits of that Thankful fabric left.

I pulled out the leftovers from that one, cut some squares, and made this little mat.

These measure 8.5 x 6.5.  You can see that I tried

to be a bit creative with my cutting so that the center gives the impression of the word "thankful."  The "n" got swallowed up in the seam allowance!

Right now this one has my angel collection sitting on it - it's just the right size for this little space!

You know I couldn't stop there, right?  What about a little quilted mat like this in Christmas scraps?  I started hunting around in my Christmas drawer and found these 3 inch bowties.  I made them last year for some purpose, but abandoned them before anything was finished.  (I think the little pieces were kind of fiddly and the finished sizes of these varied widely!)

I cut an alternate block for in between, and hand-pieced these together, too.  It wasn't hard to adjust the seam allowances to fix the wonky bowties.

Some simple hand quilting and matching binding and this one is done, too.  It's a little bigger at about 10.5 x 8.

These little projects don't need much for backing - another good way to use up scraps!

So, here are my Table Scraps minis!

Lots of places to link up this weekend:

Joyful Quilter

SoScrappy

Quilting is more fun than Housework 

Kathy's Quilts 

I Like Thursday #262 - Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a week of looking at old pictures, telling family stories, laughter and tears.   I really love old family pictures, so I picked a few to share with you.

Mike and his mom when he was a young sailor, about 1970.

All of the boy cousins with their grandma at a family wedding, about 1999.  Our boys are the two on the right.

And a more recent photo of my mother-in-law, having her very favorite meal at Red Lobster, fried shrimp!  That was the last time Mike was able to take his mom out for lunch back in July of this year.

I love that look on her face!

Thank you for indulging me, one more time.  Hope you are having a lovely Thanksgiving, however and wherever you celebrate!

Thanks for visiting on "I Like Thursday" 

hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color. 

To-Do Tuesday #113

 is a TA-DAAAA!!!!

Positivity is finally finished!

This quilt along was sponsored by Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts and the design is her own.  I chose reds and low volumes for my blocks because that's what I had the most of in my stash at the time.  

I ended up adding a few new red and low volume prints to the mix along the way because I ran low.  Plus I found the perfect backing for the quilt at Joann's - red with white stars.  I used it for the binding, too.

The Positivity QAL was started to benefit Mercyful Quilts, a charity quilt drive started by Bernie at Needle and Foot,  for Mercy Hospital in Sacramento, California, to comfort dying patients and their families.  And so that's exactly where this quilt is going, in honor and memory of my mother-in-law, Goldie, who passed away last Tuesday, November 16th.

My favorite picture of my MIL and our oldest son, I would say this was taken sometime in 1982.

My to-do list this week has nothing quilt related on it!

• Make sure my mom has everything she needs so that we can leave town for a few days.
• Celebrate my MIL's life this afternoon with Mike's family.
• Pack up and go spend Thanksgiving with our kids.

 I'm joining in with Linda and friends at Texas Quilt Gal for To-Do Tuesday.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Slow stitching this week...

 I've been doing all kinds of hand stitching this week.  Early in the week, I made a little progress on hand quilting the rainbow trip around the world.

But then, I switched over to sewing the binding on my Positivity quilt.  That took a couple of evenings!

By Thursday, when I remembered that Michelle at PinkernPunkin Quilting would have a new Frosty on her blog for some redwork embroidery, I decided to work on last week's Frosty on his sled.

This one has an adorable little bird riding along, too!

I printed out the new Frosty, and need to get him traced and ready to stitch.  He'll be perfect to take along on our Thanksgiving road trip.

This time Frosty's getting his Christmas tree, and so is his little bird friend!

I'll be stitching on Frosty for my slow Sunday stitching, (or maybe doing some hand quilting on the TATW!)

and joining in with everyone at Kathy's Quilts.

November progress...

 Spending most of my sewing time on Positivity this week was great for finishing it up!  

A finished post will be coming soon!

However, it left less time to work on my current Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, except for a few little things.  Still needing to decide on the final heart for my crumb hearts quilt, I made a white/low volume heart with turquoise as the background.

I like this!

Here's how it looks in with the rest.  Next step is to sew the blocks/rows together and add borders, probably like what I'm trying there on the right.

I also got a little bit of a start on the final row for the Full Stop sampler.   I really loved Angela's rainbow row of periods, so I decided to do a fabric pull that would work for that idea.  I only need a 2.5 inch square of each color and then some 2.5 inch squares of the background plus strips to separate them.

A little chain piecing and it won't be long until I have this row ready to go!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #261 - Happy to Sad

 Sometimes a week takes you in all directions.  Last Friday evening, we were able to watch these two lovely people get married by way of Zoom.  The wedding was in the San Francisco area.

This is my brother's daughter, Renee, and her husband, Sean.  Both of my brother's girls got married this year - we told him he won the wedding lottery!  

Only immediate family of the bride and groom were there, and lots of us watched on Zoom.

We brought my mom over to watch the wedding on our big computer screen, and toasted them with a glass of wine.  My mom told me she was happy as a clam!

Really, the only problem with Zoom weddings is you don't get any cake.  So I made sure we had a little wedding-like cake.  I found this at our King Soopers grocery store - it was called Lemon Cream Shortcake.  Tasty!

I also read a good book this week, and that's always a happy time for me.  Eight Hundred Grapes, by Laura Dave, also the author of The Last Thing He Told Me.

Another "couldn't put it down" book.  I don't remember who shared this book in a post recently (was it you, Wendy?!), but thanks for the recommendation!  This is a good one!

Unfortunately,  late Tuesday night we learned that Mike's mom had passed away.  She was 93, and had been in declining health for several years, but it's still hard.  She will be missed!  I'm happy that we just saw her a couple weeks ago.  This photo was taken on Mother's Day when the family was last able to get together.  That, of course, made her really happy, and you can see it in the smile on her face!

Thanks for visiting on "I Like Thursday" hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color.  Hope you're having a great day!

To-Do Tuesday #112

Good morning!  I'm joining in with Linda and friends at Texas Quilt Gal for the To-Do Tuesday link-up, sharing what I've been working on and my new list for this coming week.

Today, I'm so excited because something that has been on my to-do list for quite some time has really moved along, and that is the Positivity quilt!  I can't quite say it's finished, but it's close.  Quilting is finished and binding is made - I just need to get that binding sewn on!

Almost there!

I also got started on the Winter Holiday project that I need for a gift exchange coming up soon.  It's not Christmas themed, more snow themed, but since it's for a gift, that's all I can say right now.  My goal for the week was to get the pieces cut.

But I also got started on the sewing, starting with a checkerboard section, and HSTs for pinwheels.

Those two items were at the top of my "must do" list, but I also had a "hope to get to" and that was to get another quilt ready for hand-quilting, and I did that, too!  You can read more about this one in my weekend post, but here's a photo of my quilting progress.

I was a good girl and stayed focused on these three projects, and that paid off.  The potential distraction of a new project (my solid scraps that I have an idea for) were stuffed back in their drawer for another time!

So, on this week's list:

• Binding on Positivity!
• Keep going on the winter project.
• Progress on Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects - especially the period row for Full Stop.

Wishing you a productive week!

Slow stitching a scrappy rainbow...

Quite a bit of my sewing time this week has been devoted to prepping my hand-pieced scrappy Trip Around the World quilt for hand quilting.   It's not the most exciting part of quilt construction, but it's a necessary one!

Pressing and de-threading the back came first.  Lots of seams in this quilt!

The backing is yardage that I found at Joann's earlier in the week, so it needed to be pieced.

I decided to pin baste the layers, so I cleared off my sewing machine table, and used that nice big space to do the basting.

This quilt really has a lot of favorite scraps in it!

This might be my new favorite backing fabric for rainbow quilts!

I'll be quilting this with DMC white Perle Cotton #12, starting with all the white diagonals, and then going through the rainbow colors.  This will be my slow stitching project for a lo-o-o-ng time!  

Sharing at my favorite weekend linky parties:

SoScrappy 

Quilting is more fun than Housework 

Kathy's Quilts 

I Like Thursday #260

 Happy Thursday!

I am grateful!

I am especially thankful to share my life with this guy.  Happy Veterans Day to him!

This was taken at one of our favorite places - Depoe Bay, Oregon.

Stitching this week:  a sweet redwork snowman!  This is a design from Melisa at PinkernPunkin Quilting.  She's sharing a snowman every Thursday for an embroidery/quilt project, and I thought I'd join in.  She is so generous with her designs!

Just a little more to do!

Reading this week:

I really enjoy this murder mystery series, so I was happy when it became available from the library.  And it looks like a #22 is coming soon, too!

And speaking of murder mysteries, we discovered "Grantchester" this fall.  It's on PBS right after "Call the Midwife" on Sunday nights.   I know it's been around for several seasons before this, and I wish we had started watching sooner.  We've really been enjoying it!

Hope you've been having a great week!  Thanks for visiting on "I Like Thursday" hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color.