ABC Table Scraps projects for March

Finishing up March with my Table Scraps projects - come take a look!

This year, for the 2023 Table Scraps Challenge over at the Joyful Quilter, Joy has included a couple of letters of the alphabet to somehow work into our quilty projects, as well as a color of the month, which coordinates with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  For March, the color has been green, and the letters are B and U.

For me this month, B stands for Orphan Blocks!   Way back in 2020, I participated in the Color Challenge, which is sponsored by Jen of Patterns by Jen, and each year there is a theme that each month's block is based on.  2020's theme was Birds (also starts with B!) and enjoying birds as I do, I knew I had to participate!  Here are the twelve blocks I made in 2020.

I enjoyed making each block throughout the year,

but have never made them into a quilt, 

so I decided I would use them for smaller projects this year! 

The most important thing is that there were two green blocks, and since these are 12.5 inch blocks, it only took a few inches of coordinating side borders to make two new 12 x 16 inch placemats!

Bright greens

Olive greens

Back to the ABCs of these table scraps projects - U stands for Underneath!  When you look at the underneath side of these placemats, you will find some fun prints that fit with the colors on the front.

And now we're all ready for dinner with a fresh, Spring table!

Sharing at Joyful Quilter's March Table Scraps link-up!

And Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

Also at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!

I Like Thursday #329

Happy Thursday, friends!  I'm joining in, as always, with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.  Hope you're having a great week!

Did you know that the dates of the last 10 days of March form palindromes?  I didn't realize this until I saw this meme on Facebook.  Interesting!

In Colorado, it became legal to sell wine in the grocery stores as of March 1st.  We're starting to see items like this, which caught my eye the other day.   This made me smile, and I had to go back and take a picture!

Do you get into a book series, and have to read the next book as soon as you finish the one before?  That's where I'm at with the Ruth Galloway series, by Elly Griffith.  I know I've shared this series before.  I think I'm on my fourth one for the month of March!

This week I've been enjoying finishing up my Table Scraps projects for this month, and will share them in a post tomorrow.  For a quick sewing project yesterday, I stitched up one more set of cloth napkins in green.  I've made a lot of these since discovering this tutorial for them several years ago.  Two fat quarters make two napkins.

I made three sets of these last year - red (apples), 

yellow (bananas), and purple (grapes).

We get a lot of use out of them!

Easter is coming up - are you hosting a big dinner at your house?  I did last last year, but no plans for that this year.  Even so, there is a meal that feels traditional to me for Easter and that is ham with cheesy potatoes.   I've used several recipes for the potato dish over the years, and recently have been making them in the crockpot.  This recipe intrigued me because it was just 5 ingredients.

Slow Cooker Cheesy Potatoes

Those look good, don't they?!

To-Do Tuesday #174

I'm putting a request on Mother Nature's to-do list for this week.  Please bring Spring back!

This is Monday morning's view out the front window.

At least, as with most Spring snowstorms, it all should melt pretty quickly!

On my personal to-do list from last week, I just wanted to get the binding taken care of on the Dancing Plus quilt, and that is done!  ✅️. You can read more about it in my weekend post HERE.  I finished stitching the binding on Saturday evening.

I'm not counting this one as completely finished yet, because I discovered some places where I missed some quilting and need to add more.  Maybe by the end of this week it will be ready for a finished post?  

On this week's to-do list, I have some adulting to do... a meeting with the therapists and caregivers at my mom's rehab center to see how she's doing.  

And... I'm being a good girl and finally getting my first Shingles shot this afternoon.  My doctor has been on me to get that done for a couple years, and I've put it off.  But not anymore!

In the sewing room:  just need to finish up one last March project, and that is my entry for the Table Scraps Challenge.  It's part way there!

What's on your list this week?

Sharing at Quilt Schmilt for To-Do Tuesday.

Survey says...

In my To-Do Tuesday post, I asked everyone for input on which binding color I should use on the Dancing Plus quilt.  It was so fun to see what each commenter thought, and I have to admit that I was influenced by each of you.  Each time I read a comment, I would think - okay, I'm going with the Kona Lagoon, or okay, I'm going with the gray Grunge!  Here's how the results turned out:

Kona Lagoon:                       Grunge in gray:                  Either: 

         8                                               10                                    4      

Pretty close!  Ultimately, my decision was based on exactly what Deb A. said: if I want the binding to stand out, pick the blue; if I want it to blend in more, pick the gray.  So, I picked...   the gray.  

I did end up with a lighter gray than the one I showed in my Tuesday post,

but I think I'll be very happy with this.  

And, don't worry, the Lagoon will find the perfect place in another quilt! 

There's lots of binding left to stitch, so that will be my slow stitching for the weekend!

In other RSC stitching for the week, I finished up the three green zipper blocks I had started a few weeks ago.

And almost finished two dark green split 9 patches.

Yes, there are penguins in that one!

Aren't they cute?!

Sharing at all my favorite weekend link-ups:

ScrapHappy Saturday 

Oh Scrap!

and Slow Stitching Sunday 

I Like Thursday #328

In search of things to smile about this week, I came across this new sculpture at our local sculpture park.

This one might even make you laugh out loud!

I finished up Bear Necessities last night and hung it in my seasonal mini quilt place on the side of the fridge.  Ms. Bear with her bicycle and honey for sale have also been making me smile!

Adding this little project to Sandra's March DrEAMi link-up

because it was truly a "have to" project.  The best thing for my mental health 

when there is lots of stress in life is to stitch up a little something.

Ms. Bear and her honey sales helped me get my mind off my worries

about my mom that have filled up the month of March.

We were so happy to see that season 12 of Call the Midwife was starting this past Sunday.  Love that show!  And also season 3 of The Mandalorian.

I love little Grogu - also known as Baby Yoda.  One of these days I'm going to make a quilted Grogu for one of my sons who loves anything Star Wars.

Thinking ahead to planting and growing season always makes me smile, too.  I am a very small scale gardener, and don't always have a ton of success, but I keep trying.  I enjoy growing flowers in pots around the yard, and try to grow some veggies every year.  Here's how my garden area looks right now:

Winter mode - we've been adding coffee grounds to our dirt all winter.

Here's how I hope things will look in a few months!

Hope you're finding things to smile about this week!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday!

 

To-Do Tuesday #173

I haven't published a To-To post for a few weeks because of everything going on with my mom, but I think we've reached a fairly stable point in her care, so I decided I could make some plans this week!

In my last to-do post, there were two main projects I was working on finishing up, and both were completed since that post.

Stay at Home Round Robin

and

Rainbow Beads

I was definitely happy to be able to finish both of those!

Besides a few Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks that I've been working on, I also have another finish in the works.  This is the Dancing Plus quilt.  I finished hand quilting it a few weeks ago, and it's just been hanging out waiting for binding.

Edges stay-stitched and trimmed.

So this week's To-To list is a simple one - decide on a binding fabric, and get it made and attached!  But which one?  The blue is Kona Lagoon and the gray is a dark gray Grunge.  If I decide on the Grunge, I'll need more of it, but that's easy to find!

What do you think?

Sharing at Quilt Schmilt for To-Do Tuesday.

Working on a little finish...

I finished up Bear Necessities, an embroidery design by Kathy Schmitz, earlier this week.  You might remember that I started it two weeks ago after the news that my mom had broken her hip and gone through surgery.  It's been a stressful couple of weeks, and I've needed lots of stitching therapy!

When I was looking around for border ideas, I came across a pile of orphan blocks I had, leftover from the 2020 Color Challenge.  I've never used them for anything, so decided to use the different blocks for smaller finishes.  This yellow one is from January of 2020.

The colors and prints are perfect to go with Ms. Bear and her honey bees!

So I took the sections apart and reworked them into borders.

After finding a backing and some batting, I did some simple quilting and sewed on the binding.

Today's slow stitching will be to finish hand-stitching the binding to the back

and maybe add some extra stitches to those 3 inch border blocks.

Something like this -

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching 

My week in fabric...

I was so happy to finish up my Stay at Home Round Robin project this week, and here it is hanging next to last year's quilt.  Read more about it HERE.

My sewing room used to be our basement family room, so there's

a fireplace at one end.  It has turned out to be a fun place to display 

my little quilt projects! 

After that I pulled out the green scraps and started working on a couple Split 9-Patch blocks.  Working on the contrast between the green sections and the low volume sections was interesting.  A few fabrics I found could potentially go in either!

Here's what I ended up with so far:

And the whole group - they're starting to look like a quilt!  My goal is to make four in each month's color, so I need two more greens this month.  I made the two red blocks back in December when I was playing with the Split 9 design, so I'll need two more of those eventually, too.

And in the happy mail department, I received this beautiful bundle of Batiks that was a prize from a giveaway on Sew Preeti Quilts' blog awhile back.  Won't these be fun to play with?!

Thank you, Preeti!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like...

that my Stay at Home Round Robin is finished!  

This is the third year I've joined in the Stay at Home Round Robin QAL, which is hosted by Gail at QuiltingGail, and several blogging friends.  I knew I needed to keep my project fairly small this year, so I started out with an embroidered piece as the center and a plan to have a blue and white quilt at the end.  

"Welcome Winter"

To keep things simple, instead of adding a round each week, I just made the called for blocks each week, and waited until the very end to put everything together.

My collage attempt didn't get everything in the right order 

for the weekly prompts, but it does show all the blocks I made:

One spool block (for the center), square in a square, flying geese, pinwheels, friendship stars, and hourglass blocks.

In the last two weeks, I sewed these blocks into borders and onto the center, added a final outside border, and finished it all up!

Isn't that outside border fabric perfect?

The trees are sparkly silver!

So, here is my finished 2023 Stay at Home Round Robin quilt!  It's about 25 inches square.

I thought the blue with white dots would make a fun binding!

An outdoor photo - winter isn't really welcome here anymore, but we're not quite at spring yet either.  It was a pretty day today - blue sky, white clouds, still bare branches on the trees.

Speaking of Spring - a few little yellow crocuses have been poking their heads up in my flower garden!

I'm always happy to see them!

Sharing at the SAHRR2023 quilt parade,

and also at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

And at Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

 

Progress in little bits...

It's been one of those weeks where I've just been happy to get any time at all in my sewing room, so I focused on getting my Stay at Home Round Robin top together.  Here's a peek!

As of Friday afternoon, I have the batting and backing cut, and hope to spend some time this afternoon on the spray basting and getting the quilting started.

As far as green for March goes, I've been hand-piecing more 3.5 inch bowtie blocks in the evenings.  I had finished three of them back in December, stitched three more this week, and have two more ready to go for slow stitching this weekend.   

Look what I found in the green scrap bin - 

just enough little penguins on a light green background 

for one of these bowtie blocks!

One zipper block in greens was completed and one more cut out.  The fabric on the left is a greenish-blue Grunge, but the camera sees it as much bluer than it is in real life.

And if I can count embroidery floss in with my green stitching - here's the little bear design I started last week.  I've been enjoying working on her all week!  She's taking her homegrown honey to the farmer's market!

Her cute little outfit is DMC 3816 - Celadon Green and

the leaves on the branch are DMC 988 - Forest Green.

So, progress in little bits - that's been my week!  Sharing at all my favorite weekend parties:

ScrapHappy Saturday 

Oh Scrap!

and Slow Sunday Stitching

I Like Thursday #326

I have to admit that I have not had a likeable week - my mom has transferred to a rehab facility for her broken hip and we're still just getting the lay of the land there.  She has been confused and fearful about everything and that is hard to handle.  I've had many moments of wondering what the future holds for her.

I did like getting back into my sewing room on Monday afternoon for a little while.  I just needed to play with some fabric!  I'm sure you know the feeling.  I pulled out this pretty fat quarter and some Kona Grass Green scraps, and cut pieces for a zipper block.

Spring will come one of these days!

I've been enjoying visiting the blogs on the "Dust off a Quilt Book" blog hop.  Cheree at The Morning Latte showed this book in one of her photos, and I realized I had that one in my bookshelf, so I went and pulled it out.

I'm not sure I actually purchased it - I think a friend gave it to me.

It is copyrighted 1998!

It turns out that it has the directions for many, many (well, 101 to be exact!) quilt blocks and then examples of a quilt made with the block.  A lot of them are familiar to me, especially from seeing blocks that many quilters in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge have used over the years.  I love this one below - it would be a lifetime achievement for me!

A sweet friend brought us a couple meals - yummy Bierocks and a pot of chili along with homemade focaccia bread.   It is delicious!  We don't get a lot of homemade bread at our house, so it is a big treat.

On TV we've been enjoying the spinoff from "Death in Paradise" called "Beyond Paradise."  These shows are on the streaming service BritBox.  We actually haven't watched much of "Death in Paradise," so have gone back and started watching it as well.

The Caribbean island setting is a lot of fun - even if there is a murder mystery to solve!

To end on a positive note, today (Wednesday) my mom was doing pretty well.  When I got to the rehab place, my niece, Maya was there with her dog, Winston.  That was enjoyable for Mom - she loves it when the dogs come to visit!

I felt encouraged today because we spoke with Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy and they have gotten Mom up to walk and move around a bit and that's a big deal at this point!

So maybe the week will end on a more positive note than it began on!  Joining in with I Like Thursday,  hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color!