Progress toward JOY!

Even though today is Halloween, I'm continuing to work on my Christmas project and making good progress!   Since last week's Midweek post, I've 

• Cut out all the 2.5 inch squares
• Figured out a layout and made the stitch and flip corner pieces

• And then started to sew...

and sew

and sew!

Right now this measures 10.5 x 32.5.

I've seen this made both with and without borders - 

just have to decide which way I want to finish it.

Along the way, I had some time to start a new project - I figured as long as the Christmas bin was out, I might as well!  These blocks are called Sixteen Across, and can be found at susie's-scraps.  They are 16 patch blocks with a special light and dark layout.

Special thanks to Jocelyn and Linda for leading me down this squirrelly path! 

This week that border decision has to be made for the Joy wall-hanging, more Sixteen Across blocks will be made (they're good leaders and enders!), and there are Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks to sew into quilt tops.  I won't run out of things to work on!  How about you?

Linking up with Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.

October in Colorado...

can look like this:

Some leaves are still turning, many have fallen (and need to be raked!) and snow!

Our first snowfall of the year began this morning (Saturday) and is still falling late this afternoon.

So, October in my slow stitching can be varied, too.  A jack-o-lantern is taking shape in the Halloween Jar.

Mr. Jack looks a little bit like he has a 5:00 shadow, I think!

I had to get more orange floss and none of the colors I found at Joann's exactly matched the color I had run out of.  How can there be so many different oranges?

But today, stitching a tiny snowman seems appropriate, too!  This is a Melisa design - Baby Flake.  I'm having fun using little bits of different colors here and there - a black hat, a green scarf and pine branches, a red cardinal.  I think I'll do the little snowman and snowflakes in variegated blue, just so there'll be some contrast against the white background.

Sunday is predicted to be a cold and snowy day here, again - high of 32° - so it will be a good day to watch football and do some slow stitching.  Will it be Jack or Baby Flake?   Maybe both!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

ABC (Table Scraps) for October

Every October for several years now, I've joined in with Autumn Jubilee over at From My Carolina Home.  Carole always includes a quilt along during the month, and we've made many fun fall designs.  This year I decided to combine my Autumn Jubilee project with Table Scraps and make a mini quilt of some kind.

I started with the scraps from this tabletopper, especially the two Autumn florals.

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for October is light neutrals, and I think these fit right in, with the addition of a little brown.    To begin with, I made the maple leaves, flying geese, and pumpkins from the Autumn Jubilee project.

Because I had a specific size in mind, I ended up using the blocks I made in this arrangement.  You can see Carole's final layout for a 40 inch square quilt HERE.  Mine is 12 x 18.

You might notice that one of my pumpkins is a different size than the other.  That resulted from miss-cutting the strips that form the pumpkin.  But that's okay - pumpkins come in all different sizes, right?

A pretty light gold dot for the backing and a fun brown stripe for the binding finished this right up!

And here is my Autumn Jubilee/Table Scraps mini quilt posing on the table with the original topper, plus a bonus mug rug made from two leftover flying geese.

The 12 x 18 piece ended up here, on the small table between our comfy chairs.  We needed something new as these quilted mats get washed all the time, with all the coffee spills and cookie crumbs that end up there... So they wear out!

And the mini mini landed here - with my Autumn Angel.  Perfect colors!

The letters for October's table scraps are Q and T, and I really had to think about how they could go with my projects.  The first word that came to mind was Quiet - because low volume/light neutral quilts always seem quiet to me.  

And then the word Quote popped up, so how about an Autumn quote?  This one fits!

Hope you're having a lovely Autumn day!

Sharing at The Joyful Quilter's October Table Scraps link-up.

Alycia Quilts Finished or Not Friday 

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

 

I Like Thursday #359

This is me this week!  I have been reading and reading.

Two really good books that even have an interesting common theme which I didn’t realize until I started reading the second book.  Do you know what synesthesia is?  I didn't until I started reading the first book and the main character has it.  Here is a definition from the Cleveland Clinic.

Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously. Some examples include tasting words or linking colors to numbers and letters.

Only the Beautiful 

Esme Cahill

Yesterday I finished up the "Bless Our Home" 50th anniversary gift I've been working on for our friends.  I'm so happy to have this finished and will get it ready to send off soon.  I hope they like it!

For our last post before Halloween, LeeAnna is asking if we've ever had an encounter with a ghost or a family member after they passed.  I'm not much of a ghost person, and have never had a visit from a family member who has passed away, but it's not for lack of trying!  After my dad died pretty suddenly many years ago, I spent that night at my mom's house and slept on her couch.  I was so hoping to get a "visit" from my dad that night so I could say goodbye to him.  But no luck. 

I still miss him!  In this photo, my dad was probably 56 years old, 

and I'm now 13 years older than that.  That's a strange thought!

Have a great rest of the week!  We're expecting a change in the weather coming up on the weekend - with our first snow in the forecast.  ❄️❄️❄️

Joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday!

 

 

Midweek Update

It's not even Halloween yet, but I need to start working on a Christmas project that will be a gift for a friend.   I decided to make a small wall-hanging that I saw on Pinterest that will measure about 10.5 x 32.5 finished.  It's made completely from 2.5 inch squares, so the first step is quite a bit of cutting!

I decided to use some scraps for this project, but also did a little stash enhancing to get some more Christmas colors to choose from.

And now I'm cutting squares!  54 background squares and 26 in reds and greens.  A few of the reds and greens need stitch and flip corners, so there's a few more background squares needed in a 2 inch size.

And here's an idea of how this goes - 

Once I have all the squares cut and can spend some time on the layout, the sewing will be pretty simple.  Lots of straight seams!  The Pinterest link has you iron the squares to a grid on fusible interfacing and then sew the seams, if you know that technique.  But I'm just going to sew the squares into rows and rows to each other in the traditional way.

Sharing at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers. 

Lots of slow stitching!

I've worked on several different projects during my evening slow stitching time this week.  First, I finished up the embroidery on Bless Our Home.  There wasn't much left to do on this one.  Then I spent a little time adding a churn dash border just for fun.  

This week I'm planning to get this finished up so I can send it off to my friends who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary this year.

I also worked on a little wool penny rug as a part of Autumn Jubilee at From My Carolina Home.  Carole's example shows bigger buttons, but these little tiny yellow buttons were what I had in my button box.  Looking at the photo now, I'm thinking each group of two might need one more button.  

There's more to do on this little project, but the final directions aren't out yet.

Another project that has gotten some stitches is the Halloween Jar designed by Melisa at PinkernPunkin Quilting.  Can you tell there's a jack-o-lantern at the bottom?  I'm just getting started on him!

I guess there are plenty of things to work on for today's slow stitching!  What are you working on?  

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A sandy finish!

There is not a beach anywhere near my house in landlocked Colorado, but if there was one, yesterday would have been the day to go!

So instead, I took the finished beach landscape out into my backyard for some photos.  I like the look of the dark blue binding which matches the border to finish off the edges. 

This project came from a kit that I bought on our vacation to Oregon in September, and it included all the fabric for the quilt, except for the backing.  I had never tried a landscape quilt before and it has been a fun sewing experience!

The pattern designer, Karen Eckmeier, has a great website with galleries of finished landscapes for inspiration.  The Quilted Lizard.

For the backing I dug into my stash and used up some larger chunks of sandy prints - footprints and shells.

Click to enlarge and you can see the quilting I did that 

follows the shapes of the sand dunes and ocean waves.

It was a beautiful day out in our yard when I took these photos and this little quilt went well with the leaves that are falling!

It's also a great souvenir of our trip to a favorite place!

Sharing at Quilting Learning Combo for Free Motion Mavericks

and SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday

Also at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Sew and Tell Monday at Melva Loves Scraps.

Meadow Mist Designs Favorite Finish October link-up 

I Like Thursday #358

Happy Thursday,  friends!  How's your week going?  I'm joining in with I Like Thursday over at Not Afraid of Color!

First of all, happy birthday to my dear husband!  He wanted to play golf, so we did!  It was a beautiful day, and we both enjoyed being out on the golf course.

You know I've been enjoying cooking with my son, and we made chicken fajitas in his Ninja using the air fryer function the other night.  He found the recipe on a cooking video, and it was super simple.  I thought this was a really colorful and appealing meal!  

We ate this mixture in tortillas with salsa, cheese, sour cream, etc.

I enjoyed this book this week.  It's a good story about a woman who cleans house for her favorite writer, and fantasizes about how glamorous life would be if she were a famous writer, too.  Of course, things don't turn out quite like she expects!

LeeAnna has asked this week if we are intuitive or psychic, or do we know someone who is - and I have to answer no for myself.  I am, however, known in my family for my crazy dreams!  We call them "school dreams" and maybe everyone has them to some extent.  The kind where everything's going wrong, you can't find the right room, you're late - all that.  Fortunately, none of things ever seem to come true in real life, so that's a relief!

I'll leave you with the view from our front yard this week.  Aren't those trees beautiful?  I think the red ones are called Autumn Purple Ash and they have just been gorgeous this year!

Such a beautiful time of year!

Midweek Update

This week I finished up the quilting on my beach landscape.   I followed the shape of the waves with gentle curves - so fun to do!

Some simple straight line quilting in the borders to hold the layers together, and it's ready for binding.

I decided to bind this in the same dark blue as the two borders because it doesn't seem to need any more contrast than it already has.  That will be my evening stitching job for the next couple nights.

Happy to be close to a finish on this little project!

Sharing at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.

 

Slow stitching this week...

I decided it was time to get the stitching finished on the "Bless Our Home" 50th anniversary gift before I got distracted by anything else and it got lost in the shuffle!

There's only a little left to do - the bee skep and a couple of bees.  That will be my slow stitching for today!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching!

 

Bowties in light neutrals

This week I finished up hand-piecing eight bowties in light neutrals.  It was fun picking out the fabrics for these, and they run from light sandy-tan to golds to light brown.

They blend right in with the more colorful bowties and make a fun collection!  Here are all 80 that I've made this year.

Whoops - I can see one turned wrong - the red one that begins the seventh row down.  I'll have to watch for that as I begin to sew these together.  I think I'll start by sewing them into fours.

At my sewing machine this week, I have been making some blocks for the Autumn Jubilee QAL at From My Carolina Home.  Here's my progress so far - maple leaves, flying geese, and a pumpkin.  So fun!

I making my pumpkins out of golds to go with the 

golden sunflowers and leaves in the other prints.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!

 

I Like Thursday #357

Good morning, and happy Thursday, friends!  Hope your week is going well.  Things have been quiet here, which is good - just enjoying daily life without too much extra to deal with.  I like those kinds of weeks!

Last week, after I shared that I wanted to try the Garam Masala spice, Wendy shared this recipe link with me, so we made it for dinner over the weekend, and it was yummy!  It's always good when your husband says you should make that one again!  Thanks, Wendy!

Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken 

The recipe said it should be served with Naan bread, and our son had told me wanted to try making Naan, so that was the perfect opportunity!  He used his Ninja, of course  - and it turned out perfectly.  

Yum!

This week I've been working on my beach landscape project - see yesterday's post about that.  I also got started on some Autumn Jubilee projects.  This is Carole's special blog event over at From My Carolina Home for the month of October.  I always enjoy participating in this!

Maple leaf and flying geese for the quilt project:

The prints are scraps leftover from a fall table topper I finished at the end of September, so I think I will combine this project with my Table Scraps project for October.

And some wool stitching for a penny rug - little apples and leaves.

I was all fumble fingers at first with those little apples - and the leaves especially! - 

but I got the hang of it!  🍎🍎🍎

Yesterday I went over to visit my mom, and discovered this gal outside of her building.  She made me smile!

And one more thing making me smile this week - these pretty red dianthus are still blooming in my pots!

What's been making you smile this week?

I'm joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color 

for I Like Thursday.