Last Sunday of June...

How is that possible?!  This year is flying by!  I'm glad to be able to slow down a bit today and enjoy some hand stitching.  

This year I've been hand piecing a couple of hollow 9 patch blocks each month in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color, which has been blue in June.  I decided to make both a dark blue and a light blue block this month.

There are just 12 of these blocks so far, which means this quilt is progressing slowly (or will end up very small!), but that's okay.  These are pleasant to stitch and I'm in no hurry!

Since Angela announced that the July color is aqua, I spent a little time yesterday afternoon cutting out the pieces needed for another hollow 9 patch, and I'll plan to stitch it together today!

Meanwhile this week, I've also been adding stitches to this little watermelon design.  It just needs some sunflowers coming out of that pretty blue jar, and some little bees stitched on, too.  

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Table Scraps for June 2024

At the beginning of each month, after Angela announces the color for that month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and Joy tells us what the added challenge is for our table scraps, then I start thinking about what I'd like to make for a small project.

June's color has been all shades of blue, and the extra challenge was to include watermelon - and I wanted to make little, scrappy flags!  Could I include blue and watermelon?  Sure!  So, I started making the little flag blocks that Melisa at PinkernPunkin Quilting shared with us a few weeks back.

They call for a blue 3.5 inch square for the star section of the flag ✔️

and strips (1.5 x 3.5 or 1.5 x 6.5) in scrappy reds and whites ✔️.

Do you see the watermelon slices?  

I had a few scraps of that watermelon print leftover from a quilt backing that I've been slowly using up and I was happy to find enough of it to use for a few stripes on my flags!

I made eight flags and then started cutting sashing and cornerstones until I had enough to surround every block.

A chunk of backing fabric leftover from Paducah Stars, some simple quilting, and matching binding, and voila!

32 x 15

I think this will make a great table decoration for our backyard cookout on the 4th of July!

And speaking of watermelon, a little slice of it was stitched up this week, with a blackbird friend!

Sharing at the Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge for June and at

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

 

I Like Thursday #393

Well, it's been a busy week since my last Thursday post of likes!  We bought a new car!  For Mike and I that is a big deal because our current car is 18 years old, and his pickup is older than that... We keep our cars forever.  

Isn't it pretty?!  It is a Mazda CX-50.  We had a choice of red or white, and Mike just kept looking at the red and finally said that was the one.  

When you haven't had a new car since 2006, there's a lot to learn!

My phone is now paired with it, and yesterday I was driving along, when a ding came through the car speaker and up popped a message on the car's screen that said "text from 'so-and-so' "  Who knew?!   

A friend recommended this book, and it has turned out to be a really good story!  I've never read a WWII historical fiction book that is told from a German citizen's point of view like this one is.  The main character does not agree with what Hitler has done to the country and is trying to do through the war, so he works with the Resistance.  

Younger son wanted to try making some Greek food the other night, so he came up with some grilled chicken in pita pockets, and made a tzatziki sauce that was really tasty!  I had heard of tzatziki, but never tasted it - it's made with plain yogurt, cucumber, garlic, lemon, mint, and dill, and I'm not sure what else.  Besides being yummy on the chicken, it's really good with veggies dipped in it.

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our summer routines - do they change with the season even though we are adults and not kids getting out of school for the summer?  I have been lucky to have a school year schedule most of my life because I was a teacher in my working career, so getting out for summer was a big deal!  Even now, I feel that excitement of the change of seasons and expectations.  

I do enjoy the opportunity to be outside more - playing golf, hiking, working in the yard and garden.  I'm a small scale gardener, but keep trying every year with varying degrees of success!  

Can you see the difference in my two tomato plants in this photo?  One is going great - tons of cherry tomatoes on it - and the other has hardly grown at all and, in fact,  is looking pretty sickly.  I wonder why?!  I've treated them both the same!  (I think...)

The garden on the other side of the house is looking good.  Flowers are happy and the cucumbers are huge!  I've already harvested one and eaten it!  (You might remember, some pesky varmint ate the green beans this year - I had to give up on them...)  But there will be cucumbers!

Hope you're having a great week! 

Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

Midweek Update

In the last few days, I've been working on a couple different things.  Since it's the end of the month, it's time to finish up my entry for Joyful Quilter's Table Scraps Challenge.  And I'm right on time with just the binding left to stitch up!

I'll have a finished post for this at the end of the week.

My other plan was to work on some blocks for the current block drive at Many Hands and Many Hearts.  This is Cynthia's (Quilting is More Fun than Housework) charity organization which is collecting blocks for quilts that will be donated to a hospital in her city.  The current block drive is for blocks called "Two Step," and made in fall colors.

To make some, I started by digging out a chunk of sunflower fabric that I had, and cut it into 5 inch squares.

This is really a simple block to put together - the rest of the block is made with five and nine inch strips.  It goes together like this:

I don't think it will take long to sew up a few more of these!

Linking up with Midweek Makers at Quiltfabrication.

A collection of mini samplers...

I've been enjoying stitching up PinkernPunkin's mini samplers and have made 8 of them now!  I made this basket years ago when a friend was teaching classes, and it has held many things over the years, but I decided now it's perfect for these little mini sampler pillows .

It looks like I have more space to fill!

These are the two newest that I finished up this week: the bunny sampler and the strawberry sampler.

I made the strawberry sampler to go along with the little strawberry stamps I also stitched up this Spring.  The newest one of those is Strawberries and Cream.

I can't go very long without having another cross-stitch design to work on, and since it's now officially summer, I decided on the Watermelon stamp.  Watermelon is one of my favorite summer fruits, so it will be fun to stitch one!  You can see I haven't gotten very far on it yet, so that's what I'll be working on today, for my slow Sunday Stitching.  

Thank you, Melisa, for sharing all your sweet designs so generously!  

You're keeping me stitching!

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

Back to Blueberry Taffy

You might remember this project even though I haven't shared it for awhile.  I think the last time I pulled it out was in December of 2023.  Blueberry Taffy began in the RSC blue month in 2022 when I wondered how many crumb blocks I could get out of my shoebox sized blue scrap bin.

The answer was 20 of them!  And then I decided to make "wrapped candy" blocks out of the crumbs - a block I've seen on more than one RSC quilter's blog.  My plan was to work on it every time we had a blue month, and I realized this week that we were already into the third week of June, and I hadn't gotten it out yet!  

It turned out that I only needed to make five more blocks for the 20 total I had planned on, and once you get the pieces and parts cut and trimmed, these Taffy blocks sew together really quickly. 

 So this week I made the final five blocks!

Here are all twenty blocks.  You can see that I used all shades of blue from very light to very dark, and I included blue-green and purple in the mix.

Time now to sew these into a quilt top!

Sweet, calm light blues - these might be my favorite blocks!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday. 

And at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Sew and Tell Monday at Melva Loves Scraps.

I Like Thursday #392

The other day, Mike had an eye appointment on the far east side of town, and I rode along.  While he was getting eyes dilated and looked at, I decided to go for a walk.  I followed a sidewalk along the parking lot and around the corner I came upon this:

I've walked out here before, 

but I didn't realize it was so close to the medical building.

A beautiful spot of nature tucked in between busy highways and retail/office areas.

Chapungu Sculpture Park is home to 80 different stone sculptures from Zimbabwe.  I have enjoyed walking there, but there are also concerts to go to in the summer and a lighting display at Christmas time.  I took pictures of a couple sculptures to share:

The sculptures all have themes of family and Zimbabwean life.

Beautiful!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about going to camp in the summer - did we?  And, yes, I did!  I was a Girl Scout for many years of my growing up, and that included various kinds of summer camp - day camp and sleep away camps.  I remember enjoying them and not being too homesick.  Of course I was with friends and busy doing fun things - crafts, hiking, learning about cooking on a campfire, and all the good songs we would sing.  

I couldn't come up with any photos of Girl Scout events except for this one, which is actually a clipping from the newspaper.  One summer we went to Washington, DC!  I recall that we went on a big bus and stayed at a GS camp outside the city.  It felt really grown-up to do something like this.   I think I might have shared this before on the blog, but I can't remember when or why, lol!  So thanks for indulging me if you've seen this before!

⬇️Me, top row, second from left! 1968

Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

Midweek Update

Since finishing Paducah Stars, I've had some time to get caught up on the most recent blocks for Melva's QAL, Pieces of My Life.  With these two blocks, we're celebrating love and friendship, which I've been lucky to have a lot of in my life!

Right after my high school graduation in 1972, my parents moved our family out here to Colorado where my dad was transferring for his work at the new (at the time) Kodak plant in Windsor.  Although I wasn't particularly happy about leaving my friends back in New York, I agreed to start college at Colorado State University in Ft. Collins for one year.  And, of course, what happened is I met new friends and have stayed in Colorado ever since.

A friendship star for my dear, lifelong friends!

We met while living in the dorms at CSU, and then rented a house together not too far off campus on Plum Street.  There were eight of us, so we were the Plum St. 8!  Eight of us took up the whole house - I shared a room with one of the others, but some had their own room.  We planted a garden in the back yard, hosted friends at Friday night dinners, and played guitars and sang together.  (Oh, and we did study and write papers and all graduated from college, too, lol!)

Around 1974:

And from 2016 when we were all together last - recreating the photo from the 70s:  

During those years, I met my husband, Mike, when I had a summer job at Kodak, where he worked also.   He fit right in with my Plum St. friends, and joined in with all the goings-on.  Our first date was going out for pizza after work and the next was an outing for miniature golf.  We still enjoy both pizza and golf!   We did a lot of hiking and skiing back then, went to movies, and hung out with friends.

We were married in 1976, and the rest of the group sang at our wedding.

This interesting heart block was our block to celebrate love.  Since I had the blue scraps out for June in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, it made sense to use them for this block, too.  I'm really happy with how it turned out!

I've now made all the blocks for the QAL that have been released up to this point.  I even went back and made the two 6 inch blocks I was missing from earlier.  That means I can start putting the first quadrant of the blocks together in preparation for the quilt-as-you-go method of finishing the quilt.  See Melva's post HERE for more info about that.  I just put in an order at Connecting Threads for the Hobbs 80/20 fusible batting that she recommends.  They're having a really good sale right now!

Sharing at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.

And Melva's link-up for the star and heart blocks.

My Quilt Infatuation - Needle and Thread Thursday.

Year of Hearts stitching

Friday night I just had one more buzzing bee to stitch on the June heart.  So that didn't take too long to finish up!

I'm all caught up on these now - aren't they cute?!  Apparently, one of my background fabrics is more cream colored than white, but I sure didn't realize that when I chose it.  

I'll have to figure out how to deal with that 

when I decide how to put these all together into a top.  

Meanwhile, Melisa released a bonus heart block for us this month!  That means my job for Sunday slow stitching will be to get this traced so that I can start stitching on it.

You can see Melisa's block HERE. 

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Stitchers

at Kathy'sQuilts.

A QAL Finish to share!

This is my 6th year of participating in Sandra's (of mmmquilts) Spring quilt alongs, and the finished quilts never disappoint!

2022 - Popstar in Blue, 2020 - Centred

2021 - Follow the Garden Path, 2019 - Flowers for Shanawdithit

And then there is my all time favorite - Rainbow Neighbourhood - finished in 2023.  How can you not love a rainbow of houses full of fun details inviting you to look closer and closer?!

This year's quilt design is right up there on the list of my favorites, too, for many reasons.  I bought all the fabric for the quilt top at Hancock's of Paducah when we were visiting there in April.  After seeing some early versions that other quilters had put together, I decided I wanted to make my Luminous Layers in all solids - or solid-ish, anyway.  These are tonal solids from a Marcia Derse line called Palette.

Lots of HSTs make up this quilt, of all sizes.

Giant sized:

To teeny-tiny!

I definitely enjoyed putting this unique design together, and now it's finished!

Paducah Stars - 48 x 48

A close-up of some of the quilting and pink binding:

The backing came from a great sale at Missouri Star Quilt Co - two yard cuts for $10.  Couldn't pass that up!  

There's plenty of that left, too, so it will show up again

 - quite possibly in some scrappy blue blocks!  

And, finally, a close-up of the label.

Thank you, Sandra, for a very enjoyable 2024 quilt-along!

Linking up with the Luminous Layers quilt parade at mmmquilts.

And at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday

Quilting is More Fun Than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday