Slow stitching this week...

My big basket of tiny samplers is filling up!

I added the Little Red Schoolhouse Mini Sampler to the collection this week.  Thank you, Melisa, for offering so many fun freebies to keep me stitching!

I realized that before I start anymore cross-stitch projects, I need to work on the September heart for my Year of Hearts collection.  So I got it prepped and traced, and I've stitched the outer borders.

I need to color in some sections on this one, too.

Melisa has the apples in different colors on hers - 

green, yellow, and red - so cute!

Meanwhile our apple tree is covered in tiny apples, the size of a golf ball at the most.  I haven't even tried to do anything with them.  I think it would take about a thousand to get enough to feed anyone!

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

Table Scraps for September

Over the last few years, I have had the best time using up scraps to make a rainbow of quilted placemats, both to give away and to use on our table.   This is just a fraction of them for the photo, but you can tell they are used, washed, and used again!

One color combination that I've never made into a placemats is browns - or the Fall colors as I like to think of them - dark and light browns, golds, and sandy tones.  Since I had those out this month to make some patchwork hearts, it was the perfect timing to make a new placemat, too.

I started with strips and rectangles, and pieced them in columns.

Zooming in - there are leaves in some of these prints, too.  (That's our extra challenge for the month, from Joy)!

Next I connected the columns with some strips of a gold print that has been in my stash for a long time.  It started as a wide backing that I used for a quilt I made several years ago, and now the leftovers are in the scrap bin, waiting to be used up!

Some simple quilting of a curvy grid, plus backing, and binding, and it's ready to use!

The backing comes from a piece of fabric Nann included in her goody box 

that she sent to me last month.  Perfect for the "brown" theme!

So now there is a placemat to get out for Fall.  Maybe I need to make a few more?!

Linking up at all my favorite scrappy places:

Joyful Quilter

Alycia Quilts

SoScrappy

Quilting is More Fun than Housework

Melva Loves Scraps

I Like Thursday #407

Autumn seems to have arrived in our neck of the woods!  The leaves are already turning. (Although I have to say, afternoon highs of upper 80s are not very fall-like, but I am enjoying the cool mornings!)

LeeAnna asks - what is our favorite fall scent?  Mine is the scent you get while crunching through a pile of fallen leaves - kind of spicy, earthy - do you know what I mean?  I have had a couple of pumpkin spice lattes over the years and, of course, delicious spiced cider, but my favorite pumpkin or apple scent is the baking kind - pumpkin bread, apple pie, lots of cinnamon!  Yum! 

Or how about a peach pie?  My thoughtful sister brought one over to me yesterday afternoon - right out of the oven!  Definitely yummy!

I've been enjoying this book this week, recommended by Nann at With Strings Attached.  It's so enjoyable to read all kinds of interesting things about our national parks, from history to animals to architecture.  And if you hunt a little bit on YouTube, you can find the author's clips from the CBS Sunday Morning TV show where he shares his year of visiting all the national parks.

Thanks for the recommendation,

Nann!

Hope you're having a great week!  Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

Midweek Update

I've had a visit from the lovely Covid this week, everyone's least favorite company.  There's been plenty of laying around wrapped in a quilt, snoozing in front of the TV or reading, and not too much sewing.  But yesterday I just had to get up and do something - I was going a little stir crazy!  

Fortunately, the next blocks for Melva's Pieces of My Life QAL were simple and quick, and I was able to sew them up without any problem.  I started with the Spool block.

Making this block has us thinking about who taught us to sew, and of course, for me, that was my mom.  She was a very accomplished seamstress and could sew everything from curtains to wedding dresses to men's suits and all of our clothes (4 kids)!  I was a reluctant learner, and never really liked sewing back then - everything was about sewing clothing and I just never found that to be enjoyable.  I always had a hard time picking the right pattern/fabric combination.  Mom said to me more than once that she was surprised I ever got into quilting!  

Of course, though - those skills learned back then were the foundation for the sewing I do now, and I am immensely grateful.    

 

Block number two is a twelve inch Monkey Wrench block.  I chose to make this one with only two fabrics - the background and one color.  All the rest of my twelve inch blocks have some of the floral focus fabric in them, but that just didn't seem right for this one.  And it turns out that I like its simplicity.

For this block, the question is - what is the hardest thing you've ever done?  And I think, as a young adult, that was losing my dad.  He died in 1992, and I still miss him.  Hard to believe he has been gone 32 years now.  It was very sudden and unexpected, which is a big part of what made it so hard.  At the time, my parents lived just a few blocks from us, and one afternoon we started hearing a bunch of sirens.  Then the phone rang and one of their neighbors was calling - "Diann, you need to get over here," and from that moment everything changed.  

This photo was taken in 1985.  Dad got to know his three oldest grand kids up to the ages of 11, 8, and 2.  I have always imagined that he would love knowing them as adults.

Now that all of the blocks are made for the third quarter of the quilt, I'll be able to start sewing them together!

Sharing at Melva Loves Scraps and at

Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers.

 

Slow Sunday Stitching

I'm still working on the the Little Red Schoolhouse Mini Sampler from Melisa at PinkernPunkin, but it won't be too much longer before it's all stitched.  Just some of the alphabet left to do.

It's time to stitch something for fall - maybe I'll start this Prairie Schooler pumpkin, from one of the charts that Nann sent me.  It looks like a fun one!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A little bit more for September

I just love the landscape of the wine country of northern California!  There's quite a contrast between the miles and miles of green vineyards and the dry, grassy hills.  It fascinates me!

After arriving home from our trip, I had enough time to make one more patchwork heart, all in light browns this time.   The above photo kind of inspired the colors of this one!

All laid out:

And sewn together:

Four patches for the alternate block made good leaders and enders.  Just one more needed and the plain squares before I can sew this one together.

After that, two more blocks will be needed for this quilt top, and I've finally got an idea for the final patchwork heart!   More on that coming up.  Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

I Like Thursday #406

We have been taking a September trip every year since 2014 when Mike asked me what I wanted to do for my 60th birthday, and I told him, "anything except be at work!"  2014-2015 was to be my final year of teaching and I had a really difficult class.  That year we went on a long weekend trip to California and had a great time.  And so it became a tradition, and we've enjoyed every September trip since then!

This year we went back to the same area of California that we visited back in 2014, called the Russian River Valley.   This is north of San Francisco and was easy for us to get to by flying into Sacramento and staying over in Santa Rosa.

Three activities stand out as favorites, and they really filled up the whole week.  There are several redwood parks that we spent time in.  Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, Hendy Woods State Park, and Navarro River Redwoods State Park gave us experiences like these:

Look up!

Way, way up!

Cool, quiet, so peaceful.

Our days over at the beach were really foggy!  But that just makes it all so other-worldly - especially for people from Colorado.  A favorite place is Bodega Bay, where we hiked up and around Bodega Head.

We do enjoy wine tasting, and this is the place to do it!  As you drive through the area, there are just fields upon fields of grapevines, up and down the hills, everywhere.  It is quite a sight!  Something different that we did this year was a champagne tasting, and that was fun!  I can't say that I've ever had much (if any) champagne, and if I have, it was the cheap grocery store variety.  This was so different, and we really enjoyed it.

Cheers!

I'm always torn after a week away - not ready for the vacation to be over, really, but still ready to be home again.  And, very thankful to have had the chance to go!  Now, if I could just get caught up on the laundry, lol!  

Hope you're having a great week!  Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color.

I Like Thursday #405

Hello, and happy Thursday, friends!  Can you guess where I am?  

The view was a bit different than the last time we visited this amazing place, but we enjoyed it just as much!

Have a wonderful day!

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

 

Pieces of My Life QAL - Noon and Night

I wasn't sure I could get it done before we left on our trip, but I did!  "It" is the next block of Melva's QAL called "Noon and Night."  There are a lot of half square triangles in this one - lots of cutting, sewing, and trimming.  

And a fairly complicated layout to keep track of while sewing, but I managed to keep everything straight.   Such a pretty block!  The two main prints - the blue and turquoise - came from a scrap bundle I purchased over in Grand Junction a couple weeks ago.  I thought they might work together in this block - the same print of fabric, but different shades.

With this block, we're focusing on our early years as a married couple.  What was it like, adjusting to living together?  I've been thinking about that as I worked on this block.  And I have to say I don't remember it being a hard adjustment.  Although I had been living with my college roommates,  I had spent a fair amount of time at Mike's (soon to be our) apartment, so we were very comfortable shopping, cooking, eating meals, and all that typical stuff.  

I would do my homework for classes while he watched football or basketball games on Sunday afternoons, and whenever we had a free day we went skiing!  That was one of our favorite pastimes, and it was pretty affordable back then, too.   I could not think where there might be a picture from back in those days of us skiing, so don't have one to share.  I guess we didn't carry a tiny phone with a camera in it everywhere we went back in the 1970s!

So I also picked the fabric for this block because the print on it reminded me of snowflakes!

After I graduated from CSU, we moved here to Loveland, and lived in another apartment for about a year.  Then we bought our house, where we still live today - 47 years later! 

We joke that we bought a brand new house and it turned into a fixer-upper!  We've done many of the usual things - replaced windows, the roof (twice!), and repainted, changed the landscaping numerous times, and the trees have definitely grown.   And about 1985, we built an addition on the back of the house.  It expanded us from two to three bedrooms, and gave us a dining/family room.  Very helpful space with two growing boys!  (But I'll save those stories for another post!) 

Home Sweet Home!

Sharing at Quiltfabrication for Midweek Makers. 

Sampler September

I still feel relatively new to the world of cross-stitching, so didn't catch on until just recently that there is a thing called "Sampler September!"  Fortunately I was already working on one of the mini samplers that I enjoy inspired by all the bee activity around our newly blooming sunflowers. 

We're pretty sure this is a wasp in the photo here, 

but they're pollinators, too, right?!

The bees in this sampler are much cuter!  This is the Little Bee Sampler from Melisa at PinkernPunkin Quilting.  

After finishing that one, there was time to start a new mini sampler, and since it's September, and I'm a retired teacher, I decided on the Little Red Schoolhouse Mini Sampler.   Check out Melisa's adorable finished piece at the link.  I have just gotten started on it, but you can see the little red schoolhouse starting to emerge!

Plenty more to do!  Thank you, Melisa, for keeping me in stitches!

We're going out of town this coming week, and I think this will make some good travel stitching.   I'll work on it today, too, for my Slow Sunday Stitching!  Linking up at Kathy's Quilts. 

 

 

A Heart for Fall

I do love fall, and even if it isn't officially here yet, I was happy to dig up some fall fabrics and start working on a patchwork heart.  I had a basket of fall prints picked out for Cynthia's block drive earlier in the summer, so I pulled it back out and started sorting.

Darker browns and lighter sandy golds.

It didn't take long to get the pieces cut and parts made for a fall heart in dark browns.

I got the alternate block sewn up, too!

Here they all are.  I just need four more blocks for a 60 x 60 quilt. 

I think I'll make a heart and a chain block from the sandy gold pile,

and then dig back into my blue scraps.  Hopefully I can find some that are a medium blue - not too light and not too dark!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Sew and Tell Monday at Melva Loves Scraps.