Midweek Update

I finally finished up the quilting on Masala Box over the weekend, and got the binding sewn onto the front on Monday.  Now it has been transferred to my evening slow stitching time to finish the last step of hand stitching the binding down.  There are some penguins peeking out from the binding every now and then!  

Hopefully, I'll have a finish to share by the end of the week!

It's good to get something finished because I've got some new projects I want to start!  One is the Orange Peel Sew Along, hosted by Julie at The Crafty Quilter.  

This one requires 25 - 5 inch low volume squares for the background and 24 charm squares for the orange peels, so I've been getting these ready.   Somewhere, in one of Julie's posts, I saw that she had made an orange peel design with Kaffe charm squares, and I happen to have a bunch of those, so I decided I'll use them up in this project, too!  

The first step is to sew together the background squares,

so that's what I'm working on this week.

The other quilt project I'm planning to start is Sandra's (mmmquilts) Spring QAL, called Glowing Hearts.

Fabric requirements for this QAL are coming out today,

so I'll have to make some decisions for my quilt soon.  

Maybe I'll go shopping!  😘

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Stitching for the birds...

This week I finished up the new April mini heart quilt for my display stand.  This was one of my favorites to stitch last year with its mama bird and babies in the nest!

Changing out the display for the new month - 

We've had some birds nest in our yard over the years - one mama robin even built her nest on top of our front porch light! - but the nest I've been fascinated by since mid-February or so is the Big Bear (California) Eagles nest.  They have a nest cam there so you can watch everything that goes on.  The parents are Jackie and Shadow, and the babies are Sunny and Gizmo - they hatched about 3 - 4 weeks ago and are growing fast.  

Friends of Big Bear Valley

And in other bird stitching, I've continued to work on the Gail Pan embroidery project that I started last week.  It has Gail's signature bird sitting on the basket!

Still plenty of stitching to do on this one!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Getting started with red...

Starting again with a new color is always my favorite way to mark the beginning of the month.  Red for March means - sorting through and seeing what I have.

Cutting into some of it for blocks - 

and sewing a few up!

And then there's the opportunity to see what happens when you lay all the blocks out, now that there are some red ones.

I'm starting to see how I want the starburst to form with each color addition.

The blues won't really go where I have them now - it will be oranges and yellows in the next round.  I might need more yellow blocks!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday 

I Like Thursday #430

We had a little adventure the other day, and it wasn't even very far away from home.  I wanted to go check out a new trail area on the west side of town that has just recently opened up.  

It took us down by the Big Thompson river.

And then it curved around toward this big building.  What could it be?

It's a winery!

Good thing Mike brought money!

This is the Sweetheart Winery, and has been around in our town for quite a few years now.  We had just never been there.

But we'll be back!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about Easter traditions in our families - did we get a new dress and how else did we celebrate?  I shared this photo in one of my posts about the Pieces of My Life quilt, but it's such a classic!  My mom always sewed new dresses for us three little girls, and here we are, maybe about 1961 or so?  They were even matching dresses!  And look at the hats!  

We, of course, had Easter baskets, and egg hunts, and went to church.  I continued all of that with my own kids (well, not the dresses, lol!) until they weren't interested in Easter egg hunts anymore.  But I still make some hard boiled eggs every year, so that I can have deviled eggs with Easter dinner!

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

Midweek Update

This is the quilting on Masala Box shown from the back so that you can see what I'm doing.  It's simple, but takes time because the lines are double going both directions along almost every seam.

Getting closer!

Meanwhile, my mind wanders to other quilts I'd like to be working on, and I've been thinking about the patchwork hearts I made for a 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.

I got them out the other day and decided on a final layout.

My plan is to try using my newfound "Quilt As You Go" skills to quilt one row at a time and then connect them with sashing, just as I did with Pieces of My Life.  That means starting with row 1 first and putting all the rest of the blocks away.

It didn't take long to sew the blocks in this row together, and layer it with batting and backing cut just a little bigger all the way around.

My plan for quilting is a diagonal grid through all the blocks.  Since they are all 12.5 inch squares based on a 36 patch design, this should be simple to do and will be consistent throughout the quilt.

Here's the center block of the row already done in one direction!

Eventually, after all five rows are quilted, I'll connect them with sashing, and should end up with the quilt being 60 x about 68.  

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

I did it!

I finished the Winter Stamp SAL from Melisa at PinkernPunkin Quilting!  This is the biggest cross-stitch project I've ever worked on, although I've made many of Melisa's individual stamps over the last couple years.  I'm not sure yet how I will fully finish this, so it will go into time out for a few months.

I decided to make the hat and mitten a matched set!

I also finished up the Choose Kindness design from Crabapple Hill Studios.  Just some simple quilting and a yellow binding.  It's tiny - just 6.5 x 7.5!  This is going to be a birthday gift for a friend.  

So, I've been looking around for a new embroidery project.  Melisa has a fun post with her Spring parade of fun designs, and I saw a few there that I might like to stitch.  But then I picked up this book from Gail Pan that I bought a couple years ago and have never made anything from.   The cover project caught my eye right away, so I traced out the center design to begin with.  All of the embroidery is stitched with a variegated blue, which I always enjoy.

I didn't quite catch the full title in my photo, but it is Tabletop Stitchery.

There's plenty more to work on for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

A little yellow finish...

 for March Table Scraps!

I started the month as I often do - pulling out the yellow (for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month) scrap bin and found these crumb blocks which had been sewn awhile ago.  Maybe even last year?

It didn't take too long before I had a rectangle made of pretty yellow scraps!

This measures about 8 x 10.

To go along with the flowers and blue butterflies, I embroidered the word "Hope" in blue and a white daisy in one of the scraps.  

Why the word hope?  Because the second part of this month's challenge was to make something inspired by a poem or song, and here's a poem I love.

Hope  by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Hope has holes

in its pockets. 

It leaves little

crumb trails

so that we,

when anxious,

can follow it.

Hope's secret:

it doesn't know

the destination

it knows only

that all roads

begin with one

foot in front 

of the other.

Some wavy quilting and a matching blue binding complete the look!

Quilting is a little like hope - you don't always know the destination, but it does start with putting one foot in front of the other - or stitching one scrap to another!

Sharing at The Joyful Quilter for the March Table Scraps link-up,

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 #429

Spring has sprung in Northern Colorado!  There are green buds on the trees and I have tulips coming up.  And look at this temperature!

This week I read a fun book.  It's a light romance, requires no thinking, and was just entertaining!

When I finished it, though, I was thinking that the storyline sounded kind of familiar.  I was telling Mike about it and we realized that it is the same story as a favorite movie of his - "Pure Country," starring George Strait.  Do you know it?  In the book the musical star is a girl, and she meets a guy in a small town in Kentucky.   Even after realizing that, I still enjoyed the book.

Sometimes you just feel like playing with scraps in the sewing room, and when I need a break from quilting Masala Box, I've done a little of that.  Last week I shared the Dancing Plus blocks from this tutorial - and now I've made a few more of them.

The idea with these is to use up some of the random charm squares I have in a drawer that are leftover from other projects.  

Then I saw the Gameboard blocks on Sara's blog at My Sewing Room.  These really caught my attention!  I've been making four patches as leaders and enders with no real plan for them.  Now I have a plan!

LeeAnna's question of the week is - what was growing up in your hometown like?  I grew up in Greece, New York, a suburb of Rochester, located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario.  My dad worked for Kodak, and Greece was kind of a company town.  Everyone's dad worked for Kodak!  (Very few moms worked back then - at least that I knew.)  

Although Rochester is a big city, our neighborhood felt like a small town.  We walked or rode bikes all over the place, played outside with the neighborhood kids all day, and swam (if someone had a backyard pool) or ran through the sprinklers.  My parents' rule was just that we had to come inside when the streetlights came on!

A favorite game was "Red Light, Green Light."   I couldn't find an actual photo of me and my siblings and friends playing, but there are all kinds of sites online for teaching you how to play this game now!  Even YouTube videos!  

Good memories!

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

Bunny in the Garden

 is my 2025 Stay at Home Round Robin finish!   Starting from this sweet Kathy Schmitz embroidery design, the floral inspiration print, and some bits and pieces in blues, greens, and pinks for the borders - 

Continuing on with all the border prompts - including sliced squares, kites, Dresden Plates (for a block starting with my first initial - D), and quarter log cabins, to name a few.

I ended up with this little finish, measuring about 26 x 27.  Perfect to hang up for Spring!

I couldn't get any real bunnies to pose with my quilt, so we took it to the nearby Sculpture Garden for some bunny photos, and had a good time finding them all!

And then, not a bunny, but this one just made us laugh!  My favorite sculpture in the park just had to get its photo with the quilt, too.

And finally, a maker photo, which I don't do too often, but this was a good spot for it.

Thank you Gail, Kathleen, Anja, Wendy, Brenda, and Emily, for hosting this fun QAL again this year!  I always enjoy it!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching and at

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday 

Quilting Gail for the SAHRR quilt parade.

And at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

View from the quilting chair...

Hello from a Little Penguin!

I think Masala Box has the most penguin scraps of any quilt I've made.  It's made of lots of 2.5 inch squares, so I looked for penguins in every scrap bin!

                                                                             Lots of penguin fun!

There aren't any penguins in the yellow blocks, but the scrappy squares are fun to revisit anyway.

I did take time out from quilting to sew up the peachy/coral sixteen patch star, and it turned out nicely!

So, now I'm all caught up on those blocks for the first three months of the year.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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