A short getaway and a little sewing...

Hello from San Diego!  We celebrated Memorial Day by getting on a plane and flying to one of our favorite cities and are enjoying every minute.  Because we are away from home this week, I decided to merge all of my usual weekly posts into one.  Midweek Update, I Like Thursday, this month's Table Scraps, and ScrapHappy Saturday - all here!

We're staying on Coronado Island and using the ferry to get around, plus putting many miles on our step counters.  (And sleeping well at night!)

One of the things I love about visiting here is the interesting plants, like these huge succulents - 

All the green reminds of my Table Scraps project for May, which is all about green!  Our challenge this month was to use the color green and the inspiration of "freshly cut grass" to use up a few more scraps.   I do love green, and I even like mowing - this was a few days ago before we left. 

So there was no lack of inspiration at my house, either outside in the yard or inside in the sewing room.   I had a lot of green strips hanging around that looked like they would work well for a quilt-as-you-go placemat, so that is what I did.  And I used all the greens, too - dark, light, and in between, and the last bit of my favorite floral that has green in it.

Even a green selvage was thrown in!

And where is freshly cut grass more important than at the golf course?  I've had this fat quarter for several years and didn't have anywhere to use it, until now - and it made the perfect backing!

And so, ta-da!

Perfect for the table in between our comfy chairs in the TV room.  

Sharing at all my favorite link-ups:

Wednesday Wait Loss 

I Like Thursday

Finished or Not Friday 

The May Table Scraps Challenge

ScrapHappy Saturday 

Oh Scrap

Slow stitching this week...

Since it's the end of the month, it's time to finish another embroidered heart mini.  I finished the June heart for May, so now I'm finishing the May heart for June!  🍓🍓🍓 In my defense, strawberries grow a bit later out here in Colorado, and are often harvested in June, so it will still be appropriate.

Just for fun, I prepped another little strawberry doodle from PinkernPunkin to stitch as a companion piece.  I think I'll work this one all in red.

I did make good progress on the Rose Garden Mini Sampler this week.   I don't often stitch a border like this, and I did get off by one stitch early on, so had to rip back a ways.  But I continued on around and ended up exactly where I needed to be!  Just one green leaf and a few more roses to finish up now!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Working on this and that...

Being all caught up on this year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks gave me a chance to pull out a few other projects this week.  Thanks to a challenge by Gwyned, I really wanted to get some more quilting done on my 2024 Patchwork Hearts quilt, and I finally got it out on Thursday afternoon.  I'm quilting this one row at a time and will join the rows later in quilt-as-you-go style.  This row has all the quilting done in one direction, now marking for and sewing in the other direction.

And a photo after sewing with low lighting to see if I could capture the great texture that the grid quilting gives.

I just happened to be working on the dark green block!

The other project I wanted to get back to was the Orange Peel QAL, hosted by The Crafty Quilter, which I had started on back in April, around the same time as the Glowing Hearts QAL.  Of course, it was too much to keep up with all at the same time (I should have anticipated that!) and now the QAL is over, but I am still working on mine.  

Early on, I made the scrappy neutral background and a few of the orange peels, but was way short of the 24 that were needed.  My orange peels are made from a leftover pile of Kaffe Fassett charm squares, and they have lots of soft green in them, plus pink, purple, and light blue.  

After twelve orange peels were made, I could make this design, and it was tempting to stop there.

But I really wanted the full design that Julie shared at the beginning of the QAL, which is what hooked me in to participating!  So I made twelve more orange peels.  These are made with a template traced onto fusible interfacing, sewn right sides together with the charm square, and then after taking this photo I snipped a hole in the interfacing and flipped the orange peel to right sides out.

And with 24 orange peels, here's the design I really wanted!  These are lightly fused on to the background, and my next decision will have to be about how to applique them down.

Now I'm feeling much more caught up!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday,

And at The Crafty Quilter for the Orange Peel QAL link-up.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #437

Happy Thursday, friends!   Hope you're having a great week.  My snapdragons are starting to bloom.  It looks like it's going to be a good year for them!

Happy yellow blooms!

The other day I got a somewhat vague text from my brother - "watch for something being delivered to your house soon."  ???  He never sends me anything, lol!  Well, the something came on Saturday, and it is one of these - 

When I texted to say thank you, he said it was to thank me for everything I do for our mom.  So, that was nice!  You never know know if the rest of the family realizes what you do.

We figured out a place to hang this, and I planted it yesterday.

I finished this book this afternoon - it's from a favorite series of mine - by Anne Hillerman.  These are mysteries set in the Southwest, with Navajo policemen, and lots of Native American culture included.  There is another after this one that I'm now waiting for from the library.

LeeAnna's question of the week is about technology.  What technology do we use now that wasn't available when I was a kid? - and the answer to that is just about everything!  We had a TV, of course, when I was growing up - a black and white one... and I had a transistor radio that I listened to every night to get the latest music.  But that was about it!   Personal computers, cable TV, VHS, DVDs, smart phones and TVs, streaming - all of it has come in my adult life, and it's pretty hard to say what I could do without anymore!

My phone and my Samsung tablet are pretty much constant companions. 

(Unless I'm sewing or reading a paper book.)  

Besides calling and texting, I use the phone for photos and 

the tablet for email, blogging, and reading the news and ebooks.   

I could probably get along without a TV - although I can watch anything I want on my tablet - so that wouldn't really be much of a loss.  

I'm definitely attached to my technology!

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

Midweek Update

I've made good progress on my Glowing Hearts project this week.  Thanks to a tip from Kate at Life in Pieces, the ninth heart - which is the center one of the group - turned out perfectly!

The next step is to add the sashing and cornerstones between blocks and rows.   I chose a couple white with yellow-green and pale blue strips for the sashings, and the dark blue (second strip on the center heart) for the cornerstones.  

It didn't take long to sew together blocks and sashing into rows and get two-thirds of the quilt center together.  Thanks to a sewing tip from Gail at The Cozy Quilter, I was able to save the heart points and all is well!

One more row to attach and then it will be time 

to make a decision about the outer border!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday. 

 

Slow stitching everyday...

 I finally had some time to prep the variegated blue embroidered project for hand quilting and get started on that on Thursday.

You would probably call my hand quilting "big stitch" and I do best with simple straight lines following the seams.  Right now I'm stitching around and around the center basket design.

I also made some progress on the Rose Garden Mini Sampler from PinkernPunkin.  Little by little the border and the roses are emerging!

As always, there's plenty to work on for my Slow Sunday Stitching!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

A little more with green...

This week I continued to fiddle with my lighter green squares to come up with the right ones for a second 16 patch star block.  I got them to this group by piecing a couple squares from strips.

A couple of them still bothered me, though, so I took a few away, added a few more in, and finally ended up with this:

Done!

And here are the two together:

Along the way I stitched up two tiny green sixteen patch blocks as leaders and enders that will eventually become Gameboard blocks, a design I borrowed from Sara @ My Sewing Room.

And one more thing was worked on - a strippy quilt-as-you-go project that I'll post more about later in the month.  This one gets all the greens (and some flowers, too)!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday 

I Like Thursday #436

May in my garden is for planting!  Right around Mother's Day is when they always tell us we should be past the last freeze.  So that's what I've been doing this last week.  

Green bean seeds in the raised bed - 

Plus we added a cucumber plant and pumpkins.

A couple tomatoes in pots - 

And flowers, too.  I have good luck with petunias, so I plant a bunch of those every year.

Today (Wednesday) started out as a beautiful day and we played golf with a friend. There are tons of goose families at the golf course, hanging around the ponds especially.  The little ones are so sweet!

Later this afternoon, the sky clouded up, everything got very dark, and we had a huge thunderstorm!  Now the temperature is in the 40s and we have all the plants covered with buckets and sheets.  That's Colorado in the springtime!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about motorcycles.  Have I ridden one?  Yes - three times, I think.  Did I like it?  Ummm, not really.  It went too fast for me, without much protection.  But I did have a good time on a little dirt bike once.  We were camping with family and everyone else had gone fishing, except my sister-in-law and me.  She asked if I wanted to learn how to drive the dirt bike and I thought - why not?!  So she taught me - and that was fun because I could control how I went.  I don't have a picture of that event, but here is where we were camping - a neat place up in Wyoming called Vedauwoo (pronounced Vee-da-voo).

Vedauwoo

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

Midweek Update

This week I have been determined to finish up eight of the nine hearts needed for the Glowing Hearts QAL at mmmquilts.  And I did achieve that goal, but not without some continued frustration with how the bottom section of the heart block is turning out.  Sometimes it looks great, other times I'm way off.  

  Pretty good ⬆️ - I'm happy with that.    ⬆️Not so great...  

I've tried multiple things to correct the problem, including starching and oversizing the triangles.  I ultimately decided that the paper template I was using for cutting was keeping me from having an accurate piece.  So I printed out two brand new ones, taped them together, and figured out what size of square to cut so I don't have to use the template anymore.  

That definitely made cutting the triangle piece easier, but I still ran into trouble getting those bottom points to match up.  So, you know what I decided?  They're good enough!  And eight hearts are finished!

I've saved the center heart for last 

so that I can see what's left of the strips I've used for the others.  

It will be a dark to light design.

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

   

Slow stitching this week...

I finished up the variegated blue embroidered top with some more scrappy strips and today's job is to get it ready for some hand quilting.  

This measures about 23.5 x 13.5

 

Meanwhile, I also finished filling in the background of the Spring Banner, so some decisions need to be made about how to fully finish it.

And the alphabet is stitched on the Rose Garden Mini Sampler, designed by Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  I've just gotten started on the viny border, and I'm looking forward to adding the pretty red and pink roses, too.  

There's plenty to work on for Slow Sunday Stitching,

and I'll be linking up at Kathy's Quilts!

So many greens!

About five years ago, I was playing with my green scraps and made this mini quilt that hangs on our dining room wall.  It was fun to create the background with such a variety of greens from Spring green to very dark, and then add the vine and flowers.

This week I've been hunting through my stash for green scraps for a different purpose.  When making the two blocks for my 16 patch star project, I need 15 3.5 inch squares that read as a similar shade.  For example, these blue blocks made earlier this year:

It seems that my green scraps are making this week's sewing a little more challenging!  First try for a dark green and a light green block:

Some of the dark greens read as almost black - hard to photograph!

The light greens range from bluish/almost grayish green to acid green.  Ugh!

And how about this green?  It could go in either block, right?!

A little adding and a little subtracting and I have a dark green 16 patch star that I'm very happy with.

The light green star block is still to be determined!

So now there are nine of these!

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