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! 

I Like Thursday #428

Happy first day of Spring, friends!  Hope you're having a good week!  A few days ago, I enjoyed going to our local museum for an exhibit of Hawaiian quilts.

I had never seen a Hawaiian quilt in person, and was amazed at how huge most of them are.  And all hand stitched, too.   I think this one might be my favorite.  It has got to be king-sized, although the dimensions were not listed.

I didn't take a lot of photos, but this one has a view of the room as we saw it.  Most of these quilts would probably be considered antiques - they were dated between the 1890s and 1920s.  All from the collection of one couple who love Hawaii and decided to focus on those particular quilts.  Some were stained and faded, and had definitely been used!

I finished this book which I really liked!  It is WWII historical fiction, about two girls who are evacuated from London to the Oxford area.  It is a good story!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our birth order.  What is it like to be oldest, youngest, etc?  I am the oldest of four siblings - two sisters, and my brother is the youngest.  Here we are in a Christmas photo from about 1963.  I'm guessing that year because my brother looks about two and we are seven years apart.  When I was in 3rd grade, my parents got our piano (which still resides in my living room!) and I got glasses.  Aren't they stylish?!  😜

I have found being the oldest to be a bit of a double-edged sword.  Growing up, of course, you get many of the firsts - first to get piano lessons, could stay up later, go out with friends, drive first.  My parents paid me to babysit the younger ones, so I could earn money early on.   Now that we are older, though, and our mom needs care, all the responsibility has fallen on me.   I have to admit that can be stressful at times - and that's when I wish I wasn't the oldest!

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

Midweek Update

I've been keeping busy in the sewing room this week, and accomplished everything I was hoping to when I wrote my midweek post last week.  Quilting is finished on the Stay at Home Round Robin, and binding is being stitched.  It will be ready to share just in time for the final quilt parade next week!

Two sixteen patch star blocks were made for the March color in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - yellow.  I expanded into the sandy/gold range and really like that one, too.

It wasn't on my list, but I even made some more progress on quilting Masala Box.  There's no goal or deadline for finishing this one, but it would sure feel good to get it completed.  Getting closer!

There's always something to distract me from quilting ⬆️, though, and this week it is a block tutorial I found on The Colorful Fabriholic blog.  I just *had to* try it, lol!  Dancing Plus blocks - these look fun!

First you make the plus block (as is, it measures about 7.5 inches) - and then you cut it with a 6.5 inch ruler to make it dance!

I'll definitely be making more of these blocks.  The center plus section can be made with a 5 inch charm square, and I have a drawer full of those.   This could be a good way to use them up!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday!

Only four days until Spring!

But I'm still stitching on the Winter SAL from Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  Almost there, though.  Can I finish it before Spring officially arrives?  I'm going to try!

Meanwhile, I did finish up this little Daisy Basket Trifle, also from Melisa.  It was a fun and tiny design - just about 1.5 inches square!  I finished it in a circle, which was a challenge for me, but I did it!  This really needs some kind of trim around it - I didn't have any, but will think about adding some in the future.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

More with yellow...

I'm celebrating the month of yellow with some daffodils!  There aren't any growing in my garden this year, so instead I bought a bouquet at the grocery store earlier this week to bring home.  Such pretty yellow!

In the sewing room, my plan for the sixteen patch stars project is to make two every month, for a total of 20 at the end of the year.  It was easy to come up with enough yellow for one block, but I wasn't sure what to do for a second one that wasn't exactly the same as the first.  Then I saw Nancy's post about her March strippy quilts at Grace and Peace Quilting and had an "aha!" moment - I could pull out my sandy/golds for a second block!

These two piles turned into these blocks:

Here are my sixteen patch stars so far - 

Now I need to figure out a second pink star.  Maybe this peach/coral group will work?  I'll play with them this weekend and see what happens!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Also linking up with Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #427

I love green!  It has always been my favorite color, so when LeeAnna asked about green this week, I decided to dedicate my whole Thursday post to green.

How about green vegetables?  This asparagus and mushroom stir fry was quite tasty.  It was an easy recipe - asparagus, mushrooms, olive oil and your favorite seasonings.  

It was my turn to host book club this month, so how about green plates and napkins for March?

Peanut butter cookies (always my favorite) 

and dark chocolate almonds for treats - yum!

We read an interesting book for this month's discussion - A Patchwork Planet, by Anne Tyler.  The main character is Barnaby, who is described as a loveable loser who's trying to get his life together.  

The title of the book comes from a quilt that one of the characters was making.  I loved this quote from the story:

"Planet Earth was makeshift and haphazard, 

clumsily cobbled together, overlapping and crowded and 

likely to fall to pieces at any moment."

I have made quite a few green things for our house over the years.  You can tell these placemats have been used and washed over and over!  My favorite shade of green is in the top placemat - what would you call that shade?  Maybe emerald green.

I'm so glad Spring is on its way - that mean lots of green coming in the near future!

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

Midweek Update

I haven't had a lot of time for sewing in recent days, but I did go shopping!  We had an errand to run in a shopping area south of here closer to Denver, so I took that opportunity to stop in at a favorite quilt shop that I hadn't visited in awhile.   Isn't this a fun view?

A little bit of each?  Yes, please!

To be honest, though, I didn't buy anything particularly exciting.  I was looking for some low volume background fabrics and some green.  I bought seven fat quarters because they had a "buy six, get one free" deal! 

I know these will get used!

So, what have I gotten done in the sewing room in the last few days?  I'm making good progress on quilting the Stay at Home Round Robin.

I also sorted through a bunch of yellows (the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month) and sandy/gold scraps to pick out enough pieces to make two sixteen patch stars.

Since then, I have cut pieces for two sixteen patch stars, 

more about that in my Saturday post!

So - my goal for the rest of this week is to get the SAHRR quilted, and the two sixteen patch stars made.  That sounds doable, right?!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.