Midweek Update

It's a bit anti-climactic because I have shared so much during the making of the orange peel quilt, but it is now finished!  Whoop, whoop!

It was a long time in the making because so much of it was hand stitched - the applique and then the quilting - and I am definitely a slow stitcher.  But I am very happy with this finish.

I enjoyed participating in the Orange Peel SAL at the Crafty Quilter 

last spring where lots of tips and inspiration were offered for the project.

You can see all the finishes from the sew along at this link.

Including the binding for the orange peels, I feel like I've spent all week sewing bindings!  Last week's placemat finish, the Table Scraps Challenge runner, and finally the binding for the October heart.   More about that one in my Sunday Slow Stitching post.

Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to work on the quarter star blocks for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects!

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday!

  

 

Almost there...

I'm so excited - I finished the quilting on the orange peel quilt!  I've only been working on this project since April, but it has felt very slow on the finishing side of things.

Binding is on, and finishing the hand stitching step of that will be my slow stitching project for today.

This week I also put some stitches into the Celebrate Fall embroidery, and moved the hoop to the lower area.  I'm ready to stitch some pumpkins!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Film Strip

A table scraps project for September! 

  

Do you remember film strips in school?  As a teacher I used them once in awhile - especially if they went with a certain unit we were teaching.  I know that's really old technology now, but way back when, they were a helpful way to show a group of kids pictures of things we were studying.

When Joy challenged us to make something inspired by "television" I thought of happy blocks that featured the novelty beach fabric I bought on vacation in Oregon earlier this month.  This looks a little like a television, right?

Then I made four happy blocks in combinations of blues and browns, and sewed them together.  This changed my television into a "film strip" that is 7.5 x 28.5.

I like this color combination - very beach-like!

This was a quick and simple finish - I pieced a backing from squares of the novelty fabrics.  The binding came from the 5th fat quarter that I bought at the same time as the four that I used for the main project - it has shells and stones in a little darker brown.

And here is the finished front.

I made this for a specific spot - on top of my desk - long and narrow like this fits that space perfectly.  At the end of the desk sits our digital photo frame which shows our photos whenever we want to look at them. 

I do have to admit that this table "scraps" project did not start with scraps, but it created some in the end.  I'm sure you'll see these scraps show up in other quilts!

Sharing at The Joyful Quilter for the September 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.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #451

Fall came in on Monday, and brought with it a change in the weather!  On Tuesday it rained here the entire day - we got over an inch of rain in about 8 hours.  For people who live in a dry climate like we do, that was amazing!

I spent much of the afternoon wrapped in a quilt, reading.  It was so enjoyable!   Michael Connelly is a favorite author of mine, and I finally got to read his newest book, which introduces a new main character.  A good story!

Goodreads

Our regional airport here had an air show going on this past weekend, and we were able to see the Air Force Thunderbirds practicing for it right above our neighborhood.  They make quite a roar as they zoom by!  They entertained us for a good hour on both Thursday and Friday afternoons last week.

And the fall leaf colors are entertaining right now, too.  We went for a scenic drive up in the mountains yesterday, and the aspen are at their peak right now - just gorgeous!

The rain we got on Tuesday brought snow to the mountains above tree line, and it was beautiful, too!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our learning styles.  In thinking about that this week, I guess that I am a combination of things.  In college, I took notes in class, and then re-read and highlighted them at home, and when studying for a test, I read them out loud to myself.  So - a combination of visual and auditory learning.

As a quilter, I do a combination of things, too, when trying out a new pattern or quilt block.  I read and re-read the pattern, take notes, plan out the fabric choices, talk myself through making a trial block - sometimes out loud!  I imagine many of you do much the same thing.

These are my notes and preparations for 

mmmquilts' Beothuk Star QAL from a few years ago.

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

Midweek Update

A finish to share and a fabric bonanza!

My little challenge to myself to use up every last bit of the jelly roll that I made Glowing Hearts out of is complete!  Here's the last part - the placemat.  In last week's post I showed how the two blue squares were touching and that really didn't look very good, so I did fix that.  It was easy to do - just rip out one long seam, flip that section around, and re-sew.  It looks so much better!

The backing and binding are the same blue-green batik that I finished Glowing Hearts with.

And here are the three things I made with that jelly roll!

And the fabric bonanza - a dear quilting friend gave me two paper grocery sacks filled with leftover pieces from projects that she didn't anymore.  She mostly sews from kits and doesn't use the scraps afterwards, so I got to bring home some goodies.  This is from one of the sacks - a few pieces were what I would call scraps, but a lot of them were at least fat eighth sized or bigger.  These will work wonderfully for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects!

There's another whole bag to go through, which I will probably look at today, and then I think I will pass what I don't want on to a church group here that takes donations for charity quilts that they make.

Have a great Wednesday!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Three projects, Pt. 2

I did end up working on each of my three hand stitching projects over the last week, and progress was made!  These two saw a little bit of stitching on a few different days -

Apple Mini Sampler and Gail Pan's Pumpkins and Sunflowers

But I spent the most time on the Orange Peel project and got all of the orange peels quilted!  It took me awhile to get that task accomplished, but I finally got it done. 

Now I am quilting a diagonal line through each of the background squares in both directions.  Things should go a little faster now!

There'll be plenty of stitching to do while football is on at our house today!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday. 

 

More with greens and blues...

Continuing on with my plan to make four more quarter star blocks in each of the eight colors we've worked with this year - I finished up the red ones this week, and found pieces and parts for some orange blocks.  And then I ran out of the Grunge Sea background!  So some is on order from Fat Quarter Shop, and I'll get back on that when it arrives.

My next challenge was to see if I could pull out enough different light blues and greens to make two more 16 patch stars in those shades.  Here's where I started - 

These are some of my ugliest green scraps, and hard to photograph, too!

I've been trying to name this shade of green and found a fun website - 

134 Shades of Green!

I'm thinking my scraps might be in the artichoke or laurel or sage shades.

But they did go together to make a pretty good block for this project, and the light blue ones, too!

Here are all the blues and greens together - light, medium, and dark in no particular order.

I'm up to 18 blocks for this quilt, just two more needed!

That will be next month's task!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

I Like Thursday #450

We've been doing some fall yard clean-up, so many of my summer flowers (like the petunias in pots) have been ripped out.  But the big pot of marigolds is still going strong - they're a good fall flower!  I like to leave them in there so they'll re-seed themselves for next year.

On a little hike in Oregon we came across this pretty grove of purple flowers.  I used the Google Lens feature in Photos to identify them and it called them sea asters.  

A favorite event of mine to go and walk through was taking place last weekend.  It's called "Pastels on 5th Street" and is a fundraiser for our local domestic violence organization.  We go to this every year because the art is so fun to see, and it's always interesting to see the artists at work, too.

I think this was my favorite.

And loved the fall tree, too.

A whole block of artists!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about school supplies - and, of course, loving school and always wanting to be a teacher, those were always very important to me.  But I don't remember shopping for them as a kid at all.  I think maybe they were supplied by the schools in our town back then?  Not sure.  But I definitely do remember shopping for them with my own kids, and that was a big deal!  They were in school in the 90s - and the "Trapper Keeper" was very popular!  I can remember that teachers didn't like them very much because they were big and didn't fit in the kids' desks, but the kids loved them!  Go figure!

In my years as a teacher, I shopped for lots of school supplies because lots of kids came without them.  When places like Walmart or Office Depot had things on sale, I would go and buy as many as I could to give out to my students when they needed something.  Nowadays my favorite "school supply" is my spiral notebook full of graph paper.  It's been great for planning out quilt designs that I want to make.

I made this String Star in 2018.

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

Midweek Update - Updated!

This week, I seem to be jumping around from one thing to another in my sewing room.  I opened up and spread out those fat quarters I bought in Oregon last week.  I don't buy a lot of novelty fabric, but I do love these.  They're going to become my Table Scraps Challenge project for September.

I've been hunting around for more light blues and greens to see if I can find enough to sew two more 16 patch star blocks for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts.  More about that on Saturday!

And I opened up a project box to find these - the last of the jelly roll strips that I made Glowing Hearts and then the braided tablerunner from.

Just for fun I decided to see if I could use them to make a placemat.  I started by sewing them all together end to end to make one long strip - jelly roll race style - it measured 154 inches!  Then I folded it in half and sewed along one side multiple times until I had about a 16.5 x 18.5 inch piece. 

 8.5 x 35.5

16.5 x 18.5.                             

I had to laugh when those two blue squares ended up side by side!  Finally, I squared it up to a 12.5 x 16.5 inch rectangle, and called it good.

Wednesday afternoon, thanks to two gently encouraging friends, I ripped out the seam between the two blue squares, flipped the left section around, and fixed the "two blue squares touching" problem, and it really does look so much better!

One of these days I will quilt this and bind it, and it will definitely be used! 

But now I'm going to get back to working on the RSC blocks!  

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Three projects...

for a slow stitching Sunday!

A little progress has been made on "Celebrate Fall."  I took it along on our trip, but hardly got it out.  I guess you never know what kind of time there'll be for stitching when you're away from home.  I've made a little progress on it, though - the words are finished and a few other areas!

Sometime in this last few weeks I started a new mini sampler designed by Melisa.  It's the Mini Apple Sampler.   I've stitched a lot of her mini samplers, but missed this one.  And since my September display has an apple theme - I need this one! 

And then there's my on-again, off-again hand quilting project - the Orange Peels.  I'm trying to get back on it again!  I'm up to 17 of the 24 orange peels being quilted, so it's slowly moving along.

What will I work on today?  Maybe a little of each!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.