This week...

We are headed out of town!  🎼🎵🎶 My bags are packed, I'm ready to go! 🎶🎵

Over the years I've made quite a few quilted zipper pouches that I use for various purposes when we travel.  The different sizes and shapes are really handy.

  Here's a little hint about our destination.  I'm sooo looking forward to it!

A little sewing has been accomplished.  I've been trying to make some quilting progress on Patchwork Hearts.  Row 2 of 5 is almost finished.

Angela called for light blues and greens for the September Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month.  So I got out my previously made blue and green quarter star blocks.  I can definitely make more of these in greens and blues.

I'll share more about these when we are home again next week.

I've packed a project bag for my suitcase with the fall embroidery in it.  If there's some evening downtime, I'll pull it out and put in a few stitches.

I love being able to travel in the fall - so thankful to be retired and have the time to go to a favorite destination!  LeeAnna's question of the week is about starting school as kids - did we get new school clothes and what was that like?  My mom sewed everything we kids wore, and I remember how fun it was to go to the fabric store and pick out the pattern and the fabric for something new to begin school.  Girls always wore dresses back in those days and I think my mom sewed lots of jumpers for us.  A really big memory is that I always had to wear saddle shoes - and I hated them!  (They were not in style :) Their support was supposed to be better for my flat feet, but I thought they were so ugly!  

Looking at them now, I don't think I'd mind having a pair.

Lol!

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss 

and Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday 

Off we go!  See you on the other side!

September is on its way!

If it's that time of year when the calendar still says summer, but it's feeling a bit like fall, it must be almost September!  At least that's how it feels at our house.  So I finished the September heart mini quilt to display on the little chest by the front door.

The theme is apples!

September also means back-to-school for this retired teacher, so I put out the Little Schoolhouse Mini sampler, and a favorite glass apple that a student once gave me.

I did get the fall embroidery project traced and found some variegated floss that I like for it.  Just a few stitches were taken to get it started last night.

This is Cosmo Seasons variegated floss, which I haven't used before.   

It doesn't have a name, but it's a blend of brown, gold, 

and kind of a pumpkin orange - seems just right for this project.

Since Joann's went out of business, I've been struggling a bit about where to buy new thread and embroidery floss.  I have ordered from Red Rock Threads and they do carry lots of floss brands, including Cosmos floss.   But I found this at my LQS - it turns out they have a whole wall of it!  Now I know where to go when I need something new.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Table Scraps for August

My Table Scraps project for August was inspired by many things - the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August: aqua, a creative challenge from Melva Loves Scraps - see here, and the added challenge from Joyful Quilter: hot flash!   

Let me show you what I came up with!  

I started with the creative challenge from Melva's list - "fussy cut a square from a favorite fabric and add borders to create a table topper."  As I was sorting through my aqua scraps for my RSC blocks early in the month, I came across this little chunk.

Mermaids!  Some with aqua hair and tails.  

The background is also aqua, although it doesn't show very well in this photo.

I fussy cut a 4.5 inch square with two mermaids in the center and started adding borders.  Did you notice that some of them also have orange hair or tails?  They must be having hot flashes!  (August has been a very hot month here, lol!)

Orange for the hot flashes, and then some aqua - 

maybe to help these girls cool off?! 

But, you know, it's just been really hot, and the orange took over, until I added some cool, bubbly blue to finish this table topper off.

Aqua mermaids having hot flashes!

And, as I often show you - the finished Table Scraps project in my favorite place, paired with my favorite mug and morning beverage.  I got both the mermaid fabric and the mug when we visited Cape Cod a few years back.

Sharing at all my favorite weekend link-ups!

The Joyful Quilter

Alycia Quilts

SoScrappy

Quilting is More Fun than Housework 

Melva Loves Scraps 

I Like Thursday #449

My tomatoes finally decided it was time to ripen up.  We're going to be having some BLT's for lunch today!

We took a little trip up to Estes Park last Friday and played our favorite miniature golf course.  

We found a place for a picnic lunch and then walked around town for a bit.  I had to take this photo of the taffy place, in honor of my Blueberry Taffy project!

Salt Water Taffy - Colorado style, lol! 

(Not a lot of salt water around here!)

Right after that it started raining like crazy, and we had to hightail it back to the car!  

But it was a fun day while it lasted.

LeeAnna's question of the week is about amusement parks - do we like them, and what do we like about them?  I haven't been to an amusement park in many years.   But we did enjoy visiting the Disney parks several times over the years as our kids were growing up, both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida.  You can't beat their atmosphere - beautiful landscaping and buildings.  My favorite ride was always Pirates of the Caribbean, and the shows are fun, too.    

Great memories!

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

 

Midweek Update

In my Saturday post, I was so excited about the progress I had made in sewing the longer sashings and rows together for Blueberry Taffy.  I was so sure I could finish the last row and the borders on Sunday.   And then I got in a hurry and measured wrong, or sewed it wrong, or something - and saw this...

A ripple-y border.  😭

So I was a good girl and took that off before doing any pressing or "trying to make it work."  Re-measure, re-cut, and re-sew, and a short time later, it looked much better and as of Tuesday late afternoon, Blueberry Taffy is a finished quilt top!  And all is laying flat!

I'm very happy with how the block and sashing intersections went together - they look nice and square.

I'm not as happy with how much the light blue Riley Blake solid is unraveling!  It seems that just as I cut it and move it around to sew a sashing to a row, it has already started. Very frustrating!  This top needs to be quilted and bound soon so that it doesn't completely unravel before it can be finished. 

Right now, though, it has been gently folded and hung up on a hanger in the closet because I have some small pieces to finish.  My Table Scraps project...

And the September heart...

More about both of these in my weekend posts!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Almost finished...

with Hello Summer, that is!  Just three more rows for the watermelon and this will be done.  

I did rip a little something out and make a change to the design.  In the pattern, the little bees at the very top had antennae made of cross-stitches, and I had stitched mine in pink so they would stand out.  See below from last week's photo.

But that just didn't look right to me.  So if you look back at the top photo,

you can see that I took those pink stitches out and just made smaller straight stitches 

that look more like antennae to me.

A nice change in our weather has it feeling like there's a hint of fall in the air, and that has made me feel like starting some new with a fall theme!  This is from Gail Pan's book, Patchwork Loves Embroidery Too.  I've stitched this before, but gave it away, so now I want to do it again to keep.

The directions say to stitch this in a variegated red-orange pearl cotton, which I don't have, so will have to go looking for some this week.  Meanwhile I can get this all prepped and ready to start!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Making progress...

As I've been working on Blueberry Taffy this week, it's been fun to revisit all the scrappy blocks that are going into it.  The aqua blocks are some of my favorites!

I've been slowly measuring, cutting, and sewing the sashing strips that connect the rows together.  Since I decided not to add cornerstones, I needed to mark where the seams were between the blocks so they could match up from one row to the next.

It's all been going together nicely!  Just one more row to do, and the final outer borders.  You might notice that the top border was already sewn on - that was a bit of a mistake, lol!  I originally flipped the orientation of the first two rows when I laid them out to work on sewing them together, and then realized something didn't look right.  Good thing I planned to use the light blue for the outer border, too - no seam ripper this week!

And along the way I sewed up two more Gameboard blocks - the dark blue and the aqua ones in the bottom row.  

                                       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 #448

Today is my dear mom's 94th birthday!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I'm going to take her some flowers a little later this morning and have lunch with her.  The folks at her place were asking what she would like for a special birthday lunch, but Mom can't answer questions like that anymore, so they asked me, and I decided on something Italian because she's always liked that.   And ice cream for dessert because that is a favorite of hers also.  Who doesn't like ice cream?!  

We have a favorite local ice cream place here and we try to go a few times every summer.  It's owned by some people we knew when our kids were all growing up.  They have yummy ice cream there!

My favorite flavor is always something with chocolate in it - 

this time it was mint chocolate chip.

Look what I grew in my garden!  I try to grow a pumpkin or two every year, but this is the first time for four of them.  It has been so hot here that the vines have just been wilting, so I decided to cut the pumpkins off and bring them inside where it's cooler.  The parts that are still green will ripen on their own.

And another good book this week - this is an entertaining story with lots of things in it to make you think about the times we're living in.  I'm really enjoying it!

Hope you're having a great week!

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

    

 

Midweek Update

Thanks to all my encouraging commenters from last Wednesday's post, I've stayed faithful to my plan, and made some good progress on the Blueberry Taffy project!  I had some decisions to make first - sew all the blocks together by themselves or add a sashing strip between each block and each row?  One way would make for a faster finish, but I thought I would probably like the finished look better the other way.  So I decided to add the sashing, and that meant going shopping!

I came home with this Riley Blake Confetti Cottons solid 

in a shade of blue called Breeze.

Then you know what's next - squaring up the blocks, measuring and cutting strips, and sewing, sewing, sewing!

Although this is not the most exciting of quilting tasks, it has to be done!   I do enjoy looking closely at the blocks again, and seeing all the scraps that were used in making them.

I Spy a little penguin!

And here's where I am now - 20 blocks with sashing turned into five rows.  

Next step is to add the sashing between the rows - that is my job for the next few days.  But first, I'll be linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss!

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Slow stitching this week...

I've been so excited about the sunflower blooming in my garden this week that I decided I had to finish the Old Crow Salt Box House cross-stitch piece.  And I did!

I was having so much fun stitching that last sunflower that 

I almost forgot to add the chimneys to the house.  

Good thing that didn't take long!

This fits right in with my other sunflower pieces on display for the month of August.

So now I'm back to working on "Hello Summer!"  

There really isn't too much left on this one - just the bottom row of motifs -

some lemons, another watermelon piece, and finish the border.  

I can have this done before fall comes, right?!

I'll be stitching on this today for my Slow Sunday Stitching - 

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

More with aqua...

It's been a busy week getting ready to host my quilt group, but all went well and there was lots of fun show and tell.

Quilty friends in the house!

I did manage to get the two 16 patch stars sewn up, and I'm happy with the mix of darker and lighter aquas, too.

Sixteen of them now!

Leaders and enders this week were a tiny aqua 16 patch, and pieces and parts for a blue Gameboard block.  

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #447

Tuesday is my regular golf day with friends that I have been participating in for years.  This week it was such a nice day - a cooler temperature after weeks of heat, good friends, and an osprey soaring above us to provide distraction from bad golfing skills! 😜   This guy must have been feeding a young one because he came back and caught a fish three times and then would fly off and take it somewhere.

Not my photo - I borrowed this from allaboutbirds.com

The sunflower in my garden that was just starting to open on Sunday is fully open now, and so pretty.  The bees have discovered it, too!

And more zinnias, too.  I've never grown zinnias before - I'm so excited about these!

I've been reading a good book this week.  It's a WWII historical fiction story that takes place on Martha's Vineyard, so I love the setting, and it involves several interesting storylines, too.

LeeAnna's question of the week is about fudgesicles vs orange creamsicles.  Which would we choose?  Ordinarily, for me, chocolate is always the first choice.  But then - orange creamsicles are so yummy - now I want one!  

This afternoon I am hosting my quilt group, so I've been busy getting ready for that.  It only occurred to me yesterday afternoon (after I'd done all the grocery shopping!) that I should have gotten cold treats like fudgesicles and creamsicles for the treats to serve because it is so hot here.)  Oh well - we're having cookies and grapes instead.  At least there will be chocolate!

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