All the blues...

Earlier this week, I finished stitching the center section of my Gail Pan project from her book, Tabletop Stitcheries.

6.5 x 9.5

The project in the book is made with matching sized pieces of fabric on either side of this center and then two narrower embroidered pieces on either side of those.  I decided I wanted a scrappier look with variegated blues, to go with my variegated blue floss.  So I dug out a bunch of blues.

And I added strips of these blues all around the embroidered section - kind of log cabin style!

Now 10.5 x 13.5

Meanwhile, I am stitching up the narrower sections to go on either side of this center.  They'll be dressed up with some blue strips, too.

These will be trimmed to be 3.5 x 6.5 after I finish the embroidery.

Here's the book that the project is from - it's even the cover design!  Mine will look a lot different when finished, however.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Table Scraps for April

It's my favorite week of the month - time to share my little finish for the Table Scraps Challenge, hosted by The Joyful Quilter.   For April's project, the color was red (the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month) and the added challenge was to include raindrops.  

Red and raindrops??? Okay!

But then I lucked out!  Last year at some point, I had sewn together some rail fence blocks out of a scrap bag that a friend had given me.  I picked these particular bits because I liked the red, yellow, black and white combination.  And look - do you see them?  Red raindrops!

Plus, suns, scissors, tulips, and cats on bicycles!

I eventually made enough of the blocks to sew together into this little piece - it measures about 9 x 12 inches.

And then it sat, never finished, until I was digging around for my red scraps earlier in April, and this turned up - so perfect to finish for the April challenge!  I found a great backing for it, continuing the red and yellow theme, and I hand quilted with ecru pearl cotton.

And, voila!  A finish!

This little tabletopper made its way to my desk that sits by the back door of our house where we come in from the garage, and collects the stuff you drop by the door.  (All cleaned up for photo purposes!)

Thank you, Joy, another fun challenge!  I enjoy these every month.

Sharing at all my favorite weekend parties:

The Joyful Quilter for the April Table Scraps Challenge 

 Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday 

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #433

It's lilac time in Colorado!  That means Spring is really here.  I pass these bushes on my neighborhood walk - they smell so good!

Sometimes I walk in my mom's neighborhood after I visit her.  The other day I came across this beautiful garden.  This is only half of the flowers - it's a big circular garden in the middle of the complex.

I was a lucky winner in the Stay at Home Round Robin QAL!  Kathleen from Kathleen McMusing sent me this amazing fat quarter bundle of Island Batik fabric called Flutter Fields.

See the butterflies?  ⬆️  This is going to be fun to play with!

Last night I went to a favorite event with my book club friends - the annual "Loveland Loves to Read" author talk.  The book this year was Go As a River, by Shelley Read.  She is a Colorado author, and the book is set in the late 1940s up into the 1970s, including when the Gunnison River was dammed up and the valley was flooded to make Blue Mesa Reservoir.  Several small towns were flooded and are at the bottom of the reservoir.  The story centers on a woman who was displaced because of this.  A really good story, and she was a great speaker!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about where we do our computer work/blogging.  I have a Samsung tablet - similar to an iPad, but an Android system, and I use it for everything - reading, blogging, email, watching videos - you name it!  I often am sitting in my comfy chair with my feet up when I am writing my posts, but sometimes (like today!) I am at Starbucks with a favorite coffee beverage in hand.  

Have a great Thursday!

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

Midweek Update

Progress on the two QALs:

It's time to make orange peel shapes for the Orange Peel stitch-along at The Crafty Quilter.  Julie had a great post last week about different ways to make the orange peel shapes and I chose to make mine with her faced method.  You sew the orange peel shape to a piece of fusible interfacing right sides together, snip the interfacing and turn right side out.  Pretty easy to construct!

I'm going to make a few each day until I have the 24 I need.  I did discover I can get two out of each charm square that I have, so I have plenty to choose from.  

Some of my points are better than others.  

That's something I'll have to work on!

Sandra posted cutting directions for the Glowing Hearts QAL last week, too.  I'm a slow cutter, if you know what I mean, but I'll work my way through them.  It's definitely easy to have a jelly roll of strips that just need to be cut to length.

Five hearts are made with the left side grouping,

and four made with the right side strips.

One intentional choice I've  made is to use all the same background fabric for the hearts, rather than half dark and half light.  I'm hoping I'll be happy with that choice.  Here are the two heart "tops" started.

There are nine hearts blocks to make for a small throw quilt - that sounds doable!  

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Stitching bunnies...

Happy Easter!  Beatrice Bunny is a finish!  I stitched her a year ago, but she has been patiently waiting her turn to be ready for display.  This is a PinkernPunkin design.  

I tucked Beatrice into the little Easter basket next to the wooden eggs and she snuggled right in!

This week I also stitched up the bunnies on Melisa's Spring Banner.   Now I just need to fill in the banner, and I'm doing that with a pale yellow floss.

This will be the perfect slow stitching for my Easter Sunday!

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts.

A little more with red...

Senior moments - do you have them?  I sure do.  Earlier this week I shared the red sixteen patch star that I had made.  I'm happy with how it turned out, and I was thinking about how I now had four of these blocks.  

Four?  Did that mean I'd only have 10 or maybe 12 of them by the end of the year?  That didn't seem right.  Well, oops, I suddenly remembered I've been making two each month!

At the end of March:

So I had to figure out how to make another red block that was enough different from the original that you could tell the difference.  I dug around in my Christmas drawer and found some reds with black and white and a text print and some plaids.  I tried some different combinations.

It's a little busy, but it's a scrappy quilt, so I'm sticking with this.   So now there are two red blocks!

And eight total.

And in other scrappy sewing - my leaders and enders have turned into Gameboard blocks which I discovered over at Sara's blog - My Sewing Room.  I start with 2.5 inch four patches, then make them into 4.5 inch sixteen patches.  Eventually the outer sections are added to end up with an 8.5 inch block.

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 #432

 April in my garden starts like this:

Some tulips are blooming, and lots of pretty purple grape hyacinths. 

Last year's leaves were still there - I leave them over the winter for mulch - but I've cleaned them out since this photo was taken.

But the crowning glory of Spring in our yard is this beautiful Spring Snow Crabapple.  It was at its peak this week.

This afternoon the wind came up and the "Spring snow" part of its name happened!

I came home the other day to a box of goodies that came in the mail from Nann - thank you, Nann!  There's a lot to dig into, but I'll share one item that was in it that I know will get used - a rainbow of embroidery floss!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about Easter baskets.  I loved getting an Easter basket as a kid - ours were usually full of chocolate, especially those little individually wrapped chocolate eggs.  Remember these?  It looks like you can still get them - even a dark chocolate variety!

Nowadays, my Easter basket looks like this:

Those are painted wooden eggs!  

(Not that I don't enjoy some chocolate every now and then... 

Maybe I'll have to put in a request with the Easter bunny!)

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

Midweek Update

Since my last midweek update post, I shared the finish of Masala Box here.  That was a big quilt finish, so working on some smaller things was on the agenda next.  Next up, the background squares needed to be sewn together for the Orange Peel SAL, hosted by Julie at The Crafty Quilter. ✔️

I'm ready to start the orange peel applique - 

I think that's coming up this week.

Sandra's most recent post about the Glowing Hearts QAL talked about fabric requirements, so I spent some time digging through my stash to see if I could find anything that inspired me there.  When nothing exciting turned up, my next thought was to visit my LQS for some fat quarters to cut strips for the hearts from.  But before I even did that, I found an Island Batik jelly roll at Missouri Star Quilt Co that I liked ✔️, was on sale ✔️, and they had a Daily Deal for free shipping! ✔️  And it just arrived this afternoon, so I'm all set to get started on that project, too.

With those things out of the way, I could get back to sewing with my red scraps for a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  I've been making sixteen patch stars for one of my RSC quilts, so that was on the list for this week.  These blocks really take longer to cut the pieces and prep for the star points than they do to sew!  It didn't take long to make a star in red.

Then it occurred to me that I've actually been making two of these stars each month, one in a darker shade and one in a lighter!  How was I going to do that for red?  (Isn't light red actually pink?!  I made those in February...)  I hunted around for some different red choices and I'll share in my Saturday RSC post what I ended up using!

Hope you're having a productive week!   Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Melva Loves Scraps for TGIFF.

Slow stitching this week...

I spent several nights this week stitching down the binding on this quilt. That's always my favorite kind of slow stitching!

Once that was finished, I've been able to make some progress on the Gail Pan variegated blue flower basket.  In fact, there's just a little more to do.  

But with it being Eastertime, I gave myself permission to start a new little project with bunnies on it!  This is Spring Banner from Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  Hopefully you can see the bunny starting to emerge!

Plenty to work on today for Slow Sunday Stitching! 

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

It's a finish!

And even in time for Friday!  My version of Masala Box, a Sew Preeti Quilts design, is finally finished!  I started this one way back in 2022 as a Rainbow Scrap Challenge project.  This is the best photo I could find of the first blocks.  January was red that year and February was turquoise.

It progressed to a finished quilt top in January of 2023 - I had to look around a bit to find this photo of my design wall at the time.

And then it hung in the closet until earlier this year, when I finally got the layers basted for quilting and got it done!  Whoop, whoop!

This photo shows the double grid quilting I did - 

Gail at the Cozy Quilter calls it waffle quilting and that's the perfect name for it!

It's kind of time consuming, but I like the final look of it.  

The binding is a funny penguin print that Nann sent me a half yard or so piece of.   I thought it could make a fun binding, plus I wanted to use something I already had.  Thanks, Nann!

Peeking penguins!

So glad to finally have this quilt finished!  It doesn't have a home yet, so it will live at my house for awhile, and I'll enjoy seeing it!

Sharing at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday and at

SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

I Like Thursday #431

Thursday snuck up on me this week!  I'm not sure where the time has gone, but I guess some weeks are like that.  I did finish a good book.  It's a WWII historical fiction - a genre I almost always like.  I particularly like Jennifer Ryan's books - I think I've read all of hers now.

We found a new treat that we like!  Madeleine cookies - tasty with a cup of coffee or tea.

With Joann's closing down, I needed to find a new place to get my favorite Gutermann thread from and Karen recommended Red Rock Threads.  I ended up ordering from them - several spools of Gutermann for the sewing machine and a ball of Valdani embroidery floss.  I thought the prices were good and the shipping reasonable, so I'll order from them again.  Thanks, Karen!

The gals at my mom's house just love to decorate for the holidays and the Easter decorations are up now.  Cute bunnies and eggs all over the place.  But this one is the most creative of all!

This is a hand sanitizer dispenser! 

Speaking of Easter, LeeAnna's question of the week is about dyeing Easter eggs.  I always enjoyed doing that, as a kid and with my own kids.  We loved the Paas egg dyeing kits and apparently they're still around!   I remember using those invisible crayons to put wax on the egg so that the dye would show some kind of pattern.  And the little stickers and the paper "costumes" you could create characters with.  

We did hide the dyed eggs, as well as 

the plastic ones with candy and little prizes in them.  

Always fun and good memories!

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