A pastel placemat and some cross-stitch...

We are heading up into the mountains this weekend to attend a 50th wedding anniversary celebration for some college friends, so I thought I would combine my usual two weekend posts into one.  

This week, I finished up the scrappy placemat that I started out of the scraps from the Lyra tablerunner project.  It was fun to see what would happen when I cut the blue floral leftovers into smaller pieces.   There might even have been fussy cutting involved! 

Here's the whole thing - the border and binding are a new purchase that I just love.  The Lyra quilt needed binding, and I didn't have enough of anything in my stash to complete it, so...

This is Woodland Wonder by Gingiber for Moda.  I love it!

Now that I've cut into it, is the rest of it considered to be scraps? 😘

I'm sure this will show up in other projects!

The pile of placemats is continuing to grow!

My slow stitching involved some pastel colors this week, too.  Stamp #5 in the Summer SAL is mostly finished.  It is the Summer Quilt stamp - remembering picnic quilts and the fun of going on a picnic, which I still love to do.  It's supposed to have white filling in around the star and in the borders which I am putting off, lol!  That's not my favorite part of cross-stitching. 

Stamp 6 is in progress - a pitcher of Pink Lemonade!

A lemon and some lemon slices will be added to the strawberries

around the pitcher.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday 

and at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

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

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday 

I Like Thursday #487

It was a chocolate cake kind of week here.  😊  With some extended family in town, we all met up at my sister's house for dinner and a chocolate sheet cake was requested for dessert.  I think a lot of families have something like this in their shared recipe boxes - we've been making this one for years.  It's so yummy - it's good to have lots of people to share it with.

But... there was frosting leftover, and we just couldn't waste it, lol!  So I suggested to younger son that there could be such a thing as "Sourdough Chocolate Cake," and it turns out, there is.  He found a recipe and made it, and yum!

Before frosting...

And after...

So good!  

(And now I need to work off those extra calories!:)

LeeAnna's question of the week is about a choice between two summer activities - would you rather play in the garden or lay in a hammock and read a book?  My answer is - can I pick both?  I've been enjoying planting things in my pots and small raised bed this year, and things are growing!  Here's a view of our back porch and some of my flowers in pots.  Although we don't have a hammock, this is a good reading spot!

One of Mike's pepper plants in the ⬆️ foreground here.

But you know I also love to read, and here is this week's book.  Kate Quinn is a favorite author, and I have particularly liked her historical fiction novels.  This one is a whole different genre, but has really grabbed me!

I don't usually show a photo of the back cover, but this week, I had to!

Oh yes!

Have a great Thursday, everyone!  Joining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

Lyra, the tablerunner edition...

is a finish!   Just in time to share here and then link up with the quilt parade which starts June 15th.  This is my 8th year to participate in one of Sandra's (mmmquilts) QALs, and each year has been a great quilting experience!  Thank you, Sandra, for sharing your wonderful designs and expertise.  

This is the first year that my quilt is a smaller version of the design in Sandra's pattern.  This year I decided to work from my stash, trying not to purchase anything, and a tablerunner size is what my stash supported.  I actually think that peachy pink is left over from the 2024 quilt, Paducah Stars, so named because I bought all the fabric for it at Hancock's of Paducah when we were on a trip there.

Early on, I figured out that each section of these star blocks 

could be paper-pieced, so that is what I did!

  

Three of the large intertwining stars were made...

And a final border added.

Quilting and binding done, and voila!

It turns out this design also looks good vertically, so here it is hanging on my sewing room door.  I think I will enjoy seeing it hanging here everyday when I come in to sew!

I hope to make the full size quilt of Lyra one of these days, and I especially love the Artemis version, which looks like a full moon surrounded by stars.   It honors the Artemis moon mission which took place while the QAL was going on.  You can see that pattern at Sandra's Etsy shop here.  Until then, I'll be enjoying this finish!

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss,

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday, and

at Quilting Learning Combo for I Quilted This!

mmmquilts for the Lyra Quilt Parade starting next Monday.

A little of everything...

This week, my evening slow stitching time included three different projects.  I did some hand quilting on the spool mini quilt.

There was some cross-stitching on PinkernPunkin's Summer stitch-along as I worked on stamp #5 - Summer Quilt.

And then there's been some binding stitching to finish up my Lyra project from mmmquilts' QAL.  I'm hoping to have a finish to share by midweek!

Each one of these needs quite a bit more stitching, so I've got choices for today's slow stitching time!  Linking up at Kathy's Quilts!

Playing with pastels...

It's always fun to find out the new color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge! When Angela suggested we focus on the pastel shades, my first thought was "what can I dig up that fits that?"  So I started with the light blues.

In January, I made two Jacob's Ladder blocks - one in dark blue and one brighter.

Through trial and error in the first five months of the year, I've learned that these blocks need to have fabrics that contrast well with the ecru background, but not with each other.  So the big question was - would it work with very light blues? 

 

I think this will work!

So now there are three blue blocks - 

And here's the whole gang, in very random layout!

And some quilting was completed on light blue, too - 

A good start for June!

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 #486

It's the "yard work" time of year and we always take our grass and tree branches to the city recycle center to be mulched.  Every time we go, I see something interesting there!

Things are growing, too.  I planted two tomatoes in pots this year - one for slicing and one cherry tomato.  The cherry tomato is the one farthest over in the photo - and it has blossoms on it already!

This dianthus is looks happy!

We've had some extended family coming through town and some of the kids went to visit my mom.  Mom has three grandsons and three granddaughters.  These are the sweet granddaughters who all paid her a visit together!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about insects.  Do we have a favorite?  I'm not a big insect fan, unlike my college roommate who is an entomologist and loves all bugs!  But I did have an interesting experience with this beautiful praying mantis who showed up in our garden several years ago.

She lived in the ground cover garden by our front step, and

everyday when I watered it, she would climb up from underneath the plants.

Eventually we saw her mate, and then we never saw anything more after that.

I had hoped to see some babies hatch from there, too, but never did.

Fascinating experience anyway, though!

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

Midweek Update

This week I got my Lyra tablerunner top sandwiched for quilting and it is in progress!

Meanwhile I've been trying to figure out what to do with the scraps from this project.  There aren't very many scraps, but even so I don't want to stick them in the scrap bins and have them just sit there!

Last year, after making Sandra's Glowing Hearts quilt, I went on a quest to use up the leftovers from that project and ended up making a tablerunner and a placemat out of them.

There's not near the amount of scraps from this year's project (because it was started from scraps!) but there was enough to make twelve little 3.5 inch four patches.  Since the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in June is pastels I'm thinking these will turn into my scrappy placemat for the month.

I still have to decide how exactly I'll use these four patches, 

but they'll turn into something!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday 

Slow stitching this week...

Not sure why it took me so long, but I finally finished up the Gail Pan Spring embroidery piece this week!

Winter, Spring...

and I will move on to the Summer design, as soon as I find the background fabric that I had reserved for this project to trace the new design!  😜  Meanwhile I decided to prep a small quilt for hand quilting.  I sewed this up back in April.  It's made from a charm pack of Tilda and a Spool quilt pattern from Primrose Cottage.

About 15 inches square.

And meanwhile, I've continued to work on the Summer SAL from PinkernPunkin.  I stitched Stamp 4 this week - Sunflower Strut.  

Moving on to stamp #5!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Catching Up!

It's been nice to have a week to catch up on some quilting tasks.  Earlier in the week I finished the top for my Lyra tablerunner, and it's now layered and ready to quilt.

Then I got busy working on block 9 for the Little House sew-along at Melva Loves Scraps and it's now finished, too!  It started with a sweet center block that Melva calls Prairie Rose.  Choosing the fabrics for this one, using my fall-themed prints, was more challenging than sewing it up.  Of course this one looks like a sunflower rather than a rose!

Add the log cabin strips, and here it is.

Now all nine blocks are made, and we can start to play with layouts.  I think the finishing instructions will be out next week.

I can already see a block or two ⬆️

that I'm going to have to rearrange.

I fussy cut a favorite bit of orange from the jelly roll for this block!

Having a leader/ender block is helpful when sewing these log cabins together, so I was able to finish a gameboard block along the way, too.  It even uses scraps from the Little House project!

And there goes orange month!  I'm wondering what our next color will be.

Linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday 

and at Melva Loves Scraps for the Little House sew-along, block 9.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #485

We spent some time on Monday exploring a new park in our town that we hadn't been to before.  It has a little bit of everything - a great playground, sculptures, walking trails, and fishing areas.

I've been telling all my friends with grandkids 

that they need to bring them here!

The sculptures are fun - much larger than life-size - native animals.  Wild turkeys!

And prairie dogs!

That trail you can see back behind there is where we walked.  

You can go down to the river there and check out the fishing ponds, too.

It was a beautiful day!

This week's book was a good one - The Keeper of Happy Endings, by Barbara Davis.  It's my book club's June book.  It is historical fiction, taking place in the 1940s and the 1980s.

Goodreads

LeeAnna's question of the week is about perms.  Have we had one and how did it work out?  This one made me laugh!  I have very curly hair!  So curly, in fact, that people have asked me if I had a perm.  😄  When I was a teenager, some product came out that claimed to straighten curly hair, and my mom thought we ought to try it.  I think it was done much like a perm - you combed this stuff in, left it for awhile, and then pretended your hair was magically straight (as was the style in the early 70s when I was in high school).  I think it lasted at the most for a week or two.  

In college, I met Mike, whose hair was also curly back then, and our friends called us the "Brillo Pads!"  We even dressed up as brillo pad boxes for a Halloween party way back then.   I wish I could find a picture of that, but I'm not sure where it would be.

How's this for a 70s look?!

Have a great Thursday, everyone!

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

Midweek Update

Looking back at my recent posts, I realized that it's been a month since I last shared any progress on my version of mmmquilts' Lyra QAL.  I guess going on a trip in the middle of that month affected what I was able to get done, but I'm moving it along now!

Early in the QAL, I had figured out that the best way for me to make all the sections I needed was to paper-piece them.  The entire quilt is made out of these three shapes.

Based on my fabric choices and available time, I decided to turn Sandra's nine blocks quilt into a 3 block summer table runner, so I calculated how many of those paper-pieced sections I would need, and they turned into this design.

Getting it to that point was the hardest part!  And now it is sewn together.  In the above photo the pieces are laid out on the green backing of an older quilt.  In the photo below, the runner is on a blue sheet because I was pressing with some starch.  There are lots of bias edges in this one!

The last couple days I've been working on the borders.  Sandra's design for the full quilt calls for square-in-a-square cornerstone, which I made in a 2.5 inch size, using the same green as the star points.

And then here it is - the finished tablerunner top!

This measures 40 x 20, a good size for our table.

Time to layer, quilt, and finish this!

The final quilt parade starts June 15th.

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Melva Loves Scraps for TGIFF