I Like Thursday #481

We've had a gray and chilly week here in northern Colorado, and finally some rain came!  So nice to finally get a little of that precipitation we need so badly!   It's been cold enough that I need to wear my down coat when I go for a walk.  But not too cold for the neighbor's iris to bloom!

We've done some spring clean-up in the yard when it's been nice enough.  That includes cleaning off our back porch (it gets really dusty over the winter!) and getting out the furniture for enjoying it.  We both enjoy spinners and yard art, and have been replacing the cloth ones we had previously (that get destroyed by the sun and wind) with metal ones.

I think this one's my favorite right now.

I think LeeAnna's question of the week is about Spring cleaning, but I can't seem to find the email about it.  (Must have been Spring cleaning my inbox, lol!)  When it comes to cleaning, I seem to go in spurts.  Sometimes there is routine cleaning or cleaning because company is coming.  Sometimes I see that something in particular needs to be done so I just do it.  But I rarely do a large "Spring Cleaning."  

This week we have been cleaning out/collecting our old electronic items for an e-waste collection drive that we can take them to.  Think old phones, laptops, charging cords, VCRs, and that type of thing.  It turns out we have a lot of them!  It requires looking in  junk drawers and places where those things hide.  And finding things you forgot you had - like this... never opened.  I've been retired for 11 years, and I stopped wearing nylons to work long before that.  Wonder how long this has been in that drawer.  

I got a good laugh out of this find!

Do they even sell these anymore?

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

Midweek Update

This week I've been focusing on the parts and blocks needed for Lyra, mmmquilts' Spring QAL.  I shared the first two kite blocks that I paper-pieced in my Thursday post last week.  And from there I realized that I could paper-piece each of the sections that I need for this quilt.   

I drafted these myself, remembering to add the 1/4 inch seam allowance all around the outside, and they are working out perfectly!  (And fortunately, we have a printer than also works as a copier, so I only had to draw each block once, and then I could make multiple copies as needed.)

Kite, square-in-a-square, and tri recs blocks

The individual parts go together to make these interesting, interlocking stars!

I've been working from left to right.  To the right of the pink and blue star

 is another like the big star on the left.

I made a few more pieces and added them on, and now you can see that third section developing on the right.

Sandra has released the pattern for Lyra, and you can see her post for that here.   She also has designed another version of the quilt which I think is really fabulous.  I'm thinking about making that version sometime in the future.  For now, I'll keep working on this one!

                         Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Stitching Summer

We're in that lull between Spring bulbs blooming and being able to plant this year's flowers and vegetables. So nothing much is growing here right now, and I'm dreaming of June in my garden!

Until then, though, I can enjoy stitching on the Summer stitch-along, hosted by Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  This week I finished the header and got going on Stamp 1.  

Lots more to work on here, so this will be my Slow Sunday Stitching.

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

Quilting

Like many quilters and crafters, I have a tendency to jump around between projects.  Especially since I retired from teaching and have more time to sew, as well as see new patterns and projects I would like to try.  Sometimes that means a quilt finish gets put on the back burner for awhile.  That has certainly been the case for Patchwork Hearts.  These blocks were made during the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2024!

I slowly sewed them into rows and began quilting in 2025.  I wanted to try a quilt-as-you-go finish, building on what I learned from the Pieces of My Life QAL that I participated in in 2024-25.  But, it seems to be months in between time spent working on the quilting - which means the quilt is still not finished.  Taking some inspiration from Kate at Life in Pieces, I'm going to try dedicating some time to this quilt each week until it is finally finished this year!

Two days of quilting this past week helped finish up row 3 which is the center row of the quilt.

On to row 4 this next week.  And, to honor pink month, here is the pink heart, all quilted!

In other sewing-related news, I've been successful at using up the partial spools of thread that I discovered back in January.  I remember that I was so embarrassed about how many there were that at the time I didn't photograph them or count them.  But here are the 10 that I've used up and the others bagged up by color that are waiting to be used up next!

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.

Quilting Learning Combo for I Quilted This!

I Like Thursday #480

One of my favorite events of the year was this week.  "Loveland Loves to Read" is our city's One Book program.  Every year my book club reads the chosen book and then we get to attend the author talk event, along with many other readers from around the city.  This year's book was The Frozen River, by Ariel Lawhon, and she was an excellent speaker!  

Younger son has purchased a "smart telescope" and we are fascinated by what he can do with it.  Among other things, he got this great photograph of the moon the other night.

I decided to draw out the kite blocks that are needed for the stars in Sandra's Spring QAL so that I could paper-piece them.  I had to start by making some decisions about what fabric goes where, so I did that in my graph paper notebook.  I know a lot of people use their computers for this, but there's something very satisfying about doing it the "old-fashioned way," lol!

And my paper-piecing worked!   I need a few more of these, but they shouldn't take too long.

Did you know that Saturday is National Telephone Day?  LeeAnna's question of the week is about telephones and how we interact with them.   I have an iPhone and I use it for the basic things - phone calls, texting, maps.  I have some grocery apps on there for digital coupons, and then that's about it.  When I want to do other online things - email, blogging, reading - I use my Samsung tablet.  It's like a cross between a phone and a laptop - easier to see what things say, but lighter than a laptop to carry around!

Thanks for visiting on I Like Thursday!

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

Midweek Update

Block #6 for Melva's Little House sew-along came out last Thursday, so I worked on that over the weekend.  The center is called the Snowflake block because book 6 in the series is The Long Winter.  It's made with lots of little half square triangles, and I was very careful to lay them out and sew them together in the correct orientation!

Then the log cabin surround was added, strip by strip.  

And we're up to six blocks now!  Looking at all the blocks together, I'm seeing that I used more orange in the first three (top blocks) and more turquoise in the second three.  I'll have to add some more orange in block 4!

The step of adding the log cabin strips to the center block needs lots of leader/enders in between, so I sewed sashing and borders onto the Spool Love blocks and turned them into a little mini quilt top.  I'm working on a backing for it now.

Sharing at Melva Loves Scraps for the block 6 link-up

and at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

Confused...

We're still working on Spring here at the Little Penguin house.

But outside, Mother Nature is a bit confused!

This was Friday.

So, just to complicate things a little more, why not start a Summer project, lol!  This is the header of Melisa's Summer stitch-along at PinkernPunkin.  I started the borders on another piece of cloth, but realized I didn't like how it was looking, so I started over with the header.  Who can resist a U that looks like a slice of watermelon and a sunflower?!  Definitely not me!

I'll get back to the borders after I finish this top section.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Super Scrappy!

Hello from the Little Penguin house!

I have a scrappy placemat in pink to share today!  I started this month with dumping out the scraps from the pink bin and this was the photo.

There was even an already made block!

So, as I do each month, I just kept sewing and trimming and adding more until I had some crumb slabs that would make the right size for a placemat.

There were even a few leftover quarter star blocks in pink!

Once I had my desired 12.5 x 16.5 size, I layered it up and quilted with a square spiral.  That was fun!  Nothing marked, just chose a spot to begin with a tiny square, and then kept going round and round.

Remember the dots I used to bind the red placemat last month?  Well, there are more of them, and these on pink looked like a good choice for this month's finish.

Voila!

And here's the rainbow!

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 #479

 I love Earl and Opal, of "Pickles!"  Do you read them?

I didn't sleep very well last night, so I hope to have a naportunity today. 😜

Thinking of waking up in the morning - LeeAnna has asked us to describe our morning routine.  I am an early riser - rarely sleep past 6 am.  I think that's a function of getting up so early for work for so many years.  I don't mind being the first one up, though.  I turn on the coffee pot, get that first sip, and spend some quiet time reading the news and my favorite bloggers.

After that, most days we live by the do "whatever we want, whenever we want" 

retired people life style, lol!

We bought a new thistle feeder to try to attract the goldfinches once again, and we finally got one.  We were so happy to see this guy and he hung out for a long time, too.  He looked like he was just getting his summer colors coming in.

I was looking for a new mystery series to read, and saw that the latest book by Tana French has just come out, and it's the third book in a trilogy.  So I thought it would be good to start at the beginning of the trilogy, and I'm liking it.  These books take place in Ireland, but the main character is a retired police detective from Chicago.  Of course he gets involved in a mystery in Ireland!

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

Midweek Update

I was in the mood to start something new this week, so I did!  Last summer, after participating in The Crafty Quilter's Orange Peel QAL, I won a prize package that included this charm pack of Tilda, Country Memories.

When I saw the free quilt pattern offered in the Primrose Cottage newsletter last week, Spool Love, I thought it would be a fun one to use the charm pack for.

So far, I've made three spools and the heart block.   The heart block needed two 3.5 x 6.5 inch rectangles, so I made those out of four of the charm squares.   Sweet and fun!

A couple other new patterns/projects have caught my attention, too.

For participating in this year's Stay at Home Round Robin, I was the lucky winner of a pattern from Sew Fresh Quilts, and I chose her Hummingbird pattern.   I think this could be a fun Rainbow Scrap Challenge project!

Thank you, Lorna!

And the other one - Sandra at mmmquilts hosts a QAL every spring, and I've participated for quite a few years in a row now.  You can see this year's quilt right here.  So far, I've just played with a fabric pull.  I think the first block comes out this Friday.

Plenty to work on this week!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

At Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

And at mmmquilts to share my fabric pull for Sandra's QAL.

Spring Blessings

...is all stitched up!  I did change the little bees from the original Primrose Cottage pattern, and used some from one of Melisa's designs instead.  I wanted them to be smaller.

For now, I ironed a piece of fusible interfacing to the back of Spring Blessings and clipped it to the mini quilt stand.

There's plenty of spring stitching left to do on the other design - 

so that's what I'll be working on for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts.

A new house in the neighborhood...

How about a Butterfly house?  After last week's struggle to use the pretty butterfly print I found, it seemed like it might work for a house block.  And it did!

The sky full of stars is dedicated to the Artemis II astronauts 

who we have been fascinated with all week!

(Was anyone else glued to the livestream of their splashdown 

and recovery yesterday about dinner time like we were? 

Pretty exciting!) 

There are five houses in the neighborhood now.

This is going to be a fun and colorful neighborhood!

And, in other pink sewing, I made some tiny pink four patches and added another block to the Gameboard collection.  I decided that it needed some butterflies, too!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

Faith, Trust, and Breast Cancer for Sew and Tell Monday

And at Quilting Learning Combo for the April Quilter's Cove link-up.

I Like Thursday #478

Happy Thursday, friends!  Have you been watching the Big Bear (California) bald eagles' nest this year?  Jackie and Shadow, the mating pair of bald eagles who live there, have two little eaglet babies now who hatched just a week ago or so.  We're fascinated with them!  It's literally a breath of fresh air to watch how nature follows its yearly path, in spite of us humans.

This is a screenshot from their YouTube channel.

The other cool thing we have been following for the last week is the flight of the Orion spacecraft around the moon and back.   The liftoff, the moon flyby, the 40 minutes of radio silence until they came around on the other side of the moon - fascinating!  We're looking forward to seeing the splashdown off the coast of California tomorrow evening.

NASA site

Something we connected with this event was that the last astronauts who went to the moon were on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.  Mike was in the Navy at the time, and the ship he was on, the USS Ticonteroga, was the ship that was sent to pick up the Apollo space capsule and the astronauts.  Mike was a helicopter crewman, but he was not in the helicopter shown in the photo.  He was back there on the ship - he tells me he was the "flight deck trouble shooter" that day - apparently meaning he had to make sure all the helicopters were ready to fly when needed.

Closer to home, younger son has been experimenting with a sour dough starter, and made his first loaf of bread the other day.  It was delicious!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about the season of spring.  I love spring!   We have had a mild, dry winter, so it has been very brown here, but spring has brought the green back.  The lilacs are blooming, too, and they smell so good.  We were just smelling them on our afternoon walk today.  Lilacs really mean spring to me!

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