I Like Thursday #505

It's a cool rainy day here - the first in a very long time!

This kind of weather always makes me want soup or chili in the crockpot.  It smells good cooking all day, and tastes so good for dinner.  Plus there are always leftovers - win, win!

It's good reading weather, too.  I just finished this book, and it was fascinating!  I've read other books by Chanel Cleeton, and most have been historical fiction set in Cuba or Florida with Cuban immigrants as the main characters.  This one is very different - it is set in the 1960s in the early days of the space program, and focuses on the astronauts' wives and their experiences.

Earlier in the week when we went to the library, we ran into our favorite downtown flock of turkeys.  Right on somebody's door step!  I'm thinking maybe these people leave food out for them.

Hope you're having a great week!

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

 

Fall Fortnight Placemat Blog Hop

Welcome to my stop on the Fall Fortnight blog hop, and thanks for visiting!  Check out Carole's blog at From My Carolina Home for lots of fun fall sewing, crafting, and cooking ideas.

One of my most favorite projects to work on as a quilter is making placemats out of scrappy leftovers.  I especially enjoy trying to use up the leftover jelly roll strips after making a quilt. 

After participating in the 2025 Fall Fortnight, I won this jelly roll in Carole's giveaway. 

Earlier this year, I used that jelly roll to make this quilt top during the Little House on the Prairie sew-along at Melva Loves Scraps.

Of course, not all of the strips were used up in the construction of the quilt top, so I decided to see how many I could use up to make some fall placemats.  Using a quilt-as-you-go technique is a fun and quick way to sew these together.

Carole recommended that the placemats made for the blog hop be 12 x 18 in size.  So I layered a piece of backing and a piece of batting, cut at 14 x 21, and fused them together with a bit of basting spray.

Quilting as you go means you layer two strips right sides together and sew them together right through the batting and backing.

Press to the batting and add some

 quilting along the seam line 

to anchor the strip down.

You can even add some additional quilting

with a decorative stitch on your machine.

Then just keep going until you get the width you want!

I trimmed to 12 x 18, added binding, and voila!  (The plaid strips in the jelly roll were perfect for the binding!)

Carole is coordinating a placemat donation drive for her local Meals on Wheels organization in coordination with this blog hop, so I made two.  I'll be sending these off to Carole later this week.

If you feel inspired to make some placemats for Carole's charity collection, too, I know she would appreciate your contribution!  

Be sure to visit the other bloggers who are participating in this blog hop!  You can also find this list with links at From My Carolina Home! 

Carole at From My Carolina Home - Placemat Blog Hop and Charity Project

Diann at Little Penguin Quilts - Fall Fortnight Placemat Blog Hop - you are here!

Mary Ellen at Quilt Mouse - A Blog Hop with Fall Fortnight 2026

Vicki at Colorways by Vicki -Placemats for a Cause

Yvonne at Quilting Jetgirl - Fall Leaf Block & Placemat Tutorial

Kathy at Sewing Etc - Fall Placemats

Mary at Stitchin’ Grandma - Fall Placemat Tutorial

Kathleen McMusing - Maple Leaf Placemats

Alycia Quilts - Fall Fortnight Placemat Hop

Also sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Quilting Learning Combo for I Quilted This.

 

 

October Stitching

Nine days of daily stitching on my Calendar of Life, so far!  Some days have specific "pictures" I wanted to capture, and others have just been done like doodling with needle and thread.

Here are my two favorites from the last week - 

Golden leaves on the trees in our yard from last Sunday,

and my quilt group met in the park on Thursday.

In other slow-stitching news, Broom Hilda got her broom!

She still needs a pumpkin and some stars in the sky,

so I'll be working on those things today.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

X's and O's

I decided earlier this week that the last block for my Jacob's Ladder project would be a light green one.  These don't take long to put together at all!

Since I had already made three blue blocks, it made sense to have three green ones.

Now I can play with layouts!  Do I want to highlight the X's?

Or the O's?

I'm still going to tweak this layout a bit to mix up the dark and light blocks a bit better, but there's no hurry for that.  As leaders and enders this week, I also made two new gameboard blocks - a dark neutral and a light neutral.  Now it's time to do the same thing with that set of blocks - figure out what's left to do!

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.

I Like Thursday #504

We took a little field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colorado, the other day.  It's about an hour's drive from our house, but well worth it.  And my husband and son enjoyed the photo ops.

This guy was my favorite, with its striking orange markings.

According to learnbutterflies.com, it is a Common Longwing.

They had these spongy contraptions hanging all over the places, and they were always covered in butterflies.  Apparently the sponges are soaked in sugar water for the butterflies to drink.

We found one beautiful monarch on this red flower.

And look!  Apparently these two liked my yellow shirt!

Google Lens says that bottom butterfly is called a Clipper.

This was a fun day trip!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about Halloween.  Do we prefer fun and festive or scary and terrifying?  I'm definitely on the fun and festive side!  No haunted houses or scary movies for me.  I'd just as soon not have any nightmares after that kind of thing, my dreams are strange enough as it is!  Here's the typical Halloween decor at my house.

Hope you're having a great week!

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

Midweek Update

My Pfaff is in the shop for what is (hopefully!) just some routine maintenance, so I brought up the back-up machine, a little Janome.  It's a perfectly good sewing machine, just a lot smaller than the Pfaff.  One thing I really like about it is that you can leave the last block you were working on with the needle down and just start up where you left off the next day.   The Pfaff has to do some kind of reset each time you turn it on, so it can't be left with the needle down.

Little Janome has been just fine for sewing some pieces and parts for Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects.  

One last Jacob's Ladder in very light green, and 

the centers for one light neutral and one dark neutral gameboard block.

It has also worked for finishing up my project for next week's Fall Fortnight blog hop over at From My Carolina Home.

The Fall Fortnight event starts this Sunday.  I've participated in this for many years, back to when Carole also hosted Autumn Jubilee.  I've gotten some favorite fall recipes from Carole's blog, and also made many of her quilt designs over the years.  The blog hop will be next Wednesday, October 14th.  Hope you'll come and visit then!

Linking up with The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday 

Daily Stitching Update and a new start...

 I finished out September with my daily stitching...

And moved on to October!  October 2nd has a butterfly because we went to the Butterfly Pavilion down in Denver that day.  That is such a sweet experience!  I'll share some photos in my Thursday post.  This is the first daily square where I actually drew the shape before I stitched it.

The whole piece looks like this right now - you can see July, August, and September in the top row, and then it skips down to October on the bottom left.  I just started this project on September 26th.

The new start for October is Broom Hilda, a design from Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  I think she's so cute with her purple hair and green skin!  Her hat and dress are supposed to be stitched in black, and I couldn't find a bit of it in my stash, so I chose a very dark gray instead.  I think that's working fine for the clothing, but not so much for her eyes and mouth.  So I'll need to go pick up some black floss!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.