Little Penguin Quilts Through the Year

Little Penguin Quilts Through the Year

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

I Like Thursday #339

Last Friday, I went with a couple of friends to a quilt show put on by the Ft. Collins Modern Quilt Guild.  I shared one quilt photo over the weekend, but saved a couple more for today.  I thought this one at the entrance to the show was really stunning!

I love the flow of color in this quilt!  
The blocks were paper-pieced to make the strip triangles within the squares.
A few were full squares.

I could gave taken a ton more photos, but I just took one more of this crumb quilt.  We could vote for our favorite, and this one got my vote.

All those tiny crumb blocks - I just love them!  
These were not sewn by color - they had all the colors.
We thought the pink sashing was interesting - I probably wouldn't use that in a quilt of my own, but it did seem to bring out some of the other colors quite a bit.

Here's the label for the quilt.


I read a book this week that I just loved!  It's my book club's July pick for discussion, and I think it's another good one for us.  The really interesting thing about this book is that it's set in a time and place I really knew nothing about - Iran in the 1950s.  There is a current day storyline, too, that eventually connects all the different parts together.


And, to continue this month's I Like Thursday theme, a favorite ice cream memory of growing up is that we sometimes made our own ice cream!  My family went camping a lot and this was a fun thing to do while camping.   I say fun now, but I do remember it was hard work!  It took a lot of muscle to crank that thing, because of course there was no electricity when we were tent camping!   The homemade ice cream was pretty tasty, though.

I picked this photo off of Google because I'm pretty sure our ice cream maker looked something like this.  My dad bought everything at Sears, so I'm sure the one we owned came from Sears.

We never had much rain in April - you know, like "April Showers bring May Flowers," but May and this first week of June have been very wet in Colorado.  So it brought June flowers!


Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color!

















 

Monday, June 5, 2023

To-Do Tuesday #183

Good morning, and happy To-Do Tuesday!  I've had a good week of getting things done in the sewing room.  

  • One of the biggest accomplishments has been completing the last two house blocks for the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL.  

House #8:










House #9:

It had to be a rainbow house, with penguins!

Here are all nine houses!

Next step for these is sashing and cornerstones.

  • I'm also finishing up my project for the Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs book launch blog hop, coming up on June 21st.  Just a little more binding to stitch!
  • Some blue and green blocks were stitched up for the colors of the month for June in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, too!

So what's going on this week?  
  • I need to find just the right fabric for the sashing and borders on the Rainbow Neighbourhood quilt.  I don't think I have anything in my stash that will work, so a little shopping is needed.
  • Maybe start sewing the sashing and cornerstones to the house blocks?  Don't know if I'll get to that or not.
  • More blue and green blocks for my RSC projects.
  • I'd like to get back to working on a QAL which started in February - Scrap Dance Quadrille at From My Carolina Home.  I've made one Block A, and need five for a tabletopper.  
I'm using a favorite bundle of ocean-themed prints for this.

Have a great week!

                       Joining in with Carol and friends at Quilt Schmilt for To-Do Tuesday!





Saturday, June 3, 2023

A few more bowties...

Piggybacking on yesterday's post, I decided to stitch some more bowtie blocks.  Angela suggested getting out the greens if we had enough blue blocks, so that's just what I did!  These are all hand-pieced, so I work on them during my evening slow stitching time.

Earlier in the week I made four new blue blocks for a total of 12, 
and then decided to make four more green blocks, too.

These are such cute little blocks!

I have two of the four new green ones sewn,
 and a couple more ready to go
for Slow Sunday Stitching today.

Also this week, I've put a few stitches into this one - a shovel, some clay pots, and working on a little tree to plant!


Sharing over at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching!












Friday, June 2, 2023

My sewing week...

has taken me all over the place!  I'm working on a finish for the Perfectly Pieced Quilt Backs blog hop coming up in a few weeks, so that was my No. 1 job of the week.   It's getting close!


House #8 for the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL is sewn up, too.  When I was looking at the colors of houses I've made already, I realized that I had already made a yellow house with a purple quilt block, so this time I made a purple house with a yellow quilt block!


Just waiting for house #9 now, which is under construction!


To get started on some more blue blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in June, I pulled out the hand-pieced bow ties.


I have already made eight bowties in various shades of blue - dark, bright, medium, light - so I decided to make a few more in whatever blues I found that I hadn't used yet.

These are often made with whatever scraps happen to be on my cutting table at the time - this week it was blue sky and clouds along with strawberries!

And this afternoon (Friday), I went up to a quilt show put on by the Ft. Collins Modern Quilt Guild.  All kinds of quilts were on display, and I took a few pictures of my favorites to share.  Today, for my fellow rainbow scrap quilters I'll share this one:


The tag attached to it made me laugh!


But, just like the rest of us - I bet she'll keep trying!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 
















Wednesday, May 31, 2023

I Like Thursday #338

LeeAnna has declared the month of June to be ice cream month for I Like Thursdays, and I can get on board with that!  The question for this week is - what's your favorite ice cream flavor?  Well, that's an easy one!

I don't get it very often anymore, but when we do go to Baskin Robbins, that is what I order.  Hmmm... it must be time for a little ice cream field trip!  Or buy some and bring it home - then there could be more than one bowl! 

I was googling Jamoca Almond Fudge to find out how long it's been around, and while I didn't get that question answered, I did find this article about BR's co-founder, Irvine Robbins, who died in 2008.  Apparently my favorite flavor was also his!

Over the long weekend, we had a chance to do a little wandering at our favorite local trail areas.  At one, we found lots of yellow-headed blackbirds, a favorite bird of ours to look for this time of year.  Mike got some great photos!



On our other outing, we enjoyed seeing this goose family swimming along!


And a pretty Columbine!


And, this being primarily a quilting blog, I thought you would get a kick out of this one - who knew there was such a thing?!

This was in a native plant area, and there were many of these painted rocks
that helped identify what was growing.

In my actual sewing room, I've been working on House #8 for the Rainbow Neighbourhood and the pieces and parts are ready to sew together.

I'm not sure about that green for the grassy strip yet, but maybe.  
In real life, the batik that I'm using for the house front (around and above the door) 
is much more purple than it looks in this photo.

I'm ready to sew this up today!

Joining in with I Like Thursday at Not Afraid of Color 

  











 


Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Hands2Help Final Check-in

I have two quilts that I'm sending along to two different charities for the H2H quilt drive this year.   These are both baby/toddler size, so I'm sending one to the Little Lambs of Utah, for kids going into foster care, and one to the Cool Kids Campaign in North Carolina, for kids fighting cancer.


Both are washed and labeled and ready to go as soon the large bubble mailing envelopes I need to send them in arrive from Amazon.  I've looked all over town and can't find any in the regular stores, so Amazon to the rescue!








Monday, May 29, 2023

To-Do Tuesday #182

Good morning, and happy To-Do Tuesday!  Hope you enjoyed the long weekend.  There were lots of graduation parties around here - we were even invited to one!  It was nice to get caught up with some extended family that we hadn't seen in awhile.  But did we take any pictures?  No...

I do have pictures of things I've been working on this week to share, though.  House #7 for the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL is done!  This might be my new favorite!

The Bird House!

Here are all seven - they're really starting to look like something!

Two houses to go!

I made some progress on my project for the June blog hop to launch Kelly Young's new book.  Layers are spray basted and quilting has started.

June 21st is reveal day!

And two small projects were finished - May Table Scraps and Robin Lane.

So, what will I be working on this week?
  • House #8 - the quilt block section is started, and pieces and parts for the rest of the house need to be cut and sewn.

  • Keep working on my project for the June 21st blog hop.
  • Get started on June blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - working with more blues.
Joining in with Carol and friends at Quilt Schmilt for To-Do Tuesday!