Hello, Autumn!

 

is fully finished!

And, even though it's not quite the new month, it is officially Fall, so the October and pumpkin decorations are out, too.

I also stitched some pumpkins on the Gail Pan Autumn embroidery this week.

I've been prepping for a new, year-long daily slow stitching project.  Inspired by Julierose, I ordered a piece of fabric from Spoonflower which was designed by Karen Turner of stitchinglife.uk.   This is made for stitching on daily, as Julierose calls it, a Calendar of Life.  

On her blog, Karen describes this practice as a stitch journal or intuitive daily stitching.  Here's what my cloth for the project looks like - 30 x 32 inches:  

The fabric is white - what you're seeing that looks like a pattern is a quilt I laid out underneath this cloth when I was pressing it!  It's 3 boxes x 4 boxes so = 12 months.

A close-up:

And I started here - September 26th!

Can I keep up with stitching one motif each day?

Time will tell!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A little purple house...

The last full week of the month was the week to sew up a house for my Year in the Neighborhood project.  I had actually used some purple in the July house to go with the hummingbirds, so my goal was to make this one look different from that one.

July house: 

September house:

Okay, yes, I did repeat the columbine fabric - 

because it looks so good with the purple! 

This month's tree is supposed to represent early fall.  The aspen leaves are turning in the mountains, the elk are bugling, but there's still lots of green.

I'm up to 10 houses now.  I think this needs two more - an Autumn house and a Christmas house.  I'll work on those next month so that I can start figuring out how to put this together.

And I finished off the purple month of September with one more Gameboard block!

I've really enjoyed sewing with purple this month - hope you have, too!

Linking up at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

I Like Thursday #502

A few more photos from our trip to share!  We spent last Thursday on the shores of Lake Huron.  This time I took off my shoes and waded in it!  This was the beach right by the harbor in Cheboygan (not to be confused with Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which we did at first, lol!)  We enjoyed watching the ferries go back and forth to the islands across the way.

It seems that every town we visited had a lighthouse with a walkway you could take out to it, so we went out on each one!  This was one of our favorites, in St. Ignace, Michigan.

We went across the Mackinac Bridge four times and so we saw it from every angle we could.  

And, finally, just before we left to drive back to Grand Rapids, a beautiful sunrise over Lake Huron!

LeeAnna's question of the week is about our favorite books, movies, and TV shows.  That is a hard question for me to answer, because there are so many!  

• Books - it's probably a tie between historical fiction and murder mysteries!  I've read many of both.  Over the years there have been many favorite authors and books.
• Movies - we don't watch many movies, but favorites have always been the Star Wars movies, Lord of the Rings, and things like that.  The most recent movie we saw was Project Hail Mary, and we loved that one!
• TV shows - British detective shows are our favorites there.  Several years ago, you could get a free subscription to Acorn TV through our library, and we watched "Foyle's War" that way and loved it.  Since then we watch just about any British detective show we can find.  "Beyond Paradise," a spin-off of "Death in Paradise" is our current show.

Hope you're having a great week!  

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

Midweek Update

Wherever we travel to, I enjoy finding a local quilt shop to visit.  On this trip I found the Quilted Moose in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.  It was a fun little shop in an old house, and I came home with these fall-themed fat quarters.  

I have an idea for a tablerunner made with these -

hopefully I can get started on it soon.

But there are other things on my list this week to work on now that we are home.  Before we left I had been making a couple blocks at a time for a small version of Melva's Lala's Irish Chain design.  I have six of these blocks made, and I'm planning to make three more, one connecting block and two patchwork blocks.

In October I'm participating in a blog hop hosted by Carole at From My Carolina Home during her Fall Fortnight event, so I need to get going on my project for that.  It's started, but now it's time to move it along.

And this is the week of the month that I usually work on a house block for my Year in the Neighborhood project.  It's part of my monthly Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, so it will be a purple house for September.  It's started, too.

 

There's plenty to choose from this week, and I'm ready to get back to it!

Sharing at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Friday.

A little bit of slow stitching...

Only a few stitches were added to my Autumn embroidery piece while we were on our trip to Michigan.  I chose this section with the oak leaves because we saw lots of oak trees here and acorns - my husband is fascinated by acorns!

We did see some hints of fall leaf color along the roadsides as we explored and at Tahquamenon State Park where we hiked to the falls.  

Other colorful sights included this beautiful monarch butterfly on a zinnia.  

Our last day was spent in Grand Rapids where we met up with some dear friends and visited their botanic gardens and hunted around for all the Chihuly glass pieces that are on exhibit there right now.  They are amazing!

Now that we are home from our trip, I expect my slow stitching to pick back up again and there's definitely plenty to do for today's Slow Sunday Stitching 

at Kathy's Quilts.

I Like Thursday #501

I may have a new favorite place - Michigan's Upper Peninsula!  It's beautiful up here, and so much to see and do.

We've seen Lake Michigan - and a beautiful sunset.

                       Charlevoix

And Petoskey

We drove over the Mackinac Bridge,  and stopped at the viewpoint on the other side.

Found another Thomas Dambo troll.  This is Benny, the Beardfisher!

There are a gazillion lighthouses and beaches to wander.

Lake Superior!

I got my feet wet in Lake Superior - 

I was checking out the beautiful rocks 

and this wave snuck up on me!

We went up to Whitefish Point and visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum where the memorial to the Edmund Fitzgerald is.  It sank just a few miles off the point.

We hiked to some waterfalls in Tahquemenon State Park.  Lots of green here!

Sault Ste Marie, Michigan is where the Soo Locks are located, and we went on a boat ride through the locks.  The locks are needed because Lake Superior is 21 feet higher than Lake Huron and they help the big iron ore freighters move between the lakes.   A ship moves into the lock, then gates are opened and closed to allow the water to rise or fall to the level that's needed for the ship to move forward.  It's a fascinating process and we had a blast experiencing it!

Here is a boat just like we were on, 

going through the lock.

It's been a great trip so far, especially exploring a part of the country we've never been to before!  We have a few days left to go a few more places.  I think we will go home tired, but satisfied!

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

Travel stitching!

I've just gotten started on the Autumn embroidery from Gail Pan's book, Changing Seasons.  She has included a bird in each one, and I love them!

But then I packed it into my project pouch with needle book, scissors, hoop, and floss - 

And stuck in my suitcase to go along on our trip this week.

Will I put any stitches into it while we're away?  I'll let you know next Sunday!

Linking up at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A pretty purple placemat...

My scrappy placemat for September -

I started out the month cutting out 4.5 inch squares from each purple I pulled out of my stash, and ended up with this group of 12.  I originally thought I'd just use them this way to keep it a simple and quick project.

But that was kind of boring.

So, instead, I decided to add a strip of cream Grunge and trim that to 4.5 inches.  And I liked that so much better.

Those squares turned into this!

The columbine print I purchased at the Estes Park quilt shop made the perfect binding.

I had enough of a lavender solid 

to use for the backing.

And here's the whole rainbow!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

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

I Like Thursday #500

Post #500 in this series - wow!  Thank you, LeeAnna, for hosting this enjoyable weekly group.   I usually think about and collect ideas for this post all week.  It has made me pay closer attention to the good things in my life.

Things like getting a new garage door opener!  👍  We've had to haul it up and down manually for two weeks.  (Poor us...:)  What a nice treat to just push a button once again!  It's sort of space age looking, lol!

I have enjoyed working on this sunflower design this week.  I really like the look of the center of the flower.  There's still a border to stitch all the way around, but that should go quickly.

A friend served me this flavored sparkling water the other day, and I really liked it.  So I bought some for our house, and have been enjoying a cold, fizzy drink in the afternoon.

I loved this book!  Such a good story.  It's historical fiction, set in 1920, about the first group of women to be admitted to Oxford University.  There are four main characters that you get to know as the book goes on - and lots of interesting things about their lives.

LeeAnna's question of the week is- what has been the highlight of your week?  And I have to say, the highlight is coming up and hasn't happened quite yet.  But here's a hint!  

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