While rummaging through my stash this week to find some pinks for a few bow tie blocks, I found this -
So Cute!!!
I completely forgot that I had bought a 1/2 yard of these pink penguins at my favorite LQS while shopping with LeeAnna of Not Afraid of Color way last March, and then put it away on the shelf with the rest of the pink when I got home.
I had to make a pink bow tie block out of a bit of it, and then made a few more to go with it.
My collection of bow tie blocks is coming along!
In other scrappy sewing this week, I started to sew groups of four Dancing Monkeys together.
It's always fun to revisit your favorite blocks as they go into the quilt. This bunch has some Christmas penguins, Halloween cats, Kaffe fabric, and watermelon colors of pink and green. I like how they're coming together even though I just noticed that there is some monkey business going on up in that green and purple one! Lol!
Welcome to I Like Thursday, hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color. I enjoy joining in with all of the other I Like Thursday posts to celebrate being positive.
This past week, Mike and I visited Oregon for a week-long vacation, and I found lots to like. In fact, I have to say I LOVE Oregon! It is really one of my favorite places to visit.
We enjoyed the beautiful wine country in the McMinnville area - the hills, the friendly people, and the tasty wines.
I got to put my toes in the Pacific Ocean!
The Oregon beaches are so beautful, and every mile of them is public, so there is lots of access, wherever you are!
We saw some spectacular waves!
Treasure from the sea! (I even found an agate and some sea glass!)
We hiked up to Munson Creek Falls, just south of Tillamook. It felt like a rainforest!
There was a kite festival on the beach right by our hotel. We hadn't known what to expect, and were gone exploring most of the day, but when we came back, went "Wow!" and immediately walked back out to investigate!
On our way back to Portland to fly home, we stopped and met Cynthia from Quilting is More Fun than Housework for lunch. It is definitely fun to meet your quilty online friends in real life, and I hope to do more of that in the future. Silly us, we did not take a photo of the two of us together, so I will just have to go back!
Goodnight, from Oregon - yes, we will definitely be back!
Four orange-ish monkeys were made in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge orange month way back in 2016, and they have been patiently waiting for me to get them back out again so they could play with their friends.
I *finally* got some more Kona Maize which I have been using for the sashing between these very scrappy blocks! (the scrap quilter's dilemma - when your scraps run out and you need more!)
I needed to cut some more scrappy cornerstones, so I went to the orange box first.
And a few more in some other colors. I loved finding the last tiny bit of one of my favorite text prints!
Unleash your creativity and be inspiring! :)
And here we are - all the monkeys playing nicely together! But...
They said, "No way! This traditional setting is boring! We want to dance!" Of course, I'm thinking, "How do I do that?" And then I thought about Bonnie Hunter's tutorial for the Dancing Nine Patch quilt, and wondered if I could make that work for my monkey friends.
And I think I figured it out! I already had the sashing sewn on, so it was just a matter of turning the blocks correctly, like this! And I do like the way the cornerstones meet in the middle every so often.
Here is the layout as it is now - just a bit more fun! (And it also has the benefit of giving me way fewer seams to match up, yay!) After sewing the blocks together, I think a narrow inner border and wide outer border will be just what these monkeys need!
Sharing at So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday. and
So this was happening at our house the other day -
The tree guys came to take down an old, dying Russian Olive tree in the next-door neighbor's yard. You can see that the tree is very close to the fence between our yards, so some of the action was also in our yard.
I was kind of sad about it at first because this tree had been there for a long time and gave us a lot of shade, but it had actually gotten pretty ugly and dangerous to the houses because of a big split in the trunk. I don't know if you can tell, but there is a beautiful green tree just on the other side of the old tree that has become the view from our window, and I'm loving it!
I liked their truck (it's purple!) and their business name, too! We Love Trees! I also liked seeing Mike "supervising!"
The other day we went to Boulder and drove past this painted cement wall. I made Mike go back for a photo! I like all the painted designs - they remind me of EPP projects I see people doing.
I've been enjoying this book, No Scrap Left Behind, by Amanda Jean Nyberg of Crazy Mom Quilts. She is the guru of scrap quilters and I love all of her projects. I want to make one of each!
I also like that I could check this book out of my local public library before deciding if I will buy it or not. It does look like one I might want to own so I could refer back to it whenever I want.
I like planning a trip! It's fun to send away for information and pour over the map. You can find a lot of good stuff for traveling online, too, so I have lists of things to do, restaurants, etc. I like looking forward to visiting one of my favorite places in the world!
Happy Thursday, friends! I'm joining in with the I Like Thursday bloggers over at Not Afraid of Color. Thanks, as always, to LeeAnna, for gathering us together!
I still had a pile of pink and peach Kona Cotton solids out on my cutting table, so I gave these fun little blocks a try. All you really need are a print rectangle scrap and a neutral background rectangle scrap, and the spikes are born! (I didn't take any in progress photos, but check out the tutorial to see Debbie's.)
I added one piece of bright green and one piece of peachy polka dots to my original plan, just to make this project more interesting.
This little mat ended up to be about 9.5" x 10.5", and although it looks a bit wonky in the photo, it is pretty close to square!
I love these pinky-orange bricks that made the perfect backing!
Maybe it would be fun to use this little piece to hold some hand stitching tools!
Hope you are enjoying a great weekend! I'll be linking up to Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun than Housework to see what other scrappy quilters have been up to this week!
One last little bowl of delicious orange cherry tomatoes from my garden before the end of the season - so yummy!
Every time I work with the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I look through my scraps and stash and have the same question, "Is this orange (or purple, or red, or...)?"
For example, this one - is it orange or is it brown? Or orange-ish-brown? :)
I'm not sure where this fabric came from. I don't think I would have bought it, and it definitely isn't in any of my other projects. Maybe someone offered to give it to me, and I just couldn't say no.
This week, I was making some of the September blocks for Kat and Cat Quilts' Covered in Love Block Drive (click HERE for more info), and I pulled this one out. I thought it might be one of those that would look good paired with other fall fabrics, in a small amount.
I decided it did work!
So it grew on me, and I decided to use it another little project.
(More about this one later.)
And then it dawned on me - orange-ish brown is PUMPKIN! Perfect!
Happy Fall, everyone! As I do every Thursday, I'm joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color to celebrate things I've liked in the past week.
I know that the first day of fall is technically tomorrow, but it has been seeming like fall around here for quite a few days now. Cooler mornings, leaves falling, the sun going down so much earlier. It's just about time to bring out the hot tea and the quilts!
I like my little September angel sitting on my fall leaves table runner!
Last week, when we had to drive to Nebraska to attend the funeral of one of Mike's cousins, I liked this field of sunflowers that we passed. It is definitely a September field, and not a spring or summer field!
September is when the new season starts at our local dinner theater, and my group of friends and I have season tickets again this year. I really liked the first show of the season, "Once." Have you seen it? Evidently it won Best Musical at the Tony awards in 2012.
All of the music is played by the actors on stage - guitars, violins, drums, a cello, mandolin - lots of beautiful music!
Edited to say: LeeAnna taught me how to add a YouTube video, so I'm trying this and hope it works! :)
The song is called "Falling Slowly" - one of the lines begins "Raise your hopeful voice..."
Also this week, my book group and I went and listened to an author talk, part of the "Loveland Loves to Read" program.
I loved that the emcee began the evening by saying, "Welcome, Loveland Loves to Read-ers!" I also really liked hearing Anne Hillerman speak about her book, Spider Woman's Daughter.
In case you aren't familiar with Anne Hillerman, she is the daughter of Tony Hillerman who wrote 18 mysteries set in the Navajo country of Arizona and New Mexico. After he passed away in 2008, Anne took over the series from her dad, and has now published 3 novels that continue the stories and main characters of her dad's books. I always liked his books (recommended to me by my dad) and have enjoyed reading two of her novels so far. She described them as mysteries that a grandmother could pass down to her young granddaughter (good stories, but nothing "questionable" in them, if you know what I mean)!
Hope you are all having a good week! We have been watching Hurricane Maria make its way across Puerto Rico, hoping my niece and her family are safe. I'n sending out positive thoughts and prayers for them, and all the people of the islands who have been impacted by two storms in a row.
