Hand-Pieced QAL - Block 8

I've continued to enjoy choosing the fabrics for each week's block for this QAL from my collection of blue solids and the ocean themed fat quarters I bought on a trip last fall.

For this block, I wanted to fussy cut the square for the center, and then make the rest of the block from the two solid blues.  And I like how it turned out!

Meet Bess!

I've also enjoyed getting to know Bess and the other characters from the Friendship Album, 1933 podcast this week as I've been sewing.   Thank you, Frances O'Roark Dowell, for sharing your stories with us!

Here are my eight blocks on the design wall.  Just one more before we can start putting them together!

Sharing at the Hand-Pieced QAL link-up at Elm Street Quilts.

I Like Thursday #125 - Home Again!

Sunday and Monday this week were spent driving home from Arizona.  We had a very nice trip - successfully helped my mom clean out her garage and hold a garage sale - and now it is just wonderful to be home!

The drive up out of the desert was into the Arizona mountains was beautiful!  We enjoyed the view as we drove.  So many saguaros!

See that little "object" in the photo?  First we thought it was a bird, then maybe a plane.  Mike is calling it a UFO, lol!  Really it is a ding in the windshield caused by a rock!

We arrived home to crocuses blooming!

They were so happy on Tuesday morning!  (But unfortunately, they are now covered by several inches of snow due to the extreme storm that we had Wednesday...)

I love my new sewing machine, and missed her so much while we were gone.  Tuesday morning I pulled out all my greens and proceeded to make a beautiful green scrappy mess!

In my working life I was a 5th grade teacher, and gave many lessons about the difference between "are" and "our." I know they are easy to misuse!  But look what I saw on a sign at our shopping center this week...

It's partially covered by a shadow, but can you see what's bothering me?!  Mike calls me the grammar police because I have been known to tell business people about things like this!

If you're looking for something enjoyable to listen to , I would recommend this:

The Friendship Album podcast.  

This is just a screenshot of what you find at the website Quilt Fiction.

It sounds like an audiobook, but it is a podcast.  The story is about a small town in Ohio in 1933 and a group of women who become friends.  I'm really enjoying it!  

And for our poodle friend, Milo - look at this pretty girl!  Macy visited the garage sale at my mom's last Saturday.  I just had to take her picture!

Hope you're having a great week!  You'll find me in my sewing room, happily making more scrappy messes!  But first, I'll be visiting all my friends at Not Afraid of Color for "I Like Thursday."

Getting started with green

I've been away from my sewing machine this week, but I brought along my hand-piecing tools and threw in a bit of fabric so I could at least play with some fabric.  When I saw that the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for March was green, I had to dig through the little pile that I brought.

Here's what I came up with:

I laid a few 2.5 inch squares and 2.5 x 4.5 inch rectangles into a sort of scrappy Garlic Knot block.

It's been great weather here at my mom's house in Arizona, so I was able to take my stitching outside!

When you're working with just squares and rectangles, the seams on the back are easy to figure out.

So here's my take on a scrappy green hand-pieced Garlic Knot!

I can see this becoming a long-term slow-stitching project...

Hope you've enjoyed some green stitching this week!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

And Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Hand-Pieced QAL - Block 7

This week's block is named Eula!  I chose a print and two solids to work with -

I brought my mini cutting mat, along with other hand-piecing tools, on our road trip so I could get the pieces cut out once the block tutorial came out on Monday.

I love the tiny lighthouses on this print.  Lighthouses are a favorite stop of mine when we're traveling to the coast.

Here's Eula!  I still need to do some pressing and work on those bulky seams in the back, but I'm keeping her!

Sharing my latest hand-pieced block at the link-up at Elm Street Quilts!

I Like Thursday #124 - Road Trip!

This week we're away from home visiting my mom in Arizona, partly as a break from the wintry weather up north in Colorado, and mostly to help her with some tasks around the house.

I liked visiting a favorite LQS along the way in Las Vegas, New Mexico, called Thread Bear.

They had what will probably be my favorite fabric find of the year from Charley Harper's new line of fabric - 

When we drive this route to see my mom, we always spend a night in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and I liked this picture on the wall of our hotel room.  It was hard to get a good picture of it without glare and reflections on the glass, but hopefully you get the idea!

I think this would make a cool mini quilt!

Just a week or so before we left home, parts of Arizona had gotten a big snowstorm, and we saw this view coming through the mountains just 50 miles away from the desert.

Snow on the mountains!

I knew I would want to take my hand-piecing supplies along, so I packed up the new pouch I finished last week, and it worked perfectly to fit in my suitcase!

Something I always enjoy doing when we are here is picking a grapefruit right off the tree for breakfast!

I'm going to pick some more to take home, too!

Of course, there is birdwatching to be done here, and we found these little guys the other day.

They're called Rosy-faced Lovebirds, and evidently have thrived in this area since the 1980s.  They aren't native birds here, but escaped from an aviary during a monsoon.  More info HERE if you're curious about them!

Hope you're having a great week!  We have a few more days in the sun before we head back north.  Hello, Mary in Peoria, I'm waving at you from the east side of Mesa!

 I'm joining in with the other I Like Thursday bloggers over at Not Afraid of Color.

A Scrappy Zipper Pouch

I wanted to start with a big Thank You to everyone who commented last week on my Batik Star post!  I really appreciated all of your encouragement.

I did finish up the borders I wanted to add, pieced the back, and got it layered for quilting, but then life got in the way and I had to set this project aside.

I will definitely get this finished as soon as I'm able to!

Meanwhile, I wanted share something else I finished up this week that is scrappy, fun, and also useful!

I found a tutorial on Moda Bake Shop for a Vinyl Project Pouch, by Kristina Brinkerhoff.  I've been wanting to make one because I have some vinyl to use up.  I also had most of a mini charm pack of Picnic by Bonnie and Camille and a few leftover bits of a B&C Hello Darling layer cake to use up.

The main part of the pouch was made like a mini quilt - a 36 patch block, batting, and a piece for the backing cut from a fat quarter.

I quilted that -

Then pieced the front out of the layer cake leftovers, added the zipper and vinyl, plus binding, and it was a pretty quick finish!  

Really the hardest part was cutting the vinyl accurately, because it slips around on the cutting mat and is so hard to see!

This pouch ended up to be about 12.25 inches square, a good size to lay flat in a suitcase.  (More about actually putting it in a suitcase to come!)

Happy Sunday stitching to everyone!  

Sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

Finishing up with Yellow

This week I concentrated on finishing all my yellow blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2019.

A third sunflower was stitched up to go with the Scrappy Sprouts - the last one on the right is the new one.

And a new Tiny Rails block in yellow was completed, too.  Again, the one on the right is the new one that I'm adding to all the blocks made so far.

When Angela posted this week's Tiny Tuesday block, I thought of all the orange peels I made when I was participating in the Quilty 365 project a few years back.  I had to abandon the project, but planned to use up all the blocks I made in other projects.  So I looked in the pile and sure enough, there was a yellow one that I could use for my TT block!

I made this one by sewing it right sides together with some fusible interfacing, trimming a bit out of the center, and then turning it so that right sides were out.  Then it is ironed on the background which helps it to stay put until it can be appliqued down.

And here is the finished block!

Hope you've had a great week finishing up your yellow blocks!  I'm linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!