I Like Thursday #309

 I've been adulting this week.  And it's hard work!  

• Eye doctor visit and planning for cataract surgery, which, of course, involves phone calls to see what insurance covers, and then scheduling.
• Primary care doc visit - my *wellness* checkup for the year. 
• As a result of that, go pick up new blood pressure meds.  
• She ordered labs, so I went and did that - just routine stuff and everything is fine.

• The doc also put in orders for my yearly mammogram and a bone density scan (that one's every two years) so more phone calls and appointments.

So, don't you think I deserved a splurge at my LQS?!  Here's what I came home with:

My holiday stash needed a boost! 

For my penguin-enabling friends - do you see the penguins on blue?

The light blue with little flowers - or maybe they're stars - 

is for the setting triangles on my chandelier quilt.

And the Buffalo plaid is for this guy!  He's going to be a (planned) Drop Everything and Make It.  

This is a free tutorial from The Crafty Quilter.

Find it HERE.

In fact, she has a whole post about her most popular Christmas 

sewing and quilting tutorials. 

I was happy to send off a quilt to a new little family member yesterday.  We have a newborn great-great niece.  Yikes, that makes me feel old!  She would be Mike's brother's (who passed away in the summer) great granddaughter.  They named her after him, Ronnie, so Mike asked if I had a quilt to send her.  And I did!

Crumb Hearts 

I just finished this book and LOVED it!  It's about a 70 year old woman who works at an aquarium near Seattle and forms a connection with an octopus who lives at the aquarium.  

Goodreads

LeeAnna asked us about apple cider this week, and that is something I haven't had in a long time, but remember loving as a child.  I grew up in upstate New York where there were/are lots of apple orchards, and you could go and see how apple cider was made.  Nowadays when you Google apple cider, you get info about hard cider which is now a popular beverage like craft beer and wine.

But I did find out out that we could make our own cider with this recipe!

Homemade apple cider at Sally's Baking Addiction.

I might just have to try that!

Hope you're having a great week!  Joining in with "I Like Thursday," hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color. 

To-Do Tuesday #160

Good morning, and happy Tuesday!   I'm  joining in with To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda at Texas Quilt Gal.  It's a great way to keep track of what needs to be done in my sewing room each week!

I'm really happy to share that I finished up the quilting on Full Stop this week, and it's all trimmed and ready for the binding.  I found something in my stash that will work for the binding, so that's my job for today - get the binding made and machine sewn on, so I can do the hand-stitching in the evening.

A little progress has been made on the Autumn Jubilee tablerunner pieced border, too.  I'm cutting 2.5 inch squares for this, but the measurement isn't exactly right on the runner to match 10 squares.  I decided to center the strip of squares with the half star on the edge, and trim off the difference at each end.  I think this will work!

For this week's list - 

• Finish up Full Stop with binding.
• Keep working on the AJ pieced borders.
• Start sewing Masala Box blocks into rows. 

All ready to go!

Slow stitching this week...

has been lots of embroidery!  I finished up the Great Pumpkin Haul, and added some little borders of orange and black.  Quilted with embroidery floss, then bound in a black print, it's now hanging on my fridge in the spot I've been using for seasonal embroidery finishes.

I love the blackbird on this design!  As I was stitching it, we had several days where a flock of Redwing blackbirds would descend on our yard and take it over for awhile, even trying to eat out of the feeders.  I never could get a good photo of them, but there seemed to be hundreds of them!

I'm keeping up with the Autumn Mystery SAL at Days Filled with Joy.  This week's addition was some pumpkins!  One more box to fill - what will it be?

Even though it is technically still Autumn here, we had a brief taste of winter Thursday night into Friday, with an inch or so of snow!  So it seemed appropriate to trace another Kathy Schmitz design called "Winter's Brew," and get started on it.

This will be my Sunday Slow Stitching!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts.

A rainbow of progress...

Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt projects are progressing in my sewing room this week!   A leftover from 2021 is getting closer to a finish - the Full Stop sampler.  I'm almost done with the quilting.

There is quite a bit of negative space in this quilt, and I thought it needed more quilting than just the horizontal serpentine stitch, so I've been adding some vertical quilting there as well.

Just a little bit more to do, and then binding!

I've also been slowly hand stitching the Dancing Plus blocks together into sections of four, six, or nine.  Here's where they are at this point.

I'm feeling good about this week's progress!  Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #308

I went on a little pumpkin scavenger hunt around my house the other day.  There were more than I thought!

Jack-o-lantern!

Fabric pumpkin - from Autumn Jubilee a couple years ago.

A pumpkin I bought for the table - this one's called a Warty Minion!

"The Great Pumpkin Haul," a Kathy Schmitz design, all stitched up!

Even a can of pumpkin!

Out of which I made these yummy muffins, 

which might just be my new favorite pumpkin muffin recipe.

Recipe link HERE.

Just for fun on Halloween night, we watched "Hocus Pocus!"  I'd never seen it, and it was available on Disney+.  That was fun - glad we watched it!

Hope you're having a great week!

Joining in with "I Like Thursday," hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color. 

To-Do Tuesday #159

Good morning, and happy Tuesday!   It's To-Do Tuesday at Texas Quilt Gal - thanks, Linda, for hosting this fun link-up each week!

I'm continuing to make progress on several different projects, just as I'd hoped in last week's to-do post.

• Finish up October Table Scraps project(s) ✅️

A small tabletopper and a zipper pouch!

• Work on quilting Full Stop - good progress!

So far, I'm quilting horizontal lines across about 3 inches apart, 

using the serpentine stitch.

• Work on my Autumn Jubilee tablerunner - good progress!

A two inch inner border has been added, 

and I'm cutting squares for the final pieced border.

What's on this week's list?  Keep going on the above projects!  Plus, if time allows, work on construction of other Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2022 quilt tops - Dancing Plus blocks, Masala Box, and Chandelier blocks.

Most evenings, I do some kind of hand stitching.  I rarely put those projects on my To-Do list because they are purely for pleasure and relaxation.  I did join in with the Autumn embroidery mystery at Days Filled with Joy this week, so I'll add to this post that I'm planning to keep up with that!

Weeks 1 and 2 in progress!

Have a great week!

A finish to share...

Earlier this week, I finished up the little hexie flower quilt that I've been working on for several months.  I think I started making the flower blocks toward the end of April, probably when I was anxious to see more Spring flowers blooming!

I ended up making 9 flowers, appliqueing them to w-o-w background squares, and sewing the blocks together with floral sashing and cornerstones in green and pink.  

I hand-quilted this little quilt around all the hexies and the flowers, as well as the white squares and sashing.

About 28 x 28 inches.

It was a beautiful fall day here on Saturday, so I had fun spreading this Spring-like quilt out on the pretty fall leaves in our backyard.  (Then we raked them all up, lol!)

And then here it is, indoors with my Jo doll (from Little Women) made by my mom when I was little.  Jo was always my favorite character in the book.

Here you can see the backing (a floral 30s print), and the pistachio green binding.

A fun little finish! 

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.