Scrappy Improv Quilting!

 Blog hop starts today!

9/13- Summer Blossom- Lori @ Crossquilt
           Up, Up, and Away- Sandra @ mmm...quilts!

9/15- Flutter- Rose @ Something Rosemade
           Botanics- Diann @ Little Penguin Quilts ⬅️  That's me!

9/20- Face the Sun- Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts
           Full Spectrum- Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal

9/22- Prismatic- Anja @ Anja Quilts
           Downpour- Nancy @ Grace and Peace Quilting

9/27- Funkytown- Vasudha @ Storied Quilts
           Cherub Wings- Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty

9/29- Chapel Window- Kris @ Sew Sunshine
           Winter Frost- Leanne @ Devoted Quilter

10/4- Heartstruck- Rebecca Grace @ Rebecca Grace Quilting
           Star Spangled- Christine @ Triangles & Squares

10/6- Birds of a Feather- Preeti @ Sew Preeti Quilts
           Fall Foliage- Susan @ Quilt Fabrication

10/11- Ornamental- Gail @ Quilting Gail
            Churn, Churn, Churn- Cynthia @ Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

10/13- Sunset Crossing- Kate @ Katie Mae Quilts
             Positivity- Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts

10/18- All Dressed Up- Linda @ Flourishing Palms
             Shockwave- Anne-Marie @ Stories From the Sewing Room

10/20- Sweet Bee (a bonus thank-you pattern), Finishing, and Wrap-Up

Come back Wednesday to see what I made!  

Slow stitching this week...

 I've been working on finishing up one of my Kathy Schmitz embroidery designs into a small wall-hanging.  It came together pretty quickly with a simple border and some machine quilting.

Looks like it needs some more pressing though!

I thought this fun floral and the green binding finished it off nicely!

One evening was spent hand stitching the binding to the back.

Other evenings this week have been spent working on my hand-pieced Scrappy Trips blocks in orange.  

So many different shades of orange represented here!

Lots of NFL football on today and my mom will be over to watch the Bronco game with us, and to attend my niece's wedding by Zoom.  So I think it might be a good day to put some stitches into the Wooly Ewe!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Table Scraps in Orange and a DrEAMi...

 To make this month's Table Scraps placemat, I started with a piece I had made at least a year ago from a tutorial on Joyful Quilter's blog.  I shared this photo on my To-Do Tuesday post.

Unfortunately, Joy says the tutorial is no longer available.  

But I did enjoy playing with some charm squares to 

create this design in the first place!

It wasn't quite the right size to begin with, so I added 1.5 inch strips of an orange solid to bring the placemat to 12.5 x 16.5 inches.  Add some simple quilting and a mellow blue binding, and the placemat was done quickly!

So now there are nine!

The orange looks really florescent - I promise it isn't!

But wait, there's more!

Originally I made two of these pieced sections.  What should I do with the other one?

I was thinking maybe a quick zipper pouch, and I remembered this tutorial from Sew Preeti Quilts.  I made one of these before, when I first started reading Preeti's blog.  Simplest Zippered Pouch. It really is simple!  I layered the top piece with some batting and backing, quilted the layers, and found an orange zipper.

Following the steps of the tutorial gave me a finished zipper pouch in about an hour.  I think this one will be handy for using somewhere that a flat pouch would be useful, like in a suitcase?!

9.5 x 7

The backing/lining piece I used is one of those big print fabrics that I could never figure out another use for!  It was perfect for this pouch.

***Sharing my pouch at mmmquilts for the September DrEAMi link-up since this was a true "drop everything and make it " project.  Plus it turned out to be the perfect size and shape to carry masks, hand sanitizer, and packets of bleach wipes on our recent trip!  I didn't even plan it that way.***

So there's my week in an orange nutshell!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

And at the Joyful Quilter for September's Table Scraps link-up.

I Like Thursday #252

Happy Thursday, and thanks for visiting for I Like Thursday, hosted by LeeAnna  at Not Afraid of Color!  

I do love a nice thunderstorm with a rainbow afterwards, and we got one of those the other day!

Speaking of rainbows, I have to show you my favorite glass for ice water or iced tea.  I found these at our Ace Hardware and had to have them!

My mom has down-sized twice in the last 6 months or so, from her two bedroom house to a one bedroom apartment and now to a studio apartment.  That has meant lots of decision making about what to keep and what to get rid of.  So look at this treasure trove of holiday socks she has.  A friend of Mom's in Arizona has been giving them to her for years.   

I don't think my mom has actually ever worn any of these because she likes her outfits to all "go together," but I (the retired 5th grade teacher) love them!  Even so, I'm not sure what I would do with this many holiday socks.

But I do call dibs on this pair!

Reading Linda's post on To-Do Tuesday reminded me of these blocks that I made in 2020 as leaders and enders.  I love the rainbow colors (of course!) and I like the chain effect that the four patches create.

But, since October of last year, these blocks have been in a project box!  Who knows why?  (Out of sight, out of mind, I think!)  So I'm getting them out and putting them on the list to sew into a quilt top, after I finish up the Positivity quilt.

We quilters never run out of things to do, do we?  

 

To-Do Tuesday #104

Good morning!  I'm joining in with Linda and friends at Texas Quilt Gal for the To-Do Tuesday link-up, sharing what I plan to be working on this week.  Thanks go to Linda for taking over the link-up for all of us who like to join in!  And for Chris at Chrisknitssews - we're all thinking about you and hope things are going better.  

I've had a lot of fun playing with my orange scraps this week for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month!

Along the way, progress has been made on Positivity - it's almost a quilt top!  As is, it will measure 50 x 60, somewhat smaller than Preeti was asking for, so I'll have to decide - more blocks or a border?

The other item on last week's list was to work on finishing up an embroidery design with some patchwork borders and quilting.  I did get the borders on, but it needs more work, so that stays on the list.

For the coming week:

• Continue with orange blocks for RSC projects, including my Table Scraps placemat of the month.  I'm going to be using this piece that I made (quite  awhile ago!) using The Joyful Quilter's tutorial for Mini Magic Stars.

• Continue working on that Positivity quilt top.  Just a little more work to do!
• Finish up that embroidery design - choose a backing, quilt, and bind.

Hopefully, just the right amount of things to work on for the week!

Getting Started on September

Inspired by these pretty marigolds in my front garden, I decided to play with orange this week.

I pulled out the crumb box and a few larger chunks to see what I had.

In the crumb box, I found these, not even sure what I originally made them for.  

I wondered if they would work for a crumb heart.

And they did!

Here is the rainbow of crumb hearts and wonky stars up on the design wall.  You can see my idea for sashing and cornerstones in the first few blocks at the top.  It looks like I still need a few more hearts and stars to make this quilt a little bigger.

I also cut out the 36 squares needed for a Scrappy Trips block.

And that has been my evening hand stitching all week.  Making good progress, too!

Sharing at my favorite weekend link-ups:

SoScrappy 

Quilting is more fun than Housework 

Kathy's Quilts 

I Like Thursday #251 - Hello September!

 September has to start with a pumpkin, right?!

This is the one, funky little pumpkin that my garden would grow this year.  Quite a few others appeared to start, but never developed into full-grown pumpkins.  Apparently I can grow cucumbers, but not pumpkins!

The pumpkin vine looked promising with lots of flowers, but...

On my to-do list this week is to finish up a recent embroidery design with some borders, and this is what I chose to work on.  I love the selvage on this one!  Hope you can see it - it says "Let your light shine" and the usual color dots are suns.  So cute!  It also has little bees in between the flowers which is perfect for this design.

This week we got a new sink installed in the kitchen.  It's so nice and bright and shiny!  I hope I can keep it that way.  

Also this week we watched two interesting movies that we really liked, although I wouldn't recommend them for everyone.  "A Quiet Place" and "A Quiet Place, Part 2." They are considered to be Horror/SciFi, and they do have nasty alien creatures.  If you've seen them, you know what I'm talking about.  But the fascinating thing to me about these movies is that the family in them communicates by sign language because their daughter is deaf.  And it's the kids who figure out how to defeat the nasty aliens!  

Image Source

Emily Blunt and John Krasinski are the co-stars of these movies and they are also married, so that's kind of interesting, too!

Finally, I like that my mom is finally going to be released from the rehab center on Friday and be able to go to her new apartment!   We moved her things almost two weeks ago, but they weren't done working with Mom at rehab.  The last five weeks have been a long haul, but Mom is doing so much better.  I'm ready to move on!  

Joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday!