To-Do Tuesday #144

Does it count if I just *thought* about a couple of the things on my to-do list from last week?  :) Two things on my list involved figuring out backings for some quilts - the crumb quilt and my son's tabletopper.  

• Joann's was having a sale on Kona cottons, so I bought some yardage that will work for the crumb quilt backing.  Right now it's still in the bag! 

• For the tabletopper, I was thinking I might just piece the backing out of the leftovers from the front, the green, blue, and gray Grunge.

And then I got off on a tangent.  Well, a tangent with a purpose, you could say!  I've been wanting to get back to making blocks for the Covered in Love charity.  Kat, who started the charity, posts a new block drive every couple of months.  The block for July and August, find it HERE, will benefit Project Linus of Uvalde, Texas, and I really want to participate.  It turns out the colors for these blocks are green, blue, maroon, khaki, and black.  I definitely have that green and blue Grunge that fits.  So I cut some squares!

Sewed them together into a 4 patch, cut and then re-sewed into a disappearing 4 patch!

I can definitely make a few more of these!

I did work on my purple blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and posted about them on Saturday.

So on this week's list:

• Make more blocks for CiL.
• Backing for son's tabletopper.
• Work on my purple projects.
• Piece the backing for the crumb quilt?  Maybe!

Joining in with To-Do Tuesday at Texas Quilt Gal - thanks, Linda, for hosting this fun link-up each week!

Slow Stitching Sunday

Oof!  It's a hot weekend here in Colorado! 

A good one for some slow stitching in front of the fan.

This week I've stitched up a couple more purple plus blocks.  I'm enjoying these pretty purple fabrics!

I also put some stitches into the Kathy Schmitz teacup design.  Those little blue flowers (all lazy daisy stitch) took two evenings!   I'm sure I'll pick this up again this week sometime.

For today I got out the EPP hexies I'd been working on.  For some reason I set them aside, but I'm ready to work on them again.

One is prepped to applique to the background square, and some pieces are cut to make another - this time in that pretty lilac floral print that I also used for a plus block.

Hope you're staying cool where you are, and

enjoying some slow stitching today!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

 

Playing with purple

After several finishes in the month of June, it was lovely this week to just play with the purple fabrics.  I have to admit these are not all scraps, as I have a very small amount of those in purple, but now that I've cut into a few new fat quarters, new scraps are being created!  💜

Two Masala Box blocks:

This group of blocks just keeps getting prettier!

Pieces and parts for three Bloom baskets.   I'll use these for leaders and enders for the rest of the month.

And a seed of an idea for my July Table Scraps project, too.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #292

 Welcome!  Thanks for visiting on I Like Thursday, hosted by LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color.   I found lots of things to like this week!

I love fireworks on the 4th of July, and the ones our city puts on finally came back after two Covid years.  It felt so good to grab a blanket and walk down to the park to watch them on Monday night.  Mike got some good pictures, too! 

Also on Monday, we took my mom out for lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant.  So yummy!  My mom's place is having Spirit Week, with different colors to dress in each day.  Of course, Monday was red, white, and blue, and Mom was all decked out!

Mike likes to "remind" me how gray my hair is...

But I say this:

On Tuesday I played golf with my group.  One friend is doing a "picture a day" project this year, so she had someone take our picture for her album, and shared it with us.

We have a good time together!

Here's another photo of the wonder clip pincushion Judy made and sent me, a close-up this time.  You can see that the clips are attached to some flaps that stick out from the center flaps (which are 3-D!)  A cool design!  Thanks, again, Judy!

And a REALLY good book this week that I read in about two days!  This was recommended by a couple of friends, and it is so good.  It's about two little boys - 10 years old, I think - who take off into the Wisconsin woods because of something they think they need to run away from.  They have quite an adventure as do their families and some townspeople who go looking for them.

More about the book at this

Goodreads link.

Hope you're having a great week!  

To-Do Tuesday #143

Happy 4th of July!

I hope you had a great holiday, however you spent it!

It's been a busy week, but I did make some progress on last week's list.  I finished up my Full Spectrum mini quilt, and posted about it here.  This is my favorite photo of it:

And I did get the revised borders on Crumb Hearts, too, so progress there!  No backing for it yet - hoping to find something for that this week.

Purple is the color of the month for July in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I've been working on some purple blocks.  These are for Masala Box.

This week will continue the theme of making progress on Works in Progress!

• Figure out a backing for Crumb Hearts.  Maybe get it layered and basted for quilting?  Maybe!
• Finish up the Masala Box blocks, and work on Bloom baskets for the RSC.
• This is the tabletopper I started for my son a few weeks ago.  I need to figure out a backing for it also, and get it ready to quilt.

There's always something to do around here!

Joining in with Linda at Texas Quilt Gal for To-Do Tuesday!

 

Slow Stitching this week

As soon as I discovered that purple was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for July, I started cutting pieces for the hand-pieced plus blocks I'm making.  

Two are completed and a third in progress.  I've been making six each month.

35 of these blocks are made so far!  

Every time I put these blocks up on the design wall, I mess up

the placement of one block.  This time it's in the red row.  Just one turned wrong and it messes up everything after that, lol!  I'll have to be careful 

when I start sewing groups of blocks together!

My lovely friend, Judy, of Busy Hands are Happy Hands, sent me a really handy wonder clip holder and pincushion this week.  Isn't this a great addition to the slow stitching  table next to my chair? 

Thank you, Judy!

For today's slow stitching, I think I'll go back to some embroidery.  This is Kathy Schmitz's May design for the One Stitch at a Time Club, called "Spring Steep."  I just got this traced yesterday afternoon, and a few stitches started in the evening.  I love the little tea cup full of flowers!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

A finish to start the month

For such a small project, this one feels like a huge accomplishment!  It only measures 18.5 x 18.5, but there are a lot of bits of fabric and seams in this little quilt.  Here is my version of "Full Spectrum," from Kelly Young's book Scrappy Improv Quilting!

Except for the background fabric (a fat quarter of white with pale blue dots), 

every bit of this quilt is a scrap!

I enjoy making crumb blocks - they're a great way to get more out of the little odd-shaped scraps - and I'm always looking for ways to use them.  This project started with a rainbow of crumbs sewn together in squares or rectangles according to the pattern.

Scrappy triangles in a square, stitch and flip corners, and smaller squares are cut of the crumb blocks to create this design!

Even the backing and binding are scraps from other quilts!  I decided to stick with the blue theme that started with the background choice.

For the quilting,  I followed the design to make a star, 

and added some orange peel shapes in the center.

It was fun taking Full Spectrum out in the yard for a photo shoot!  Under the apple tree:

And with the exploding petunias!

But it's going to live here, above the fireplace mantel in my sewing room.  (Yes, those are longhorns!  Long story...lol!)

I enjoyed everything about making this mini quilt!  

Now moving on to my purple blocks for July!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

And at Needle and Thread Thursday.