Slow stitching to a finish...

 The stitching on Winter's Brew was completed this week.  I want to frame it in a wooden embroidery hoop like I did Spring Steep, and also am planning that for Autumn Brew as well.  These are all Kathy Schmitz designs involving a tea cup!

Since I didn't make it to Hobby Lobby just yet to get the wooden embroidery hoops to finish off the above design, I decided to finish an older one that had been waiting for awhile.

This one is called "Patience," also a Kathy Schmitz design that I stitched in 2021.  

I have a dear local friend who lost her mom this week, and I decided rather than send her flowers, I would give her this little handmade design to honor motherhood.

Today's slow stitching will be sewing on the binding and finishing it with hand stitching to the back!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

#Full Stop is a finish!

 I've been so excited to finish up this quilt and share it with everyone.  Worked on throughout 2021 and 2022 as a project with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilters, it has been on my to-do list for a long time! 

50 x 65

Thank you, Angela, our fearless leader of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, for figuring out the blocks and sharing tutorials for all the punctuation marks throughout 2021!  I think my favorite row to make was the question marks.

Once all the blocks were made into rows, it was time to figure how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.  That took me awhile, and lots of bits and pieces of background fabric (Moda Bella Pearl) to figure out! 

Sometime in October, I finally had everything I needed to finish this one up - backing, batting, and basting spray!  I quilted it using the serpentine stitch on my Pfaff - mostly horizontal lines, but also some vertical to fill in the negative spaces.  The binding turned out to be some leftover Kona Aruba from my stash which is actually on the front of the quilt, too.  

A fun rainbow print from Joann's for the backing.

And now #Full Stop is finished!

A label and a trip through the washer and dryer are all that's needed before I can give this to my 15 year old great niece who is quite a writer!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

 

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.