To-Do Tuesday #162

It's been a good week for making progress on my last to-do list, and, in fact, I got further than I expected to a week ago!  

My Autumn Jubilee tablerunner is close to being finished - borders on, backing made,  and quilted.  This afternoon (Monday), I machine sewed the binding on and it's ready to hand stitch to the back.

I also finished sewing the Masala Box blocks into the finished quilt top; more info about it in my Saturday post here.

With this week being Thanksgiving, and we're taking off to go visit our kids for a few days, I know I won't have time for a lot of sewing.   I will put a few things on the the to-do list for when we get back on the weekend, though.

• Sew the Autumn Jubilee binding.
• Make some progress on a Christmas gift that's planned for a gift exchange.  I have something embroidered for this and want to turn it into a pillow.  
• Get started on a tablerunner that I need for a hostess gift in January.  Mike's Navy buddies are meeting for a golf weekend in Arizona, and one of the guys has a home there.  I'm starting with this group of half yard pieces of Grunge.

I want to incorporate this star into the design - maybe making three of them, separated by sashing.  The star requires a lot of HSTs, so I thought I'd just get started with those.

Image from Quilter's Cache.

Wishing you all a lovely Thanksgiving, however you celebrate!  I'm linking up with To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda at Texas Quilt Gal.

Slow stitching this week...

 We woke up to this view out the front window Friday morning - snow overnight and very cold temperatures.  

It put me in the mood for some wintry stitching, so I've been working on the little Christmas Penguin that I started earlier in the week.   On Tuesday, he looked like this:

                             You can see the full design above - it comes from this site:

                                              Durene Jones Cross-stitch on Facebook.

And now he looks like this:

He's going to be a cute little guy!

I also traced this design from All People Quilt, and got started on a little bit of it.  We're going on a road trip for Thanksgiving later in the week, and I thought this would be a good take along project.  

The two designs say "Welcome" and "Winter" and

 are meant to make two pincushions or bowl fillers.  

Find the pattern and design here at All People Quilt.

Thanks, Vicki, for the inspiration and pattern link! 

For today's Slow Sunday Stitching with Kathy's Quilts, I'll see if I can get a little farther on the little penguin!

Two quilt tops finished!

Two of my 2022 Rainbow Scrap Challenge block projects are now quilt tops, after finishing up the last long seams this week.

The Dancing Plus blocks have been a hand-piecing project throughout the year, with 6 blocks stitched in every color, except for blue which has 7.  These blocks are 6.5 x 8.5 and are set so that they are offset from each other in the rows.   Hopefully you can see the color groups running in diagonal rows from top left to bottom right!

42 x 49

And one close-up of some of the blocks.  It has been so fun choosing these blocks from various scraps each month.  This was an anything goes quilt - birds, cats, stars, flowers, dots, solids, pumpkins, starfish - you name it!

The other blocks to make it to quilt top form this week are the Masala Box blocks, pattern by Sew Preeti Quilts.  I made two of these blocks in each color of the month for a 48 x 60 quilt.

Maybe you could think of this as a double rainbow, lol!

Pink to indigo and violet and back again.

I always think I'll pick out a favorite block as I'm sewing them all together, but I really love them all!  This quilt does have lots of my favorite penguin scraps in it in several different colors.. 

It's time for batting and backings and basting spray!

Hoping to have at least one of these finished by the end of the year.  

Which one it will be is still to be decided!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and at 

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

I Like Thursday #310

Happy Thursday, friends!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna and friends at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday as I always do.   And this week we're looking ahead to Thanksgiving!  

Since our boys graduated from college and moved off to new communities on their own, we've had to figure out new holiday traditions.  To accommodate their work schedules, Mike and I have been taking a little road trip every Thanksgiving, and taking our meal along with us!  That means I roast the turkey ahead of time, package it up with a few easy sides, and it rides along in a cooler.  (It also means a lot less work and cleanup when we're at either son's house!)

We do a pretty simple meal because it's easier for traveling, but there is one dish that is always requested, and that is a pie I make that everyone likes.  Again, it's really simple, but very tasty!

Oreo crumb crust, and two layers of pudding.

I use sugar free because it's better for Mike, and make each layer with only 1 and 1/4 cups of milk.  That way it sets up nice and thick and the layers stay separate from each other.

A little whipped cream on top, and we're all set!

A simple meal leaves lots of time for games, football, watching a movie or whatever we want to do.

Cheers!

What else has been going on this week?  I finished stitching the Autumn SAL from Days filled with Joy, and it is really sweet!  I'm not sure I'll get it fully finished anytime soon, but I think it would make a nice pillow cover for the living room couch.   Here I just laid some Autumn-themed squares around it to give you an idea.

I read a really good book this week, too.  It's historical fiction about the Polish Jews who fled into the great forests there during WWII and were able to hide from the Nazis.  It's a fascinating story about their survival, and I learned so much from the story.

It's supposed to snow and be very cold here today and tomorrow, so I'm anticipating lots of hibernating with another good book and a cup of hot tea and then time spent in the sewing room, too.  Hope you have a great Thursday, too!

To-Do Tuesday #161

 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!

Not long after last Tuesday's post, I finished Full Stop, the 2021 Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt that has been on my to-do list forever!   It's a great feeling to have this quilt finished, and be able to move on to other projects.

More info about this quilt in my Saturday post HERE.

The rest of the week has been a mish-mash of working on a little of this and a little of that!

• Slowly stitching together the squares for the longer borders of Autumn Jubilee. The side borders are done.

• Sewing blocks into rows for Masala Box.  I didn't take a photo, but have 4 of 5 rows sewn together so far.
• Planning, purchasing for, and cutting setting triangles for the chandelier block quilt.

My inspiration quilt for this is from Mary's Quilts.

For the coming week, I'm planning to focus on:

• Sewing the Masala Box rows into a top.
• Finishing the borders for the Autumn Jubilee runner, and figuring out a backing for it.

And just for fun!  I decided to jump into counted cross-stitch again with this cute Christmas Penguin.  I'm totally blaming this on Ivani, who had a link to the design in a post last week.  It's from Durene Jones who shares a ton of cute designs on Facebook.

Can you see his hat and scarf?  Slowly the details are emerging!

I'm a slowpoke at cross-stitch, but enjoying the process.

Have a great week!

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!