Midweek Update

Getting caught up on my 2025 Stay at Home Round Robin this week - first by sewing up the long seams from round 4's border.

At this point, the top measures 21 x 22, 

a little bit more rectangular than square.

Then, on Monday, Brenda, from Songbird Designs, posted her choice for border #5, which is log cabin blocks.  It's our choice whether to sew full, half, or quarter blocks, and I chose quarter log cabins.  So far I've made six of them with 1.5 inch logs, and they finish at 3 inches.

I made two with the floral square in the center, 

and four with pink in the center.

The reason for that was to set these blocks in the corner of the top, like this - 

They'll go on opposite corners like this - 

I'm going to wait for the final border prompt next Monday

 to decide how I will finish this up!

Sharing at the round 5 link-up at Songbird Designs

and at The Inquiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

And Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

Celebrating International Embroidery Month!

I haven't had an embroidery project to stitch on since I finished up Woven Wreaths last month, so when I saw that Crabapple Hill Studios was hosting one last International Embroidery Month stitch-along, I knew I wanted to join in.  You can find the free pattern on their website under the Downloadables tab.

There are actually two choices of design to work on - I chose "Choose Kindness."  Here's the pattern example:

And here's where I am - not very far along - but enjoying these sunny sunflowers!

Something needs to bring some sun in here, judging by the current view outdoors!

Brrr!

This project is appropriate for the weather!  I finished stamp 3 last night - Sledding Friends!  

Stamp 4 is  A Winter Mitten.  Definitely needed right now!

There should be plenty of time for slow stitching today!  

Joining in with Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts.

Home again!

We drove home Thursday with these kinds of views:

Blue sky and frosty.  It was cold!

One of the things I enjoy doing when we are in a different city is visiting a local quilt shop.  In Santa Fe, New Mexico, we found this one.  It was a nice shop - small, but a good fabric selection.

Since February is blue month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I decided to stock up on blues.  I think these will be fun to play with!

Now that we are home, it's time to think through where I left off on projects and what needs working on next.  Quilting is slowly progressing on Masala Box, so I need to get back to that.

First on the list to spend some time on, though, is the next border for my Stay at Home Round Robin.  Wendy, at Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life, is this week's host, and she called for sliced squares with an insert.  Since my round 2/3 border is pretty busy, I decided to go for a simple frame around it this week, using the cream Grunge and blue with white dots that you can see in the Dresden flowers from round 1.

Using these as cornerstones and some strips of the cream, it will look like this:

These corners remind me of those little triangle shaped photo holders 

that scrapbookers use (or used to anyway).  

Looks like that bottom section of border 2/3 needs 

some adjusting to get the blue piece centered.  

Good thing I'm still sewing those together!  

Sharing at Wendy's Round 4 link-up for the SAHRR

and at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

I Like Thursday #423

Happy Thursday, friends!  Hope you're having a good week.  We've been away for a week, but headed home now, and hoping the road conditions will cooperate!  It's been a fun week, with the first half of it spent with our Navy friends, and the second half on our own.

On our way down to Phoenix, we had to stand on a corner...

There were fun times for the guys on the golf course...

And the women enjoyed a cruise on Canyon Lake on a beautiful February day.  

Throughout our get together there was lots of great conversation (about kids and grandkids, travel, health, books, you name it!), good food eaten, and games to be played.  "Codenames" was a game that was new to me, and it was lots of fun!  I need to get that one for our family.

Read more about it here.

Once the group get together was over, Mike and I had another couple days to hang out in Phoenix, and we decided to go try out "PopStroke" which is Tiger Woods' miniature golf venue.

You pay one price and can play all day long.  There are two 18 hole courses to play, plus a restaurant for lunch, music playing, just lots of fun! 

When this post publishes, we'll still be on our way home.  There was snow in Colorado on Tuesday into Wednesday, so we waited until today (Thursday) to drive from Santa Fe back to Loveland.  As always, it's been fun to go, but I'll be happy to be home again, too!

Joining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.  LeeAnna has had some questions of the week for us for February, but I haven't written about them because we've been gone.  I'll get caught up on them next week!

 

Everything blue...

We're away from home, spending a long weekend with friends in Arizona, and had a fun outing today with a boat ride on Canyon Lake in the Superstition Mountains.  It was a gorgeous day with amazing scenery! 

But, earlier this week, besides working on my Stay at Home Round Robin (which does involve some blue), I had some time to get out my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project bin and switched out the pink scraps for the blue.

Along the way, I stitched up a few quarter star blocks in blue.  

With the smallest scraps, I'm again making four patches - 

While sorting and pressing, I looked for pieces that would give me some 3.5 inch squares for a 16 patch square and got those cut out.  I still need the smaller squares for the star points and then will start sewing these together.

Even my Winter SAL stitching involved blue!  I'm working on finishing up the last border sections and using DMC pearl cotton in color 930 for that.  Medium Antique Blue.

Lots of blue!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap

Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

And Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.

Midweek Update

We're heading out for a week in (hopefully!) sunny warm Arizona with friends, so I'm combining all my midweek posts into one for the sake of efficiency!  An update on my Stay at Home Round Robin and I Like Thursday, all in one.

Because it's true, I do like the Stay at Home Round Robin project!  It's a good creativity and brain stretcher.  Plus, it's fun to see what other quilters do and also figure out what to do with my own project.  

This week's host, Quilting Gail, has called for star blocks, and you can see all the different ideas people are trying at the link-up here.  I was thinking about my half-square triangles from last week's round and how they could fit into a star block.

I've also had the Sister's Choice block on my mind lately, and that (to me) looks like a star.  

Could I use the HSTs plus other elements of the basic block design to make a Sister's Choice variation using my bunny in the garden with her Dresden flowers as the center?  It would need sections something like this:

So I tried it with additional pink pieces to connect the blue and the corners.

Okay - except that's a lot of pink for me!  Maybe too much.

So, what if I turned the HSTs the other way and made the green the focus?  Like this - 

This I like!  It fits the garden theme better.

A little quilt math was needed to figure out what size the green connecting strips needed to be to make each border section the correct length.  After taking the above photo, I got the two side pieces sewn to the center.  Not sure I'll get the top and bottom done before we leave on our trip, but it will happen as soon as possible!

Sharing at Quilting Gail for the SAHRR round 3,

and at The Inspiring Quilter for Wednesday Wait Loss.

Also joining in with Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday!

Slow stitching this week...

I feel like I've stitched a lot of binding this week, on some small finishes, like my Table Scraps project.  I also stitched some binding to finish up the February heart for my mini quilt stand.

Lots of hearts!

I put away all the snowmen and got out the Valentine decorations.

All of these were stitched last year, 

and it looks like my basket needs more heart designs to fill it up!

But meanwhile, I'm still working on the Winter Stamp SAL from Melisa at PinkernPunkin.  You can see her finished piece here.  I've just finished up Stamp #2, and ready to move on to #3.

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

And at Melva Loves Scraps for Sew and Tell Monday.