I Like Thursday #107

Happy Thursday to everyone!  I hope your week is going well!  I'm joining in with the weekly party over at Not Afraid of Color and looking forward to seeing what everyone has to share this week.

I am really thankful to have had the right and the opportunity to vote this week!

I'm happy that some of the candidates and issues that I supported were successful this year.  I'm also really thankful to be done with all those yucky election commercials on TV and radio, as well as the junk mail and phone calls!

I really like trying new blocks and patterns, so I've  had fun playing with fabric and thread in my sewing room this week.

I bet you can't guess what this is! (wink!)  More about him later!

I liked stitching another redwork design from Gail Pan's Christmas Patchwork Loves Embroidery book.

So simple and enjoyable to work on!  

I've also been making these blocks, a few at a time.

I have had a layer cake of Bonnie and Camille's "Hello, Darling" in my stash for a long time, and have broken into it more than once when I needed a certain color for a project, but I'm sure there are enough 10 inch squares left to make a baby quilt.  I'm using this tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew to make the blocks.  "Easy Stack, Cut and Sew Blocks" in red, turquoise, and lime green!

I like learning new skills so I'm planning to participate in Elm Street Quilts' hand piecing quilt along, starting in January.

Check out Patty's blog HERE for more info - she's already had a couple of posts with helpful info in them.

I even have a couple of fat quarter bundles set aside for this QAL!

I guess I'll go sew!  :)

Some Christmas Scraps and a little Slow Stitching

I've been playing with my Christmas fabric this week, mostly because I have a deadline for a party that is a few weeks before Christmas, and I have to play a little bit before I'm sure about what I want to make!

So I decided to use some of the more traditional colors in my scrap drawer - dark reds and olive greens, and a Moda Bella Cream for a background.

I cut them into a bunch of 2 inch squares.

From squares to a 9 patch - 

And then to here - alternating greens and reds for an Irish Chain.

These are 5 inch squares.

Meanwhile, I'd been wanting to try embroidering some Gail Pan designs, because I've been so inspired by the sweet designs I've seen on Kathy's Quilts and Gretchen's Little Corner recently.  I decided to see if I could check out a Gail Pan book at the library, and found this one - 

After borrowing a light box from a friend, I traced up a simple design, and a short time later, I had it completed!

I will definitely be stitching up more of the projects from this book!  In fact, I have another one traced to work on this afternoon.

So now I'm thinking about changing out at least one of my plain cream background squares in the Christmas project with some embroidery  - like this!

If I add another column on to the right, the heart would be the center square.  I think I like that!

Linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap today

and also Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Scrappy Bowties Finished!

Yahoo for a finish!  I started making these colorful bowtie blocks in February of 2017.  They're such a classic block, but I had never made them before!

A few were made every month through this summer when I felt like there were enough to make a nice size cuddle quilt - 90 different 6.5 inch blocks.

I finally got this quilt top basted, quilted, bound, and finished this week!  Hooray!  Scrappy Bowties measures 55.5 x 62.

This quilt is such a perfect example of what I love about scrappy, colorful quilts.  Anything goes!  

The backing is a royal blue tiny floral print wide-back fabric that I got on sale from Connecting Threads earlier this year.  It's the first time I've ever used a wide backing and it was so convenient!  I had a lot of it left, so I decided it would make a good binding, too.

I quilted this very simply along all the seam lines, and I think that works well for this quilt.

Scrappy Bowties is so much fun to look at - there are fun fabrics everywhere!  Bicycles, birds (lots of penguins, lol!), text fabric, dots of every color, florals, solids, batiks, Christmas fabric, and even a few of those those ugly prints that just blend right in. 

Like most quilters, my favorite quilt is always the one I'm working on right now, and this one is definitely a favorite.  I'm planning to send it off to some special extended family who I've never given a quilt to.  I hope they'll enjoy using it as much as I've enjoyed making it!

Since this a Friday finish, I'm linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, and also sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday because this quilt has been  one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects for 2017-2018.  

I Like Thursday #106 - Welcome, November!

Just like everyone else, I am surprised to find that it's November already!  Where did September and October go?  Do the weeks just go by faster this time of year, or what?!

I gave myself a goal of finishing my Rainbow Scrap Challenge Bowtie quilt this week, and I'm almost there!  I like finishing projects - especially larger quilts, on which I am typically pretty slow.

I finished the quilting this afternoon (Wednesday) and have been working away on the binding!  Planning a finished post for Saturday!

We enjoyed a day out in Boulder last Friday.  Lunch at Mod Pizza (in spite of their name, they also make really good salads which were our choice that day!) and then a hike up in the hills west of town.

Bald Mountain Scenic Area

It was a short hike with wonderful views!

To the east - the plains

And to the west - 

It was the perfect after lunch walk.  And we topped it off with a visit to one of our favorite local wineries!

Another day this week, I was out for a walk by myself, and just had to crunch through a big pile of leaves.

I've always loved doing this, from childhood up into my 60s!  Fun!

And this week I really enjoyed this book!  

Evidently it was Reese Witherspoon's Book Club choice for September (I didn't know she had a book club, but now I'll pay a little more attention!) and I found a fun video on YouTube that she did to introduce it.  Click HERE if you'd like to see her video! 

Hope you're having a great week!  I'm joining in, as always, with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for I Like Thursday.

October in my sewing room - DrEAMi's!

I've been crushing on orange this month!

It started with some orange strings and  a crumb block which turned into these pumpkins.

I finished the crumb block into this mini to decorate my front entry way.

The three string blocks became a little tablerunner that I gifted to a friend for her birthday.

I found a cute ceramic pumpkin to go with it!

And then I reversed the colors to make these fun pumpkins from Carole's Autumn Jubilee QAL.

I'm still trying to use up this dark orange leftover from a quilt I made long before I started blogging!

The pumpkins and a white star for the center became a tablerunner for my dining room table.  The (real) white pumpkin I found was the inspiration for this color combination!  This measures about 12.5 x 36.

Another good use of the stripe-y Halloween fabric I found at Joann's, too.

Okay, I think I'm done with orange...  Time to pull out the Christmas scraps!  :)

Sharing at mmmquilts for Sandra's October DrEAMi linky, and at

Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

October in my sewing room - Rainbow Scrap Challenge

I was feeling like I hadn't accomplished much on my RSC projects this month, but then I started to look at photos for the month, and I felt much better!  :)

There was plenty of dark green goodness to be found!

Scrappy sprouts

Squared Away

Pieces and parts for a dark green rail block - almost there!

And Rainbow Bowties was pin basted and the quilting is in progress.  I love that 

sage-y green bowtie in the bottom left corner.  This weekend I'm pushing this one to a finish!  :)

Linking up with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

I Like Thursday #105 - I Like Fall!

Welcome back for I Like Thursday!  Every week I share good things that are going on - some sewing related and some otherwise.  Lots of other bloggers do the same and we meet up at LeeAnna's blog, Not Afraid of Color.  Join us!

This week I have really been enjoying Fall!  After a short flirtation with winter, Colorado's usual lovely fall weather came back!   Sunday afternoon was so nice (and since there was no Bronco game) we got ourselves outdoors for a favorite hike.  I think it has been a year since we went on this one - it crosses through a very scenic golf course on the west side of town.

To the east of the trail you get views of our city, and to the west, this -

And the signs on the trail crack me up!

Watch for flying golf balls and talk only in a whisper!

Fall means soup in the crockpot, and I love that!

Fall is for baking pumpkin bread!  I used Carole's (From My Carolina Home) recipe for Pumpkin Orange bread, and it turned out to be delicious!

I bet you can tell what's for dinner at my house tonight - vegetable soup and pumpkin bread!

I don't buy very much novelty fabric, but I saw this at Joann's recently and decided I needed it. :)

I love the little tiny things in it - pumpkins and bats and leaves!  And that it has purple and lime green stripes along with the Halloween-y colors.

It made a great binding for one of my pumpkin projects!

And one more neat fall thing I came across - I was out for a walk yesterday afternoon and walked by this Milkweed plant with all its pods exploding!

Hope you're having a wonderful week!  Thanks for visiting!