It's all about the blues!

In thinking about my scrappy sewing week, I realized that not much was really accomplished.  But I did get out the blue scraps, do a bunch of cutting, and played!

In between sewing up the blocks for my Beothuk Star, I cut up lots of different blues into 4.5 inch squares and stitched up a patchwork piece to see what it might look like as the sky for my Scrappy Sprouts project.

Birds, butterflies, sky, clouds, sun and flowers.  This could work!  I have lots more to do on this project - good thing we have two months to work on blue!

And I'm continuing to slowly hand piece these blocks with my blue scraps every evening.  

Every group of four small blocks gets sewn together into the larger 12 inch star block.

Inspired by Cynthia's Oh Scrap post last Sunday, I had to go dig out more blue scraps and cut a bunch of 2.5 inch pieces.

Dark navy blue to almost white with just a hint of blue...

Because I wanted to see if I could make a block like this - 

Laying it out...

All sewn up!

  I see more of these my scrappy future!

And finally, the first dark blue Tiny Tuesday block - my (sort of wonky, but I'm okay with it for now) Grandmother's Fan.

Looking forward to more with my blue scraps this week!

Linking up with my favorite weekend parties - 

ScrapHappy Saturday at SoScrappy

Oh Scrap at Quilting is more fun than Housework and

Slow Sunday Stitching at Kathy's Quilts 

I Like Thursday #137 - Wide Open Spaces

🎼🎵🎶🎵🎶🎵🎵🎶🎵🎶
I'm singing along with the Dixie Chicks in my head this morning... "Wide open spaces..."

"Who doesn't know what I'm talking about
Who's never left home, who's never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone"

There's nothing my husband and I like better than finding a beautiful new spot to wander and explore, and the other day we did just that!

We had to drive a ways to get there, way out in the boonies, almost to Wyoming, and on lots of dirt roads.  Wide open spaces!

Our trail followed this creek - 

And into a canyon of red cliffs.

Looking up...

Looking down...

Lots of bird noises, but hard to see them, except this little guy!

I can see this as a little yellow warbler in a quilted piece - can you?  I might have to try that!

Waving hello from the wide open spaces, with not another soul around!

"Down that red dirt road..." (Are you singing along with me now? :)

Thanks for visiting on "I Like Thursday!" Hope you're having a great week!  

Joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color.

Circle of Sisters

I have lots of sisters...

Two sisters in my immediate family.

Mom, me, and my two sisters in 2012

Plus, four sisters-in-law.   All precious to me in so many ways.

Sisters who started out as co-workers and have become life-long friends, here in my community.

Spring of 2014 - all my favorite teaching partners and friends.

And Quilty Sisters, too numerous to count, from all around blogland - you are all so appreciated!

And now I have International Sisters, too.  Thank you, Preeti, for this fun block!  I turned my four sisters (last week's post) into a mini quilt this week.

Concentric circles of quilting seemed just the thing for this mini.

Backing and binding are this yellow-gold with plus signs - bright and fun!

I found the perfect spot for this quilt...

I'm going to enjoy looking at it every day!

Sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

The last of the orange

Happy 1st of June!

To finish up May's orange sewing this week, I've focused on the orange blocks for my Beothuk Star QAL.

This photo makes the pretty floral look very pink, but when I'm looking at it as I'm sewing it really reads as a corally - orange with bits of yellow, pink, and red in it.

The orange star is sewn together now, as is one of the purple ones.  I'm getting there!

I also made this week's Tiny Tuesday butterfly block out of these fun scraps!

I thought the sewing themed dark gray would make a fun butterfly body!

Looking at my butterfly now, if I were to do it over again, I would adjust where I placed the body, but I know in the whole quilt, that isn't something I'll worry about!

To end the month, I put up all my blocks on the design wall.  Somehow I've ended up with 25 blocks.  (Plus two reject blocks that I didn't even include here!)

You can see my design wall is pretty full right now!

Now I'm ready to play with blue in June!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!

I Like Thursday #136 - Out and About

In between rain showers and cloudy, cool days this last week, we managed to get out and about for a few favorite activities.

Saturday, on our way to a family graduation party, we stopped off at a local open space to see if the Yellow-headed Blackbirds had come back for the summer yet.

And there they were!  They are such beautiful birds, and have a very loud and noticeable call, too!

Mike's photo with his fancy camera!

On Monday, we were wanting to go for a hike somewhere, but seeing that storms and hail were in the forecast for the afternoon, it needed to be somewhere fairly close.  We ended up at a beautiful (paved) trail that follows along the Poudre River, west of Fort Collins.

Lots of big trees and bushes along the river make for great bird habitat, and we saw some birds that were new for us, which we always like!

But the coolest view was this one -

Hope you can see it - right in the middle - it's a Golden Eagle nest!  Huge!  This photo was taken from across the river, looking way up.

Meanwhile, back at home, my Columbine are starting to bloom!

I'm always so happy to see them, and wish they lasted all year.

We enjoyed this movie on Netflix the other night.

Morgan Freeman is especially good in it!

And I've finished up the neutral border on this hexie tablerunner that I've been working on forever!

I think I'm ready to finish it off, but have to decide how.  It measures about 33.5 x 14. Should I baste it with batting and backing, and quilt it before trimming the edges straight for the binding?  Since it's all hand-pieced,  I'm planning to hand quilt it.  I want to use the same Grunge Dot fabric that makes the neutral border for the binding so that it extends that color.

Hope you're having a great week!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna and the other "I Like Thursday" bloggers at Not Afraid of Color today.  Thanks for visiting!

On my design wall this week...

While continuing to work on the blocks for the Beothuk Star QAL, hosted by Sandra at mmmquilts, I couldn't resist making more International Sisters blocks!

Some of them are even made from the leftovers of Beothuk Star!

These are a great block for scraps because you can make the headdress, sleeves, and skirt out of a pretty small piece - about 7 x 14 inches at the most - for a 10.5 inch block.  Then you just need a little chunk for the face and hands and some background fabric.  I'm using a piece of Kona White that was left from making my Squared Away blocks, last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge sampler.

I've had fun working on my sisters in between sewing HSTs for Beothuk Star.  (All the while, listening to the Friendship Album podcasts!)

What will I do with these colorful ladies?  Stay tuned!

If you want to make some International Sisters, check out Sew Preeti Quilts, right HERE.

Sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  

This week in orange...

Our Tiny Tuesday block for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge was a rail fence block.  It was fun working with some little strips of orange and this pretty background fabric!

Thanks, Angela, for the directions for this block!  They can be found HERE. 

I think I might like this block better set straight rather than on point, but I can change my mind about that later in the year if I want.

Here are my three orange blocks for May, including a redo of last week's Bearclaw Bowtie.   I like it much better than the first one I made!

I also finished up an orange Tiny Rail block.

I've made three of these, each using different orange scraps.

And now I have 20 Tiny Rails blocks!  I started making these blocks as a way to use up the smallest scraps I have.  There are 50  (1.5 x 2.5 inch) pieces in each block, so 1000 little pieces all together! 

I'm still thinking I need 30 of these 10.5 inch blocks to make a good size lap quilt - it will be about 50 x 60.  So 10 more to go!

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.