Only a year late

 Hi all! Yes, thank you, I am feeling much better now. It took a lot of laying around on the sofa, but that's just the kind of assignment I am well suited for. When I was sick as a kid, I used to lay on the couch and watch soap operas with my grandmother. Have you seen daytime TV lately? It is definitely not those soap operas!

Anyway, once I dragged myself to the shower and started to feel human again, I finished up a quilt top that I started a year ago. We should be very pleased that it only took me a year, right? Take a look:

If you recall, last year I started this for the Hands2Help Challenge. It was supposed to be a quick quilt, and it really was, it just took me a year to get around to it. (You can get the pattern, such as it is, right HERE.) Sarah is back for the challenge this year (hurray Sarah!) so I thought I should probably finish it up to donate this year.

This quilt used up just about every single colorful 2-1/2 inch square that I had saved, and a whole bunch of white squares that I had either already cut from scraps and leftovers or I cut down from hunks and chunks of leftover white on whites. It feels so great to have all of those pieces cleared out and used up in a cheerful quilt.

There is a ton of variety in the squares I used, everything from Christmassy prints to colorful batiks. Just toss it all in! The alternate squares look gray in the pictures, but they're really a print that has some blue and red dots interspersed in there. In person it looks quite good, not gray at all.

This quilt top is just about 50 by 60, and I realized as I finished it that it would be the perfect quilt top to send to Victoria Quilts Canada if I added one more row or a border to each end. I think that's what I'll do, and it will get made into a nice finished quilt much sooner than if I tried to quilt it up. It took a year to finish, why take another year to quilt?

Hope you all have a good weekend. Spring is busting out all over here, and this is what it looks like on our hillside:

 

 Can you GET more springy? It's full of pollen, but I love it!

 

If you haven't been over to Sarah's to find out about this year's Hands2Help, you can find a bunch of information and sign-ups HERE. Go check it out and leave Sarah a nice comment while you're there!

 

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Brag About Your Beauties, Finished or not Friday, and the Quilting, Patchwork, Applique linkup.

Triple project updates

 Hi everyone, and happy February! Are you caught up in the ice storm that is sweeping the country right now? I hope not, and if you are, I hope you are safe. We are not in the path of the storm, but that didn't stop our furnace from giving up the ghost. We had a very shivery night because they needed a part so it couldn't be fixed right away, but it did finally get fixed. $1700 later, it should be good for another long while now.

Meanwhile, I'm working on a few different projects at the same time. As always. First, there is the Stay at Home Round Robin:

 

This is my finish of the first round, which was spool blocks. Not my favorite block! But it turned out all right and made a nice chain at the top and bottom to turn my center into a rectangle. This now measures about 32 by 24 and is ready for the second round, which is stars. I'm working on them! They're multicolored and very festive.

I also started finally doing the final assembly on this quilt, which I started last year for Hands2Help:

I don't know why I never finished this. I think there was just a lot going on right then and it just got pushed to the side. Sarah is starting up Hands2Help again this year, and I'm here to tell you that it's a lot of work, so give her as much support as you can. I'm hoping to have this one all finished in time to donate for H2H this year. The pattern for this quilt, such as it is, can be found right HERE.

The last thing I'm working on today is yet another repurposing of old blocks:

Not a great picture, but you get the idea! I made the strings a LONG time ago and used some of them in a different project (still unquilted--sadness!) but was left with a whole bunch of string half-blocks. There they sat (because I can't throw anything away) until I saw the Heading North pattern by Sandra at mmmquilts. I knew I would use this layout, so I purchased the pattern and here we are. My blocks are a little smaller than Sandra's but I love it already. I also have a cool idea for making it a bit bigger. We'll see how it works out.

And there we go! Everyone stay warm and safe. I'm leaving you with a picture of the ancient heater cover in my office. I think it would look great as a hand quilting pattern, don't you?

Sharing at the SAHRR and Midweek Makers.

Love and good will

Hi all. I've been trying to write this post all day, and I do have something quilty to talk about today, but it feels a little silly to talk about quilts and other hobbies right now, doesn't it? Every day I wake up and I'm not sure what country I'm in. I thought that the pandemic was a very challenging time, and what is happening in our country right now just leaves me at a complete loss for words. I am heartbroken, and angry, and fearful all at once, and like many of you I don't know where we go from here.

I said I had something quilty (and pretty happy) to show today, so let's talk about that first, and those of you who don't want to read my other thoughts can just skip them.  Here is my mostly finished project:

These are two little quilts that are going to Jack's Basket through Sarah's Hands to Help quilt drive. This is an awesome organization, and they ask for smaller quilts, so these are just 36 by 36. They look a little wrinkled, but I promise that they are very cozy, and I took these pictures in the evening, so the shadows make them look worse. They're really very cute in person.

These are quilted but not yet bound, and they might look a little flat to some of you. I used flannel inside instead of batting, and put flannel on the back. I really like how that turned out, and I might do that for all my baby quilts from now on. They are lighter and fold up a little smaller, and they will probably fit into the baskets a bit better.  I also used the wavy stitch on a quilt for the first time, and I love how it turned out.

I have to admit that the end of the challenge snuck up on me, so for the rest of the week I'm planning to power quilt through my donations. Cross your fingers, though, because I also have a paper to finish by the 12th. What's a little pressure at this point?

And on to the non-happy part of the post:

Talking about those happy little quilts has lightened my mood a little, but after a few minutes the reality of it all comes back. I've tried to keep politics out of this blog, mainly because I want it to be a fun and happy refuge from the craziness of the rest of the world. It would be wrong, though to ignore what's going on right now. There are armed soldiers in the streets of the capitol of this nation, protests in the most beautiful cities in this country, too many men and women arrested, too many dead for no reason, an ongoing pandemic that has claimed more than 105,000 lives, millions are unemployed, and oh, yeah-- there are still children locked up at our border because their parents wanted a better life for them. And the Secretary of Defense calls the cities and neighborhoods where most Americans live "the battlespace."

For one of the very few times in my life, I feel fairly useless here. I'm a white woman in my late 50s. Protesting and marching are not for me. I've written checks and clicked "donate" buttons, and I voted today, but it feels like such a small effort. I wish we had a leader, a real leader, not the hollow man in the White House and the sycophants who serve him, to help lead us out of this space that we're in. I wish I knew a way to wrap George Floyd's family in love and comfort, and the families of so many others, too-- Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Ahmaud Aubrey, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor. . .and on and on and on. I wish I knew better ways to let my black brothers and sisters know that their pain is felt by Americans of all races, and we are not indifferent to their suffering.

Sigh. I know all is not useless, as this country is better than it was when I was a child, and even better than when I was a young woman. It just feels very hard right now. Perhaps we are witnessing the birth of an even better country. Can it be? Can we make it so? Can we piece together something better out of the crises we face today? I pray that we are strong enough to do so, I really do, and I cry because of all the time and lives we have already lost.

All my love and good will to all of you today, quilty friends, with my wishes for a better tomorrow for ALL of us, together. The moral universe bends, and let it bend toward justice, please Lord.

Thanks for listening to my rambling,
Mari

A forest of comfort

Hi all, and welcome to another spring weekend.  We have reached the point in the season where I wake up every morning with my eyes glued shut because there is pollen covering literally every surface in the whole world.  Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration of how much pollen there is currently floating around, but definitely not an exaggeration of my reaction to it.  I think all the rain we had last year has kicked all the plants into overdrive on the pollen front.

So, I kind of have an allergy fog right now, so much so that I forgot today was Friday.  Sigh.  Thankfully, I do have a completed project to show, and I even braved the outdoors to get some fun pictures of it:

Oh, yay! This happy forest is the last top I'm making this year for the Hands to Help challenge at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I did not make the blocks in this top. Those were adopted from Jennifer and I got them through Cynthia's quilty adoption event.  I received a bunch of blocks and chose 20 for this top.

The trees are made of colorful, happy fabrics, and I tied them all together with a gray-green sashing.  The dark green stop border is a piece I've had for a while, and the outer border is a green print that has a 2012 date on the selvage.  Time to use it! It does pretty well tie the colors of the trees together, while the sashing gives it just enough calmness.

This little top went together really quickly. Since I didn't have to make blocks, I had a serious head start! The top finished at just about 48 by 65, which will be a decent lap quilt size.  I'm thinking that this one should go to Happy Chemo, but I'm going to wait until everything is quilted to decide for sure.

Since this is all about trees, I want to show a happy tree picture from our property:

This is a little cherry tree that we planted last fall.  We got it on clearance for $5! This spring it is blooming beautifully and is about 5 feet tall.  That's a pretty great return on our $5, I think!

I hope everyone has a good weekend.  I'm going to try to stay inside and out of the allergens, and maybe--maybe-- start work on those quilts I have basted.  I have to wait for my head to clear a bit, though, because right now I don't think I can be trusted near a sewing machine. I did forget that it's Friday, after all!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and Oh, Scrap!

Trees on the design wall

Hi all!  Has anyone else noticed that it's now April? Holy cow! I know I say this all the time, but this is just going way too fast.  Wasn't Valentine's Day last week? Then again, I still think 2014 was last year or so. Impossible that it was five years ago now.

Here is the happiest thing about the fact that it's now April:

Yes! The daffodils are blooming in Delaware! I saw these as I left the house, and it was such a nice start to the day.  Some of the day lilies are a couple of inches high, too.

So, what are you making now that it's spring?  This week I started a new donation quilt for the Hands to Help challenge.  I'm pretty sure that this will be my last one for this year's challenge. Here's the beginning of it:

Trees!  I did not make any of these blocks. I adopted them from Jennifer, who blogs at life's little adventures, through Cynthia's quilty adoption event at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.  I have been meaning and meaning to give up a project for adoption to someone who would finish it, but I always get too busy and miss the event.  Maybe I should just do it here? What do you think?

I received 26 of these blocks in some kind of nifty fabrics, including this one:

A quilting cotton that I would swear is a sweater! It's so realistic that I keep having to look twice.  Jennifer intended this as a Christmas quilt, so I took out six blocks that were very Christmassy and was left with 20 blocks that are somewhat wintery but don't really read as Christmas.  I chose a soft sage green polka dot to use as a sashing:

Green goes with everything, and I think this fabric is pretty and also calms down some of the colors in the quilt.  I'll add a border too, and that should make a decent- sized donation quilt top.  I even have a plan for those leftover six blocks, but not in this quilt.

So, there's one thing I'm working on this week, but I'm also thinking that I'm going to make a quilt for the Pantone Challenge from Bryan House Quilts and No Hats in the House.  I have the sampler that I've been working on, of course, and there are a lot of different corals in there, but check out this fabric:

It's hard to capture with this camera (I'm shopping for a new one, I swear!), but this fabric is pretty much the exact color of Living Coral! I have a couple yards of it, and I thought I might put it with a pale aqua.  I was thinking about a Kona solid, but then I pulled out a print and I'm thinking I might use that instead:

With a green of some kind and a white background, it could be pretty snappy! I have no pattern for this, but I'm trying to come up with something. It's pretty fun to page through the block books and dream, at least for me.  I guess I'll see what I find before I decide for sure. It's pretty fabric, though, and even without the challenge it will make a lovely quilt.

So that's the update from here. I hope you're all having a good week with lots of color and sewing.  And spring flowers, too!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social.

Jack and Jill

Hi everyone! Is it really the end of March? That must have happened when I wasn't looking. To be fair, this has been a hard month and I haven't been looking at a lot of things.  This week I finally wound up a very large, important project that has taken up a great deal of my time the past few months. I spent a day this week at another school out of state and gave *two* high stakes presentations on the same day.  It went well, and I am happy to have that behind me.  Maybe now I can focus on important things, like the best color to use with orange in a quilt.

I was so busy and then mentally used up this week that I didn't think I'd have a finish, but it turns out I have two! Here they are:

These are two baby quilts that I've been calling "Jack and Jill."  They are just about 35-1/2 inches square and are intended as donations to Jack's Basket through Sarah's Hands to Help challenge at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

These two little quilts are adapted from the infamous 'Quick Strippie" pattern at Mary Quilts. (You can find the free pattern HERE.)  I just made the pattern a bit smaller.  Mary is an absolute genius, because I cut these fabrics on Sunday before I got on the road, then stitched up one after I got back on Wednesday and one on Thursday.  I don't think it took even three hours to make up both of these.  Not difficult at all!

Both of these are made from about a half yard of some leftover fabrics.  The pink quilt uses up most of what I had left of some fabric I had originally purchased for a quilt backing.  I used it as a backing, but still had a couple yards left over and it's been here forever.  It's a hard print to use but works great here.

I still think the fabric is really pretty but I'm really happy to see it used up and in a happy little baby quilt.

The blue quilt uses a piece that I bought for a baby quilt, but never used because I made something else instead.  The fabric has all kinds of construction equipment, and the coordinating piece is nuts and bolts. Perfect for a baby boy.

I'm also glad to use up these two pieces!  The only real use for them is a baby quilt, don't you think?

I will quilt these up in a little bit.  Since they're strip quilts, I plan to just do straight line quilting on them.  I'm actually planning to quilt all of the donation quilts at once after I have them all finished.  I have one more to do and then that will be it for this year.

When I went out to take pictures of these little quilts, I found some happy little flowers poking through the dead leaves under the trees:

Those are some purple crocus, and I don't know if you can see these very well, but they are grape hyacinths:

I didn't plant any of these, but they make me happy!

For this weekend I'm planning to rest up and read some quilty blogs and then maybe buy a bunch of fabric.  I have some serious shelf space to fill!  Apparently I've been using fabric and not replacing it with more, so there are some gaps. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Sharing at Finished or Not Friday, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, TGIFF, and Brag About Your Beauties.

Finished paneling

Hi everyone, and welcome to another weekend! I don't know about you, but I sure could use it.  It's been a very busy week around here.  Lots and lots going on behind the scenes!  Nothing quilt-related, just family and work stuff, and some of it not fun, but it certainly kept me running. Thankfully, I did have a major distraction that turned into this week's finished quilt top.  It's nice when that happens, isn't it?

Do you ever get a project in your head and for some reason it just captures your imagination and you just have to work on it, even when you have much more pressing things to do?  That's what happened to me with this project.  Sandra over at mmmquilts calls these projects "squirrels" that cause Dreami moments-- when you just have to drop everything and make it.  (You can find out more at Sandra's blog HERE.) Here is my squirrel:

Yay, a finished quilt top! This top started out as a panel that I pulled out to make into a donation quilt.  I had some yardage from the same line of fabric and now I've used up the panel, the coordinating yardage, a small brown piece, and some beige that's in the hourglass blocks.  Let's hear it for moving out old fabrics and making room for some new stuff!

This quilt looks so simple, and it is, but I'll tell you-- I could not stop thinking about it all week.  I even doodled some block layouts and alternate blocks when I should not have been doodling.  Then I went into the sewing room and tried a bunch of things.  Given the way it turned out, I think that was okay, but it was a little weird that it was taking up so much mental space. In the end it went together pretty easily.  You save a lot of time if you're not piecing blocks!

I cut the panel into 9-1/2 inch blocks, then added 1-inch red frames that finished at just a half inch around each of those.  The alternate blocks are simple hourglass blocks that are turned every row to make faux frames for the panel blocks.  Each of the blocks finishes at 10 inches, and the top is about 58 by 68. I had just enough of the green in the hourglass blocks to squeak those out, and I also used up all but about an 8 inch strip of the red border.  I divided the length of red I had to determine the width of the final border, so it ended up at about 3 inches wide, which feels a little narrow to me, but it did use up that red fabric.

In case you haven't noticed, we are stuck with indoor pictures.  This week was mostly sunny and warmish, and then I went to take pictures. Yeah, it rained and rained. I was going to brave it when it was only drizzling, but the ground was really saturated.  It's very wet out there! The indoor pictures didn't turn out toooo badly, but maybe I can get some outside on Friday and replace these. UPDATED TO ADD-- I did get some new pictures and have replaced some of them. Still very squishy outside!

Now that it's out of my head, this quilt is destined for donation to Mercy Hospital through Hands to Help. I was hoping that this would be fairly gender neutral, and looking at it now I'm not so sure.  It's feels pretty woodsy, but there are a lot of flowers in it. Perhaps I'll have to try again with another quilt. I don't have one in my head yet, but I'm pretty sure if I look around I'll find a few doodled ideas!

Finally, here's a picture that I took on campus on one of our sunny days this week:

Tulips blooming! Doesn't that just make your heart sing?

Hope everyone has a good weekend filled with signs of spring! I have lots on the agenda, including a date with some lemon bars and maybe a bit of painting.  If it rains, I guess I'm stuck with just the lemon bars, so I'm not sure whether I'm hoping for rain or not!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, Brag about Your Beauties, and probably Sandra's Dreami link party.