Bright spots

Hi all! Well, this week I looked at the calendar and realized that it's the middle of November.  How in the world did that happen?  Seriously, isn't it still September? 

This week I actually finished two small projects.  Yay me!  Here is the first one, a green crumb star for my RSC 15 project:

I don't have a ton of lime green, so I was going to mix the light greens and limes.  Don't do it!  You wouldn't believe how bad the light greens look next to the brighter greens.  They really look gray.  The crumb block is the last one I need for this year's Framed project.  Yay!  I do need to go purchase a small bit of lime for the frame in order to finish off that quilt.  Gosh, shopping for fabric.  Doesn't that sound awful?

Don't know why it looks a little gray on the tree, except that it was raining when I took the picture.  This photo shows the colors a lot better:

I tried for this crumb block to be somewhat "log cabiny" and I think it worked out.
 
Since I wasn't thinking when we were packing things up in a big hurry, all of our coasters are in storage. What was I thinking?  We still have furniture to protect! So, I also made up these coasters from a treasured Mary Engelbreit scrap:

I really did not plot out the storage thing very well.  There are so many small things that I wish I had, but they're all in boxes.  But at least these little things will be a spot of brightness in the living room at the condo.  That fabric makes me happy every time I look at it.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  We are going to my best friend's wedding.  She is my age and has never been married, and we are all so happy that she has finally found someone to share her life with.  It will be like a reunion for us, so it should be a lot of fun!

Happy sewing!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  soscrappy, and Finish it up Friday.

Catching up

Hello everyone, and welcome to what promises to be a very wet weekend.  According to the TV weather people, this is a good time to stock up on bottled water and batteries.  Or maybe not.  They can't decide.

So, now that all the excitement surrounding the pope has died down and all the roads are open again, I actually got to sew a little bit.  I feel like I am so behind on everything!  I'm letting myself down, but I've resolved to catch up.  The first thing to catch up on was these crumb blocks for the framed stars quilt:

Indoor picture! Raining!

Okay, the indigo block isn't really a crumb block, but I only had enough indigo (or what passes for indigo around here) for one lonely little string block.  I already decided to carry the string blocks over to next year so that I'll actually have enough for a quilt, so into a framed star it goes.

The orange and brown are actual crumb blocks.  It turns out that I have quite a lot of brown bits left over from the Terrestrial Star quilt, so I had plenty for a crumb block and enough for the row quilt too.  Plenty happy about that!

Then I actually made enough progress that I finished all three stars:

That's a raindrop, not a stain!

Oh, happiness. Slightly damp happiness, but still.

After all this time using up my white on white scraps, it turns out that I don't have enough big leftovers to make the frames from just scraps, so I didn't get to make the frames.  Well, I'd probably have enough if I wasn't so danged picky about how the white tones must match each other, but it will be just a lot more fun to go pick out some yardage.  Easier too!

That was my sewing week!  I'm slowly starting to feel at home here (I must be slow to adapt) and am getting back to a regular schedule for my sewing.  I've had a tough time with the traffic eating up so much of my time, but I'm getting used to it.

Oh, gosh, one last thing!  My kids got me a new camera for my birthday (thanks kids!) and all of the pictures in this post were taken with the new one. Yay!  But I have to show you the last picture taken with the old camera:

 Leeanna from Not Afraid of Color and I met up and got to go to a quilt show last weekend!  It was so fun to meet her and to have a friend to critique the quilts with. We enjoyed a lot of the same ones and had a great time.  Thanks Leeanna!  (I am the weirdo on the left. Leeanna is the sweet and lovely lady on the right.)

Everyone have a great weekend!  Stay dry if possible, and if the rain keeps you inside, I'll bet I can think up something you can do!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  soscrappy, and Finish it up Friday.

Stringing along

Hi folks! What are you all up to today?  I am feverishly getting ready for a conference this week. I always wait until the last minute so I get pretty stressed. What can I say? I do this to myself.

In order to deal with all my stress, I spent some time making up some string blocks in light blue:

The blocks are a little washed out, but they're pretty boring, so I took them out to the garden for a glamor shot. I don't have much light blue at all, so this is all I got out of the strings I had. Sad, I know.

I also made a light blue "crumb" block, in the same style that I made the green one last month:

These were the teeny pieces that I had at the very bottom of the light blue scraps bin.  That bin is just about empty now.  Cause for happiness, or cause for despair? Hmmm.

And just because I never showed them, here are all the green string blocks I made last month:

Two. Yep, that's all the green strings I had, and I had to scramble for those. That bin is just about empty, too. But don't they look nice with the flowers?

So that's it for the string blocks, BUT! Nancy at Pug Mom Quilts has nominated me for One Lovely Blog!  Thanks Nancy!  She has a wonderful blog herself and the cutest pug dogs ever.  And great quilts, too.



So, for the blog hop, the only thing I really have to do is tell you 7 things about me.  I hope I can think up 7 non-quilty things!  Here goes:

1. I've been to almost every ball park in Major League Baseball.  Really! Wish I could say "all," but they keep building new ones and it's hard to keep up!  Our favorite (except for Miller Park, our hometown park, of course) is PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Not saying what the least-favorite is, but trust me, it's a pit.

2. I hate cooking and will do almost anything to get out of it.  All food tastes better if someone else makes it.  (Especially salads, for some reason.)  As far as I'm concerned, restaurants are the happiest places on earth. Maybe that's why our son became a chef.

3. I love books and read every day, usually while Best Husband Ever is watching a sporting event on TV.  I have too many favorite books to list, but almost any genre and any well-written book is good with me.  Sometimes I feel like the characters are my real friends. I wonder what that means? (If you have a young adult in your life, check out Seven Stones, a new book by Julia Lee. I know the author!)

4. I also love movies! Especially action movies. Romantic comedies, not so much. My favorite movie ever is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I first saw in high school. Some things never get old. "Try sculpture!"

5. I can read in 7 languages (besides English), most of them for research purposes. I can only say "where is the restroom, please?" in four, though. Gotta work on that.

6. I'm the author of 3 books, with another coming out next year and yet another in progress for 2017. Hope to be done with that manuscript by December.  They're not quilty books, so most people would find them very boring. Heck, sometimes I find them very boring!

7. I am a volunteer literacy tutor, teaching adults to read (or read better). It's probably the most rewarding teaching I'll ever do.

Hey, that's 7 things.  Hurray! That was hard.

The last part of the blog hop is to nominate ten more blogs.  Most of the blogs I like have already been nominated, so I'm just going to tell you a few of my favorites, in no particular order with no obligations attached.  Some are newer, and some are old friends. I'm afraid to leave anyone out! If your blog isn't here, there just wasn't room!

Angela at soscrappy.

Lane at That Man Quilts?

Julie at Me and My Quilts, Exploring the Possibilities.

Bernie at Needle and Foot.

Jo at ButterZ.

Kevin of Kevin the Quilter.

Leeanna at Not Afraid of Color.

Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Connie at Freemotion by the River.

Wanda at Exuberant Color.

That's a good mix that should give everyone some good reading! Hope you all find some new friends to visit.

Thanks again to Nancy, and everyone have a really good week! (Also, if you are interested in adopting and finishing one of my orphan projects absolutely free, check out last Sunday's post.)

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social,  and soscrappy for RSC15.

Is it May or October?

Hello, all! What a lovely fall day we're having! It's very windy, though. I know the calendar says May, but we have a freeze warning for tonight, so someone better tell the weather to get in line. It's not listening to me, but one of you may have better luck.

On a much happier note, I've finished just about everything that has an immediate deadline, and the weather has been crummy, so I had a little time to sew so far this week. Here's what I started with:

This is what I'm calling the green crumb block. Turns out that I have very few actual scraps of dark green, though I do have many fat quarters and half yards.  Why cut those up to make "scraps?" So I used what I had, which was pieces that are not exactly strings, but not crumbs, either. I'm calling this a tile block. I was much more comfortable with this than with actual crumb blocks, so I bet we'll be seeing this style again really soon.

Of course, the tile block then became a star block:

Pinned to the tree!

Okay, I think that looks great! Since I had some time, I kept going and the star block became a framed block:

Lilacs in the background!

This looks a little fuzzy, but it isn't out of focus, that's just the fabric. I think it looks fabulous.  I am really liking these blocks.

Of course, I had to get a "family picture" of all these blocks, too:

This was as good as it got with all the wind. I think they look wonderful together. Can't hardly wait to start putting them together!

Finally, I have to tell everyone about the major score I made this past weekend. My friend Renee and I went to Nancy's Notions warehouse sale, which is always a great time. We had a blast! In the clearance area they had "grab bags" that were marked down to $1.49, so I grabbed five of them.  Here's what was inside:

More than 7 yards of fabric! Those big pieces are all at least a quarter yard, with most bigger. One of them is more than half a yard.  This kind of thing never happens to me, so I just had to share!

Hope everyone has a good and productive week, and I hope the weather is better where you are!

Linking to Let's Bee Social and WIP Wednesday, plus Scraphappy Saturday.

Mini with a side of crumbs

Hi everyone! How was your week? Ours was wet and cold. We had frost more than once, some sleet, and a tiny bit of snow. Good thing I didn't jump the gun and plant anything yet, though I did move around some perennials. They won't be hurt, but grass seed would never have survived. Hope we're done with the frost thing now because I am ready for some more color.

It has been a very busy week here, so pretty much all I really finished was the last of the minis and a couple of RSC15 blocks. First up is the mini, which came out to about 20 by 22:

 How darling is that? Our house is yellow with red shutters, so this is sort of modeled after ours. This is just a traditional house block with some borders. The house and the roof are string pieced, which I think made this a lot more interesting, plus it let me use up some tiny pieces. I cut the templates from paper with about a half-inch margin around them, then stitched the pieces to the templates and trimmed when they were full. I'm really happy with how it turned out! My favorite part is that tiny blue inner border. I think I have enough of that for a binding, too.

I also finished up the frame for the blue crumb star block for RSC15:

I also had just enough time this week to make up the purple one. It helps that I had all the frame pieces cut and some sections stitched together before I made the crumb star:

Yikes! A lost point! I'll fix that right up!

Gosh, I like how these are turning out!  Here are the four that I have finished, just pinned to the fence:

Wow. I'm going to like this! And I'll be needing a bigger fence to photograph all of it!

That's the update from here! Hope everyone has a fun weekend planned. I am planning to go treat myself to a new pair of gardening gloves. Maybe I'll even get the nifty waterproof ones. It will be almost as good as having a new rotary blade!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Angela at soscrappy, and also Finish it up Friday. Happy sewing!

Quiet week

Hi folks, and happy first day of spring! We officially made it through the winter. What a relief! We are pretty good here. The hubs is feeling better after about a dozen milkshakes and several boxes of cold medicines, plus all our snow seems to have disappeared. No green shoots in the garden yet, but the ground is thawing.  Can mud be far behind?

I had a very quiet sewing week. This was my big accomplishment:

That's the yellow crumb star for RSC15. I think I did better with this one. It's less linear, that's for sure. I got this book from the library to help get me over the problems I was having with crumbs:

This is by Victoria Findlay Wolfe and was kind of helpful. It focuses mainly on "made fabric," which is basically how to put crumbs together. She's really into it! She has some challenges in the book that look interesting and I think I want to work through. If nothing else, I got a cool yellow star out of it. "Wonky" still bugs me, though.

I also put together most of the Loyal Union Sampler blocks:

I can't decide if this is a table topper or a baby quilt. It's about 45 by 45, so it could be either. For the sashing, I used a pale blue-green solid that doesn't exactly match any of the other colors, but I think it turned out great. The other possibility was yellow, but I'm glad I went with this color instead.

I'm not feeling bad at all about abandoning this big project and using the blocks for this smaller piece. It's actually a relief not to have it hanging over me, plus there are now a lot more possibilities for all that pink and green fabric. Any suggestions for a pink and green quilt?

So that was it for me this week! Quiet, but not totally unproductive. We'll probably have a quiet weekend, too, although I have this strange urge to scrub things, like the cabinets and baseboards. What is it about spring that makes that happen? Must be something in the air.

Have a wonderful weekend! Hope it's spring-like!

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  Link a Finish Friday. and Angela at soscrappy.

Cloudy with a spot of sunshine

Hi all! How has your week been? We have had a great one here--lots of sunshine and temperatures near 50. You would think that all the snow was gone, but it isn't, of course. Lots of melting, though, which means a lot of puddles. Plus, I'm almost recovered from the switch to daylight savings time. One more day and my sleep may be back to normal. John Oliver is right, how is this still a thing?

So, this week I put together the weird Birds in the Air quilt I found in pieces in the closet. Here's how it turned out:

It's amazing how fast you can sew when all the pieces are cut and blocks made already. I spent a total of about 2 minutes cutting for this quilt, and used up almost all the fabric that was with it with just a few scraps left, plus one HST and one Birds block.

Plus, can I get a pat on the back for just making do with the fabric that was there, even though there wasn't enough for a full border? The strips were already cut and what you see is literally all there was. I'm not even obsessing over it. Much. I am so proud of myself.

Still no idea what this was supposed to be originally, or where it came from. There was backing fabric in there too, so it's ready to quilt up. A good place to try out some more of those stitches on the Pfaff!

I also made a couple of sawtooth star blocks to use with my crumb blocks. I think they turned out okay.

 I still have mixed feelings about crumb blocks. These make nice star centers, though.

 I also made up some yellow string blocks for a spot of sunshine:

Man, yellow is a happy color! There are plenty more strings, so there will be some more of these blocks later. And here is one more spot of sunshine for everyone:

Melting happening in the background!

Daffodils! These are from the grocery store, not the garden, but they'll do for now!

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  Tomorrow (3/14) is Pi Day! Hug a scientist! Or a mathematician, your choice. And be sure to eat some pie to celebrate--3.14 pieces should do it.

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  Link a Finish Friday. and Angela at soscrappy.

Goofing off

Hello everyone! I am beyond happy to report that spring is arriving here in southeastern Wisconsin! All of a sudden we have temperatures in the 40s and rain in the forecast. It's like someone flipped a switch. And now we've even changed the clocks and sprung ahead, so it won't be long before we can burn the long underwear and break out some shorts. Which around here is usually when it hits about 50, so fingers crossed for this week!

I have been playing with fabric and making up some things even though I know I should be working on some half-finished projects that are still laying around here. (Remember the "frozen" quilt? Still in pieces!) One thing I made was another crumb block:

These are really, really hard for a traditionalist like me. A few people told me to start with a shape, so this one started with that blue triangle, not that you can tell. I am having a terrible time being comfortable with this method and I'd swear I heard my grandmother telling me to "straighten up that seam." I think one of my problems is that I associate the odd seaming and general "wonkiness" with sloppy work. But I have decided to go ahead and make some more of these and maybe--maybe--use them as centers for the sawtooth stars that Angela has going at soscrappy. Maybe.

Anyway, after that, I made a little bitty blue heart block to go with the mini red block:

Could use better pressing! These are both 4-1/2 inches right now. What am I going to do with them? Who knows?

During the big clean out of the the fabric closet, I found a bunch of stuff that I hadn't seen in a long time, including a whole bunch of blue, yellow, and green charm packs from various related Moda fabric lines. I decided to mix them all together and just stitch them into a simple quilt center just as they are, without additional cutting or fussing about it:

I arranged it sort of like a really chunky Boston Common pattern. The last two rows will be blue all around. I see now that I should probably separate out the light/medium blues and the medium/dark blues, just so it looks a bit better. I plan to stitch this all up and use it to practice quilting, then it will become a donation quilt. Some small person will love it.

And here's another one that was also hidden in the closet and is just getting stitched randomly:

I honestly have no idea where this came from!  I'm pretty sure someone gave up on it and gave it to me. It was in a project box with the Birds in the Air blocks all finished and trimmed, along with a bunch of extra fabric:

There were 36 of the Birds blocks, plus a bunch of greenish HSTs, some strips, and some yardage. I know for sure I did not make these. The fabric is grayed and is nothing I would have chosen at any point. Even when I was using a lot of Thimbleberries patterns I substituted brighter, clearer fabrics. Also, all of the blocks measure 4-1/2 inches but there are inconsistencies that would have made me crazy, like someone didn't bother to align the ruler and just plopped it on the block and trimmed. But they are ready to stitch, so who cares at this point? As long as the HSTs aren't next to each other, I think any problems will be hard to spot.

 

These are the selvages, so it is past time for this to be made up and go to a good home. Again, some tiny human will like it a lot, I'll bet. Any ideas from anyone out there what this was supposed to be?  I checked the website and there is nothing remotely similar and no pattern that I can find.

So, I've been goofing off and not focusing on my projects! But I think it's still working out okay. Hope you are having some fun this week too. And I hope it's warm where you are!

Linking to Linky Tuesday,  Fabric Tuesday, and Let's Bee Social.  Come join the party!