Another round for the house

 Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday! Halfway through the week, so everything after this is heading for the weekend. It is very loud here at my house right now. They are finally fixing the floor after our roof leak and there is a lot of pounding. There are four guys here and they all have hammers or nail guns. I know it will be worth it, but I really need somewhere to hide.

I have put another round on my stay at home round robin! This is a project by Quilting Gail and friends, and I think this is its third year. It's my third year, anyway. Here is the current status of my project:

Okay, it's looking better than I thought it would! I usually have no confidence in how things will turn out when I start them, other than 'that might be pretty.' This week's prompt was 'square in a square blocks,' and you can see mine right there in the corners. I started with the ships in the center and I'm pretty happy so far with how the rounds are turning out. And I'm really happy that those ships are getting used in something! I had so many ideas for them, but none actually came to pass, so I'm happy they are being used here.

Last week's prompt was triangles, but I really thought I had enough triangles in this little quilt already. Instead I added the golden yellow spacers to the top and bottom and decided to use the star fabric for whatever the next round was. The stars were left over from another backing, so so far everything here is a leftover or scrap. The blue square in a square blocks made great cornerstones and they also go nicely with that pretty yellow. 

At this point, my little quilt measures 42 inches square. Wait, what? How did that happen? I don't know, but here we are. There are two more rounds to go, so I think I will end up with a very nice toddler quilt, perfect for donation. 

Whatever the next prompt is, I'm ready! Hope your week is going well, and I hope the hammering is done soon. Then I will have a floor again!

Sharing at Songbird Designs for the SAHRR.

Falling into spring

Hi everyone! How are you all doing? Here's how I am: my husband has a cold. Condolences gratefully accepted in the form of chocolate.

Meanwhile, I've been sniffling with allergies, reading papers, churning out the grades, and ordering books from the library so I can do some research this summer. And I also finally got around to taking some beauty shots of this finished quilt:

Hurray, another one done! I quilted this a while ago, then finally put a binding on it, and then it waited around for a bit until I finally took some pictures. I don't know why I waited so long, but it just got pushed aside in the shuffle of many things happening. Good thing I have it during this really busy week, though!

I took these pictures on a rainy day, which has happened a *lot* lately. Really, you should see the grass! But the clouds and the rain really have made everything green and have made for very bright photos. It helps that the colors stand out from all the green, too.

This was made from a pattern called Sunnyside by Myra at Busy Hands Quilts, and it is all from scraps. A friend gave me some gold fabrics, and I pulled the remaining colors from my scraps. I started it during the pandemic in 2020, finally finished assembling the top last year, and then quilted it this year. Hey, sometimes these things take time! 

 

 

As you can see, the quilt got quilted a large meander in a beige thread to make it stay nice and soft, and then it got an orange binding to coordinate with the oranges in the quilt. Not what I usually go for, but it works! With the riot of colors on the front, the backing is a nice calm beige. This quilt has been washed and is being donated to Mercyful Quilts for Hands2Help. I think it's pretty gender-neutral, it's the right size, and it's definitely cozy. I hope someone will find it comforting.

So that's another finish! And for all those of you who wanted to know why the azaleas from last week have to come out, check out the purple azalea that just bloomed:

 

It's really pretty, but I think you can see how incredibly overgrown and unkempt that whole area is. This plant is taller than I am, and there are no blooms or leaves near the bottom, and all of the plants in this area are really scraggly. It will look so much better when it's cleared. Not to worry, azalea lovers! The plan is to plant some new ones in the front of the house a little later this spring, where they can be seen and enjoyed and won't be choked by other plants.

 

Everyone have a wonderful weekend! I still have some things to finish up for the semester, then I plan to nap quite a bit. And of course, I'll be bringing tissues and drinks to the guy laying on my sofa who apparently has never before suffered like he is right now. Fun, hey?

 

 

 Sharing at Finished or not Friday, Brag About Your Beauties, Oh Scrap! and the Patchwork and Quilts linkup at Quilting Patchwork Applique.

Fall color amid winter gray

 Hi everyone, and happy weekend! Hope you have had a really good week. I finished getting ready for the new semester this week, and I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for it. And hey, did you notice that I redecorated? Some of the settings have changed since last time I did this, and I'm not sure what they all do, but I managed to get a nice pretty picture up at the top, and that's what matters, right?

I finished up another quilt top this week in between class prep, and before I show it to you, you'll have to cast your mind back to last fall, which is when this quilt top really should have been finished. But it wasn't, so just try to remember the pretty leaves and how awesome they were. And didn't it smell great?

 

 

Doesn't that seem like a quilt top fit for fall? It certainly looks good and colorful against all the gray in the landscape these days. I know there really weren't any pink leaves, but it needed a little zing, so I threw in some pink scraps, too. I started putting this together last fall, and it's been hanging around here for way too long, just taking up a big space on the design wall. This is the Sunshine pattern by Myra at Busy Hands Quilts, and you can get the pattern right HERE.

 

This quilt was pretty easy, except that I made it hard. It made my brain confused, and it's my own fault. You can see that it is mainly squares and half square triangles, and the pattern shows the quilt made in scraps of just two colors. This would have been so much easier! I decided to use up a number of orange scraps that I had left over from my nephew's quilt, and I threw in a bunch of other scraps that looked like fall leaves, with the second color coming from some golds that a friend gave me. 

 

This was not my best idea ever. Sure, it turned out looking great, but the road there was arduous. I kept turning the hsts in the wrong direction, and putting the wrong color in the wrong place, and then I also had to be sure not to put the same color too close to another piece with same color, you know? For some reason, I just couldn't make sense of how it should go. If you can see the pinwheels in the top, I kept stumbling over those and putting them in the wrong place. This was entirely my own fault for trying to be creative with a pattern I didn't create myself.

I sat down this week and made myself figure it out, and it did turn out well, I think. Look at all the variety in those scraps! (Of course there's a stray thread, too, because I couldn't make something that's not covered in thread. I always think I get them all, but there are always more.) If you decide to make this quilt, I highly recommend putting it together in columns. That would be so much easier than rows! Plus I think it might be easier to get into a rhythm and spot mistakes, too.

This quilt top finished up at about 56 by 72, a nice lap size. I'm pretty sure it's going to become a donation quilt, but it will have to wait its turn to get quilted up because there are several things in line ahead of it. I just ordered a bunch of backings, so I'm pretty excited to get some more things quilted up and moved out.

So there we are-- off the design wall and ready to finish! It was a long road, but it feels good to have gotten this far. Hope you have gotten pretty far along on a project or two as well. And if you know what "custom robot tags" are in Blogger, and what I should do with them, be sure to let me know! This weekend I'm planning to stitch some leftover battings together because the weather looks nasty, and I hope you all have something more fun planned than that! Have a great weekend!

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

Hsts for fall

 Hi everyone! Yeah, I know, it's been a while. What can I say? Thanks for your emails checking up on me! I'm okay, really. There has been stitching happening, but not writing. I do what I can, you know? And some things are looking up. A huge problem that we were having at work looks like it's going to resolve (hurray!) and I finished an 8-week class that I was teaching, so now I have a tiny bit more time. Zoom remains exhausting, but in between classes I sometimes play videos of my grandkids singing the ABCs. It's not scholarly, but it's keeping me afloat!

Before we go any further, here is a picture of the last of the geraniums:

 

I think they know they're getting uprooted this weekend, so they've decided to put on a last show. Has anyone ever tried over-wintering these? It wouldn't hurt to try, right? I have a new garage to keep them in, after all! (No it isn't finished. Soon, they tell me, but I've heard that before.) Let me know if you have any great semi-southern gardening wisdom.

As for the sewing part of my life, there has been sewing, specifically sewing a lot of hsts:

If you remember, I had planned to make Myra's Sunnyside pattern in dark blues and yellow, but then a friend gave me a bunch of golds, and Myra also posted a picture of the quilt done in multicolors by Tula Pink. So why not change the plan a bit and do something a bit more creative? I pulled out some graph paper to make a coloring page and rooted through the scraps and came up with the beginnings of what will be a fall-colored quilt.

[On a completely unrelated note-- I'm thinking of getting a used Accuquilt just for cutting hsts. Any thoughts or wisdom?]

Amazingly, I had enough scraps in enough fall colors, and here's a small part of what I've got so far:

I'm using the golds as the lights and the fall colors as the darks. I think it's going to work out just fine, don't you?

I also have done a little fabric acquisition in the last couple of weeks. I bought this stack of fat quarters, which is really not like me, but they were so pretty!

This is Apricot and Ash by Corey Yoder. I was thinking of using them to make the Sewcialites Quilt Along, except that I don't like the layout they have. I'll need to come up with a new layout before I can start making blocks. Luckily, I have more graph paper.

I also bought this fat quarter pack:

 

Again, not like me! But they were so pretty and looked so fresh that I couldn't resist. I have no plan for these, but I like them and they make me happy. Is there a better reason to buy fabric?

Well, there's my update! Still here, still stressed, still not sick, still trying to keep a good thought. Sewing when I can. Hope you all are doing the same. Stay healthy and sane, everyone, and remember to wash those hands!

 

 Sharing at Finished or Not Friday