The Busy Beehives

Monday didn't provide much sewing time, but there are 2 blocks to report.  Grocery shopping, some household chores, middle school cross country, and 5th grade flag football pretty much filled up the day.

Lori Holt designs such cute whimsical blocks, and her Farm Girl Vintage books are some of my favorite GO TO pattern books.  Busy Beehive is from FGV2.  These should go really nicely with the Honey Bee blocks, also from her books.

I debated about making that top section with the colors keeping the alternate arrangement.  But then decided the bee print was a better focus if I put it next to the previous one.  The doors and hearts came directly from the 2.5" square scrap bin.  The 2 gold prints were from stash.  

Now I need to choose which Circle of Nine layout I want to use, and what colors to make the spacers and borders.  And do I want both quilts to be arranged the same?  I'm looking for input and ideas from everyone. 

Monday morning I finally got around to switching the seasons on my front porch. It's kind of a hodge podge of fall (silk) flowers and needs a bit of rearranging yet.  But at least it's not still red, white, and blue.  I probably should pull out those purple ones. 

Design Wall Monday - October 5

I'm really excited for this week's goals. I have some fun things on my design wall right now, and hope to make a little progress on several things.

The Marigold Mystery blocks for October are all done, so I can set aside that project box until next month.  On the 1st of October I made the 5 Shoo Fly blocks that finish at 4".  And now I have the 5 Square-in-a-Square and 5 Uneven 9-Patch blocks that are also that size.  From the sneak peek provided by Meadow Mist I think all the blocks we've made so far will be the middle of spool blocks.  

Sunday afternoon I cut all the pieces needed for the October paper pieced block for Garden of Stars.  After I took this picture I ended up going back and sew parts 1, 2, and 3 on all 8 papers so that's a good start.  There are 120 pieces in this block.

A relatively easy goal is to sew the rows into a flimsy for the RSC Scrappy Stars.  The 6 rows are pressed in alternate directions so they are ready to run through the machine.  

Also for RSC this year I made Lori Holt's Honey Bee blocks - 2 of each color, for 8 of the months.  My plan now is to make the Busy Beehive block, from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage 2 book to go with them.  In my stash was a fat quarter of each of these cute bee prints in a rich gold.  I'm using the Circle of Nine book to choose a layout and put the hives in the middle with the colorful bees around it.  And I plan to make 2 separate quilts.

Once a bobbin is wound with orange thread, I'll get a start blanket stitching the orange sections on this little gnome mini quilt.  Changing thread colors is one of my least favorite things to do, which may explain another reason I never enjoyed my embroidery machine.  

I'm linking up today with:

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ 

https://songbirddesigns.blog 

RSC26 - Week #40

For me October will be a mix of playing with neutrals and hopefully figuring out how I want each of my RSC block sets to go together.  I'm sure I'll also have to make more blocks for some of those sets. So I'll be following the suggestions Angela posted Oct. 1. 

Starting with a dark neutral - black - I've pulled this set of RSC blocks for decision making.  There are only 32 Scrappy Star blocks because I skipped the "pastel" month.  Some of my blocks were already pastels.  If I lay them out 5 x 6, then I'll have 2 orphan blocks left over.  Because these finish at 9", this would be 45 by 54 which would be a nice size for a child, or a couch quilt.  The 2 extra blocks could become pot holders.

The rows went together and next week I am confident this will be a quilt top.

So far I had only made 17 of the little paper pieced Crackers and Jam blocks (Bonnie Hunter) and this week I used 16 of them to make this cute block.  It's 11.5" square, as is.  These are so cute, but for now I really don't have a plan.  

The little 4.5" Tulip Swirl blocks (also Bonnie Hunter) are coming together into 4-sies.  The little basket of these is pretty full so there will be a lot more of these.  Again, there is no clear plan for these yet. 

Friday afternoon I did make 4 little black Tulip Swirl blocks and 3 of the Crackers and Jam blocks from the scrap bin. The black/grey scrap bin is overflowing.  

Let's go check out more Rainbow fun . . .

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Finished (or not) Friday

Yesterday I was finally home long enough to spend quality time - and quantity - in my sewing room.  And I got a few things accomplished in there, plus catching up with laundry and baking some brownies for Saturday's quilt guild meeting. I plan to bake another pan of different bars today to add to those guild treats.

One thing I worked on had less than satisfactory results.  I quilted and bound the first Christmas runner in the Swirling Star pattern.  The outside edge is very wavy - positively ruffled.  Somehow I managed to stretch it out of shape with the quilting.  That means I'll need to really pay attention when I work on the second one of these.  I'm hoping that maybe I can do some pressing and starching on this one to make it lay more flat.

The October blocks for the Marigold Mystery were posted early in the morning as Oct 1 also happened to be the first Thursday of the month.  This month we're making 3 different small blocks - Shoo Fly, Uneven 9-Patch, and Square-in-a-Square.  I have the Shoo Fly blocks all finished.  We'll be making 5 of each.

The parts for all 5 Uneven 9-Patch are cut and waiting next to my sewing machine this morning.  They will be the first thing I work on today.

And the parts for the Square-in-a-Square blocks are also ready to go.  Keeping up with the Marigold Mystery so far has been pretty easy.  

For more finishes, please visit:  https://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/

BOMs and Sew-Alongs

There is always something fun going on in the Quilting World to tempt us to join in.  And you know I have very little willpower to resist.

I'm already working on these BOMs . . .

• Saturday Sampler
• Marigold (Meadow Mist)
• Garden of Stars (Carol Doak)
• Rainbow Scrap Challenge 

And now Moda is starting Blockheads 7, and I really really really want to play along.  This one will be weekly from next week through late April.  I did the Blockheads 6 in red, white, and blue and donated the finished quilt to our Quilt of Valor group.  

It has the theme this year of Friends and Family, and many of the blocks will be shared in 4 sizes. I'm kind of thinking about using Christmas fabrics and making it very scrappy.  

One little finish

In the bottom of the project box with all the leftover fabric, was a selection of embellishments in little zip lock bags that I must have collected when we were doing the Gingerbread Joy pattern for Saturday Sampler.  The quilt had a red/aqua color scheme.  And there were little buttons just the right color of aqua.  So . . . here she is, all done!!  She's only 12" square, but it's still very nice to have a finish.  

One flimsy can be checked off my To Do list too.  Enough triangle units to make 2 identical runners were on my sewing table, but so far I've only found time to get one of these sewn.  Hopefully this afternoon I can get the other one done and then find batting and backing for them both from my stash.  

The last Wednesday of each month is lunch with the retired group from the school.  Today we're meeting at a little spot - mix of gas station/convenience store/lunch counter - that serves the best Hot Beef special.  Roast beef and gravy, mashed potatoes, veggie, and dessert.  It's a generous portion meant to fill up the local farmers who frequent this place, so usually a couple of us share a serving.  Yum!!  I'm looking forward to a tasty lunch with my former coworkers.

The 50th college reunion

We had a really good time on Friday and Saturday at our college reunion at South Dakota State University.  We're officially members of the 50 Year Club!!  We got to see some people we haven't seen in decades, and some friends we see much more often.  

Dave had only 21 students in his high school graduating class, and 7 of them went to SDSU.  At the reunion this year - 3 of them were able to be there.  One more - Dave's college roommate and best man at our wedding - had planned to come but something came up at the last minute.  Dave (left) and Gordon (right) grew up a mile apart on farms. Gayla (center) and I met as freshmen because she lived about 6 doors down the hall from me in the dorm.  I didn't meet my husband until the beginning of our sophomore year. 

Dan (left) and his wife were other friends from college, but we do usually see them about once a year. His wife had other commitments for the weekend but Dan actually stayed with their youngest son, a student on campus. 

We posed with the Dirty Lil and Weary Wil statues near the student union on campus.  It's a long story, but the homecoming celebration at SDSU is Hobo Day.  Weary Wil had been a character included in the celebration for decades, and Lil was officially added the fall of 1976, right after we graduated. 

Here we are on May 1, 1976, right before our graduation ceremony.  I think our tassel color was different because I got a BA and Dave got a BS, although both from the College of Arts and Science.  The guy standing on the other side of Dave was one of his roommates, who got an Associates degree so his cap and gown were blue instead of black. 

I'm headed out early this morning to volunteer at the golf course, checking in golfers for a tournament - unless it rains again, which is a possibility.  Then I have a haircut appointment this afternoon.  There might be a little sewing time in between things.