Planning ahead & looking back

 It's that time of month, when I begin to plan ahead for the next month's goals.  For Rainbow Scrap Challenge, our color for August is AQUA.  So - what UFOs or PIGS are living in my sewing room that have a lot of aqua?

I have a 3-yard quilt planned that has teal and aqua, but I'm rethinking one of the fabrics I had set aside for this one.  That tan fabric isn't speaking to me!  The teal on the bottom works, but now I'm thinking a lighter aqua would blend with the forest print better.  What do you think?

There is a small-ish UFO project that has a lot of aqua - the Gingerbread Joy blocks.  There were 5 of these applique gingerbread people blocks for a long past Saturday Sampler, mixed in with pieced blocks for a Christmas quilt.  I used the pieced blocks in a quilt at the time, but skipped the applique blocks.  Three of them are partially done.   I think I'll finish them up for a wall hanging.  All the parts are in this project box - waiting. 

No matter how much I work these UFOs it seems like I don't make much of a dent in my stash or the collections of kits.  Sigh!!

Reviewing July goals will prove to myself that I did make lots of progress however . . . everything cross off below is finished.  Yay!!

• Saturday Sampler - row 6 for July
• Blockheads blocks each week
• Binding projects IF READY
• Pyramid quilt
• Mickey Mouse Quick Strippie
• Pumpkin door hanger
• Valentine door hanger
• Quilt the Sunflower wall hanging myself - didn't happen
• Finish Sweet Potato Puff bag
• Rainbow Scrap Challenge - PURPLE is July color
• Buckeye Beauty blocks
• Brighten blocks
• Triple Triangle (string) blocks
• Hollow 9 blocks
• Give It a Whirl blocks
• Gameboard blocks
• Paint Chip
• Quilt of Valor blocks 
• Indigo Way
• Spools
• Misc other QOV block sets
• PIG projects for this month
• RWB mini quilt - popsicles
• Beach Bums wall hanging - not touched

Lots of red, white, and blue

A couple of years ago Bonnie Hunter introduced the Indigo Way for her winter mystery quilt, and as usual I played along.  But instead of making a BIG quilt, I only made about a third of the number of blocks in her pattern.

I finally decided to use Indigo Way for a Quilt of Valor, but needed to add borders to make it large enough.  It has been sitting around for about 2 weeks now with that final blue border all ready to attach.  Procrastination must be my middle name!  Border is on!!

  Another set of Quilt of Valor blocks is nearly enough for a complete top.  It looks like I need just a couple more of these Spool blocks. I might even get those 2 blocks made this morning before going to lunch with the retired group from school.  

The Sunflower mini

Good news - the opossum in my sewing room window well was gone by Monday morning.  I discovered him Sunday afternoon when it was 98 degrees outside, so was quite concerned that it would die down there from the heat.

We're guessing he crawled up the ladder after it got dark on Sunday night.  Plus it was raining by dark.  I was very relieved that the critter was gone when I went down to sew in the morning. 

One more small kit has become a finished project.

The Sunflower Spools mini quilt is all done and displayed in my family room until the end of summer comes around.  These spool-themed mini quilts are so cute.

The binding is attached to the 3 red/grey placemats and 2 mug rugs.  The red/grey hourglass units were 3.5" square and all made from trimming of a Christmas themed quilt from a few years ago.  I've used up every single one of those hourglass units now.  The binding will give me some hand stitching for evenings this week. 

The bowtie placemat is nearly done, with only 1 side left to hand stitch.

Design Wall Monday - July 28

 It was a HOT, humid and windy weekend, but with lots of things going on.  No sewing at all happened on Saturday.   

Saturday I spent the afternoon in a lawn chair under a tree watching wrestling held outdoors - in the heat at a baseball diamond.  They had to move the girls' mat twice trying to keep it in the at least partial shade.  Our granddaughter lost 2 matches, but pinned her last opponent.  She wore a long sleeved swim shirt under her singlet because the mat was so hot to the touch, even in the shade.  

Sunday morning I made a quick trip to the Arts in the Park - before the temps hit the 90s.  I got there as they opened up.  This park has a lot of shade thankfully.

My big purchases - fresh flowers, jam and syrup from The Jam Man, and ice cold lemonade.  Then I hustled home to hide out in my sewing room, out of the heat and humidity.

And found this in the window well of my sewing room.  It's a young opossum, and very much alive.  I have no idea if it just fell in there overnight, or had spent all day Saturday there too.  Poor thing!!  My husband wasn't home to help me, but I found a board in the garage and drug it out to drop into the window well - hoping the opossum could climb up the board to get out.  He didn't . . . so now my husband put down a ladder for the opossum to climb.  Hopefully he is gone this morning, but I haven't checked yet.

Eventually I did manage to get some sewing in.  The sunflower mini quilt is a flimsy, and sandwiched for quilting.  The binding is made too.  This might be the first thing I finish this week.  

 The placemats made from orphan blocks could be the second finishes for the week, if I can get them bound.  The bowtie placemat has binding attached, but these red/grey ones (3) will get some grey binding if there is enough. 

Overall my goals for this final week of July . . .

**  Sunflower mini
** bowtie placemat
** red/grey placemats & mug rugs
** last border on Indigo Way

I'm linking up today with:

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ 

https://songbirddesigns.blog  

RSC25 - Week #30

Hmmm - I got carried away with purple at the beginning of the month, so I haven't played with the purple scraps this week.  But I did play with plenty of other scraps, in a variety of colors.  Since my purple blocks are done already, I have plenty of time to do something with other scrappy leftovers. 

Some readers pointed out to me this week that the Gameboard blocks have a "bowtie" vibe to them, which I hadn't even noticed until laying them out together like this.  And they do look like a bowtie variation.  So cute!!  Of course that reminded me that there was a small collection of actual bowtie blocks hiding out somewhere.

In one of those small plastic 3-drawer craft supply units (Walmart) is a collection of small orphan blocks.  Most are 2-4" finished leftover units (from lots of previous projects), such as 4-patch, Hourglass, and pinwheel units.  One drawer had those missing bowtie blocks, and a bunch of other things - all leftovers from previous projects.  

There are just enough of the bowties to make 1 placemat.  Those red/grey hourglass units are plentiful, maybe enough for 2 placemats.  

After a quilt on Pinterest caught my eye, I had to pull out the strings again to play.  These string diamond blocks were made with 2 Tri Recs triangle blocks.

Let's see what else is going on in the RSC world this week.

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/  

Alternate project

It all began because I was looking for a hand written index I made of the 200+ photos that were scanned when my MIL passed away 14 years ago. 

I've decided that one day each week I need to devote to dealing with the family photos and genealogy materials that have accumulated in a very disorganized way around here.  Yesterday was that day for this week. Today I hope to get back to sewing. 

Yesterday I needed to stay upstairs most of the day while having a contractor working on our rain gutters because I can't hear the doorbell from my sewing room in the basement.  So . . . I dug into that mess of genealogy "stuff" hoping to find that index list.

Remember last month when I finished up the books about my father-in-law during WW2?  His siblings all have their copies now, and his sister asked if all 4 of her kids could get copies of their own.  Since I was already planning to do copies of both for our daughters, it was easy enough to just get 6 copies of each book. 

I wrote a letter to the nieces and nephew explaining what is in their package, clipped it to one book, and all 4 of these went to the post office at the end of the day yesterday.  I'll hand deliver the books to our daughters next time we head that direction.  I'm excited to have these all distributed.  

Next, I removed all of the genealogy containers from my office closet, and began sorting in order to organize things better.  Yes - there is A TON of stuff here.  Guess that's because I've become the family historian.  The smaller stack on antique chair is all stuff that needs to be copied and then given back to my sister-in-law.  Yikes!!

The file boxes are now labeled for the branch of family to be found in each box.  As I sort things they can go into the appropriate container for that lineage.   What a big job!!   Wonder how many weeks it will take to do this. 

And it seems like the pile of old photos needing to be scanned is endless.  I found this box that I didn't even know we had, all old photos from my in-laws.  There are several boxes of old photos from my side of the family, and even from early in our marriage - waiting to be sorted and scanned too.  Endless task . . .

And I still have NOT found that hand written list.  Grrr!  

Blockheads #9

This week's Blockheads blocks are done.  So far I'm easily keeping up each week.

Polaris by Barb Groves (Me & My Sister Designs) is another 9" block, and we made 2 versions of the block again this week. 

Usually I prefer to follow pattern instructions on projects, even when I think a different technique would work just as well - or better.  And sometimes I learn a new way of doing something.  So - my commentary about this week's block is both positive and negative.  The positive is that once this triangle unit is squared up, it's perfect.  The negative - lots of wasted fabric is trimmed away.  I'm a fan of the Tri Recs rulers for this particular unit (above), but I did just follow the pattern this time in spite of the waste. 

The sunflower mini quilt is seeing progress.  In between the Polaris blocks, I worked more on the tiny pieces for the mini.  Can I finish it today?  

We have contractors coming today to upgrade our rain gutters.  And I'm hoping to get a call from the shop to say my car is ready to be picked up so I can return the loaner I'm driving this week while they replace some leaky part on my car.  And I'm hoping to get to the post office to mail several packages.  Seems like there may not be much sewing time. Guess we'll see.

Miniature acorns & more

It's allergy season around here - for me anyway.  I don't feel horrible, but have such gritty eyes and wake up coughing every night.  I feel sorry for people who are even more sensitive to all the growing, blooming things.  

This mini quilt had a rocky start last week, but it turned out OK in the end and will look good on display come fall.

I have 2 of these wire hangers, and they sit on the hearth of the 2 fireplaces we have.  Changing out these minis for the season is fun, and I've been enjoying them.  Each of the mini quilt is 12-14" square so in general they are quick projects.  However, some of them haven't been easy to make.  This one had an error in the instructions for the acorns, plus the pattern was printed in such small type I could hardly read any of it until I enlarged it. 

With the fall mini quilt done, I've turned my attention to the Sunflower mini.

 The spool units are both done as well as the centers of the 2 sunflowers.  Those petals will take me some time to make with all those tiny pieces.

And when I'm tired of holding onto those tiny pieces, then I've switched to the RWB leader/ender blocks in between.    

Small finishes

Binding small projects can sometimes go much more quickly than planned.  I figured these would take me a multiple evenings in front of the TV, but . . . they're both all done already. I even got the ribbon hangers sewn onto both to hang from the hooks on my front door.  

The texture on both of these door hangers is just wonderful.  Thank you to Anessa, who quilted them.  The Valentine hanger has hearts floating around with swirls.  These were cute before quilting, but pretty stitching just makes them come alive.

The pumpkin door hanger has flowers quilted into it.  The binding that came with this one is the same gingham print as the frame around the pumpkin.  

I'm totally thrilled with how these turned out.  I had subscribed to this "door hanger of the month" program from Fat Quarter Shop a couple of years ago.  But not all of them are done, and a couple may never be done because I don't care for the design.  In those cases I'll repurpose the fabrics for something different.   

The first one I made was the Easter one, with the big chocolate bunny.  Then I did the patriotic one, which is currently hanging on my door.  The winter snowman and the summery watermelon ones followed.  The tulip hanger is not a favorite however.  I quilted it myself, and it is kind of limp - plus the tulips don't show up very well.  The kit fabrics just didn't have good contrast for those tulips but that wasn't obvious enough to me until it was done.  Oh well.  

Still in their boxes are the other 5 door hanger kits.  It remains to be seen which ones I actually decide to make.  These 7 pretty much cover all the seasons already.  

Design Wall Monday - June21

Last week I stayed focused and actually got some tasks done.  My reward - pulling out some PIGS!  I'm going to work on a couple of new projects, both mini quilts from kits hanging out in my sewing room.

I began with a cute little mini for fall, with acorns and leaves that I bought because it was so darn cute.  But then you get it home and realize it requires cutting LOTS of pieces only 3/4" square.  Yikes!!  So it has been waiting until now.  First step - make those 4 acorns.  And right off the bat I'm not happy with the pattern.  Holy cow - it's written in 10 point type!!  Small type doesn't make me happy.  Neither do instructions that guide you to something that looks nothing like the picture.  Acorn #1 was a failure!

There was plenty of fabric so I recut that bottom green section and made the little corner pieces smaller.  The pattern called for 1.5" background squares, and I changed them to 1" squares.  Much better.  These 4 acorns are 3" (finished) blocks.  That is insane!!  Now on to making the 3" leaf blocks with their gazillion tiny HSTs.  There will be 5 leaves.   

The other mini quilt kit should be much easier to make.  These kits are from 2023, so they've been laying around too long too.  This one is so cute!

All of the pieces are cut, and labeled on a design board so it will be ready to start sewing.  I will point out there are 56 little 1" squares for the corners of all those sunflower petals.  Maybe it won't be as quick as I thought. 

A lot of cutting happened on Sunday, including plenty of parts for more Quilts of Valor blocks.  The final borders for Indigo Way are ready. And a whole bunch of the 4-Patch Fun leader/ender blocks are cut. Two more of the Spool blocks are half done.  And strips are cut for a couple more of the 25-Patch for the Ribbon QOV.  No chance of getting bored this week.

As for hand stitching, I'm so excited by the quilting that the long armer did on these 2 door hangers, and they are now both ready to bind.  Because these are small they are quick to bind.  I'm starting with the pumpkin door hanger. 

OK - full disclosure - I bought a kit for a bench pillow during Crazy Days on Friday.  So, maybe this will be started this week too.  We'll see how it goes.  We have 2 really nice little quilt shops in town, and I checked out the bargains at both.  A few items came home with me besides that pillow kit - a scrap bag of Halloween fabrics, a few fat quarters and 1 yard cuts, a charm pack, and a couple of patterns.  The only other stop I actually made for Crazy Days was a clothing store where I bought 2 shirts at 50% off.    

There will definitely be more block making in between to keep up with Blockheads, Quilts of Valor, and Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  

I'm linking up today with:

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ 

https://songbirddesigns.blog  

RSC25 - Week #29

First of all - I'm not 100% sure anymore what number of week this is.  I noticed that in June I had said it was Week #24 - TWICE!!  That means we're further into 2025 than I thought. Yikes!!!  It's flying by isn't it?

One more RSC set of blocks has become a flimsy.  I'm really tickled with how this one turned out.  A rainbow of scraps can become a really beautiful quilt.  The Buckeye Beauty blocks are known by a few different names.  I do believe these blocks have become one of my favorite blocks this year and so I just kept making them.  This flimsy has 80 blocks in it.  A couple of extra ones are in the orphan block box - seed for another quilt in the future quite possibly. 

Two purple Gameboard blocks happened, one more lavender, and the other deeper in color.  So far I've been making 2 of these each month.  The first ones began with the 16-Patch units that were left over from a previous project.  But now I'm having to pull out the cookie tins full of postage stamp size squares to make those centers.  No worries - I'll never run out of 1.5" squares to use in these or any future projects. 

With only 2 blocks made each month it will take quite a while yet to have enough for a quilt.  But these do look pretty cute together already.  I'm thinking of a future baby quilt. 

The Paint Chip blocks arrived on my RSC list just this summer, so the collection is still pretty small.  I did a test block in aqua - just because those 2.5" squares were on top in the bin.  But once I did a bit of sorting by color, the other blocks were quick.  I've only made 1 purple one so far this month (not counting the miniature version) and will eventually go back to making the other RSC colors too. These would also make a cute baby quilt.  

Because I got a little carried away with the miniature versions last month, I used most of them in this topper for my front porch table.  It doesn't lay very flat because my quilting wasn't done very well.   

Let's see what else is going on in the RSC world this week.
https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Red, white, and blue

I had a couple of WIPs on my To Do list for this week, and made myself a promise to finish those tasks before playing with anything else.  I'm happy to say to both the Buckeye Beauty quilt top, and the row for Saturday Sampler were finished.  

Indigo Way also has 1 border added.  As is, the top is only 51 x 64 and for a Quilt of Valor it needs to be a little larger.  The plan is to add a dark blue outer border.  

And since I'm determined NOT to fall behind with the weekly Blockheads sew-along, more red, white, and blue was on my agenda. 

Sandcastles, by Sherri McConnell is the Blockheads block for this week.  This was another quick block to make.  It's a 9" finished block, and I made 2 versions.  I'm using scraps for these blocks, and will most likely use them in a future Quilt of Valor.  I think there could even be enough for 2 Quilts of Valor.  And because I had the RWB scraps out . . . I kept right on playing with some current QOV blocks.

There is a QOV sew-along beginning on Alycia's Quiltygirl blog and I just HAD to join in.  I have no delusions about keeping up each week.  But I can keep making the blocks for The Ribbon as time allows.  Besides - I really like her design for this quilt.  So far I've made 2 (of 18) of the 25-Patch blocks for this one.  Again, the plan is for scrappy.  These use 2" strips.  

Bonnie Hunter posted her annual Leader/Ender pattern earlier in the month, and I've made a few in . . . red, white, and blue.  She's calling it 4-Patch Fun.  While playing with RWB scraps last week, I cut a bunch of parts for these little (6" finished) blocks and did use them this week as a Leader/Ender in between my other projects. It's nice to slide these through before and after, rather than cutting thread each time I end a seam.  Guess it's time to cut another stack of these.  I layed them out together on the front porch, but also am thinking these could look great used as a border around a patriotic panel.  Hmmm . . .   

Saturday Sampler row #6

This month's row for Saturday Sampler was a little tricky, but it's done.  And I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out.  The previous blocks used 2 or 3 of the 6 fabrics, but this one used 5 of them in the blocks.  Next month should be the final row design.  It looks like it's a narrow row, done twice - both above and below this center row. 

Midweek progress

The Buckeye Beauty blocks are now a flimsy.  Yay!!  It's so easy for me to procrastinate on long-term projects, but I finally just dug in and finished it.  There is even a backing selected I think.  I made myself a promise that nothing new could be started until I got a couple of WIP moved forward this week. I can check off one of those now.

Next up is Saturday Sampler.  This month's row has 2 different block designs alternated in the row, using 5 different fabrics.  Block A is all done - 4 of them.  This row is 15" tall, so each of the blocks are 8 x 15. 

Block B has a good start. 

The parts are cut for 2 purple Gameboard blocks for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and there are some 2.5" squares sorted out for Paint Chip blocks.  Hopefully they will all be sewn by the end of the week.