A sew-free zone

 

First of all, I need to wish a very Happy Birthday to my firstborn today!!  She's a busy working mom to 3 kids and 3 dogs, and wife to 1 husband.  Hope she has a really good day!

My house was a "sew-free" zone on Monday, and might be again today.   Yesterday I played 18 holes of golf with my husband.  He wanted to get in a practice round at the course (45-60 minutes away) his tournament will be on Friday, so we made a tee time.  It was a gorgeous day for golf - low 80s for temps and not windy.  Yay!!  

Today is a haircut and manicure day, but maybe I'll find time for a little sewing.  Tomorrow I have my annual physical, and a DAR meeting.  Seems like a really good time to take a day off from blogging.  See you Thursday - maybe. 

Design Wall Monday - July 7

 I've been on a roll lately with sewing nearly every day for at least an hour or 2, some days a lot more.  It really adds up. But today will hopefully be spent on a golf course and not in the sewing room.   

It will be a semi busy week, so I'm being more reasonable with my plans for the week.  I picked up the Scrappy Pyramids quilt from the quilter last week, so I'm hoping to get that one bound.  The binding is scrappy too, and all from the leftover binding chunks in a drawer.  I got a start yesterday hand stitching that binding down, so hopefully it will easily be finished by the end of this week.  

The other 2 projects I plan to work on this week are also UFOs that need attention.  One is another doll quilt, and the other is a Quilt of Valor.  The doll quilt just needs binding too, so that should be a quick finish as it's only about 20" square. 
 

The other UFO that needs attention . . . Indigo Way. This was a Bonnie Hunter mystery a couple of years ago.  I made some blocks at the time, but never actually put them together.  The blocks and lots of parts of blocks have been languishing in the project box.  This is my plan for using the blocks so far. The corner triangles still need to be cut.   In order to make it large enough for a Quilt of Valor I'll have to add a couple of wide outer borders.  

The Buckeye Beauty blocks all need to be sewn into sets of 4 before laying them out for final assembly.  There is a small stack yet that need to become a 4-sie.  That would bring this project one step closer to being finished. 

And of course there will be various block sewing - like always - RSC blocks, Leaders/Enders, Blockheads, more QOV blocks.  Maybe some other small things like mug rugs or placemats.  Whatever strikes my fancy, right?  There are parts already cut for more QOV blocks, and for more RSC (purple) blocks.  Kitting up block pieces makes it really quick to sew a bunch of new blocks.  

I'm linking up today with:

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ 

https://songbirddesigns.blog  

RSC25 - Week #26

Halfway through the year already!!!  That means we're on color #7 already, and I dug right into the purples with glee this week.  Once I pulled out the purple scrap bin, a lot of cutting happened all at once.  I may have gotten carried away with purple and July is just beginning. 

The first purple blocks were the Buckeye Beauty.  I'm hoping to have enough of these blocks now to start assembling the quilt top.  I haven't counted them yet but I'm getting close I think.  I've been sewing these individual blocks into 4-sies.  By the end of July, I'm hoping to have a completed flimsy of Buckeye Beauty. 

Three purple Give It a Whirl blocks came next.  There are 3 of each color so far, meaning there are 21 of these.  They add up quickly.  

Then came some Hollow-9 blocks, and a couple of string triangles.

And finally just 1 Brighten block was added to that collection.

I'm not worried about having nothing purple to make the rest of the month however, because there are other RSC block sets hanging in the closet that need purple.  And if I were to look through the UFOs, I'm sure there is purple there too.  

There is a LOT MORE inspiration out there in the RSC blog posts.

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

July 4th

 Happy 4th of July!!

One of my husband's cousins had a funny post on Facebook yesterday . . .
On this date July 3rd 1776, Thomas Jefferson historically said "holy crap!! Is that due tomorrow?"  

Sorry - I just couldn't resist sharing it today.

The June row for Saturday Sampler is finished.  Some of the rows have been narrow, with lots of small (like 4") blocks.  And a couple of rows have been this size - 12" finished - with only 5 blocks in it.  We're over halfway through this program already.

Since I was in a red/white/blue mood a good share of the week I continued to play with the leftovers from Quilts of Valor.  That lead to pulling out some 6.5" orphan blocks from the bin - some are patriotic and others were just random ones.  These will be more mug rugs and the bonus - uses up more orphan blocks. 

To continue on with my focus on red/white/blue, one of the UFO projects on my July goal list is to do something with the Indigo Way blocks that have been languishing in the project box.  This was a Bonnie Hunter pattern from a couple of years ago.  If there aren't enough blocks done for a Quilt of Valor I may end up making a few more.  

Blockheads and Leaders/Enders

The Blockheads 6 program is chugging right along.  This was week #6 already, and so far I've kept up with the weekly blocks. 

Last week's Blockheads blocks were Dew Drops by Chelsi Stratton. 

This week's block is Moonbeam by Robin Pickens.  It's 18" finished, so twice as large as the previous 5 weeks' blocks.  

So far, we've made 2 blocks each previous week, except for one.  And now we've added one big block to the mix.   Because I'm doing scrappy red/white/blue these blocks are all destined to end up in a Quilt of Valor.  

Ironically about the same time yesterday morning that Moda posted the newest Blockheads block, Bonnie Hunter posted her new Leader/Ender Challenge block.  She's calling this 4-Patch Fun, and it's very similar to the Bento Box block our QOV group has used in the past.  So my brain immediately went to red/white/blue.  While I was cutting the parts for the Moonbeam block I also cut some pieces for some of these.  And I also used some other patriotic fabric scraps.  They did make perfect Leader/Ender pieces while working on the Blockheads block.  These will be very fun to make. 

July 1st finishes

 Yesterday was July 1st - and I have my first finish of the month all checked off.  I really hadn't planned to have a finish already, but it worked out quite nicely.  And I love how this looks sitting on the fireplace hearth in the family room.  

This is the mini quilt made from a Shabby Fabrics kit.  They did this series of minis in 2023 with spools.  I recently bought the July kit from the series, and OMG - it went together so easy.

It only took about a half hour to cut all the pieces, and I laid those pieces out on a design board with the plan to work on this later this week.  But . . . then I thought I would just sew those popsicle sections together.  And you know what happened next!!  Yes I just kept sewing.  This was a 2 hour project including the simple quilting I did, not counting the hour it took to hand stitch that binding down.  

There is a 2nd July finish already too, but this one really didn't have much left to do.  The Sweet Potato puffy bag!  All I had left to do was to top stitch around the top to anchor the lining and handles nicely.  It's pretty cute, and would make a fun gift for a little girl.  This is a free pattern that can be downloaded.

Goals, goals, goals

The goal list for July looks really long, but it's actually pretty reasonable.  A lot of binding is listed to help me remember what projects are already in the quilting phase, and MIGHT be ready to bind.  And some projects are actually pretty small, like working on the RSC blocks in the new color.  I've chosen a couple of new PIG projects that will be rewards for finishing something else.  

• 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
• 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
• 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

Meeting my goals from June was mostly a success.  The best finish for June, besides that genealogy project, was getting that enormous Saturday Sampler quilt bound.  It's 98" square!! Most of the items on my June goal list are either finished, or saw some progress.  That makes for success in my mind.