Orange in May

If all goes well, this post will appear as scheduled on Saturday morning when we are just getting ready for the wedding. That will be the second of our big events this week!

 

I am celebrating the month of May with the orange of the Florida gators!

Sydney has been to commencement, graduation and the engineering pinky ring society ceremony. 

She is officially done with UF and ready to start her new job in July. We all went to Gainesville on Monday and I have a house with all three kids until we leave for the wedding. (Hopefully we are there now and this posted as planned.) 

There were A LOT of gator chomps as the graduates crossed the stage. Also a couple of back flips, a magic trick, some confetti, and many imaginary golf shots. The kids were all trying to think of something creative to do when their name was called. 

There has to be quilt for the wedding of course, and Anna chose a Double Wedding Ring in blue batik fabrics. I am trying hard not to think about all those bias curves.  

We worked together to get the background pieces cut out using the accuquilt, and ironed them all to freezer paper so that we can collect signatures. 

Kurt's sister is in charge of the blocks which will take the place of a guest book. I hope that everyone is enjoying orange so far! I know that I say this a lot, but things will slow down for me soon. Until then, enjoy spring flowers and orange flowers.

New Color for May

 

May is all about orange! I chose this because it is usually a small color, and May is an unusually large month. I do have some string blocks to share, not because I made them this month, but because I sewed a bunch of strings at the cabin last summer. Anna is home for the next week! We will all go to Sydney's graduation on Monday and then hang out until it is time to go to the wedding next weekend. I will be at school two days this week. It would have been great to take the entire week, but AP testing starts on Monday and It would be rude to just disappear and leave everyone else to do the work. For today, I need to polish off my graduate school work for the week and see if Anna wants to do anything festive before the wedding. Maybe a mani-pedi?  How do your orange scraps look? It is a festive color, even if it can seem a bit aggressive. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Last Pink Saturday

How has another month rushed by? There wasn't much time to sew this week, but I caught up with a few things from the ironing basket and the sorting piles to come up with some more blocks to add to the wall. 

There were some beautiful sunrises this week. 

Also a lot of end of year rushing at work, which made it nice to take a deep breath and find a  minute every morning to just take it all in. 

My main goal for this morning it to get the log cabin blocks done and off of the frame. Anna will be here on Friday to stay with us until the wedding and it would be nice if she had a place to sleep. I got to the end of the batting that I had cut from the roll. I think that was 90 inches and the quilt is 110 inches. So maybe 20 more inches to quilt? I will have to cut piece of batting to move on. I was sure that I could puzzle together some frankenbatting, but I seem to be pretty low on leftovers right now. Honestly, being pretty low on leftovers is a good thing. It means that I am using things up efficiently. Its been over a decade of using up things and it suddenly seems to be making a dent!

Mister linky is below, please share your pink progress for this month. May starts on Friday and it is going to be orange! I made sure to choose a small color because it is going to be a crazy month. End of the year festivities and AP testing at work, graduation for Sydney, Wedding for Anna. Deep breath for me? Time will tell!

ScrapHappy Saturday Pink

 I haven't make much more progress on pink. There are always a couple of leader and ender blocks to add to the wall as I sew other things. Most of my sewing time has been taken up with the log cabin quilt. 

I quilted the first 90 inches. I know that because my batting is 90 inches and I need to add another piece. Extremely large quilts take an very long time. I am using freehand Baptist Fans which is one of my favorite traditional all over quilting designs. There are about 6 inches at one end that the machine can't reach even though I stretched the frame as far out as I could, I will reload it to get to that part as soon as the main surface is done. I need to get this done soon because the frame is taking up most of the room and blocking space. Anna and Sydney will both be here for the week between Sydney's graduation and Anna's wedding, and I think they would both like a place to sleep. Wedding plans seem to be coming along nicely. We all have two more weeks before things get very busy! 

Today Kurt is at tennis and I am going to go to an estate sale to look at a sewing machine for the makerspace at school. I took in my old Kenmore machine, but it wasn't working well. Yesterday I left work early to take it to a sewing machine repair shop. They are only open on 10-4 during weekdays, so I had to rush out early to get there in time. Hopefully they will be able to figure out what is going on. I was planning on letting Sydney have that machine when she moves into her new apartment in July. She thinks that she would like to modify vintage clothes as a hobby when she starts her new job. 

Tomorrow we are going to see the all school musical which is Les Miserable. Today I need to buckle down and get some school work done. A new term started on Monday and so we are all in the starting phase of figuring out the expectations for all the new classes. Somehow I ended up with three classes again this term, even though it is usually two. One is about technology, one is about human resources and the other is for my literature review. Time to stop procrastinating and jump in! How are your weekend plans shaping up? Hopefully you have found some time to sew. It's good for the soul. 

Spring Rains

 

It has been cold and rainy in Florida. Kurt has been gone all week for work and to visit his dad. Sydney is home for the weekend. She is starting to count down days until she graduates from UF next month. Anna is polishing off all of her wedding plans. The first week in May is going to be a lot!

I spent some time sewing together 10.5 inch squares from men's flannel shirts to make a backing for the log cabin quilt. 

This is the last giant quilt that I want to get finished before I collapse the film down to a smaller size. I need to get that one loaded up and then start to work on the binding for Dear Jane. 

It has been years since I did a scalloped binding, that will take a bit of mental effort. I see that the Artemis II astronauts splashed down. That is nice to hear. I am looking forward to a quiet weekend much closer to home. 

How are your weekend plans shaping up?

Long Weekend

 We had Friday off of school for Easter weekend. We don't always get religious holidays, but they gave it to us this year. It is the last long weekend until Memorial day at the end of May, so I am trying to enjoy it.  Thursday, also known as fake Friday, was trivia. We won! It always comes down to the last question, we didn't know it and bet zero. 

Yesterday I brought up the fabric basket where I dump all the leftover fabric for later. I sorted and cut and put things away. It felt good to start fresh again. 

Then I celebrated by sewing some pink. Look how happy those blocks look? Such a softer and less angry version of red. Have you started on pink yet? 

PINK!!

 

Are your ready for pink? A new month means a new color and I am ready for something new. How about you?

I've been trying to get out in the mornings a bit. I had a late start on Tuesday and spent a few minutes to enjoy the sunrise.

A sailboat got stranded on the beach Saturday night. It was stormy with big wind gusts. 

Then we went out tonight to enjoy the Artemis II launch. It was packed!

Coming Home Again

Kurt and I had the best time in Jamaica. Many walks on the beach, a little too much time in the sun. 

There was nothing more urgent on the schedule than a dinner reservation. 

It was just the reset that I needed after getting all too caught up in the worry over having a job next year. 

We got home again late Wednesday which left time for a few more log cabin blocks. I finally had to call it quits yesterday when I ran out of foundation paper patterns. I will need to make a few more copies and then continue to figure out where to go with the design. I think this will be called fractured diamonds. Maybe I will add a few more rows to the bottom to put the red diamond at the break between the first and second third. Then I think that I want to mirror the purple and red chevrons near the right hand side. The whole thing is going to be rotated... so something like this... 

Hmmm. It is all too symmetrical now that I look at it this way. I will keep playing. Maybe if the red diamond is at the first third then the peak of the chevron can be at the second third? At some point I will need to decide on a size. Having some parameters might help. Given that the blocks are going to finish at 2.5 inches, it isn't as large as it seems. I might need to get some graph paper out to do some planning. 

I ran out of red leaders and enders while I was sewing the log cabin blocks, but there is a good representation of red on the wall. Time to go and figure out what color is next! (Just checked, and pink is up next!)

 It has been a lovely week. Spring break is one of the nice things about teaching. How has your red month progressed? 

Spring Break Relaxing with Red

 So maybe red isn't the color that comes to mind when you think about relaxation, but it is a great color for spring break. Kurt and I are (hopefully) off to Jamaica for the trip that was supposed to have happened over Veteran's day when they had that massive hurricane. So far our flight has been delayed 45 minutes due to the TSA issues, but we are patient and hopeful. 

I pulled out this tiny log cabin UFO last week and started adding blocks. I am not settled on an exact layout quite yet, but I had lots of extra red blocks. I worked during the week on adding more orange and yellow. It looks like green and purple are up next. These blocks are paper pieced and each block is 3 inches unfinished with 13 pieces. I used up as many crumbs as I had and then dug into the string bin. After a massive organization for the new year, I have color sorted bags of strings and crumbs in all the colors of the rainbow. 

While putting together the log cabin blocks, I worked a few more red blocks in as leaders and enders. Finding contrasting shades of red for the centers of the dot blocks was not easy, so I went with some alternate colors instead. I don't have nearly as many reds as blues or greens, so there won't be too many more for next week which is the last red Saturday. How are your blocks coming along this month? Misterlinky is below. Please share with us all. This is scheduled for bright and early on Saturday, hopefully it all works as it should because I will be on a beach with an adult beverage and a trashy romance novel. 

How are your reds coming along. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Radiant in Red

 I sewed - on a Thursday! Yesterday was a teacher workday which meant that Thursday felt like a Friday and so I sewed. Crumb strips are so relaxing to make. No measuring, very little cutting. Then I went out and got a massage. Apparently I have a lot of tension in my back. No surprise there. Things have settled down at work though and spring break is right around the corner. My goal for today is to finish up the rest of my graduate school work for this week so that I can slide into the break with no stress. The first chapter of my dissertation was officially accepted! It is actually chapter 3, but it is the first one that I have written. I learned last weekend that all of the necessary people were not part of my Canvas classroom to give approval to my submission, but I got that all straightened out and that means one class is off of my to-do list. I have a haircut first thing this morning and then I will power through the rest. How are your reds coming along? I know that people do red and white quilts, but red is so strong - I think it looks better with other blocks.