ScrapHappy Saturday - The Longest Week

I am so sorry that I have dropped off the radar for the last week. I usually try to pop back in on the first of the month to announce the new color, though I am happy to see that I did mention it last week in preparation. It is going to be aqua for July.

Sadly, Kurt's father passed away early on Monday. It has been a long week of hospital to hospice to funeral home. Once the decision was made to move to hospice, everything else got easier. It was a relief to see him finally out of pain and past the anxiety that had taken over. I can't say enough about how helpful and supportive everyone there was. It was the same hospice where Kurt's mom passed away 10 years ago. 

For us, it has been a lot of back and forth between Virginia and North Carolina. Kurt's dad was supposed to be at the Cabin with us for the holiday weekend along with his new girlfriend and Kurt's sister Leslie who lives in a supported group home in NC. Since she had planned to be away for the weekend already, we went down to pick her up and she is at the cabin with us for the weekend. She has helped Kurt with a demolition project and he drove her down yesterday on the UTV to pick up a package. Then we were able to see fireworks from the cabin last night. She wants to do smores tonight, and we will do those on the grill after hamburgers. We should have a big bonfire, but it is very hot and also difficult to get Leslie and her walker over the rough mountain terrain. 

There was a fox on the road during one of our trips out. We will head back to Florida a little earlier than planned so that we can get Leslie back into her normal routine next week. I seem to have quite a lot of aqua hexies that I can sew in the car. I must have checked the color before we left. That seems like a long time ago now.

Most of my sewing happened early in the summer. I have a nice stack of string blocks that I will bring back to add to my collection. 

I also have a new rag rug loom, but that will stay here. I will work on my rug the next time we are back. Maybe a long weekend for labor day? That is too far away to think about right now. The rug is a bit chaotic, but I am learning a new skill and it will get better. We have a celebration of life scheduled for July 25th and potentially more trips to settle affairs and estates. 

I hope that you are all having a celebratory weekend. For those in the US it is Independence Day. Kurt got Friday off this year because the 4th is on a Saturday, but he has been working a scattered schedule lately of only doing the most important things between handling all the rest. I am glad that I am on a break from both my own job and my graduate school work at the moment. That makes it easier to juggle the rest. 

Car Sewing

 I am in North Carolina for a few days. Kurt was planning to come down for the weekend to visit his dad, but he isn't doing as well as we had hoped and so I decided to come and support Kurt. We are headed over the hospital now that visiting hours are open again. I actually did quite a bit of string block sewing this week, but didn't take a photo as we dashed out the door. The week was more projects at the cabin, but nothing photo worthy. I had the good sense to grab my hexie bag as we left and I got a few of those done on the drive. I am sure there will be time for few more of those today. How is your June going? It is the last pastel Saturday. I know that it has been a bit of a strange month without a proper color, but it has been fun to see what people do with catch up and overflow. I think that it helps to round things out and take stock in the middle of the year. July will be aqua, so it is a bit more of a proper color. I feel that too many shades live somewhere between blue and green and love having a chance to explore those shades each year. I have a separate bin for these. If yours are not segregated, try looking for anything that isn't quite blue or green and you will be on the right track. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Oddball Triangles

I debated with myself about which sewing projects to bring up to the mountains. I ended up grabbing a project bin with triangles. You know the type that I mean -- extra bits leftover from making binding or trimming other things. I try to cut everything down to uniform squares and strips, but these are the oddballs. I had some strings here already, so I think I will work on those next.

I have some foundation paper piecing that I am trying out.

The first pattern is a set of three flying geese. So cute and so tiny. Also some economy blocks. The long side on both are 3.5, so I am working with the tiny bits.  

Our progress on the windows is slow and steady. We ran out of the tape that goes around the frame though and so took a pause yesterday afternoon to visit a winery.  Yesterday was a work holiday for Kurt, so he wasn't going back and forth to meetings. We are getting more efficient at the installation, but it is a very old house and nothing is ever straight or simple here. Having the windows will be nice, some of the old ones were broken and many were painted shut. I think we have one more to go after this dining room bay which is a set of three. Kurt loves having projects to work on. He wanted to build a log cabin from a kit but I was concerned that we wouldn't have anywhere to sleep while it was under construction. So this was our compromise. I love having the land to tend and logs to cut while Kurt has so many projects to enjoy. I used to think that he worked too hard, and then one day I saw him standing on his newly completed deck with this look of absolute joy on his face. I wouldn't have guessed we could do so much but I guess you never know until you give it a shot. 

Then it was back to our window wildlife sightings. The same deer comes through the front yard most evenings. We are calling him John (like the John Deer the tractors).

Then Bill came around the other side of the house on the edge of the driveway. He has been around for at least three years now and we named him after Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Mountain Edition

I have not yet set up my sewing machine in Virginia. There has been hand sewing of hexies.

Most of the time though, there have been projects and quiet relaxation. This deer stood outside the family room for ages last night grazing on grass and trees. 

I got the last room upstairs painted. We call it the bunkbed room. It is where Kurt has meetings when he is working from home. He hasn't been into the office yet, but has been working part time when needed. We aren't taking a summer vacation this year, so he is enjoying some down time. 

I tamed grass. We keep trying to get some low maintenance ground cover to take over, but for now, there is still mowing. Kurt does not enjoy mowing and somehow he always ends up with a broken mower when he is here on business. That means it is always the first thing that I need to do when I get here. 

Kurt spent most of the week in North Carolina visiting his dad who is in the hospital with pneumonia. 

We did spent some time yesterday getting a few new windows installed. The delivery came while Kurt was gone, so we will keep working through those in one by one. I think we have three in and four to go. Maybe five. There is an awkward door that goes out of the master bedroom that we are going to swap for a window instead. After that we will have to redo the siding and so the cycle of projects continues. Kurt really wanted to build a house from scratch, but there seem to be plenty of projects here to keep us both busy. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Pastel Month

I tend to focus on primary colors when using up my scraps for RSC. As much as I try to get a nice variety of all the tints and shades, sometimes the lighter shades get left behind. This is a catch up month of sorts and a chance to focus on those neglected pastel shades that often get forgotten when the colors are too big to finish off during a month. I know that blue and green are both huge for me, and I don't get them whittled down as much as I would like when it is their turn. 

 

We made the drive to the cabin yesterday and so I had a few hours to hand sew hexies in the car. After I got tired of sewing snakes, I started to pair up snakes. I had just gotten my first pair of snakes done when we got into the winding mountain part of the journey and so I have a bit more to work on while we are here. 

It took a while to finish the quilting on the log cabin blocks. This quilt is HUGE and exceeded the capacity of my quilting frame. I would have done it in two chunks if I was smart. Instead, I used the incredibly inefficient method of quilting as much as I could and then unloading it from the frame to finish off the parts that hung off the edges of the frame. I did those on my domestic machine using the same Baptist fan pattern. After it was washed it all looks just fine. 

The back is recycled men's flannel shirts, so the quilt is both huge and heavy. Very snuggly and soft for cold cabin winters. 

Last Orange Saturday

Orange is a small color for most people in a long month of Saturdays. Next month is going to be a catch up month of sorts with the color being "pastel". Find all the extra light blues, light pinks, light greens.  Now is the time to sort them out and use them to round out your collections. The usual colors will return next month, but for now, lets focus on those scraps that can get left behind in a rainbow hued collection. Some blocks need to be able to recede so that others can shine. In the end, that contrast will help your quilt to have a greater dimension and depth.

Tomorrow is still part of the orange month though, so take some time to polish those off if you need to. I got a few leaders and enders put together, but a couple of hours this morning should be enough to round out the collection. Everything is sitting next to the machine and ready to sew.I also pulled out a couple of flimsies to get them ready to move on the next phase. The blossom block turned into a square top which has always bothered me. So I am working on adding top and bottom borders and maybe some Dresden Plate flowers to make things more rectangular. 

There is also the Hen and Chicks top which was the quilt along from 2024. I have decided to hand quilt this one. It is all basted now and ready to take to Virginia next week.

Finally, I made a quick baby quilt for a friend at work who has been having a hard time. Lots of a hard time actually. The baby isn't quite out of the NICU yet, or even back in the state, but hopefully that will happen soon and we will have a shower for him. I cut out the binding yesterday while a friend was over making a t-shirt quilt. I keep pulling out the monochromatic 16 patch blocks and using them for all sorts of things. I was going to make a Sweet Irene quilt with them. It is good to see them getting used up. Leaders and enders can get out of hand if you aren't careful. 

Deanna is the biology teacher who took over my AP classes when I left the classroom to work as the College Coach. We got supplies to make t-shirt quilts as part of the new makerspace at school. I've been working with teachers to practice while we wait for everything to be ready enough for the kids to make quilts. Most of the teachers come in and make a couple of blocks and then get busy and move on to other things. We had a couple of small finished flimsies, but no quilts so far. Deanna came in with all the shirts that she has been saving for her son for the last decade plus and decided she was ready to do this. So she worked during the last couple of weeks of school to get the blocks ready, then watched some Youtube videos about how to put them together. We have a couple of donated sewing machines now, so she put the top together in two big chunks. Then she came over for the last two days and we quilted it up to make this quilt! It is huge! And heavy. And full of so many memories, just the way that t-shirt quilts are supposed to be. She wanted to have it ready to put on his bed when he gets back from a summer college trip next week. 

In other life updates, Sydney has found an apartment! We will help her move in the week after the 4th of July. I submitted a new draft of my literature review for my dissertation yesterday, and there are three more weeks left in this term for my other two classes. Then there is a nice long break and I am so looking forward to chopping wood, painting and helping Kurt with the master bathroom remodel and new windows in Virginia. His dad is coming up for the 4th of July and is bringing a new friend.

ScrapHappy Saturday

 

It is a good thing that I chose a small color for May! I did it quite deliberately, knowing that both a wedding and graduation would take up a bit of time. If only there were a few inches of empty space in my sewing room I would be wildly creating fabric beauty. 

Yesterday was the last day of school! So now there is time. But Sydney has invaded my sewing room, the guest room. Finding a clutter free area of the house has become tricky. We celebrated her birthday on Tuesday. It was Monday, but we never saw her on that day. It is a bit chaotic when the recent college graduate is home for a gap month before starting a new job apparently.  All the love in the world! We are happy to see her from time to time while we host her makeup and clothes. She has been catching up with the boyfriend from Iowa who goes to college here at FIT. She is doing a girls weekend with high school friends who are now done with college and back for the summer. She is loving every minute of it and we are so happy to have her her (along with her wardrobe of course).  

I mostly finished a t-shirt quilt with things that I had saved from middle school and high school. It is not a pretty color combination, but it is my youth. We have had teachers in making their own t-shirt quilts in our new makerspace at school. I will try to snap a photo as we start getting to the flimsy stage with some of them. 

Mr. Linky was being difficult. I think it is working now. This might be my motivation to move to InLinkz which is prettier anyway. 

SrapHappy Saturday - Calm After the Storm

 It has been a lot for a very long time. Now I am looking forward to doing very little for a a while. 

The wedding was beautiful. It took place outside at a sailing squadron in Sarasota. Anna and Jordan are both big sailors, and so there were many sailing themed decorations. 

Sydney brought her new boyfriend. Which was a  big deal, because no casual plus ones were allowed. So that makes him a non-casual boyfriend. She is here with us until she starts her new job at the end of July. Between now and then she just needs to get an apartment in Bocca and move out of her apartment in Gainesville. 

I didn't get many photos, and the official ones are not back from the photographer yet, She won't send out unedited proofs and so that will take a bit of time. There was a sunset, which felt strange, because we see the sunrise on the east coast. Sunsets are pretty too. 

At the end of the evening, the groomsmen threw Jordan into the bay and Anna followed. She was not planning to save her wedding dress, and so it was fine that they all got a little wet. 

How has your month been so far? I do plan to dig into some orange scraps today. Mindless sewing is just what I need right now. I do have plans for the baby quilt though. It is going to be wonky and free form sailboats and nautical flags that spell out the baby's name. It is going to be James by the way, we found out at the wedding that it will be a boy. They hid the name in nautical flags on the seating chart for the wedding. 

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.