ScrapHappy Saturday - Bright and Happy Progress

I know that I say this every week, but boy has it been a week!  Field trips and SATs and special assemblies, it seems like every day had something going on. I got a few yellow leader and ender squares sewn as I was putting together log cabin sections. I am now officially out of design wall space, So I will need to find a section of floor to clear out. 

I think this will be the design for my next hexie quilt. These are 1 inch blocks instead of the .75 inch blocks of the hexie quilt and they feel HUGE by comparison. I have yellow and blue hexies cut out and ready for the next long car trip. 

Spring has been strange in Florida this year. One day is beautiful and almost summer and then the next day a front moves in and I am pulling out a sweater again. This happy yellow hibiscus doesn't seem to mind though. It thinks spring has sprung. I hope that some signs of spring are starting to appear where you are, unless of course you are in fall. I think fall and spring are so much nicer than winter and summer. I guess I am just all about moderation. Misterlinky is below, please share your progress with us all. 
 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Sunny Day

It is a new month and a chance to dig into a fresh color.  I know that blue never seems to end, but I hope that you made a dent. Yellow will be the focus for the month, so I hope that you are feeling bright and sunny!

I got a few rows done on the hand quilting of the hexie diamonds, but there hasn't been much time for sewing this week. 

There were two evening events at school this week, one I had to plan and run. The other one I just showed up and talked. Then Thursday Kurt and I went to a concert in Orlando. On a school night! It was They Might Be Giants, a quirky band that we have been listening to together since college. It was a lot of fun, but also exhausting to get up the next morning. We are getting a bit old to stand in  a mosh pit for hours and hours. Thankfully there will be time this weekend to recharge and refresh. 

Sydney had a busy week as well with a conference and an industry night. She has an internship set up for the summer already, but it is good experience for her to go to events like that to talk to companies and find out what the job opportunities might be after she graduates - hopefully next year. It is a difficult time to be an environmental engineer, but she also does a lot of civil engineering, so that should be more safe right now. 

I think that the most exciting thing I have on the schedule for today is a haircut. I am definitely feeling good about having some quite time with yellow scraps. 

How many yellow scraps do you have to play with this month? 

March Madness

 It is going to be March so soon! I know that many of you are not done with blue yet, don't worry, there will be a catch up month later. For now though, do what you can before the end of the week and then think about digging into your yellow! Yes, yellow for spring. 

I started a rope rug this weekend. Everything started well enough, so far so good.

But then I got impatient, and I guess I thought it would all work out eventually. The rounded corners didn't want to lie down though. And so after a bunch of wrestling and stretching and swearing, I decided to let them fold back instead of lying down. It started so well, but this isn't how it was supposed to turn out. Not to worry, I will try again. I really do like the idea of a rope rug. I will pay more attention to the ends lying flat next time. Everything gets easier with practice, right? 

After I gave up on the rope rug, I went back to hand quilting the hexies. I have pink thread for the basket quilt on order, but I have almost all of the colors of thread that I need for the hexies. The quilting will be just straight lines thru the center of each row of hexies. It goes pretty quickly. I am finding hand quilting to be very relaxing right now. It is nice not to be in high gear from time to time. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Short Blue Month

Next Saturday will be March! That means just one more week to finish up those blues. There will be a catch up opportunity at the end of the year in case you aren't quite done yet. Blue is just one of those colors that keeps going. The Rainbow Scrap Challenge is all about doing what works for you though, so don't feel like you have to "finish" every color every month. Every new quilt brings new scraps and the cycle starts over. I did a good job of using up the precut squares in blue, but not so much on making more. 

In general, I have been making good progress this week on using things up. I did a deep dive into batting on Sunday and came up with enough to piece together for the hexie quilt. 

It has a rainbow scrap striped backing as well, so lots of good use it up energy going on there. I have been watching youtube videos and thinking about making a jelly roll rug to put in front of the fireplace in Virginia. It seems to get grungy with ashes and bark. 

Then, while I was busy trying to make do, I ran out of thread right in the middle of hand quilting the baskets. I got an adorable sampler of 12 wt. variegated threads and the spools were tiny. I can't buy just the pink that I used up, which means I will need another sampler pack of 4. 

I will try to put the other colors to good use in the hexies though, so no need to worry.

When finishing up long-term projects, I always start to think about what is next. I was pondering a snake like arrangements of monochromatic hexies in a larger size. The rainbow diamonds are 3/4 of an inch, which made me order a cutter for the go that makes 1 inch hexies. They seem huge by comparison! I am not ready to start a new quilt yet, but it will be nice to have a portable project to carry along the next time we travel. Spring break will be in the mountains, but we have a trip to Alaska booked for this summer! It is one for the bucket list. 

Misterlinky is below, share your blue progress with us all. 

ScrapHappy Saturday Progress

 

The hexies quilt is getting so close to being done. All the light edges are done, it is just a few more dark hexies that I need to add to the bottom row of dark. Honestly it is just a few hours of work. I am thinking of making stripes of each color for the back. I want to hand quilt it with horizontal lines, so that should not cause too many problems. 

I am still chipping away at the log cabin blocks. I lay each one out of the floor and then double check the layout before sewing it together. There is only one so far that got twisted during sewing. What are you up to in the sewing room? 

Hand Sewing on Sunday

I am evening up the edges of the hexie quilt! The half hexies are different on the top than the bottom, which made me pause for a minute. Now that I am halfway done though, I have the routine down. 

 

I also have two and a half rows done on the basket quilt Baptist fan quilting! Look at that texture. I will be sure to get a bit more done during the super bowl tonight. Anna and Jordan came in for the weekend to go a birthday party and are just now back in time for the big game. Of course, after they showed up, it occurred to us that we don't have a television. Kurt and I just watch things individually on our own devices these days. We do have a projector though, that we got to watch Christmas movies with the kids. We will get that all set up and watch some sports during family game night tonight. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Catching up on UFOs

I got some more blue blocks made while I was working on a UFO. After finishing the basket quilt top last week, I dug out a log cabin UFO to figure out why it got stuck. I had started enough blocks, but then got stuck when I ran out of light colored logs. Once I cut a few more of those, I was good to go and quickly finished up enough blocks for the full sized quilt that is in my mind for the main bedroom at the cabin. 

I really wanted to a barn raising layout, but there isn't really enough space to lay it all out at once. Instead I settled in this alternating light and dark diamond layout. I can lay out a set of 16 blocks and then sew those together pretty quickly. The blocks finish at 7 inches each and I need enough for a king sized bed with a good amount of overhang which should make the layout about 15 by 15. What is going on in your sewing room this weekend? 

 

A New Hand Quilting Project

 

I got a couple of borders on the basket quilt yesterday. The inner border was a bit sketchy. The combination of a thin border on a stretchy bias edge was almost too much. The second border seemed to bring everything back under control again, but it was touch and go for a while. I ordered a Baptist fan stencil, it should be here tomorrow. I was kind of surprised that I did not have one. I love doing fans, but they are usually free form. This quilt seemed to want something more regular though. I also ordered some 12 weight thread in a nice variegated yellow and pink shade that I think will work nicely. I have been streaming The Last Homely House on you tube while sewing lately and Kate does a lot of hand quilting with that type of thread. Sew, I thought I would give it a try. I have used lighter weight quilting thread as well as heavier Pearle cotton, so I am hoping that this will be somewhere in between. I got the back ready and pieced together some extra batting, but I don't want to layer it all up until after the stencil arrives. I am going to mark it with frixion pens that I have been using for my planner lately. I usually use Crayola washable markers, but they do tend to rub off over time, so I will see if I like this better. I am a slow hand quilter, so it needs to be sturdy to still be in good shape years from now when it is done.

There was a retirement party at work on Friday for our guidance clerk. She has always been so sweet and supportive of my quilting, so I just had to find a quilt for her to take with her. I chose a bullseye quilt which was one of my RSC22 quilts.  I am happy for her, but still sad that she will be gone. It is nice when people really want to help the kids. 

I have a draft of a paper that is due tonight on constructivist learning theory and educational standards. I will just give that a quick final edit and then make my way back down to the sewing space. I am thinking about pulling out a log cabin UFO that could be my next flimsy finish. I hope that you are finding time to sew something on this lazy Sunday. It is good to rest up before a new week comes on full force. Be sure to take some time to see what other slow stitching is happening at Kathy's Quilts before the weekends slips away. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Bold and Blue

I haven't put away the pink bin quite yet, but that will be first for today. The blue bin is a bit overflowing and will take some time to sort out. There are a few new blue blocks on the leader and ender project that is new for this year. I had a couple of random four patches lying around that got worked in as well.  

That all happened while I was webbing the top together for the basket quilt. You can't do simple stack and sew of of blocks with a diagonal setting like you can for a straight set, so it was a slow and steady process of sew a row and then check to make sure it is good before adding the next row.  I think some kind of border would be good. I would like to use the pink, but I pulled a 3.5 strip out of the scrap bin for the cornerstones and I think that is mostly used up. I will do a bit of digging and see what there is. It is a small quilt, so it won't take much. 

Even though it was a busy week at work, it looks like a nice calm weekend. I am thinking about loading another quilt on the frame. I think I have several with backing already pieced and I have a fresh new roll of batting to use along with some new spools of thread. Ah, the possibilities!

Sunday Slowdown

When I was clearing out and organizing for the new year, I found these hand applique baskets that have been done for quite a while. The last time I rediscovered them, I planned a layout and I figured out that I needed 4 more. I made the 4 more, but then set them aside again. I don't know why. 

Yesterday I submitted all of my work for grad school. It was an easy week. A very short paper and a presentation with a script. Easy and fast. So today I get to play before I start on next week's work. There were not a lot of choices for sashing, because it needed to read as solid. There was enough of the teal and so that won. Most of my yardage is for backings and borders. I usually work from the scrap bins. The cornerstones came from the pink scrap bin because it is still January and that is the one that is available. I don't know if you can see the backgrounds, but they are all different pastel dots. I had some multicolored dots for the setting triangles and so this one is ready to sew together. I tend the make the setting triangles extra large so that they can be trimmed up later. I think this will be one to hand quilt. Maybe a nice Baptist fan? Definitely something nicely traditional. 

Yesterday I went to a luncheon for Cuban missionaries. My friend Linda was organizing it and my friend Sherie was there from a different to support the cause. We used to work together and had so much fun collaborating. She retired though and we fell out of touch. Everyone who retires seems to be loving life all the time. Every so often I wonder why I keep working. Work is a tomorrow problem though, today, I will start sewing some rows together. Right after I go and visit Kathy at Slow Stitching Sunday to see what other handwork people are up to this week. 

Last Pink Saturday!

Where has the month gone? I got some pink blocks done, but there are still a lot of unsorted pink scraps. I got a new gift of scraps from my neighbor on Thursday, and it looks like there is some pink in there to add to the collection. I am mostly done with my graduate school work for the week, so I should have some time today to play with pink some more. Next Saturday will be the first of February and time to dig into blue.

Because Monday was a school holiday, I had an entire day to quilt! What a treat. I got the t-shirt quilt quilted and bound. There is just a tiny bit of binding to hand sew and I can get this back to its new owner. 

Donna at Mama Llama asked about what heat press I use for my t-shirt quilts. She is coming up as a "no reply" blogger for me, so I thought I would answer here. The exact one that I bought two years ago isn't available anymore, but this one is the most similar. The 15 x 15 size works well for t-shirts and you just sandwich the rough cut blocks with lightweight fusible interfacing between teflon ironing sheets like these. There are lots of good Youtube videos to learn how to use it. I think I have made three or four quilts for other people with it and have easily covered the cost of the machine. Having a press makes the process of t-shirts quilts so much more efficient. Stabilizing the shirts is the most time consuming part, and getting it done faster makes the process go much more smoothly. The only down side is that it is pretty bulky to store if you are not making t-shirt quilts often, so thinking about space can be a factor for occasional t-shirt quilt makers. 

I know that I should not say that it has been cold here, because I have seen how cold it is everywhere else. But is has been unusually chilly for us. The snow did not reach this far south in Florida, but the kids in at FSU were having snowball fights on campus for the first time in their lives. UF did not get snow, but they still cancelled class just in case. We just aren't good at cold weather here and people really freak out. It made for a chilly first day of the new metal detectors. It will take a bit of time for the kids to get trained on how to go through more efficiently. After that, it will just be a big time commitment for the staff who has to supervise them. Everyone who spends an hour every morning watching kids walk through metal detectors is not doing the work that they would normally be doing to help the kids learn. We are all pretending to have a positive attitude about keeping everyone safe, but really it is just sad that it feels necessary to do this. 

Misterlinky is below. I can't wait to see how your pinnk projects and blocks came together this month.

Saturday - Sewing Day?

 

I hope that you get some sewing time in today. I am enjoying a quick visit to the mountains to visit snow. 

Kurt came up a day early to to plow the driveway. We got a blade that attaches to the back of the UTV. Isn't he a sweetheart? He is up here for a couple of weeks in a row in the bitter cold and snow, so I am glad to get a weekend here.

Friday Funday

 I am in Virginia for the weekend with my good friend Linda and it is. As the airplane landed, I could see beautiful crystalline snowflakes sticking to the windows. It is sunny and 42 right now, but it is supposed to get quite cold right before the inauguration. I will be back home safely before then, so no need to worry about freezing my toes off. It is so nice to have a nice relaxing weekend in the snow. Being cold all winter would be an entirely different story!

Thursday - Spicy

 

The adventures in organization continue! I threw a bunch of cake decorating tips into the dishwasher yesterday. Anna was really into cake decorating for a while. I was thinking that I might just take the tips to her in Virginia because I was never much of a cake decorator. At one point I bought a clever little frosting tip storage box to keep them all organized. I thought it might be in a corner lazy Susan cabinet where we put mixing and baking things. So I started to dig through that and found the hand mixer. It has been missing for years! Unfortunately, I threw out the beaters yesterday when I was clearing out the bottom drawer. Kurt offered to dig through the trash to find them, but is it really worth digging through the trash to find something that hasn't been used in years? I decided that it was not. 

So while I was digging around for the cake tip box, I pulled out a little tin thinking that would work for storing the tips. Imagine how surprised I was to find it full of Christmas cookies. It wouldn't be quite as surprising if we had baked any cookies this year. Those were the cookies we baked last year. Kurt said they tasted fine and offered to take care of them for me. 

Happy Thursday. It has been a long week, but next week will be a short one, so it all works out in the end. 

Wednesday - A Quickie

 The spice drawer was the perfect choice for a busy weekday. I didn't even get a before photo. Just filled up any empty jars from the overstocks behind and sorted the extra bits into a few jars on the side. There are some empty jars in the dishwasher, but so they will come back soon enough. Having all my spices in matching jars brings me joy. My kids would say it is my OCD shining through, but everything is just so much easier to find when it is uniform and alphabetical. How many times have I bought mustard powder because I thought we were out when it was really just hiding? Nobody needs that much mustard powder! I even added some of the homegrown spices that I grew this summer. I love using sage that came from my own plants. 

I hope that you are having a happy hump day. 

Tuesday - One Day at a Time

  

Being at work again every day is hard! I could really do this if work weeks were 4 days. 5 in a row is just so much! Trying hard to work ahead on grad school so that I can take the weekend off. Wish me luck! This is the bottom drawer in our kitchen. It is supposed to hold baking supplies. It usually holds anything that doesn't have another home. First an empty, clean and then a sort. 

Like things are together now, and a bunch of scary things went into the trash. I ordered a couple of clear bins to keep things sorted. That was a quick one. The spice drawer is on the agenda for tomorrow. Nothing is more fun than alphabetizing the spices!

Monday - Here we go again

The upstairs bathroom was next on the list. I am using a random number generator to choose projects, so it is just luck of the draw that I have already done thee bathrooms. 

We had this one redone just after the pandemic and I love the views. Right now the beach includes backhoes and dump trucks, but it is still nice to look out at the ocean. We had the contractor basically make to entire room waterproof and then put up a barrier free two sided glass shower. The goal was to make it as open as possible. The glass tends to collect hard water spots, and I go in every couple of weeks and give it a good scrub while I am in the shower. The philodendron is getting a little out of control. Maybe I can put a stake in it to get it to grow up a bit more than out? 

There is always the random stuff that collects over time to be put away and then an extra deep clean is in order. It shouldn't take too long to cross this one off the list. 

It is cleaner now, and the counters are clear for the moment. I out a little bin under the sink with the things that get used every day. 

Kurt grabbed a lattice for me at Lowe's this morning and I tried to get the plant to go up a bit. I think I was semi successful. He has asked for a palm tree instead, but those are harder keep alive, so I will stick with this one for now. It is conveniently close to the tub with a spray head that makes watering easy. All the plants that I used to keep in the front steps died terrible thirsty deaths. 

I will cross that job off the list and move on to what is next. This will be a long week at school but then next week is only 4 days for MLK. For weekend I will head to Virginia for a few days, so that will be a bit nice change of pace. I am not sure how long I can keep up with the daily to do lists jobs. I might have to change to weekends only when things get busy again. Right now I need to finish a 3-5 page paper about teacher perceptions of Common Core Standards

Sunday for the Slowdown

It was a long week back at school. It is cold which is unusual for here. Getting back into the flow of things again will take a bit longer I think. I am thankful to have a weekend, even a cold and rainy one. My slow stitching time today will be devoted to hand stitching the binding on my first ever quilt. If I get energetic, I might even try a bit more hand quilting. Hand quilting is not easy through high loft polyester batting, but we live and learn as we evolve in our quilting. I am enjoying the idea of turning my first attempt at quilting into a finished project. It only took a bit more than 25 years. 

If you have more than one RSC25 project in the works, or have a few ongoing projects from years past, these tracking sheets are a great way to keep track. Stephanie makes them for us each year and there are several formats available depending on whether you want to use them electronically or print them and go analog. 

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in word

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in PDF

Rainbow Scrap Challenge Tracking Sheet in pages

I randomly drew the powder room as the next project on the "To Do" list. Honestly I thought it was in pretty good shape. It is just a half bath on the main floor that doesn't get used much. I keep some extra guest towels on the back of the potty. 

Then there is a little corner shelf for sunglasses, sunscreen and TP. Kurt has decided to turn old TP rolls into fire starters and so I will donate these to his new craft project. 

It was quick work to sort through the sunglasses and sunscreen. I am not sure who thought that bug spray, aloe and lotion should all start living in there, but they got moved out. There were some sad and broken sunglasses that have gone away. I really need a few matching containers that are slightly larger to hold those, so I will keep my eyes open. I am not much of a shopper, but maybe something will turn up. 

Then it was just a quick scrub, wipe down and polish to make everything all shiny. It was a quick one today, which is good because my first assignment for statistics is an essay that needs a bit more work. There is a group chat for the class and the professor seems to be fairly strict in her grading. Honestly, I thought I would be doing some math, but so far it is not that at all. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - Pink is a Promise

 

I woke up bright and early this morning to put the binding on this quilt. It is the first that I ever started and it is a bit embarrassing to admit that it is still unfinished after more than 25 years. There was a lot that I didn't know back then and the blocks are poorly constructed by hand because I didn't have a sewing machine. I used puffy high loft polyester binding because I thought that quilts were supposed to be fluffy. That made hand quilting really difficult and binding was incomprehensible to be at that point in time. So in it went to a bag to be carted around from our first condo in Chicago through two Florida houses and finally to our beach condo here. I used walking foot straight line quilting in the muslin sashing and border areas to try to smush everything a bit flatter. The quilt blocks will still need some hand quilting, but I can do that during cold winter nights at the cabin in Virginia. For now I will sew the binding to the back tomorrow during slow stitching Sunday and it will be finished enough to use. Do you still have the first quilt that you ever started? It is fun to look back and appreciate how much more I know now than I did back then.

I think that I added a few more blocks to the pink cross and dots leaders and enders project for this year and I've got a few hexies along to the top of the diamond hexie quilt to straighten out the tip. I think it just needs some half hexies all along the outside to be done. What pink scraps have come out to play in your sewing room? Misterlinky is below. Please share

Friday - for the Finish

 I am fairly amazed that I made it through the first full week of back to school while still managing to cross more organizations tasks off of the list. 

This tiny bookshelf used to live in my sewing room and somehow through the years it ended up in Ryan's closet. I would like to take it to the cabin to keep a stack of games and puzzles. Most of what is there is honestly trash. 

I sorted through and picked out office supplies that should live at school, saving out a few books and magazines along with phone books and my quilting notebooks. Those will all move into the sewing room and the bookshelf will be free to move to the cabin. 

We had an evening event at school last night and I am dragging this morning. Thankfully the weekend is in sight! I didn't manage to do much that was quilting related other than distributing my donated fabric scraps into the appropriate colored bins. I hope you are finding time to fondle some fabric today as well, it is good for the soul!