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.