Rainbow Scrap Challenge Green for February

Welcome to a new month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It is time to put away the blue. It's OK if you aren't done, the pastel shades will have another turn down the road. For now, dig into the green! Think of spring and brighter days to come. 

I am plugging away at chapter 3 of my dissertation today. Every so often when I need to clear my head, I get up and quilt a Dear Jane block. I think that I am on row 3 now, no rush on this one of course, she has been patient so far. 

I know that so much of the US is a blanket of ice and snow. The celebration of life was postponed, which turned out to be a very good thing as that part of North Carolina has snow being measured in feet instead of inches. I think that someone let the spigot outside drip last night so that it didn't freeze and burst. It made this beautiful ice sculpture on the foliage. I will try hard not to go anywhere today. Watching the steam roll off of the crashing ocean waves is fascinating. 

Dear Jane Flimsy

I started this top in 2013.  Most of the blocks were done by the end of that year, but those border triangles got the better of me.   The corners are still a bit wonky, but here is the finished flimsy for Dear Jane.  It has a rainbow layout of course in an around the world layout.   

Sunday Finishing

 

I finished the yellow block of Leap Year last night while we were finishing off watching Shitt's Creek as a family.   

This was the very last Dear Jane block, left side number 6 which is also known as tumbling blocks.  It was English paper pieced.   Though I haven't done much of it, the inset seams worked well that way.  

This is the final border, the right side, ready to be sewn on.  Hard to believe that all these years later I will finally have a finished quilt top.  I started this quilt in 2013 right after finishing my Tiny Tuesday Midget quilt from Sentimental stitches.   A lot happened at first, most of the top was finished before the end of that year.  Then it got set aside, and the longer a quilt is in hibernation, the harder it is to wake it up again.  It will be done today though, at least the top part.  The quilting is another story.  I'm  linking up with Slow Stitching Sunday and Oh Scrap! today.  

Dear Jane Marathon day

I took a day off of work yesterday and decided to sew.   Its been busy and I just needed a breather.   The blocks that are left on Dear Jane at this point are mostly tricky in some way.  This one is called tumbling blocks and has all these inset seams!  I will do English Paper piecing on this one for sure.   

Then there is this one, it was simple enough, I don't know why it waited so long.   I think there are three more to go?   Two need some hand work and I just didn't get to the third by the time everyone came home.   I ran out of freezer paper, and spent the day running around the house finding other things to use instead.   I think I finished only three blocks completely, but two more are well underway.  

I'm usually pretty done by the end of the day right now.  I get home in time to walk the dog and start dinner and then I'm usually ready to collapse.  Seeing the finish line though, I will have to try to make some progress even on school days.  I think I'm settling back into a pattern again with the new semester.

Anna is back at school in time for class "shopping" and Ryan is all settled in with 2 and a half in person classes!   Sydney is glad to be back to brick and mortar, the online learning was OK for a while, but it started to take an emotional toll over time.  
 

Monday Feels Like Sunday

Tomorrow is a new semester at school.  Sydney will be going back in person for the first time since we were all sent home last March.   While I was happy to keep her home and safe, the e-learning is getting more difficult over time and she is one of many who will be returning in person tomorrow.  She asked for black masks in a child size.  Anna wanted more from of sailing fabric.  I don't have any blues to match exactly so I used a variety of greenish blue hues.  I had cut out some atom fabric earlier and blue goes with everything.  I'm awfully tired of mask sewing now, but I'll add the elastic and be done with this batch.  A friend from school wants some for her wedding, and I fixed some elastic for another, but after that  I should be done for now.  

I finished off the orange block of hand quilting on Leap Year and so started on the yellow.  

The plan had been to sew on Dear Jane today, and I did get one block done this morning.  This is block number 12 on the left side.  I stitched a tiny applique diamond to the top and added it to the collection.   Most of the day though was spent moving my sewing room -- AGAIN!   Since we've been here I have moved my machine several times.   Ultimately, Sydney's room is meant to be the sewing studio, but until then I am camped out in Ryan's room.  His spring break was tacked on to the end of the winter vacation, so we are unlikely to see him again until summer.  He called last night and was able to switch his schedule around to have in person classes!  Two and a half of them.  Good news indeed.   Now I'm off to wrap my mind around having a new schedule tomorrow.  I've traded 8 seniors in Capstone Research for 24 9th  graders in Honors Biology.  We are on block schedule now, and some unknown number of students will still  be learning from home, so even a familiar class will seem new again.   

Relax and Enjoy

I can't be sure when I started these blocks.  It was after we moved to this house 10 years ago, but well before I started this blog 5 years ago.  I remember taking blocks along to hand sew when Sydney was taking karate at age 3 and when Ryan was going to chess tournaments at age 6.  The last blocks were finished in August of 2010.  It was going to be a full quilt, but I got sidetracked with Midgets before starting a rainbow version of Jane.  The center blocks are all done for that one and I am actively working on the border blocks again after a break during the rainbow sampler quilts of 2014 and 2015. 

 Jane is hand quilted of course, with individual designs chosen to accent each block.

 It took a bit longer than I expected, and she was taken along on many long car trips and family outings.

After all that time, she needed a good wash, which I did in the bathtub this week.

 The border doesn't show up all that well, I guess the thread matched a little better than I thought.

 I spent yesterday working on the OMG Churn Dash quilt.  I had pinned all the blocks together in groups of 10.  The quilt top is all sketched out of graph paper and I did a count of how many of each color it will need.

So all the blue blocks are officially done! I needed 20 of the O blocks and 22 of the X blocks.  I worked on a few other colors as well in a marathon session of sewing that went into the wee hours this morning.  Much digging through the scrap bins occurred as I had to find more 1 inch strips to add to the nine patch pile along with 2 inch strips for the churn dash blocks.  Today will be a nice calm day of catching up on my circles and grading some essays for school.  I will link up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday as well as Cynthia for Oh Scrap!.  

Finally!

It only took 4 years to hand quilt this little Dear Jane quilt.  I took the last stitches just a few minutes ago after catching up on Downton Abbey, Madame Secretary and The Good Wife.  I'll sew the binding on first thing in the morning.  Now though, I think I'll call it a night.  Good thing it is a school holiday tomorrow!

Sunday Scraps and Stitches

I took my Dear Jane with me to Science Olympiad yesterday.  Even though the kids are all running around madly most of the day, once they are in their events, it gets very quiet.  So I moved the hoop twice during the day.  The weather was absolutely beautiful.  A perfect day to sit outside and hand quilt.  Just three more moves of the hoop should get me back to the begining!  While cleaning out the blue scrap bin, I even found the binding that I had made from the same fabric as the inner border.  

Knowing that Jane is almost done, I pulled out the broken dishes stars and got two new spools of hand quilting thread.  I had wanted to try pearl cotton with some big stitch quilting, but I couldn't find just the right combination of sizes and colors.  I think that regular quilting will work better with the scale of the blocks on this one.  

I was going to do the Bonnie Hunter Mystery last year and cut out the first step before I changed my mind.  That left a lot of pointy spikes which I sewed together into a long strip.  I think that I will use them as a border for these bonus triangles which have been hanging out for many years.  They could also go as stripes into a Chinese Coin type quilt.  I think there are enough of them that I could do both.

Finally, I will use today to catch up on my Leap Year quilt.  I've chosen the fabrics and rough cut circle to hold the days toward the end of the week.  Tuesday has stars from the state of the union.  Friday has tiny buckets for all the rain.  Saturday is a rocket ship for science and today I chose little ice skaters in winter coats for the cold front that moved in last night.  Monday is a school holiday which means an extra day to sew!  Looking forward to every minute of that!  I'm linking up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday as well as Cynthia for Oh Scrap!

World's Slowest Hand Quilter

I might just be the slowest hand quilter ever.  This small Dear Jane Quilt has been in the works for years and years.  The last quilt that I hand quilted was an Elm Creek Sampler, done in 2011.  It took 4 years to get it quilted.  So I guess that makes this one about due as well.  Everything is done except the last half of the border.  That shouldn't take too long, right?

Usually I use a plastic quilting hoop  I switched after breaking of couple of wooden hoops in quick succession.  For the border though, I pulled out a rectangular PVC frame, I think it will make it easier to work on the feathers near the edge of the quilt without having to reposition the hoop so often.  An added bonus is that I can break it down for compact storage during travel.  

This little broken dishes star quilt got layered up yesterday to be next on the list.  It is made from bonus HST units that got squared up to 1.75 inches.  They weren't quite big enough for 2 inches, but 1.5 seemed too tiny.  I even cut the inner border to 1.75 inches, just to remain consistent.  I'm thinking about doing two lines in the sashing strips, a quarter inch in from each side, them maybe some diagonal lines through the blocks and cornerstones with something fancy in the border.  I'll link up with Kathy for Slow Stitching Sunday, but also with Cindy at Oh Scrap.  Nothing is scrappier than bonus HST units after all.  

Home Again At Last

 As nice as it is to visit family, nothing quite beats the feeling of being home again.  I was just rounding the second corner of the border on my little blue Dear Jane quilt when we exited the highway toward our house.  

 I felt the urge to sew a bit when we got home, so I drafted this test block for a New York Beauty quilt that has been running through my mind.  I need to get a bigger compass, so this little guy is just 6 inches, the biggest size I can make with the geometry compass and protractor I borrowed from the kids' school supplies.  I meant to make the darker orange spikes on the inside.  Oops.

So Thanksgiving was interesting.  My sister was due to host this year.  My family was scheduled to host last year, but ended up driving to North Carolina instead when Kurt's mom was diagnosed with lung cancer.  My sister came down anyway and went to Disney, but we never got to see each other.  Well her youngest son Zac has been in the hospital for the last three weeks with a variety of life threatening illnesses.  So instead of going to her house for turkey on Thanksgiving, we all ate at the hospital and visited with Zac.  While we were there, they decided that they were going to do open heart surgery to replace a valve that had been eaten away by infection.  So we took the oldest two with us to Kurt's brother's house and hung out with them while the surgery was going on.  The surgery went well, they got a new mitral valve installed and patched up another area that wasn't fairing so well.  Turns out he had a hernia as well so they fixed that up while they were in there.  We were planning to head home yesterday because Kurt was supposed to be leaving for India today, but his visa has been delayed and we get to keep him for a few more days.  Yeah!
Can I just say how nice it is to be home again with nothing exciting going on?  We are all planning to settle in for a quiet evening of leftovers and maybe a movie.  As tempted as I am to run out for some quilt block drafting supplies, it just feels too good to be home again. 

Quilting in the Car

I am glad that I am able to sew in the car.  Also so happy to finally be working on the border!  The end is in sight.

Funny Story and Steam of Consiousness

Just before we ran out the door on vacation last week, a package showed up in the mail.  I didn't remember ordering anything, but it felt soft and squishy.  As I peeked in at oodles of orange fabrics, I remembered getting an e-mail from a blog reader, Sally, who said she had lots of oranges that she would love to send me, hoping it was going to be the color of the month very soon.  Apparently people feel very strongly about orange!  It was by far the most requested color in the giveaway linky party.  I was planning to save orange for October and Halloween, but I guess you are all too impatient for that.  So I'm not sure if it will come up in August or September, but I'll move orange up on the list due to popular demand.    Best of all, the orange fabric came with an adorable cat block!  So cute!  I will definitely have to include this one in the Rainbow Scrap Sampler.
 Speaking of running out on vacation, I also meant to post the fabric giveaway winner before we left, but completely didn't.  So thanks to the magic of the random number generator at random.org, Marsha Cooper is the winner of the lovely hand dyed fabric from Vicki Welsh. I'll get her fabric off in the mail and then get ready for the August giveaway.  Marsha, you are a no-reply blogger, and I think I remember having a conversation that included your e-mail, but I can't find it now, so if you can please send me your snail mail via e-mail, I'll head off to the post office with your goodies.
Sending away all this beautiful fabric is really making me want to play with some.  I need an awesome project to feature a rainbow of hand dyes -- any suggestions?  Sometimes when faced with a wonderfully coordinated bundle of fabric goodness, I get terrified and afraid to cut into it.  Same thing happens when trying to make a gift for someone.  I need to just take a deep breath and dive in.

And on the topic of wonderful surprise packages, I stopped by school this morning after taking Ryan to the orthodontist.  There was another surprise package waiting for me there.  This one was not soft and squishy, but it was so much fun.  I was at a science technology training workshop earlier this summer and found out that our district has now has a 3-D printer for the use of the science teachers.  One particular teacher volunteered to print things for us in exchange for keeping it at his school.  So I promptly put in an order for oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin.  Check out that conformational change initiated by the bonding of the oxygen molecules.  Cool, right?!  And see the little red stand under the i-pad, it holds it perfectly vertical for video filming.  I am SO excited!

 Speaking of excited, I finally started quilting the borders for the little blue Dear Jane.  After much trial and error, I found that the clover white marking pen worked best along with a small collapsible square PVC quilting frame.  Maybe I'll make a little zipper case for it before the next trip?  Everything is better in a little zipper case.  

Progress

 I spent today slowly and carefully sewing together the Dear Jane blocks.  After much stalling, I decided to sew 9 large sections.  Here is the first one, upper left hand corner.

 This is the top center section.

 And here is the upper right hand corner.  All the kids are off playing with friends for a bit, so I might get another section done this evening.

 Friday was the play which marks the end of musical theater camp.  They did Music Man Junior this year.  Anna was Marian the librarian, Sydney was Zaneeta, the mayors daughter and Ryan wasn't in the camp, but volunteered to help with technical.  He ran the spotlight.

On the way over the causeway I couldn't help but notice the sunset.  Though the picture doesn't do it justice, it was a beautiful night.
So this week there is absolutely nothing planned.  Friday is a holiday, and I'm planning to run a 5K, but until then I can't think of a single thing I have to do.  No camps to drive back and forth to, no workshops or training.  Nothing at all, I am SO looking forward to it.  

Tiny Tuesday - Dear Jane Reds

 After finishing off the yellow blocks yesterday I jumped into the red.  This one is J-2.  I did traditional piecing and it turned out just a smidgen too big.  So the points will be cut off when it is sashed.

This one was paper pieced last night during a Royal Pains Marathon.  I guess a new season started when I wasn't paying attention.  There were two new episodes on the the DVR that I somehow missed.
Ryan and I spent the morning at the zoo and I'm off to work for a bit this afternoon.  We are finalizing homeroom supplies.  That should leave me enough time to pick up the girls this afternoon.  The last three days of the week are training, so there might not be any more sewing until the weekend.  Sigh.  Glad I got to enjoy yesterday fully.

Dear Jane Yellow Blocks are Done

 This one is called Firewood Flower.  It was a bit tricky, but the tips from That Quilt were helpful in figuring out how to get started.  I didn't do it exactly the same, but it worked out pretty well.  Still need to finish up the hand sewing on the reverse applique for this one.

 This one is called Brandon's Star.  It was nice and simple.  Thanks goodness!  Some of these blocks get to be a bit ridiculous.

 This one wasn't too bad.  It is called Sally's Pride.  The pattern has little applique triangles in the corners, but I'm wavering about those.  I think the middle section is sewed upside down, but I like it fine just like this.

 This is the one that took all morning!  I didn't think it would ever be done.  It is called Stephanie's Snowflake and I'm not at all sure it was worth the trouble.

We reheated pizza for lunch in our new oven!  The old one was having trouble with the buttons and kept turning itself off.   We are slowly converting over to stainless as things break, but for now it is a mixed up free for all.  I love that the window is huge so that you can really get a good look at what is cooking without opening it up.
It was great to have a day today to just sew without a bunch of running around.  The girls are home from camp and it has just started to pour down rain.  Maybe I can get one more block in before dinner.  Sydney is cooking appetizers for us all!  So festive.  

Design Wall Monday - June 23, 2014

 Sometimes projects get stalled at the most awkward of spots.  I was making such great progress on Jane during Christmas break.  Then school started again.  That seems to be the story of my life.  Work gets in the way of my quilting!  I'd like to have the wall back at some point.  That means finishing up the last 13 center blocks and getting them all put together.  Shouldn't be too hard, right?

My road map has gotten a little frayed along the edges.  I'll take a look at that too and then get back on track.  Too see what everyone else is up to, head over to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.  

Theme Park Day

We got annual passes for Universal Studios as a family Christmas Present this year.  We got to the park first thing this morning and did Harry Potter before it got crowded.  Two times on the dueling dragons just about did me in, so  I'm letting the kids do the Hulk without me.  There was a bit of time for hand quilting on the car ride over, I even have a appliqué block in my purse-- just in case.  

Sunday Slowdown

I've been stitching away steadily on the small blue Dear Jane.  Each block gets its own little treatment as the mood strikes me.  I'm well over halfway now, and starting to think that finishing might be a real possibility.

My hand quilting still isn't perfect, but it is a nice relaxing way to spend an evening while the family is watching a movie together in the evening.  Kathy is hosting a link up for slow stitching Sunday, head over to her blog to see what others are up to.

The girls both got up this morning and decided to start sewing.  We got a new sewing machine for Anna a couple of weeks ago.  There was an add in the paper that was advertising a clearance sale on school overstock machines still new in the box.  Kurt was able to drive down on his lunch break and get her all set up.  Now Sydney has taken over Anna's old machine which used to be mine, and they are both happy as clams.

Yesterday was crazy busy.  Ryan had his first football of the new season and Anna wanted to go to a Lacrosse clinic.

Not wanting to go alone, she recruited her friend Allie.  They were definitely the youngest girls there, but they stuck together and had a good time.  She seems to have talked Allie into signing up with her for the recreational lacrosse league that starts next month.   Somehow poor Sydney's Girl Scout meeting got lost in the shuffle of all that.  

By the end of the day, Anna was done though and snoozed right through the second movie in our Lord of the Rings marathon.  

I'm hoping Sunday will be a little more relaxing.  The boys are going to play Dungeons and Dragons and the girls want me to take them shopping for new outfits to wear for science fair.