Design Wall Monday--Plaidish2 blocks

Design Wall Monday, this Labor Day Holiday--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Happy Labor Day!  

I only needed two more of the A blocks for the Plaidish2 Quilt, and finished those up last night after languishing all day in our un-airconditioned house during a late summer heat wave---it got up to 102 degrees at my house and was triple-digit in most of California all day.  There was some slow stitching while sweltering, but the sewing machine stayed off until later in the evening when we could finally open the doors and windows to a cool breeze. 

White-on-white does not make for exciting updates!  I'm working on the area to the right of the center flower.. I like this needle-minder best as the legs hold my needle :) 

We had a lovely sunset with clouds and a breeze.  

Artsy-Fartsy try at reflected clouds in the half moon window with the half moon in the sky. 

Long after sunset and with the house cooler, I set to getting the Plaidish2 blocks sewn up.  I only needed a couple more of the large A blocks, and just a few of the B blocks as well.  

The Plaidish/Plaidish2 quilts are free patterns by Erica of  Kitchen Table Quilting.  The Plaidish2 pattern uses more mediums than any other value, so uses up a lot of scraps that most people have.   I decided to wait until I have the center completed before making the C block borders from my remaining mid-value scraps.  I have a lot of repeats in my fabrics and I think it may be easier that way to avoid  same fabrics touching.  If I need more variety, there are plenty of scraps to choose from around here!

My niece Hannah was gifted the first Plaidish Quilt I made last year.  

Another Plaidish Quilt will definitely be made, though I think I will use the designer's suggestion to choose a single fabric for the larger dark squares, as I don't have nearly as many darks in my stash! This pattern used up a lot of skinny strips from my precut scrap drawers, which was great.  Ok, off to sew!

What I'm Working on Wednesday--July Ends

Well this has been a busy month, it seemed to last a good long time because of that.  We have been lucky out here in SoCalif that the summer weather has been typical for us, morning low clouds and fog burning off by late morning or early afternoon, mid-upper 70's at the beach with a nice breeze, just a bit warmer inland.  We'll try to remember these good times when the heat and humidity are likely to show up in August and September!   

I  haven't spent much time in the sewing room yet this week, but there was some slow stitching accomplished this Wednesday.

I finished the Blackwork Slave Quarters panel I was working on--finally.  I have one of the two remaining panels already traced out and will commence with that immediately.  

Caught this checkmark in the sky over the weekend, it was an appropriate symbol for another accomplished task, sanding down the doors to our bathroom vanity in preparation for paint.  It did take almost 20 minutes to find the palm sander, however, as it was buried under my husband's workbench.  It took another two days before we got to Lowe's to get more paint, the can used to do the other bathroom vanity having been purchased in 2013!  The people-watching at home improvement stores is pretty good, though, so we didn't mind.  

Further consultation with the newlyweds on the Dreamweaver quilt settled some of the fabric choices and the background. The Jen Kingwell pattern has disappearing 9 patches as the background, but that is a lot of cutting, sewing, rearranging and sewing back together to do for the expanded size I'm making for them.  I showed them another version with simple squares as the background to the appliqued Dreamweaver, and we settled on 3.5"squares.  For the 60x80" throw I plan to make, that means cutting a whole lotta squares--520, in fact!  I looked at a chart for fat quarters and it appears I can get 30 from each--and if I stack and cut them several at a time, the squares will add up even quicker.  Good thing I have plenty of fresh rotary cutter blades :)

In the meantime, the County  Fair started today, my sister Kathy went and told me she saw ribbons on my entries--all of them--but didn't tell me what they were.  She reported mostly 2nds and 3rds on her entries, and Honorable Mention.  Kathy said our older brother told her that "Honorable Mention is just the First Loser ribbon".  What a brat!   Hopefully I'll get down there tomorrow to see for myself how my entries did.  I'll take a First Loser over nothing :)

Design Wall Monday 6/29/15

On this last Design Wall Monday of June, I have a mockup of the block for the comfort quilt I'm making for our neighbor's son who has an osteosarcoma and is undergoing chemotherapy.

This is a variation of Jacob's Ladder that I found HERE (scroll down to the bottom for this version). Yesterday I got all the black and white 4 patches cut and sewn so will be ready for block assembly--I'm making 20 12" blocks.  My goal is to have the quilt finished in a week. The flannel I ordered from Connecting Threads has arrived and will be perfect.

I'm actually in the middle of three quilts for others.  My brother texted me a few days ago that he needs a quilt for his queen sized bed and I offered the bullseye quilt top I made last year.  Searching my pictures, it seems I haven't got a photo of the completed top.  I chose the gingham as an inner border and the Thimbleberries print as the outer border but in they were not attached yet in this shot.

However, it is far too small to cover a queen bed so I have pulled a lot of neutrals and old stash in colors similar to the above gifted blocks (Thanks again, Mary of Quilt Hollow!) to make an additional border of the bullseye blocks.  I'll decide on additional border sizes once these blocks are attached.  I seem to have plenty of stash to choose from!

Third quilt I'm making is for my sister-in-law.  My husband Grant's older half-brother Jan died suddenly in March from a recurrent brain tumor, and I offered to make a quilt from some of his dress and casual shirts.  This is the quilt I pinned on Pinterest with her in mind, which I found HERE. 

On Saturday we took a trip down the coast to see her and go through the closet to select some of her favorites of Jan's clothes.

 

It was an overcast day but still wonderful to drive down the Pacific Coast Highway and look at the ocean.  This large bed of seaweed caught my eye.  

I took pictures of at least three different flocks of pelicans cruising the coastline as we drove south.

Lots of people out enjoying the early summer weather in Malibu. Lots and lots of cyclists...

We had a good visit with our sister-in-law and she picked out some shirts and I chose others to coordinate, with Grant coming home with several suits and even a tuxedo, as well as some other shirts and slacks.  After a lovely lunch and a visit to Jan's boat in the Marina Del Rey harbor with her son and his girlfriend, we headed home, with promises to get together again soon for a harbor sail.  

 We got home near sunset and the sky was gorgeous. 

See more design walls on Judy's Patchwork Times.

Weekend Bits and Bobs

It is hard to believe it is the middle of August.  Particularly since every morning for weeks has looked like this:

Nothing but a wall of white fog everywhere you look.  Some days it doesn't lift 'til the afternoon even inland where we live, and at the coast can linger all day long.  Boring and cold!

This is the view across the fields and hills in the late afternoon.  Maybe someday I'll see them in the morning again--in September!

A few months ago I gave a visiting old friend one of my heart mug mats--along with a couple of others to give to her mom and aunt.  Well, my friend's daughter Rachel loved it and so I was asked if I might be willing to make one specially for her.  Of course I would!  They provided the fabric--but there was a twist with the package I received.

Rachel is in a sorority at TCU and their colors are yellow-gold and black.  She also wanted the heart changed to a kite, as it is one of the sorority's emblems.  I searched and searched through my magazines and patterns but came up empty until I went online Saturday morning and found an old block of the month from UCquilts.com that had a 6" paper pieced kite and four patches as a tail.  I decided to adapt the idea and use squares folded into triangles to make three 3D "bows" for the kite's tail.  I wanted to jump right into the idea but instead spent the day with DD Erica on a DIY job, making over her bathroom.

This beat up old oak cabinet was supposed to end up as a deep chocolatey brown with the stain we bought.  However, after three trips to the home center, a lot of breathing of fumes, sandpaper dust, and scraping of the doors that we started with, by Sunday night the doors turned out looking like something from the 60's that people have been tearing out for decades.  Back to square one on that project.  An opaque stain or paint is next, I guess.  

Sunday morning I did actually sew, since I needed a gift for a bridal shower and naturally waited until the last minute to decide what to make.  I put together a Snap Bag but didn't get a photo of it since I was so late to my future niece's event.

Here the lovely young lady is with the ribbons from all her gifts made into a bouquet.  Traditionally at showers, each ribbon that gets broken is supposed to mean how many babies there will be.  The bride-to-be was very careful not to break any until the end, when she broke two on purpose :)  Only 47 days to the wedding so I guess I better get cracking on their quilt! 

Summer's here

The June Gloom, our usual summer weather pattern, has been hanging around all month so far, true to form.  The marine layer drifts in and out morning and evening but we have been having some sunny afternoons, even at the beach.  I only need to wear my sweater at work half the day, ha ha.  Lots of folks in blogland are showing their flourishing gardens.  I have a harvest to report as well:

Yup, we're farmers!  A neighbor gave us two tomato plants and they are producing.  This plate is about five inches across so it is not a bountiful harvest--these are cherry tomatoes! 

I finished this Broken Dishes tablerunner a while ago and really should have waited for morning to photograph it as this is a bit dark.  I posed it on DH Grant's new lounge chair.  Today I went out and bought another chair for me; mine is red.  There was about 20 minutes of lounging time before the dog went ballistic because someone was knocking on the front door, so I had to get up to see what that was all about.  The neighbor boys told me their ball went over our fence so I plodded through the thigh-deep weeds in the side yard to return not one, but four of their balls that were back there, all different sizes.  Someone keeps missing the pitch-back, apparently!

 

When I came back in from taking the tablerunner picture I found Mini holding down this WIP.  Thanks, Mini!  (Really need to get that one quilted.)

This photo should be titled "Why I should never buy ivy".  There is a sad twin to this plant in another room.  My record with houseplants that require frequent watering is pretty dismal.

But here is our healthy Golden Rain tree in the front yard.  We had it trimmed in late spring and it has filled out nicely and is thickly covered with yellow flower spikes.  The tree is only about half grown at about 15 feet tall though we have had it a number of years.  While someday it may be tall enough to actually shade the house, only part of the driveway and garage receive any protection from the sun now.   Not really reached goal on that one yet!   I love this tree because it changes all year--after the flowers bloom there are lantern-like seed pods that turn to golden and orange colors as fall approaches.  Finally all the leaves and pods fall off and the tree is bare until spring, when first red leaf buds appear that then turn green.  Nice tree!