Slow Stitching Sunday

It has been some time since I joined Slow Stitching Sunday, though I generally do have some handwork going most of the time.  I have continued embroidery on the wool applique blocks from the well-aged Fat Quarter Quilt Shop Greenpiece BOM kit my husband bought me so many years ago.  This week I finished prepping the last four applique blocks, which made me very happy.  I used freezer paper for tracing and cutting the patterns, which worked very well.

 

I got the stem and small bud stitched down this week, and am working on the large flower center.  This one was finished today, the tiny berries and stems: 

 

Binding on this pillow cover also got finished.

This is a block from the Fall Dash Quilt by Sherri McConnell.  I made two pillow covers from the pattern in American Patchwork and Quilting magazine October 2019.  I love churn dash blocks of any kind!  All fabrics were from stash. 

See more Slow Stitchers' work on Kathy's Quilts' blog. Happy Sunday!

November Downs and Ups

Well, I didn't mean to take so many days off blogging--things were just getting me down.  This year has just had so many stressful events and changes both at home and the nation--on top of COVID-19 rising--that it has been hard to keep up with positive thinking.  The time change isn't helping at all either.  Combine that with another twist in my work schedule and my mood just crashed.  I haven't touched my sewing machine in a week, can't get motivated to get out of bed until the last minute before work, and have been staying up much too late staring at the TV.

There have been some light moments, though, seeing our grandsons, having much needed rain, and yesterday I was decorating for Fall, including the new Gobble turkey pillow. I did finish the pumpkin pillow cover shown in my last post for daughter Erica, and delivered it to her at work. 

The red chair in her office made a great backdrop.  The pillow cover is about 13-14" and has a split back with a bound edge--Erica picked the caramel print scrap for binding. 

It looked good on the gold couch in the office space too!  I looked back on my blog and this block was designed by Sherri McConnell, for the Fall Dash Quilt featured in APQ magazine's October 2019 issue--it was on the cover. I haven't finished off the other pumpkin pillow cover I quilted as yet. 

A guild member had an open spot on her her longarm quilting calendar, and I spent far too much time constructing a Frankenback for a Christmas quilt top. 

It took me two days to remeasure and recut and remeasure and add more stash fabric, but finally it was large enough for the 75x90+ top and I handed it off with batting.  Although I told her to just do an allover pattern, she emailed me that she "couldn't resist" doing some Poinsettias in the open white squares and the four patches.  She brought it back today and it looks gorgeous. 

The pattern is Barefoot in the Park, though I left off the appliqued circles in the white patches from Stephanie's (Loft Quilting) pattern, and changed the borders to use up all the 5" charm squares.

Georganna quilted with red thread in the colored four patches and borders, and white thread in the white background squares. I love it! I am going to bind the quilt in red, possibly the same stripe as the border, if there is enough leftover fabric.  My poinsettia plant is just turning red at the tips of the branches.  My mom called me yesterday to say that the gardeners who "mow and blow" at their house had CUT DOWN her poinsettia plant without checking with them--just when it is about to change color with the colder weather!  

I'll finish off with a little baby spam of Dane...now 11 weeks old.  He was honed in on Papa's shirt pattern but did look up once in a while!  Proud Mama looks on.

He's very active, pushing up on his elbows during tummy time and even rolling to his back.  Dada is very pleased.

He looks pretty cute in the beanie he wore during our walk in the neighborhood before it started to rain again.  Ashley and Nick are doing a wonderful job as new parents--so happy for them, and glad we are able to visit with our masks on.  Looking forward to the day kisses are allowed again!

Halloween Week

 Halloween decorating was late, but I still got some up--if only to enjoy it myself!

Grant wore a mask and used long barbecue tongs to distribute candy to the very tiny number of trick-or-treaters that came to the door--none were really expected due to COVID restrictions.  There was one group of about 4-5 younger kids, and an hour later one teenager.  Good thing Grant bought the 100+ piece bag of candy---not!  

Grandson Cove was a red Sith Stormtrooper and Hunter a mummy.  They had a little socially distanced Halloween get together with their cousins and other grandparents in their backyard and did no trick-or-treating, but had fun anyway.  Baby grandson Dane had a Halloween onesie that Mama sent video of him wearing.   

Pretty Halloween sunset and later we watched the Blue Moon peek out from behind the clouds. 

On Friday afternoon I had gone down to the beach while Grant was still working, seeking some Vitamin Sea.  While it was sunny and warm at our house 5 miles inland, the fog was hanging off the coast and there were no surfers as the tide was way out. 

I caught this quick composition from the bluff before the gentleman passed by on the shore.  

I surprised this squirrel a ways down the path, it stood stock still until the first instant I looked away, and then it disappeared under the boulders.  There were many tons of rocks piled up below the bluff, trying to keep the shoreline from erasing the pavement and sidewalk above.  There was no easy way down to the beach, so I kept walking.  

These California Brown Pelicans are huge birds, fishing the shallows.  I was standing easily 100 yards away and zoomed in as far as I could.  I wish my picture of them flying had come out better.  I'll visit again when the walls of the house seem to close in too much and I need another dose of Vitamin Sea.

Design Wall Monday--More Scrappy Play

 Design Wall Monday at Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts--lots of great stitching happening there. 

After a recent whole house carpet cleaning, I reassembled the sewing room and spent some time rearranging and trying to put things out of sight--a difficult task when I have no closet and only one usable wall in the open family room I sew in.  True to form, things exploded almost immediately after that attempt!  I don't remember what prompted the dive into the box of leftover blocks and unfinished smalls, but suddenly I was pulling borders for pumpkin blocks made a year ago, to make into pillow covers. The blocks are about 12".

Younger daughter claimed this pumpkin and I laid out some backing options.  Erica chose the stripe. I added narrow border strips of the same brown fabric as the churndash, to preserve the points as the cover bends around the pillow, not shown in this pic. 

The other pumpkin in a churndash got a wider border of my favorite caramel dot.  It is hard to find this color even in fall, sadly.  Channel quilting just using the edge of the walking foot for spacing. The pillow back has been made and I cut binding from a reddish orange stripe print.  I love decorating for Fall. 

Two more wool applique blocks got their finished.  I had to be really careful on the bottom one when trimming the block to 8.5", as I had not centered it well at all on the background. All of the wool blocks for this BOM will have corner triangles added.  I dug through the project box to see how many I had set aside when they were cut years ago!

These are 2.5" squares in stacks of four and I will get a whole bunch of bonus HSTs when I sew them on the corners.  I cut more than the required 80 so I will have more choices.  I'm thinking I will need to lay out all the blocks, both pieced and wool, to avoid duplicate fabrics touching. But I won't drive myself crazy trying to be perfect about it!

Design Wall Monday--10/19/2020 Vacay and Applique

Design Wall Monday is here again.  See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

We had a nice getaway for a few days to Del Mar.  Leaving midweek is so much better for getting through L.A. traffic, and we took full advantage of the HOV Diamond Lane for many many miles of the 170 mile trip--less than three hours from our house to the hotel, yay! 

It was lovely to sit on the beach below the bluffs one afternoon and watch the many surfers, kids playing, and families enjoying the day.  The fog was hanging off the coast when we arrived...

..but rolled in pretty thick after an hour or so.  It wasn't cold or windy so we stayed as long as we liked.

 

 

Nothing like Vitamin Sea to reset the stress level :)  These were the first vacation days Grant has taken from work all year and he really needed them.

I waded along the shoreline and looked at shells and rocks.  Lucky find of an intact sand dollar--about 2" in diameter, and many impossibly tiny shells. 

I took the Greenpiece BOM wool applique blocks for evening stitching time, which mostly occurred while the World Series played.  Yay Dodgers!

The apple got its seeds and the coneflower is lacking only the stitching on the leaves.  I spent a good amount of time prepping more blocks once we were home, including that bottom block with the thinnest stem ever.

I'm so glad Efficient Me labeled all the freezer paper templates and the wools with colors and numbers all those years ago!  I used up some more scraps for the tiny pieces, and even for some of the larger ones--just eked out the acorn cap from a black scrap. 

A few dots of Elmer's glue stuck them to the background.  Yesterday I also rechecked the final setting instructions for this old BOM, as I knew the blocks needed to be trimmed. 

I used Washi tape to make a "preview" window for centering.  It is very exciting to be getting these blocks to completion after all these years.  The wool blocks get corner triangles before they are set with the pieced blocks that I completed long ago.  There is a center appliqued tree and leaves yet to do as well, but I did make the pieced borders some time ago.  Maybe by the end of the year I'll have a finished top?  No matter, its waited all this time for completion, no rush necessary to the end!

Design Wall Monday--10/12/2020

 Design Wall Monday--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog.  

The 50 Shades of Brown quiltalong by Lori of Humble Quilts had the final clue release for the borders  last week.  I wanted to use up more CW scraps and dug around in my bins for pieces that added the colors and quirkiness of the original antique Lori copied.  

This Judy Rothermel fabric has been in the stash a long time!  It felt good to give a strip to the 50 shades little quilt. 

The other border pieces were also pulled from the scraps.  I chose the single corner square fabric to highlight the pink in the center.  This was a quick and fun quiltalong--my outer borders are 2.5" wide.  It is not quilted yet but I'm considering doing some big stitch quilting with perle cotton.  

Still playing in the scraps, I got all the blocks for the Plaid-ish quilt laid out and moved around (free pattern and tutorial on Kitchen Table Quilting).  There was more switcheroo as I sewed the rows; my brilliant plan for pressing for nesting seams didn't quite work out, mostly due to the "medium" blocks being turned in every other row per the pattern layout. 

The quilt is so scrappy that it didn't really matter much, as long as I could space out the fabric repeats enough.

I completely assembled the top half of the quilt; the bottom four rows await final joining.  What a fun method for scrap play.  Erica of Kitchen Table Quilting has made a second version of the free Plaid-ish quilt I'd love to make too!  

My "to be quilted" projects are really piling up.  I have one out to the quilter (Twilight Hopscotch by Kim Diehl) and keep watching for pics of it on their feed (Quilting by David).  Hopefully it will make it to the top of the list soon--tracking shows it arrived in MO on 9/17.   It's a short work week for me as I'm taking a couple of vacation days.  Unfortunately my husband decided to schedule a carpet cleaning so that means I have to disassemble large portions of the family room I use as my sewing room to reveal the floor.  I'll definitely get a lot of steps on the FitBit that day!

Design Wall Monday--10/5/2020

 It's the first Design Wall Monday of October.  See more Design Walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Hard to believe we are rounding the turn to the holiday season. I've continued to play with scraps and got all the Plaidish blocks completed over the weekend.  What a fun exercise it was. Luckily my pressing plan seems to have worked out with the final set of "medium" blocks so everything will nest as the blocks are arranged. The Plaidish quilt is a free tutorial/pattern from Kitchen Table Quilting, here.

You can see my color piles at the bottom of the photo.  The final block has both light and dark sashing pieces and that is what really makes the plaid appear in the quilt.  

The green calico print in this block used to be on the walls of our girls' room decades ago.  It still pops up from the scrap bins now and then!  I bought many yards of it to line the top half of their walls, using cornstarch wallpaste I made myself. 

Stacks of all three blocks ready for layout.  Looking forward to a lot of bending and switching of blocks for placement, I will try not to overthink it as there are many repeats of colors and fabrics. 

We had a socially distanced visit with our new grandson's other grandparents over the weekend.  It was very very foggy down near the ocean where they live, but with the patio heaters overhead, we were warm and toasty. 

Papa was eye to eye with Dane while his parents were caught in the reflection on the window.  So sweet to see them often!