One Last Thing

 I decided this morning to post one last thing before Christmas. I have been madly sewing and baking every day almost. I really love having the time to do that since I no longer work. My one last thing is that I finished my Pas de Deux quilt top. This has been a year in the making. It is a pattern by Rachel of Stitched in Color. We have been having a sew along for the past year and now...we are finished.

What made me fall in love with this quilt pattern was the colors and all the different block styles. Rachel has a wonderful sense of color and these blocks are amazing. Some were easy, some were difficult. All were wonderful to see finished. As with many of her other classes and sew alongs, I learned so much by doing this.

I chose to mostly follow Rachel's color choices to the best of my ability, with my stash. I did not buy any fabrics for this quilt top. That made it challenging for me in some of the colorways, but I like to be pushed. It makes me more creative sometimes.

Some colors I didn't have enough scraps of, so I had to slightly alter the plan. That's good, though. I son't need to have an exact duplicate of her quilt. (Notice the rainbow on the yellow block?)

There are a lot of partial seams in this quilt top, which I have done before. I can't imagine Rachel trying to figure all this out. It seems very complex to me.

The hourglass blocks at the bottom are another example of having to adapt my color plan. Rachel used a dark burgundy with her oranges. That is a color I don't really have and I didn't like the purples I did have, so I found some dark blue to set off the oranges. And it works!

Now this quilt will sit in the queue waiting to be quilted. It is number 3 in the queue. I also have one other quilt that is getting a bunch of hand quilting before it gets machine quilting as well. I have a busy 2023 coming up I guess. Have a very Merry Christmas and I will see you soon.

Never a Dull Moment

 Never a dull moment around here. I thought that as soon as we got moved in and settled, I would have lots of time to sew and catch up on sew alongs etc. Not happening. So much to do.

Since I have gotten back into embroidery, I decided to rearrange my floss into color families. In an effort to be able to still find them by number, should I need to, each color family is in numerical order as well.

I was finally able to finish the blocks for January for the Pas de deux quilt along with Rachel at Stitch in Color.

Tried a new recipe from the New York Times. Chicken pot pie with cornmeal biscuits on top. I can highly recommend it. Mad a half size and it was perfect for two.

Bought myself some tulips. I needed the spring happy colors in my apartment. These filled the bill.

I bought all four different kinds of cinnamon from Penzeys. I am teaching one of my grandsons to cook and bake and we are going to have a lesson on cinnamon. It should have some delicious results.

Still working on the perfect pineapple QAL with Gigi's Thimble. I actually have 4 blocks done, but I am going to be 3 weeks behind as of tomorrow. These take me almost 2 hours to finish one. I plan to keep chugging along though.

I am working on a new wedding quilt for a recently married couple. All batiks, which I almost never do. I think this will be stunning when I get done. Mor pictures to come.

My two oldest daughters have discovered the joy of antiquing. They bought me this early mother's day gift to help to display some of my many quilts.

I did finally get February's blocks done for the Pas de deux. I am waiting for some fabric for March's blocks. In spite of all the fabric I seem to have, a couple of colorways are lacking.

I put my crocheted blankets in the bottom of this cabinet that I used to use for linens. This apartment has linen closets in each bathroom, so yay! Blanket storage it is.

Still chugging along on my Schoolhouse Sampler. I haven't done much in the last week. I had a cold; the first time I have been sick in over 2 years and I just had no desire or energy to sew anything. I did take a Covid test just to be sure. My husband had the cold the week before me, so I know where it came from.

I started this little project about 6-7 years ago when I first learned to make colonial knots instead of French knots. I didn't think I would ever finish it, but something sparked me and I worked diligently on it to finish it. I must say that it did not end up as I first pictured it, but I am very happy with it. A good long rest in time out was what it needed.

And finally, it seems we have a rooster living near our apartment complex. I don't know where he comes from, but some mornings he is just there and the other day I got to hear him too. Don't forget tomorrrow is Pi Day. I am off to make my pie dough now! See you soon.

An Interesting Thing

 So, we have been in our place for almost 3 weeks now. We are happy with our choice of this place to live and are settling in. For much of January I was chomping at the bit to sew on my machine. I could not wait to get set up somewhere. I now have the almost perfect set up. (almost because nothing is ever perfect) But...I am having trouble finding my groove. I feel so much more drawn to the hand works I have been doing these last couple of months.

Mostly I am stitching on this Dropcloth Sampler. I have really been enjoying learning, or in some cases relearning these stitches.

This is the Schoolhouse Sampler from Dropcloth Samplers. It's getting close to finished now and I do have another one already to go when I finish this.

I also signed up for Rachel Hauser's Pas de Deux block of the month for 2022. I knew I would be starting it late, but I am almost done with January and I am hoping to get February done this week. Just in time for March's release. Lol

I taught my 14 year old grandson how to bake muffins last week. He did a great job! They were very tasty.

And of course I promised the littles some pink marshmallows for Valentine's day. Heart shaped of course.

I also signed up for Gigi's Thimble Perfect Pineapple block. We are supposed to be making a block a week for 36 weeks. I need to get two more done to be caught up on this one. Here's hoping.

And of course this crocheted blanket is still going on. I only need 17 more blocks to have enough to put it all together. So very close. 

So the plan is, to start sewing today and see how much I can get done. I am hoping that if I plan this as a sewing only day, I will get in gear and maybe start to get back in the groove. I also am hoping that I can get back to blogging, especially since there are so many projects to talk about.

See you soon.

January Chilling

 So, here we are, two thirds of the way through January. We still have not made much progress with finding a place to live. So much of living life is getting in the way of the search. Weather related delays and children out of school for various reasons. We will get there, though. Not to worry. So then you might wonder what am I up to creatively. Well, mostly hand work still. I did take my machine out a couple of times last week. I did some much needed mending and put together a couple of my plus blocks that I had cut out an pressed before I left California.

Here are some of the things I have been working on recently:

First of all, I signed up to be in this Stitched in Color quilt Along for this year. It is a monthly block program, and while I can't get started just yet, I know I will have time to catch up eventually. I am going to spend some time planning while I don't have access to my stash right now.

I am still working on crocheting these beautiful Flora Granny squares designed by Lucy at Attic 24. I only have 23 more to go and I will have 100 of them. They will be joined to make a 10 x 10 block square throw. This is a great project to pick up and put down as needed. I am using all my scrap yarn from other blanket projects for this one. It's the quilter in me.

I have several other long term projects lined up. I am doing the pineapple  quilt along with Gigi's Thimble which begins at the end of January and I have saved all the clues to do Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt as soon as I have access to my scraps for that one.

I am also working on some embroidery. This is Rebecca Ringquist's Schoolhouse Sampler.

It is her newest release and I am having so much fun with it. I check Instagram often to see what everyone else is doing with theirs.

There are so many different and fun elements in this sampler. I am going slow and choosing my colors carefully.

I don't think I have ever done quite so many colonial knots in one piece.

I am really enjoying the pace and doing all this embroidery. It is a skill I learned as a child and I am so happy I did. I have definitely improved since then. Lol

I bought these fun butterflies on Amazon. They are magnetic and so it the chalkboard in my daughter's kitchen. You get about 80 butterflies in a pack and they are beautiful. We put some on the refrigerator as well.

And this little cutie turned 6 this week. It was a week of threatening winter weather and of germs.

We ended up getting a bunch of these because the little cutie pie above was diagnosed positive on Tuesday. So far, all is well and no one else has gotten sick. Yay for vaccines and boosters. Hoping to make it a few more days to be out of the woods. 

Have a great week, stay warm if you are in the cold winter weather. Talk to you soon.

Dear Dottie

 Last year, I decided to join in with Rachel, of Stitched in Color, to do the Dear Dottie QAL. I really wanted to do this pattern, but I had tons of projects on my plate, so I did the baby size quilt, hoping to revisit the pattern and make a larger quilt. Eventually.

This is my Baby size Dear Dottie. I made this on totally scrappy. Technically I guess it's a charm quilt, since no fabric is repeated here. I used up lots of my 5 inch charms in this quilt. I totally love it.

Then, I saw a picture of a Dear Dottie in a limited color pallet. I fell in love with it and wanted to do one as well. But I waited a bit, trying to figure out what colors. Or what fabrics. Or something. I finally found some fabrics that I loved and added a few from my stash. 

I have to say, I think it is harder to limit your fabrics than to go all scrappy. Any time I couldn't decide on a fabric, I would think "it needs more variety". Then I would stop and remind myself that the point was to limit the fabrics and the pallet in this one.

I finally finished that quilt this week and here it is now. I posted the small one above for the sake of comparison.

The other thing I did different was to add a narrow border to this quilt. I just really felt like it needed one.

The top and bottom borders are both dark blue, but two different fabrics. The two sides I made different.

This Dear Dottie is so much softer in color tone and also has less quilting which makes it literally softer than the small one. I knew the small one would be a wall hanging, so I quilted it rather densely.

This is most of the back of the quilt. I didn't have enough for the whole thing, so I added a strip of red down one side. I didn't get a picture of that.

I am very pleased with the result, and happy that this second Dear Dottie quilt is done so I can enjoy it.

I will see you soon. There are two more quilts pin basted and ready to be quilted.

Penny Sampler Quilt Club Catch Up

I wanted to do a quick post for the Penny Sampler Club. My May blocks have been done for over a week. This is a weird month. First, we go our assignments on about the 7th. I still felt like I had all the time in the world. Then about a week later, I worried that I would run out of time, so I started on them. Then, I was so taken with them, I did them all in just a few days. So now I am working on other things and waiting until June.

 This first block is my bell flowers. When I posted it to Instagram, one person thought it was tiny tee shirts and another thought it was kimonos. So funny.

We made two economy blocks this month and mine are both fussy cut windows from the Sonata line by Amy Sinibaldi. I had pulled that fabric in the beginning when I did my fabric pulls for the project, just hoping to be able to use them.

And this one, my favorite, is the flowers in a vase. I loved doing it in the last Penny Sampler and was so happy to see it back in this one as well. Choosing the fabrics is my favorite part of so many of these machine paper pieced blocks. I never thought I would ever learn to do this technique, let alone to like it. Rachel has changed all that for me. Her blocks are so interesting they just draw me in.

I hope you are all staying safe and well. See you soon.