A busy week

 It has been a busy week! We started back to school this week with a new hybrid model. Before school closed for the 2nd time, the hybrid model was for part of the students to return on Monday and Tuesday, part on Thursday and Friday, everyone remote on Wednesday. Of coarse, several families chose to remain completely remote. Class sizes were about 6-8 in each session. The new model is to include Wednesday as a school day. The MT kids will attend on Wednesday one week and ThF students will attend the other week. Since I am a substitute teacher, I started on Friday as I'm scheduled every Friday and the remaining days as needed. I was exhausted after one day (I have been off too long!)

On Tuesday, I took a Zoom quilt class with Nicholas Ball @craftmonkies. He taught improv fish. Although I have his book and I'm following his sewalong on Instagram, I still learned a lot on tips and insight from him. He showed us how to make fish with deep curves and curved tails. 

This is one of the fish I made during class. I'm working on putting all my fish together using his patchwork/puzzle method. 

I also worked on my SAHRR block as Round 1 was released on Monday. 

The round was to include piano keys. You were to interpret that any way you would like. Each of the round hosts post their interpretation on piano keys to help spark your imagination. Here is what I did.

I'm ready for Round 2

On Thursday, a couple of my friends got together again to quilt for charity. I previously posted about how we cut a donated quilt into 4 and then rebound them. 

They are finished and we started on making simple turned (not bound) quilts from a yard of fabric. We still sandwiched three layers and straight line quilted. 

Here are the ones we completed.

The shelter was overjoyed to receive them!

I'm linking to chrisknitssews link party this weeks hosts of SAHRR, link party at Patchwork & Quilts, and Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

Slow Stitching Progress

 I was able to spend some time on Sunday working on my flowers. I have almost 1/4 of the flowers complete! Yay! It has been fun learning new stitches or relearning stitches. It is relaxing but I find that good light is needed for these old eyes. 

I also finished knitting a hat for my daughter! It is a simple pattern with a new to me cast on method so it is nice and stretchy. She loved it! Linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching @ Kathy's Quilts

I'll leave you with this cute picture of my grandson. He loves to play! Here he is playing with his stretchy newt. (His mom had a pet newt when she was young) 

A Week of Progress

 I have continued to work with my pink scraps for the month of January. I hope that I'm not doing too much! As Angela has said, "I won't always have this much free time." School starts again with a hybrid model Tuesday. I'm scheduled every Friday so far with additional days here and there. My latest pink blocks are from the pattern Joy Luck from Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. It is one of her Schnibbles patterns that I bought a long time ago. As I was cleaning my sewing room, I ran across it and thought it was time to make it and that it would be an easy quick block for RSC. 

I have worked quite a bit on my #shoalsewalong with Nicholas Ball. I tried adding interest with inserting contrasting colors to a few bodies and tails. I am looking forward to class with Nicholas Ball on Tuesday to learn more tips and techniques. 

Improv sewing is so freeing. No rules!

I decided to join in on the SAHRR ~ Stay At Home Round Robin, hosted by Quilting Gail. I looked through my stash and decided to cut into Frolic by Sandy Gervais because I had some yardage and some fat quarters. Since I don't know what the next rounds will be I am hoping that I have enough fabric. This block is called Stacked. I left off the last round to make it a 12" block. 

I'm linking to ScrapHappy Saturday @SoScrappy,  Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @

confessions of a Fabric Addict,  Brag About Your Beauties @ From Bolt to Beauty, Peacock Party @Wendy's Quilts and More, Friday Foto Fun @Poweredbyquilting, Finished or Not Friday @ Alycia Quilts, Center Block @QuiltingGail

Some Hand Stitching

 I have started a couple of hand stitching projects. The first are some tumbler blocks using the EPP method. Most of the ones I have done so far are pinks since I was playing with my pink scrap bin it seemed the easiest. 

I don't really have any solid plans for these but it is nice to have a hand stitch project to work on.

The second project is my embroidery hoop project. I drew this several months ago but wasn't sure of the colors for the embroidery. My daughter helped me with the                color scheme and the choosing of threads from my stash.                                                    (Yes, I also have an embroidery thread stash)                                            I started embroidering the flowers using this little book and some                YouTube videos to refresh my skills. 

Slow but steady! No deadline for this one. 

I'm linking to Slow Sunday at Kathy's Quilts.

A lot has been happening here!

A new year and new month brought new projects! I continued working on my PINK Wonky Shoo Fly blocks. I now have 10 ~ 6 1/2" blocks. 

I'm having fun using up some of my smallest scraps! I will link up to Scrap Happy on Saturday over at SoScrappy. 

Kat over at Kat & Cat Quilts posted the Covered in Love block for the January and February. It is a 13" string quilt. The strings need to be of one color family except for one strip which should be a contrasting color. 

            Here are my blocks ~ blue with and orange contrast and red with a blue                 contrast. These blocks are sewn onto an oversized batting foundation piece and cut to size.

 

     On Monday, January 4th, the #ShoalSewalong with Nicholas Ball of       @QuiltsintheAttic started. Week one is all about the fabric pull and 

the start of cutting the pieces needed for the fish block. This is an 

improv sewalong so the size and number of pieces needed is really 

up to you. Nicholas suggested some colors for your fabrics and his 

quilt in his book is basically a 2 color quilt so you could use whatever 

you like! I pulled fabric from my stash that I bought at a lecture by 

Amy Walsh from Blue Underground Designs as my focus fabrics. I 

added some batiks from my stash. The deep blues are for the 

background water. 

Here is a very basic layout of the rectangles, squares, and triangles needed for the fish blocks! 

Week Two will include sewing these improv fish!

Linking to Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop?, Peacock Party @ Wendy's Quilts and More, Finished or Not Fridays @ Alycia's and Friday Foto Fun @ Powered by Quilting. 

The January instructions for the Moorwood Mystery Quilt by Meadow Mist Designs was released yesterday. This month we put together a block using some of the units that were sewn in previous months. I am excited to see how this one comes together!

There are 15 of these blocks. 

I joined some friends of mine to do some charity quilting yesterday. My friend, Marylyn, fosters many tiny kitties that are abandoned by their mammas. The shelter had a quilt that was donated to them and needed it to be cut down in size. Since it was a large square, I cut it down into 4 smaller quilts. I then set out to rebind the 2 sides that were now unfinished. Here is her little kitty helping us.

Now to hand stitch the bindings on the smaller quilts. 

Each of us took one home to finish!

First Finish of 2021!

 I'm excited to show you my first finish of 2021! This quilt was made over the coarse of 2020 as part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at SoScrappy. I'm naming it Color My World. I'm linking to So Scrappy.

With the exception of the border fabric, everything was used from my scrap bins or my stash!

This quilt finishes at 47" x 64"

Each month one color column was made and after 10 months, I put them together. I wanted to add a border to make the quilt a bit larger. I found the border fabric at Joann's. I love how the triangles and colors plays with the top! 

I didn't get a chance to work on this quilt until after Christmas when I finally was able to sandwich and quilt it. I straight-lined quilted on a diagonal across the columns and FMQ a triangular dot to dot pattern from Angela Walters in the border.  

My grandson's snowman, Uno, appreciated the cozy warmth of this quilt!

I'm linking to Link Party Patchwork & Quilts #33 @quiltingpatch.

Once again, I am joining Angela @SoScrappy on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2021. January's color is pink. Angela also recently shared a few tutorials for blocks. I decided that one of my RSC blocks will be the Wonky Shoo Fly block based on Angela's tutorial. I will be using low volume fabrics from my stash for the background. Generally, I make only one block each month but this year I plan on making several of each color. 

I'm also considering, making a Circle of Friends block.

I usually don't make a plan for the year as I prefer to quilt as I am inspired but I can tell you that I do have a few plans for this year! I will be joining Nicholas Ball on another quilt along starting Monday, January 4th! I also signed up for his class on January 19th. I loved making the improv triangle quilt with him last year and I own his book, Inspiring Improv Quilting! Can't wait to get started!

I also signed up for a recorded lecture by Victoria Findlay Wolfe on January 5th. I love her style and her creativity. I went to a lecture by her at my LQS many years ago (before she won at QuiltCon in 2013) and I was in awe of her! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take her class. I do own several of her books. This lecture is about how she made a coat out of one of her quilts. I love this idea! 

I will continue with the Moorwood Mystery Quilt at Meadow Mist Designs and Cheryl just announced that there will be another Mystery Quilt starting in July! 

 I really like how Cheryl runs the QAL. Won't you consider joining?

I have another quilt in progress but I can't mention too much about it as it is a gift. 

And finally, I plan on doing a bit of hand piecing tumbler blocks. I bought some 2 1/2" paper tumbler templates years ago and I think it is time to slowly start another hand pieced quilt. 

Hope everyone has had a great start to 2021!

Here's to the close of 2020 and new hope for 2021!

 I thought I would participate in the Best of 2020 linky party hosted by Cheryl @Meadow Mist Designs. She has asked that a new blog post be written highlighting the 5 best of my blog post from 2020. Cheryl has left it up to us to determine which post are 'the best'!

The first 'best' up for me is my post from October 31st when I posted about my finish of my Look on the Bright Side quilt. This quilt was made from my participation in the Quiet Play Pattern Club from 2019. All the blocks are paper pieced and designed by Kristy Lea. 

I really enjoyed sewing the paper pieced blocks in rainbow colors and the text blocks!

I picked this post because although this quilt took me longer than usual to finish, I kept working on it and finally finished it~~~no UFO here!

Second 'best' is from my blog post on August 30th. This post showed the finish of my I Spy quilt featuring by grandson. He still loves to take out the quilt and 'spy' all the things on the quilt! There are over 100 things to search for!

My third 'best' is Manifest, a quilt I featured in my May 13th blog post. I designed this quilt for my daughter. She loves very simple designs and sent me some ideas to work with. This quilt also feature some of my natural dyed fabrics!

The fourth 'best' is my Breaking the Rules quilt featured in my March 19th blog post. This quilt was created as part of the #improvtrianglesewalong by Nicholas Ball. I really loved learning this technique and how this quilt turned out! It now hangs in my quilt room.

I quilted it using a dense straight line/matchstick type quilting...much denser than I usually quilt!

Finally, my fifth 'best' is my Orphism quilt. It is based on the Cubism Art movement which is known for it's abstraction and bright colors. This was featured in my 

May 6th blog post.

I really like this quilt that is made with 2 different sizes of HST. The pop of yellow really makes the quilt stand out. 

Well, that is my 5 best! It was hard to pick only 5 out of 20 quilts that I made during 2020, however it was fun to look back through the past year. Hope you enjoyed it!

I'm linking to the Best of 2020 @Meadow Mist Designs.