Part 2 - The Quilt Blocks

 My last post was getting a bit long so I thought I would continue on Part 2 for the quilt blocks I finished. 

For May, Angela announced sage and/or dark greens as the color of the month. I pulled my green fabrics and started cutting for the Hang Ten block.

The bonus of this block is the HST I use in my Squiggle blocks. 

Then I pulled more greens and some scraps of gray for my 3rd RSC block.

I will link up with Scrap Happy Saturday @So Scrappy.

I made 2 blocks in pink for the Stash Buster Challenge on FB.

Kat over @Kat and Cats quilts posted the new block for the 

May/June 

blocks for Covered in Love charity. Here are my blocks. 

On YouTube, I have been following Lisa Bongean for her QAL: Oh Say Can You Sew. This is a mystery QAL but I decided to try it because of the patriotic colors. Each month another clue is released. I finished working on Clue 1 for April.

Scrappy 9 patch blocks in blue and white!

I'm also getting close to finishing my Hands2Help donation quilt. Stay tuned for a separate post about this great cause!

SAHRR Week ~ Round 1 and other things

Monday began Round 1 of SAHRR for 2022! 

Anja's choice to start this year is..the curved-block. Now I don't do much curved piecing so I hemmed and hawed about what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to try to keep each round to no more than 3". My original thought would have needed a filler border to make the size work out. I scraped that idea but I had already added the borders. My final decision was to just add a drunkard's path block to each corner. To make it more interesting, I pieced the bars between each corner in opposite colors from the drunkard's path block. This round nicely frames the original block.

I'm linking to Anja Quilts.

I also finished 2 blocks for the January/February block drive. Kat choice of blocks for the beginning of the year is a string block. We are using the pattern from 2019. They will be in the mail soon.

I have been working on another quilt but I can't say much about it yet. I will leave you with a sneak peek. 

 

A flimsy and other progress

 I put together one of my RSC 2021 quilts! I even had time to sandwich it yesterday! 

The pattern is called Joy Luck by Miss Rosie's Quilt Co. that I purchased many years ago. I hope to get to the quilting this week. My job at school has slowed down a bit and I have the week off from babysitting my grandson. My SIL landed a new job and starts next week so they gave me the week off. Hopefully I will be productive (if I'm not called into work.)

Linking to Scrap Happy Saturday, and Patchwork and Quilts

I added some peach blocks to my RSC- Wonky Shoo Fly blocks.

I also made charity blocks for Covered in Love. Kat introduced the Nov/Dec CiL block drive which are textured blocks. Other than sensory quilts, I had never seen a textured block/quilt. I was intrigued with a few of the patterns and made these.

gathered strip

undulating tucks

pintucks

I tried something new while I still could find a few flowers around. It is called flower pounding on fabric. I gathered some flowers that had some good colors and a few green leaves and laid them out. 

I covered the flowers with parchment paper and taped it down. 

Then with a rubber mallet, I pounded the flowers until I could see moisture/color released from the flowers. Some flowers released more color than others and the leaves were resistant. (Marigolds and geraniums released the best.)

Here is the result. After cleaning up the remaining parts of flowers, I ironed with a hot iron to set the colors. I'm not sure how colorfast this is so I may use a salt or vinegar fixative. I'm not sure how I will use this but I may add some embroidery to enhance the flowers and add texture.

Finally, here is my finished October calendar journal. 

Hope you have a good and productive week!

Reopened for business

 Yay! My sewing room remake is finished at least enough to move back in and use. I still need to organize some things in the new space and buy some bins. It feels so good and I really love my new cutting table!

Most of the room is the same; just rearranged except for the new cutting table and new flooring. For years I was using a cabinet from my mom which was raised up to the correct height by resting on cinder blocks for my cutting table. It worked fine but it was a bit wobbly. The floor was carpet and most difficult to keep clean of threads, fabric trimmings, and pins. 

We started with removing the carpet and laying vinyl floor planks. To replace the cutting table I found an IKEA hack using 3 Kallax 4x4 units. We bought a butcher block plank from Home Depot. My DH and I worked to put it together. My cutting mat fits perfectly on one end of the cutting table. 

(A little proof that I used power tools to help however, my DH did most of the work)

Throughout August, I participated in the #30daysofimprovqal on IG. For my final composition, I decided to add large borders of negative space to increase the size. 

Here is the final composition.

And today, I found a bit of time to pin baste it.

The start of September means August calendar journal is complete! I have been journaling a thing or two about each of my days since the beginning of the year! 

My calendar journaling actually goes back quite a few years ~in 2013 and 2014 I made monthly calendar pages out of fabric. When my mom got sick I could no longer keep up. During the following years I would see Annie's journals and how cool and creative they were. She inspired me to pick up calendar journaling once again ~ this time using a calendar download, printed on cardstock. 

I also finished the new charity blocks for the September/October block drive for Covered in Love. 

September brings a new color ~ ORANGE 

Stay tuned for projects in orange and the next step in the Macaron Mystery QAL.

A little bit of this and that

 I'm not quite ready to share my almost finished secret project (a birthday gift for my SIL)! I am hand stitching the binding and then need to label and gift it! Soon!

But since July rolled around (how can this year be going so fast?), there is a new color of the month for the RSC, dark blue, and a new block for Covered in Love charity (stars).

I cut and sewed 10 wonky shoo fly blocks and 10 joy luck blocks in dark blues. 

wonky shoo fly

Joy Luck

I also cut many dark blue and purple scraps for my tumbler blocks.

(I never got around to cutting purple scraps in June) 

Now to hand stitch them! 

Linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @So Scrappy.

Here are my star blocks for the Covered in Love charity. 

Kat @Kat & Cat Quilts is back to hosting this round after taking 2 months off to catch up. May/June was hosted by Tammy @Travelin' Sew I. 

July/August is typically star blocks, a favorite! There are so many to choose from!

Linking to Midweek Makers @Quiltfabrication, Stitch and Show @Life in the Scrapatch, and Monday Making @Love, Laugh Quilt

 

July also means a new calendar and the finished calendar for the month of June! 

June is a birthday month in our family including mine! 

July is the start of the Macaron Mystery Quilt hosted by Cheryl @MeadowMistDesigns. This month is all about fabric requirements and picks!

Here are my choices.

Mostly from my stash but I needed to add the light polka dot fabric and get a bit more of the Kona cactus and Kona white. 

This is my 3rd mystery QAL with Cheryl! It is a nice, easy pace and Cheryl's designs are great! Will you be joining? 

At my knitting club (we meet on Monday nights), one friend asked if anyone heard of a knitted potholder that was a folded type (her niece wanted to know and sent some pictures). So in usual fashion, we all start a google search to see what we could find. It turns out that the only method we could find was crochet. 

So on Tuesday night after I finished knitting my project, I started to crochet one that I found on YouTube. It is a pretty interesting technique that intrigued me.

It is double thick and made from cotton yarn. It was actually pretty fun to watch come together and fairly easy so I offered to teach it at knitting this past Monday!

Hope to be back soon with my secret finish!   

Lots to update!

 My last post was all about the Hands2Help 2021 Challenge. After I posted, I decided to donate another quilt to another Hometown Hero. It was for another teacher/co-worker. On Memorial Day, this teacher woke up with a swollen knee and started to run a fever. Her husband took her to the hospital and she was admitted with a sepsis bacteria infection. She underwent surgery on her knee. 

I was supposed to sub for her on Monday, but she called on Sunday to cancel because she wanted to be at school for her 'kids' (she was released from the hospital on Friday.) That alone is amazing, the dedication this teacher has to her students. Earlier in the year, she also contracted COVID-19 possibly from her one of her students. During that time she taught her kids remotely as her entire class was quarantined. This was also hard on her family as her son suffers from anxiety.      So I quickly added another label to my Watermelon Sparkler quilt and wrapped and delivered it on the last day of school. She was very touched and surprised. 

Drum roll please!

Head over to Sarah @Confessions of a Fabric Addict for the final numbers! You will be amazed at the numbers!

On June 5th, I received some Happy Mail! In my mailbox was this sweet postcard made by Annie @Freezeframe03. 

Annie notified me, on June 2, that I was the winner of her postcard! 

I couldn't have been more excited! Annie makes the most incredible, 

creative art whether it be a postcard, a tag, a journal page, monthly 

calendar page, or a quilt!

I now have 2 postcards from Annie and an envelope. They live in my 

sewing room on top of where I hang my scissors and below my thread 

rack. Just where I can see them and be inspired!

Aren't they fabulous!

If you would like to see more of Annie's creations, please head over to her blog. 

Speaking of calendar pages, here is my May calendar page 

(be nice, it is nowhere near as nice as Annie's!)

June's color for the RSC is purple! I found some time to play around with my scraps and made 10 wonky shoo fly blocks 

and 10 Joy Luck blocks.

After 6 months of rainbow scrap play, this is what I have...

wonky shoo fly

Joy Luck

I'm linking to Scrap Happy Saturday @SoScrappy.

I also made some blocks for the Covered in Love charity. This is run by Kat and Cat Quilts but the May and June drive is being hosted by Tammy @Travelin' Sew I. 

Here are my blocks that will be in the mail this week.

Finally, we took a few days for some relaxation in WI! Here is the view from my new hammock!

Hope you are enjoying the summer!

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!