It's been a while...

 Summer has been crazy busy - regular summer busy and our new retirement busy - which includes travel! 

In my last post, I showed the quilt I made for a wedding gift to a very special couple. We have known the bride since she was born and her parents even longer! I asked for help naming the quilt as I was having difficulty coming up with a name that worked for me. After reading many suggestions, both here and social media, as well as asking my daughters, I came up with the perfect name (in my opinion). I finally named it 'Love Grows'! Here is a picture taken on top of Mt Washington!

It was so windy! This is the best of several attempts but it was fun trying! 

(more pictures here.)

The finished size is 63" x 73". 

Also in previous posts, I showed you the process of designing and piecing a baby quilt for another special couple. I have also know mama since birth and her parents longer. Our youngest daughter was raised with these 2 girls! Since I was going to miss the baby shower (due to retirement travel), I desperately tried to get this finished before leaving. I managed to finished everything except hand stitching the binding so it came with so I could finish during the car ride. Here are pictures taken on Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park. 

I quilted this with several different thread colors. I stitched spirals in the sun and straight line rays. The mountains have straight lines following the peaks and the trees are quilted with triangles. The finished size is 36" x 42". 

I'm linking to Off the Wall Friday @ Creations-Quilts, Art, Whatever, Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Wednesday Wait Loss @the inquiring quilter

I also brought some EPP tumblers on our car trip and I managed to finish the last 36 as well as start randomly sewing them together in rows of 10. 

I'm not sure what the layout will be but at least I got a start on some rows. I can always make them longer. I have 300 tumblers.

My final project for the car ride was to work on an old UFO from my cross stitch days. I was inspired to pull this project out when I saw Annie's @Annie's Musings, cross stitch project that she recently started again. I drew up this pattern from a picture I took after we put on the addition to our house! I got bored with it while filling in the sky/background and I haven't worked on it in years!

This is what it looked/looks like!

Before

After

I have put in a few more rows since being home! Maybe this will get finished after all! I still have all the details/outlines to do after the background is done!

PROGRESS!

I will leave the rest of the updates for another post as this has gotten quite long. if you are interested in my vacation pictures you can see them on my instagram or facebook accounts.  Thanks if you have read to the end! 

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!   

A Little of This and That

 I've been working on my final quilt for the Hands2Help2021 challenge. I will be donating 2 quilts to the Little Lambs Foundation and another quilt as my Hometown Hero. More on that in a later post. I put the final stitches in the binding of       Spring Fever yesterday! 

This is a bright baby quilt.

 

I pulled fabrics from my stash to match the piece, also from my stash, that I would use for the back. I drew a simple quilt pattern on graph paper. 

The rotating pink squares bring movement to the simple design.

The backing has little rose buds in blue, pink, and yellow with green stems. I needed to piece the back to make it big enough. 

The Little Lambs Foundation suggests 36" x 42" for the size of a baby quilt. 

Spring Fever is 36" x 44" ~perfect!. 

I FMQ petals in the yellow blocks, leaves in the green blocks, and a offset circle shape in the pink/white blocks. 

The binding is a striped fabric with a mix of colors that I felt would go nicely. 

It was nice to stitch this quilt completely from my stash!

I'm linking to Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop? @Confessions of a Fabric Addict and 

Link Party @ Quilting Patchwork Applique.

EDIT: I've sent off 2 quilts to Little Lambs Foundation this week!

I haven't updated you on my Thankful Slow Stitching in awhile. It has been a little slow lately as I have doing some additional hand stitching. Almost all the green stems are finished!

Slowly I have worked on some scrappy blue tumbler blocks. Here is all the colors I've completed so far.

Linking to Slow Sunday Stitching @Kathy'sQuilts and ScrapHappySaturday @SoScrappy.

I forgot all about sharing my March journal calendar and it is almost the end of April. I'm more accountable to keep it up when I share it so here it is! 

A new project, some yellow scraps, and slow stitching

     I am so excited about this new project! Yesterday I took a class hosted by                                                           CraftyMonkies.                                                        BTW: I love that I can take a class in Great Britain thanks to Zoom! This is the 2nd class that I've                                  taken through Craftymonkies and they do not disappoint!                               The class was called Mindful Stitches by GaryMillsDesigns. Gary taught us how to create a fabric journal that you can store your keepsakes, pieces of art, stitching, even photographs! It really is up to you! Here is my journal!

I stamped the words Mindful Stitches on a piece of scrap linen and hand stitched it to the front. 

The cover is made of red/cream ticking fabric and the inside cover is some cream linen. Both I had in my stash. I used perle cotton thread to hand stitch around the journal. The pages are made in set of 4 that are folded to make 8 double sided pages. We made 2 set in class. I used some light colored calicos, some muslin and a piece left from a baby quilt I made. 

On my 1st page I put a scrap from a quilted jacket I made back in 1997. (Yes, I still have scraps from that far back! I also made quilted Christmas stocking ornaments from these scraps. 

On the backside of that page I put a candlewicking piece made by my mother. Over the years the piece got soiled/yellowed around the edges. I needed a way to preserve it. I cut it to fit and hand stitched it to the page. I added the lace flowers and  beads. I blanket stitched around the page edges. Here is a close up.

Other ideas I have to add in are my zentangle squares I made back in 2014 and some small orphaned quilt squares made as trial pieces. 

This is an ongoing project. Many more pages will be added before this journal is finished! I'm linking to Linky Party @Patchwork & Quilts. 

I worked on some additional yellow scraps for my EPP ~ tumblers project. 

I will link up to Scrap Happy Saturday @SoScrappy. 

I haven't given an update on my Slow Stitching hoop embroidery in a while. Slowly I've been stitching more flowers. Here is where it is today!

I'm almost finished with on half!

I'm linking to Slow Sunday Stitching @Kathy's Quilts.

I hope you have found some time to sew or stitch! If your interested in taking a class, go check out Craftymonkies!

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.