A very busy but very good time!

 It seems that things happen at the same time! We have been extremely busy in our personal lives and those of our kids. When my daughter announced that she would be having our 2nd grandchild in May, we knew it would be close to when our youngest daughter would graduate from pharmacy school. We just didn't know how close! It just happened that my daughter's scheduled C-Section was scheduled for May 17th and my other daughter's graduation was on May 20th (in Austin, TX.) Arrangements were made for watching Magnus (the big brother) after we needed to leave for Austin early Thursday morning. But before we left, we were able to visit our new granddaughter in the hospital!

Happy Mormor

Happy family

Magnus holding his baby sister

Sweet Freya Ruth

We were headed to Austin early Thursday morning and met up with my daughter and her fiance, Brendan. We met Brendan's parents for the first time and had a wonderful time getting to know them. We celebrated Brendan and Kari's engagement! However, the main event of the weekend was Kari's graduation from pharmacy school. We now have a Dr. of Pharmacy in our family! 

Congratulations Kari! We are so proud of you!

So in between all this excitement, I did finish 124 blocks for Clue 2 of the O Say Can You Sew! QAL. It took me nearly the entire month to finish and trim each block!

I also finished the stitching on my hoop embroidery project. I'm please with how it turned out. I still need to trim and secure it in the hoop!

I'll be linking to Finished or Not Friday @Alycia Quilts, Friday Fun Foto @Powered by Quilting, TGIFF @Sarah Goer Quilts, and Linky Party @Patchwork and Quilting

I'll be back tomorrow for the final parade of quilts for the 

Hands2Helps2022 Challenge!

Slow Stitching, SAHRR and Macaron Mystery

             Slowly I've been making progress on some of my projects.                       But first I want to share these Valentine's Day cards that I stitched up. 

The cards are free from Christina Cameli @Afewscraps on IG. I have been a fan of Christina's for some time. At Christmas, she offered some cards to stitch. I was very tempted but we have been doing photo cards over the past few years so I didn't get them. When I saw her post about her Valentine's Day cards I immediately downloaded them and started stitching. I made 2 sets of them (slightly different). It was so satisfying to slow down and stitch these beautiful cards (even if I knew that                           some wouldn't get to their destinations in time). Better late than never!                           Thank you Christina for these lovely cards!

I worked on Round 5 for the SAHRR project. This round was hosted by Quilting Gail. She gave a choice of applique and/or fence rail. I choose to add some fence rails to the corners of Round 4. Although I'm not in love with it, it will have to do. I'm running short on fabrics that go with this orphaned block. Note:after I had this round together, I found more of my main black fabric but no more of any coordinating fabric. We will see what the next and final round brings! 

Linking to Linky Party for Round 5.

I also finally put together the flimsy for the Macaron Mystery from Meadow Mist Designs. I still need to trim it up and add some borders on the top and bottom to make this quilt a bit of a rectangle. It is a bright one!

I'm very pleased with this pattern from Cheryl. It is my 3rd mystery 

by her and I love all of them! Thanks Cheryl!

Slow Stitching

 I have started several projects of hand work in the past year. I have shown you                      my hoop embroidery of flowers which is slowly coming along.                           I also shown my fabric journal for Mindful Stitches. I'm mostly using              it for textile pieces that were orphaned or sample pieces but I've also included                               some paper art and some embroidery stitching.                             Since I haven't given an update in a while, I took some picture of the new pages.

These little plus blocks were samples blocks from a project.

This quilt block and the one below were orphaned from projects.

I stitched a basic embroidery stitches sampler.

I found this stamped and colored mermaid that I made several years ago that I stitched onto the page.

I gathered small smooth sticks on my walks with my grandson and wrapped them in embroidery floss then stitched them into the journal.

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

I am staying accountable by posting my April calendar journal!

And a final picture of my attempt at an art photo. 😊

I love dandelion puffs! 

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! 

How can it be March already?

I finally put the last 2 rounds of the SAHRR quilt together! 

Round 6 really got me second guessing. The round was hosted by Susan at Quilt Fabrication and she choose log cabin. As I was reading through the host's posts and what they did, I noticed that many of them were waiting for the next round to add them to their quilt. That made me start thinking "What do they all know that I don't know?" "Will I have enough fabric to complete 2 rounds?" "I don't enjoy mystery quilts and this feels like a mystery quilt along. Did I make a mistake doing this?"

I really have enjoyed all the rounds until I got stuck in Round 6. Funny thing is that I do like the log cabin block! So I waited until Round 7. Quilting Gail announced pinwheels as the final round. I had a long week of work and babysitting so I wasn't able to start working on the rounds until yesterday. I surveyed the amount of fabric I had remaining that would work in the blocks and drew up a round combining log cabins and pinwheels. Here is what I came up with.

I added quarter log cabin blocks at the corners and 2 in the middle of each side. I then made 3 pinwheel blocks for each corner. Since I had only 2 charm packs and a little bit of yardage, I had trouble having enough of the prints from the fabric line with the same background color to complete the round without adding some coordinating fabric from my stash. I do have quite a few charm squares left over that I may use as either another round or pieced for the back. Overall, I'm pleased with this!

I'm linking to Quilting Gail linking party and the link party at Patchwork and Quilts.

I am also making a bit of progress on my slow stitching! I have finished the flowers on half of the hoop and I just finished the text. Yay!

I'm linking to Slow Stitching Sunday over at Kathy's Quilts and Can I Get a Whoop, Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

I finished my February calendar! I've been keeping up recording one or two things each day...a simple way to journal! 

This week I hope to play with my green scraps for So Scrappy, take a look at the Hands2Help charities, and work on a few other projects!

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!

Another Busy Week

I had another busy week this week! We had a 'snow day/remote learning day' on Tuesday so my Tuesday job was cancelled but I worked on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! I found out on Wednesday that my District was able to secure Covid-19 vaccines for all staff including regular substitutes in the district. It happened very quickly as the dates were Thursday and Friday! I was able to get an appointment for Thursday after school! I never have been more excited to get a shot!

I am thankful that our district was able to get the vaccines! #IGotMine #OneStepCloser

In my sewing room, I continued to sew on the shoalsewalong and I got my fish top finished. Nicholas explained his technique of putting together 'slabs' using the puzzle method. Here is my top!

I did make a few minor changes since this picture. 

I'm linking to the link party @Patchwork and Quilts, Finished or Not Friday @AlyciaQuilts, Can I Get A Whoop, Whoop @Confessions of a Fabric Addict      

I also put the back together so I'm just about ready to figure out the quilting! 

But before that can happen, I needed to get to this:

My Starlight Mountain Quilt that I finished a October has been waiting to be quilted. I was able to work on it a bit and hopefully will finish this weekend. 

In the meantime, the 2nd round of the SAHRR was announced as the plus sign. There were various ways the hosts used this prompt. I decided to keep it a bit simpler since the piano keys were quite busy. I just made a few small plus signs for each corner similar to Susan's @QuiltFabrication. 

I'm linking up to Round Robin Round #2 @ The Darling Dogwood

I have taken some time to slow down and continue my hand stitching. Here is the progress I've made! 

The first set of flowers are finished!

Linking to Slow Stitching Sunday @Kathy's Quilts

Looking forward to February! The new color is bright, sunny yellow!

Hope you had a good week! Stay safe! There is hope!

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)