RSC blocks.....

I hope it is close enough to the end of the month that there will be no more purple sampler blocks posted. I have 12 and I think that is enough for this month!

Here is a shot of all my sampler blocks so far this year. I really like how this sampler quilt is progressing.

Thunderstorm at my house now so I elected not to do soccer practice tonight. Thunder and lightning and I keep my kids inside where it is safe. Dinner is done and the kids are coloring. I guess I should pick up the house a bit while I can. That way I don't feel guilty finishing the backing for the triangle quilt and getting that pinned tonight for quilting tomorrow morning.

Design wall Monday.

I finally took an hour in the sewing room today and got my rows sewn into a top for the Triangle Quit Along. I'm not sure I'll be able to get it quilted and bound for the link up but you just never know how the week will turn out. I'll give it a shot and who knows - maybe it will get done on time. I decided to let it flow and there are some matching triangles that make diamonds. Things always seem to get turned a bit when you sew them together.... but as long as there was no white on the edges I kept it as a truly 'scrappy' quilt top. Excuse the need for a good pressing, I laid it out and a five year old promptly decided to roll around on it and wrap herself up in it stating 'this is not being taken out of the house!'.

Emily had to have a picture taken with her on the top.

After pictures she was back to watching her show... while laying on the quilt top of  course!

Other than the usual things (speech Tues,Wed; Soccer Tue, Thurs; Emily play date Thursday) this week I only have two adds -meeting about Emily's speech to hand over to her new school next year on Tuesday morning and possibly working Wednesday morning while a spa is being delivered. So nice to get back to a fairly 'normal' schedule for the last 5 weeks of school. Now to sign the kids up for their swim lessons this summer and maybe another week of some 'camp' for each of them to take up a few hours of the day. The rest of the summer will be spent being kids and enjoying the pool! I am looking forward to not having everyone ready to leave the house by 7:20AM five days a week.

Time to get some waters and snacks ready.... to go wait for the boy to be released from school.

Sunday Slow stitching.....

Kathy over at Kathy's Quilts asked what we do as we are slow stitching this week. I know last night we were 'watching' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 and part of part 2 while I stitched up some of these pretty hexagon flowers.

Usually, I am in a car in the car line waiting for Aidan to be released from school as I work on these. Since there is usually no 'good' things on tv we tend to watch reruns, which means I don't have to really look at the tv! Kathy has some great podcasts linked on her post that sound interesting. Maybe I'll have to check out a few of them while I do some slow stitching this week.

I need to prep a few more purple hexagon's with their sewing lines on the back and then I can whip up the last 5 for the month of April. I am making these with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge over at Angela's blog here. I decided to join in the sampler quilt along this year but I am also making hexie flowers, churn dashes and a 16 patch block each month in the color selected. This is a no guilt link up so you can join at any time!

Head on over to Kathy's Quilts and see what other slow stitching projects are being worked on this week.

4 more sampler blocks done in purple......

I had some bigger triangles (from 4.5 inch strips) leftover from the kaleidoscope quilt that were put into the top two blocks. I made an oops when cutting for my churn dash and did not have any more of a fabric for the 1.5 inch strip needed so those were made into the little middles of the right side ones. The lower left is the sampler block Angela has posted right now for the sampler. Instructions can be found here for that one. I've added 4 more 6.5 inch blocs to my sampler and got rid of a few scraps on the cutting table.

I have a pork shoulder in the crock pot for pulled pork sammies for dinner tonight. Just need to chop up the cabbage for some slaw to go with it. Laundry is in the dryer. Plants have been watered, birds have been fed. Birthday presents purchased and wrapped. Just waiting for the time to leave for the party. Aidan informed me he wants the computer to do his Ticket to Read while waiting to go so I better wrap this up. I hope I can sneak away to the sewing room again this evening after the kids are in bed - that triangle quilt needs to get the rows sewn together..... they are on one side of my ironing table and I need that space back =).

Finally Saturday!

I survived the week.... I think!
First I'll show the purple blocks for the RSC challenge. I got the last five of the 12 churn dashes done and added three sampler blocks this week. I got a couple more purple flowers made too but they did not make it into the picture. I still have a few to work through this month.

The trip to Lego Land with Aidan's class on Tuesday went great. I had 4 boys to keep track of and am happy to say there were still the same four when we got off the bus that night at school! We were there for the announcement that they ran all that day on Solar power for Earth Day. They will continue to run the imagination part on solar with Tampa electric. They had movies on during the 2 hour ride there and back. I had never seen the whole Jungle Book movie... and now I have!

Wednesday I got to work the whole day at the store with my hubby. He went to fetch the kids from Grandma and gave me a nice hour of peace and quiet at home. Thursday it was back to kid duty and I managed to sneak in a little sewing before taking them to a soccer game that evening. This picture is after the game with their snack and drink. Mr. Aidan got the soccer medal this week for doing a great job on the field. Emily got hers the first week.

Friday I had to work again and Greg was on kid duty for the day and did take them to their spring fling event at school last evening. They each got to mow part of the lawn with Daddy yesterday too. Today I get to drop the girl to Grandma and then have the boy for the day so he can attend a birthday party for a classmate this afternoon. Tomorrow it is back to work for me. I think I can sneak in a bit more sewing today.... I want to make a few more purple sampler blocks and have some leftover hst's and triangles that will be made into something! Thank goodness most of next week is still April..... so I can work on a little more purple before the next color comes out to play.

Head on over to SoScrappy and see what other purple projects were worked on this month.

Edited: Here is a link to a few more sampler blocks I worked on today.

Prep Work.... and a busy week..... again.

I managed to put the sewing room back together and had my sewing table back in place on Sunday morning . That let me quickly sew up the three churn dashes that were in process and a sampler block. I think I still need to do a lemoyne star for the sampler too.

Today - a little girl pitched a fit at drop off so she ended up coming home with me. Some tummy pains and it seems I did not grab a water for her and she didn't prep one like I asked. It was 10-15 minutes of a fit that had everyone there wondering what had happened to my happy go lucky girl. She seems better now, thank goodness.

I did prep quite a few hexagons today in preparation for a long week. There are five more sets of purple waiting to have their lines drawn on the back. I think I need to make a few yellow ones too for the middles of the purples. The whites will get the colorful spring colors from the triangle quilt.

Tomorrow I am a chaperon on a field trip to Lego Land that leaves the school at 6:45 AM. Yes, that is in the morning Mom! We'll have a long day including an announcement that we get to be right in the front for tomorrow morning. A long day has us arriving back to school around 7PM. Aidan told me the three boys and him that I am to keep track of..... seems two tend to get in trouble when they are together. A long day for me. I hope to be able to either do some hexie flowers or knitting on the bus ride - 2 hours there and 2 hours back.

Wednesday I get to  work all day with Greg at the store and Grandma is on kid pickup duty. She gets to pick up Emily Tuesday, bring her to speech and soccer practice that evening. A big thank you to grandma for doing that for me.

Thursday night is a soccer game. Friday night is a spring fling at school - a sort of fair I think. Saturday I drop one kid to Grandma in the morning and the other stays with me (bummer - no quilting) and then I get to take him to a friends birthday party that afternoon at a gymnastics place. Sunday I work again.
See.... a busy week. I do see lots of hand work in my future this week. If you don't hear from me until Saturday.... you know why!

RSC Saturday in purple.

I could not miss two Saturday's in the RSC challenge so I'm going to show the little bit of purple I have been able to play with this month. Not nearly as much as I would have liked at this point but I'll take what sewing time I can get. Some Churn dash blocks and some hexagon flowers have been added to the mix. I have started one of the sampler blocks but have not had a chance to finish it. There are three more churn dashes waiting to be sewn together on the sewing table.

I have been playing with some leftovers from my Triangle Quilt Along fabrics (I hope to attempt to sew some rows together on Sunday night after getting home from Easter dinner at Grandma's house). I've been making these cute hexagon flowers. I just need to prep a bunch of white for some neat flowers in between with colorful centers. I'll hook these together with a white hexagon and then make some rows. Hopefully what I am thinking will work out for a cute little quilt. Emily's new Sofia the First doll thinks she needs her own quilt!

My sewing table is a banquet table and it had to be moved outside on Thursday for a play date. Emily had a few of her friends from school over to dye some eggs. The back lawn was a great choice to do that. I ended up helping out that morning in her class for her party so had prepped the dyes early - 2.5 hours early! I added a little vinegar when we got home and it was amazing the colors we got from just a couple of seconds in the dye. I must remember this next year. The kids all had a great time and then played with lots of toys through the house while the Mom's chatted. That night the kids had a soccer game. Aidan played goal one quarter and did a great job trying to score a goal as well. None of his five try's made it past the other teams goalie but he did a great job trying. It is amazing how much they have learned in the three months they have been playing.

Friday we had a family day and we all went to Animal Kingdom. I wanted to hit the safari ride - Good Friday with a great chance of rain was a wonderful day to go! Wait times were about 10 minutes! We used the fast pass to go to see Mickey and Minnie Mouse - which they loved. We also tried 'It's Tough to be a Bug' but they both bolted out pretty quick as it was too scary. A quick bite to eat and then we hit dinosaur land to play in  the dig site and the playground. Some kids who were so excited to go with both Mom and Dad - who did not sleep much last night - got a little cranky so we called it a day and headed home after some ice cream around 1:30. The advantage of the annual pass - no guilt as we can go back any time =).

Head on over to SoScrappy on Saturday morning to see the other purple projects being worked on through the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. On Sunday, check out Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Stitching Sunday. I'll be working on some more hexagon flowers  in purples and whites during the morning and evening between easter egg hunts and heading to Grandma's for Easter lunch with the family.

 Happy Easter

Design Wall Monday.....

Since I missed all posts this weekend due to working, I figured I'd do a Design Floor post. I've been plugging away on the triangle quilt along and finally got the rows sewn together this morning after I was able to drop Emily to school around 9:15AM. We had some issues with paperwork and it seems her physical forms were out of date as of Friday... and I got a phone call Thursday night letting me know she could not go back until they had the proper form. I had to drive to the doctors across town on Friday and sign the paperwork so they could fax it to them. Seems they got it Friday but didn't let me know, so we had a bit of  a miscommunication this morning. I got a call around 9 that they had the form and she could come to school. That game me 1.5 hours of sewing before I had to pick her up! She was very happy to be back in school.

Now I need to sew the rows together so I can post a top this week over at The Sassy Quilter.


I decided to cut some hexie's from the leftover bits and will use the rest in some maverick stars. Eventually.


After this one is done, I really need to get back to the Kaleidoscope quilt so I can have it quilted and bound by the end of next month. Those blocks are hiding under the ironing board in the previous picture. I've been doing one at the end of each row to mix things up a bit.  I might have to quilt the log cabin first... that one is pinned and waiting for quilting. The white and blue toile print is the backing and it is waiting on the chair for a chunk of quilting time. It is a double bed size so will need a good chunk of the day to quilt on my little Viking machine. Especially if I attempt some feathers on it.

Ok - time to pick up the boy from school and then we have a swim date with some friends. G had the kids in the pool yesterday when I got home from work and the grocery store. Still a bit chilly for me but they had a good time. I'll head in once the water is in the mid 80 range.. until then, I'll watch from the ladder =).

Ideas?

I've made two Kaleidoscope quilts (ok - one is in process still!) and now am making a 60 degree triangle quilt. I have all those parts from the edges of the strips with those fun angles left over.
I'm looking for ideas on what to do with them. I could just sew them together in rows and see what happens, cut a square  or hexagon from each and use the leftover triangles in crumb blocks, make some wonky type star blocks...... any other thoughts?

This is the leftover bits from the triangle quilt I am working on in spring baby colors. These are a bit bigger parts from 6.5 inch strips but there are a bunch of smaller triangles under there too.

This was the first Kaleidoscope quilt I made last year. I have lots of black and all those pretty blue, teal, green and yellows hanging around somewhere. These are 4.5 and 6.5 inch strips.

This is the second Kaleidoscope quilt that is waiting to be sewn into blocks and then rows. I have some extras of teal, purple and blues hanging around from this one also. These also were 4.5 and 6.5 inch strips. Some of these have been cut and used in other projects where I needed some squares already.

Thanks for your help with ideas. I have a feeling I just need to keep the pile on the cutting mat and just pick a day and do something with them. Who knows what it will end up looking like. I'll probably keep the three sets separate and come up with three smaller quilts or wall hangings. Time will tell.

Triangle Quilt Along....

I played with the triangles this morning to lay them all out and then started to sew them together.  This just screams spring to me!

I really need to pay more attention when sewing them together so things don't get moved around. I'll have to do a little frogging to make those first two rows look like the original picture....I want the whites spread out a bit more than how they went together.

Maybe I should not sew while talking on the phone with Mom? The door to the sewing room will stay closed to keep the cats out until this is all sewn into rows. They tend to have their own idea on how the fabric should look and it is a bit different from mine!

Head on over to The Sassy Quilter to see how all the other quilts are coming along. It's not too late to join this fun sew along.

Design Wall Monday

I finished the hand quilting of the cables on this little 12 inch block last night. I now have 16 blocks made using the Kansas Troubles fabrics. Do I continue on and make the two appliqué and another 2 blocks.... or call it done and start putting them together? Decisions, decisions.....

Wishing a Happy 5th Birthday to Emily. This was the cake she selected for her school party.

The Weekend post

I managed to make a few of the blocks that were posted for the RSC sampler this week. I seem to have sewn the triangle wrong on the spinning star - so I ended up with a different block in teal and white.

I did start pulling some purples out and cut a few hexie flowers for hand stitching. I plan to work on these a little tonight after the day is all done and the kids are in bed. My reward to myself after a long day!

It is a working weekend for me. After a great day yesterday at the store, a quick delivery of a big green egg after work and then getting lost in The Villages on the way home... it was a long day. We had a dinner date for a late dinner and then picked up the kids from Grandma's house and got them home really late (9:45) for bed. Today is another work day but a short one for me since it is Sunday hours - 11-3. Tonight the grandparents down here are coming over for dinner to celebrate someone turning FIVE tomorrow. She is so excited to have brats and burgers on the grill. I'd better go boil the eggs and potato for the salad I need to make before I head into work.
Head on over to SoScrappy to see the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up and Kathy's Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday. I plan to go visit everyone this week as time allows.

Triangle Quilt Along - all 204+ triangles cut out

I just finished cutting out all the 60 degree triangles for the triangle quilt along found over to the right of my side bar. I had to supplement a bunch of solids - lots of white with pink, green and some pretty teal to go with my FQ bunch of fabrics. I also pulled a bright green print and some teal leaves to get enough of my triangles cut. I finally found the 60 degree ruler at Joann's Fabrics yesterday after picking up the car from the dealership. It made it much easier to cut out all these triangles. Head on over to see all the pretty fabrics that will be made into some pyramid quilts.