Slow Sunday Stitching....

Instead of doing what I should be today... I spent the afternoon hand stitching the plates on my dresden in light blue. Sometimes you just need a relaxing afternoon of stitching.

Linking up with Kathy at Slow Sunday Stitching.

Saturday....

I have yet to do any light blue sewing this week! I might head in and find the sewing machine in a little bit... or more likely will put some hand stitches into the dresden while relaxing a bit in my recliner.

It has been a busy day (and yesterday!). Today was our Girl Scout Thinking Day. Our Troop did Australia and I missed that we needed a flag - so was busy making one with some fabric yesterday.
It came out ok.

Then there was the board to do, and finish up our boomerang swaps - which we needed 30 more that I cut out yesterday in the car line. Emily helped color those as the rest of the troop had already done 160 of them on Monday night. I added the pins last night while watching National Treasure. My co-leader has a friend who's hubby is from Australia. They lent us a bunch of things including the boomerang to display at our booth. The girls had Fairy Bread as their snack 2 weeks ago and Anzac biscuits (cookies) this past week. Did you know that the measurement are a little different between the USA and Australia? 1Tablespoon in US is 15 ml but it is 20 ml in Australia! Their cup measurement is a little different too. I did not know that! The girls had a great time and we learned a bunch of neat little facts about Australia.

Emily has been wanting a Fitbit. I have one and and tried different ones through the years. I got the new Change 2 for Christmas as my Alta was not keeping the charge after a couple of years. I found a knock off for her on Amazon for $26 that arrived today. She charged it, then agreed to go for a walk at the trail head with me to test it out. 6,000 + steps later she was a happy camper and I hit my 10,000 goal for the day!

Time to relax with some stitching. Dinner later (we ate lunch late - after 2) will be the leftover home made Chinese  from last night - a chicken and veggie lo mein and a Thai me you'll like it that Aidan has been wanting to make for about a week - minus the hot pepper and basil.

Emily also got to visit Petco and see a kitten out of the cage. We have been walking over to visit the kittens while Aidan has his guitar lesson on Thursdays. They are in cages with a dark screen so it is very difficult to see the kittens. I had told her someone is there on Saturdays and we might have time to hold and see one of them. She played with Kachina in a play area for a while. No, she did not come home with us. We still have 2.. Maxie cat is holding on but is not eating and very frail. She sleeps a lot but does not appear to be in pain.

One kid is with Grandma overnight so I expect a quiet evening of stitching. Linking up with the RSC Challenge. 

Scrappy Irish Chain... never ending project.....

I really need to press these block but wanted to lay them out to see how it is coming along. I went with scrappy for the alternate blocks and LOVE how this is looking. This is my forever project sewn between other things in a leader and ender style. I believe I started this project back in 2015 with a basket of scrappy 2 inch squares. I think if I do 32 of the main block and 31 of the alternate block I will have a nice size throw quilt. The blocks are coming out at 7.5 inches.

Linking up on Sunday with Oh Scrap.

Monday....

Yesterday was a lot of time in the bedroom hand quilting on this and keeping Maxie cat company.

The first 3 blocks are quilted! Time to turn it a bit more and start on the next row of 3 blocks.

Max went to the vet this morning. Her blood work came back ok - just a little elevated on one thing. Her X-ray's looked ok except for her left lung. Might be a lump in there. I opted not to go to a specialist to have it biopsied. Instead she got a couple of shots (steroid and antibiotic) and we will see if that helps to perk her up and start eating better again. She lost 2 pounds since her August appointment and is down to 6.8 pounds. Skin and bones. At least she is hydrated and doesn't look like she ingested any of the fishing wire that Aidan had left on the floor a couple of weeks ago. 

Sunday slow stitching....

I did not do my 15 minutes of stitching each day on the frame....but I had a few days when I did put a bunch of stitches in and was able to move the quilt last night! Woo Hoo! I'm going to just finish off the squares in the first set of the trips on this roll (maroon, yellow and sage) and then advance it a little to start the next row of trip colors. It should go pretty quickly as there are only 2-3 squares that need quilting to finish off the design.

Hubby put a Netflix box on the tv in the bedroom since the Dish Netflix takes forever to load and was frustrating me since the remote was not working well with pause and play. I am watching Hart of Dixie while quilting this. There are 4 seasons and I am still on season 1. Each episode is 41 minutes - a good amount of quilting time.

Kathy has asked us to share photo's of our hoops used in hand work. 

I currently have my light blue Dresden block in my round plastic hoop I purchased at Joann's years ago. I love this one. It is 13 or 14 inches and I am able to get my hands around and under it without it being too bulky. It fits a 12 inch square in there perfectly for quilting. I have a bigger oval one but it never gets used as it is not comfy to use in my recliner and my arms just can't get over and around it nicely.Maybe if it was on a stand it would be better?  I also have this plastic square one but I don't like how it feels when trying to quilt on it.  I have used it to quilt the edges of a quilt when the round one just doesn't work well though. 

In other news... this one has stopped eating. She has been wheezing for a few weeks but now food is not interesting her. She has an appointment at the vet tomorrow morning. We will see what they say. They are 13 years old. Hopefully it is just a sore tooth but I have a bad feeling it is something else. She has been getting extra cuddles from me lately.

Linking up with Kathy's Quilts with all the other slow Sunday Stitchers in the World.

Monday....

 Holiday so everyone is off today. I didn't cancel Girl Scouts tonight though....Thinking Day is coming up and we picked Australia. I need to do some research for tonight and prep for the SWAP's to start and get our board ready. I'm hoping our two meetings - this week and next are enough to get it done.

I had a full day of play yesterday! I got a bunch of light blues sewn which I'll link up to the RSC Challenge on Saturday. 
Some friendship stars were made. Do you see the oops - one needs a little rework.

The last Squared away block was picked and sewn.

Some bow ties also got cut and sewn in between other things.

Then there were the crumb blocks. Little bits and pieces sewn together and cut to 6.5 inches then sewn into a 12.5 inch block. I seem to have cut the others in the stack to 6 and then sewed together! Oops.... good thing they are crumbs!

I packed up at that point and got some melons hand quilted onto the red dresden block to finish it off. I was too lazy to mark them so they are freehanded hopefully leaving the proper 1/4 inch all around for when I join these blocks together in the quilt as you go method. I need to prep the light blue one today for hand work tonight.

Not too bad for a little time in the sewing area!

Today... I got a little hand quilting in on the trip quilt on the frame.. since when I sat down to do it yesterday the kids got returned from Grandma's after I put one strand of thread into it. I think I'll see about sewing a few more of the triangle rows for Emily's quilt or sewing together the 1857 blocks and then if Aidan cleans the guinea pig cage we'll head to the trails for a walk after lunch.

Just a relaxing day at home for us.

Sunday....

I have done a lot of hand work this week. I do see some in my future today as well.

I think I will put a good 30 minutes of hand quilting into the quilt on the frame this afternoon! I am going to try and concentrate on putting at least 15 minutes in on it every day this week. We will see how I do. It seems that if I don't actually stitch on it, no progress is made! Imagine that =) I hope that will be enough to finally be able to roll it next weekend. The maroon is ready to roll so I just have the yellow and sage green to hand quilt

I made progress on the red dresden plate and plan to prep the light blue one for hand quilting in the car line this week. I still need something in those border squares of red..... but that should go quickly. I did an X in the purple ones and I might do a small melon shape in the red.

Red Dresden almost done.

Purple is done for now.

Ready to prep the next one in light blue.

It will be cold here in Florida this week (I know, cold is relative  and it is nothing like the temps up north) so I might be snuggling under this spring blooms quilt while adding some hand stitches into each of the flowers. Maxie cat did let me finally finish the binding on this and she has been sleeping on it each night since I am leaving it on the seat of the recliner when I go to bed! Spoiled cat.

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers today and hoping Kathy is feeling better this week. I am off to shower (the kids just left for Grandma's house - the boy is feeling better and they are heading to see Paddington at the movie theater) and then I plan to head into the sewing room and see what trouble I can get myself into!

RSC in blue.

Well, I opened one bin of scraps this afternoon.... but there sadly was not much blue in there. Must be in one of the other bins. (I have 3 large ones I am admitting to!)  I did have one 2.5 inch strip of a light/medium blue in there so I grabbed that to make one of the sew along blocks for this years RSC Challenge. I made 2 of the 3 - 10 inch blocks today. I found a stack of 5 inch floral prints on the shelf and decided to use a few of them up so they are in these two blocks and a 16 patch block. I have had that stack since the late 90's!

I had made a light 16 patch block earlier this week and the bow tie was a leader and ender today.

I made two more uphill houses earlier this week and cut out 2 downhill. I sewed the downhill ones today.... I think I am getting the hang of these! They need trimming but I'll do that once all the blocks are done.

The red dresden plate made progress and I got a bunch of the cross hatch done in the rainy day car line yesterday and finished it up this morning with a movie. I hope to add the X's in the blocks on the edge later tonight and then I can pull out the light blue one to work on. 

This snowflake is not light blue.... but the quilt it goes with has lots of blues so I figured I'll work on this in January. I was pattern testing Hoarfrost for Joanne at Canuckquilter a while ago but never finished the 3 snowflakes. Her pattern has them paper pieced. It was my stopping point. I really do not like paper piecing.... so last week I was checking out snowflake coloring pages and found this one. I printed it out, cut out on the lines and then used that paper to trace this out onto some white fabric. We will see how it goes as it will be needle turned appliqué. I need to press it before attaching for hand work.

There was a knitted light blue variegated dish cloth made this week too but that didn't get a photo. 

The boy was feeling off today - he is resting when he needs to- which is  a nice change from his usual self. We cancelled Grandpa since we don't want him to get sick. I did make a trip out to the store to stock up on soups for the pantry after lunch. It seems we were out of chicken noodle ones. The house also got swept, mopped and vacuumed (hubby actually helped with the vacuum) this morning. Hopefully the boy is better and both can go to Grandma's tomorrow. If so - I plan to spend the whole day in the sewing room! So many options of things to work on!  Blocks could be put together into tops, tops could get prepped for quilting, blocks could get made.... endless possibilities. 

Linking up with the RSC Challenge and Oh Scrap. What are you working on today?

Forever Leader and Ender project.

I have this basket of 2 inch squares next to the sewing machine. When not working on other things and I need to get to what is under the needle, I pull 2 squares and sew them together. I believe the idea is to make a very scrappy irish chain quilt with it. I really need to do some cutting of the scrap bins to refill the color and light options sometime soon. I'll also need to start working on the alternate block but... that would involve a decision on what color to use as the light... keep it scrappy or use one fabric? Until I decide, I'll just make more of these!

Sunday....

After 10AM and the kids are finally off to Grandma's house. I guess that means I should shower and dress sometime soon? I had a splitting headache after the girl scout cookie rally yesterday so after lunch laid down and took a 2.5 hour nap. Yup  - that had me wide awake from 2-6.... so I was reading books on my kindle. I see a slow day ahead with some stitching on the binding. I got a little bit in this morning and turned the first corner before the kids left... and now I have the same sight as Friday night. A cat on me and using my hand as her pillow. Spoiled cat.

Maybe if I clean the house a bit and run the vacuum (which has her hiding under the bed) I'll be able to get a little more hand stitching in?

My alternative red dresden block needs some lines drawn for a cross hatch on the white part. I did outline the plate in the white yesterday since I took this photo. That might need to happen... since she usually lets me hand quilt with the hoop. I know, a very, very spoiled cat I have.

Linking up with Kathy and the other slow stitchers.

RSC 2018.... and no blue sewing yet you say?

How can that be? Blue is the largest part of my stash and my scraps and not a bit of blue sewing yet? Well, I'll let you in on a little secret. Come in closer. Closer..... I have way too many tops and collections of blocks in my sewing area.

There, I said it.

Deep breath.

I feel better now.

So, instead of being good and picking up the area and finding more things to distract me..... I just cleared off the sewing table and diligently worked on my spring blossoms quilt. You see - it got pinned, walking foot machine quilted and I made and attached a binding to the front this week. Don't tell the quilting police.... but I plan to hand quilt the blossoms.... after I finish the binding! I know, I am a rule breaker! I'm thinking I'll outline the color blossoms on the inside and then do what Joanne did with her machine in the middle sections since I like how that looked. So..... one project has officially moved out of the sewing area this week. I'm calling that a win. I made this last year with the RSC Challenge and the free pattern can be found here. It is a super fun quilt to make.

Since I had some time... I pulled out the wonky houses and looked up the directions for the uphill and down hill. I had one uphill and 3 downhill. I know when I cut them and sewed them a couple of years ago I cut out 2 of each. Might be why they got put into a pile and erased from the memory. I cut some fabric for 2 uphills today... and I actually got 2 uphill houses! Woo Hoo! These were made with the RSC Challenge a few years ago. Hey - one of the houses is blue, does that count?

I did see some blue this week though. I needed a change of pace after 2 days of hand quilting on my red dresden block last weekend (and a very sore fingertip) so have been knitting and made both of these this week.  Just need to tuck in the ends and they will go into the dish cloth rotation.

Linking up with the RSC Challenge on Saturday. I'll be with 150 girls at a cookie rally in the morning. Unfortunately - the location of the rally does not have heat... and it is going to be freezing overnight here in Florida again. It will be an interesting dress code... as most don't have winter gear so hopefully lots of layering and gloves and mittens will be happening. Stay warm everyone.

For now, I am going to cooking club tonight so I'd better get in a quick walk (and turn on the pool pump to low for overnight) and then make dinner for the hubby and kids. Have a great weekend.

Its a soup kind of day....

I decided it was a lentil soup in the crock pot day. That and leftovers will be dinner tonight (tourtiere with gravy and meatloaf were the last 2 nights meals!). The kids are back in school - with a few calls from school reminding kids to dress warm for the weather and they actually are letting it be an excused absence if you decide to keep your child home from the cold! It is in the 30's and cold and rainy and lows to 25 tonight. My kids are at school and will be all week!

On their last day of 'vacation' they each got a little sewing time in. Aidan got his parts sewn into rows.

Emily laid out her triangles for me to sew a few together. I should be able to add 2 rows this afternoon to her quilt before we head to gymnastics tonight with a new teacher. She loved Coach Emma but she has moved on and we will see who is reassigned to her class.

It is snowing in Tallahassee, Florida right now! Crazy weather.

Happy New Year!

I spent yesterday delivering kids to Grandma and then getting some groceries. I should not have to go grocery shopping for a while!
Then it was time to sit and relax in the recliner with some hand stitching. I got the red dresden plate quilted and just need to work on the outline and cross hatch in the white part, then put an X through the squares surrounding the block. My left middle finger is a little sore from the needle picks.... so I might have to rest it for a day. I still can't stand a thimble on my finger. Emily suggested hearts in the center circle. I think I did a swirl in the purple. Each one will get something different I think. This was free hand stitched... cause I was too lazy to find a heart and trace it on there!

 Hubby grilled some steaks last night and we had baked potato, steamed broccoli and some mushrooms to go with it. I was zonked out on the couch by 9! Yup - real exciting at my house! I did wake up from 1-5 and decided to read a cozy mystery on my kindle. I want to read a little more this year and I heard rumors that whatever you do on New Years you do all year =). It was Old Maids Puzzle by Terry Thayer.

I put away a few more Christmas things and found the sewing table. I sewed 40 more of On Ringo Lake's step 2 for an even 100 out of 200 done and pressed. She revealed the final clue today! What a pretty quilt.

Then I pressed the Spring Blooms Quilt and the backing and cut the batting. Pinning that is next on the list. I think it will just get straight line stitching on the diagonal and some hand quilting in the blooms. The white fabric is not a good feel for hand quilting so I'll have to come up with something for the corner setting triangles. I do have some ideas.

When putting things away I found the parts for Hoarfrost - a quilt pattern by Joanne over at Canuckquilter. She designed the Spring Blooms Quilt too! I decided my hang up with this one is the paper piecing. I really, really do not like paper piecing at all. So... I am taking some liberties (hope you don't mind Joanne!) and will be finding a few snowflakes to appliqué to the 3 snowflake blocks needed! That will let me get this quilt finished I think.

For now.... I'm going to make a tourtiere for dinner tonight. I'll probably be the only one who eats it but oh well, it reminds me of my french canadian heritage, even if it is traditionally a Christmas eve meal. Having the oven on later will warm up the house - we are getting a high of 48 today in north central Florida.



Happy New Year Everyone!