February Table Scrap Challenge

 The theme for February was blue and Neon/Anything bright.

While I was digging in the blue bin, I pulled out a little strip of a sparkly blue with neon bright dragonfly's on it. My brain said - that'd be perfect for the challenge this month, so I hung it over the rungs on the wall and it sat. I had some time this week and took a look at it. Hmmm. Maybe 16 inches long and not too wide. 2 inches at the biggest point. Let's pull some brights - neon means highlighter colors in my head. Yellow, green, orange. All three colors are in the blue print. I cut a few strips about 5 inches long and sewed them together. I pulled a blue flowered print for the back and did a little walking foot quilting. I cheated and pulled the backing to the front and tacked it down with a zig zag stitch. With a matching color, that might be an option for a binding in the future. It was fun to give it a try.

 Note to self, when done with this stitch, after changing back to the 1/4 foot.... remember to switch to a straight stitch so the needle doesn't break, and need to get dug out of the bobbin area of the machine with a pipe cleaner. Scared me to death hearing that snap. 

Linking up with TheJoyfulQuilter for the TSC.

I had prepped some yellow hexagons for QAYG last week and stitched them up since March is all about yellow. I need to hand quilt 3 of these still. Maybe Sunday when I am back home. Linking up with the RSC on Saturday.

Friday night, I headed to a local high school to watch my daughter and her symphonic band perform at their Music Performance Assessment. They did a great job, despite arriving a little late due to traffic. I got there expecting to hear them, but got to hear their middle school band play first. considering they are 2+3 years in they sounded great. I listened to the high school and then parents could go into the room for their sight reading assessment. They had 2 pieces to play with a 3 minute then 5 minute time before playing each piece. I always struggled with sight reading music, but these kids sounded awesome! 

Saturday is a busy day. Emily is headed to Fleming Island for a Winter Guard Competition (2 hours away) and will be gone all day with the squad. Greg gets to shuttle her to school and do the pick up late Saturday night. 

Aidan and I are headed the other direction to St. Pete for the weekend to watch Indy Cars go around the track. They threw in a Paddock Pass when I renewed the tickets from last year and Aidan is excited to go see them race. I finally booked a hotel for us for Saturday night, since I forgot to do it when I got the tickets in November. Crazy prices for hotels and with the taxes sometimes more than the hotel price for the night getting close to $500-$1000 dollars! For a place to sleep. Crazy. I found something under $300 total with a breakfast and free parking. Less than last year's hotel so I'm calling it a win. Lets hope the great ratings are correct. (St. Pete is a good 2 hours away without any traffic.) 

Arkansas Traveller assembly.

 I had finished making the last block needed this month and laid them out this afternoon. I sewed them into diagonal rows. 

Then I pulled the 3 bolts of fabric I had - the same as the background, a soft yellow and a navy blue. I consulted with the boy, who was silly enough to ask if I wanted it to be a light or dark quilt. After I rolled my eye's at him, he said to keep it the same as the background. I looked up the cutting chart for a 12 inch block. I cut the amount based on a 12.5 finished block for a little wiggle room. I did 3-19 inch blocks to make the 12 side triangles. I cut a 2- 9 3/4 squares for the corners. I got this far before I had to stop. Someone was taking a nap and did not want to get disturbed. The other parts picked up have their side triangles and corner triangles on them but the rows are not sewn to each other yet.

Emily drove me around for some errands last night. We renewed our library card at the library. Went to refill the cat litter box at Petco and then headed to Joann's to see what was happening. All the batting was gone, lots of the yarn was picked over and a bunch of things were just gone. Quilting rulers, templates, quilting templates.  The yarn was 25% off. Emily found some she liked and got 16 skeins for a new afghan, along with a set of bigger crochet hooks for them. She also plans to make a t-shirt quilt in a couple years with her marching band and winter guard t-shirts. She found a thick flannel that she liked and we picked up 4 yards of a 59 inch wide fabric, just to make sure we had enough. The fabric was only 20% off from original prices. The staff was pretty teary eyed, as they are all losing their jobs sometime in May. Sigh, a sad time all around. 

Hexagon parade

 I stitched these four hexagons in green last night.

I need 12 sets of 4, for each column to add to the quilt to make it bigger. I have 1 column done. This makes 3 sets done for the second column.  I have another 3 sets prepped with clips and 2 more sets cut out. Progress.

Slow Sunday prep

 Darn, I had this all written and then added a photo from my phone and lost it all! Bummer.

I had pulled out and stitched 8 of the hexagon QAYG blocks that were prepped on Friday night. That means I needed to pull things to prep some more. I use the batting cut offs for these.

Then cut 4 sets of the backing fabrics and 4 of colored fabrics.

Time to get them ready for folding the binding on and clip it. 

I am using the clips I got on sale from Missouri Quilt Company in December for $5. One down, 19 to go. These will be added to the original quilt to make it a little bigger on my bed. 

I have also been adding crochet granny squares. I started adding the grey border around them. I am still not sure how I will lay them out. I'm thinking I might find a paw print pattern and add a few of those in. We do have some cats and a dog in the household after all.

I started a sourdough starter back in January and it finally behaved a couple of weeks ago. I made a sourdough bread which was yummy. I then found the website amybakesbread. I made a batch of chocolate chip scones, and Aidan requested I make them again! I did this morning. I also have a dough for focaccia in process. Aidan requested a garlic one, I might add some grape tomato's to a small section and some herbs over all of it. We will see how it turns out.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Hexagons

 I had 4 purple hexagons prepped and stitched them up on Friday. Then I cut out 4 more to prep the pretty blue/greens and got them stitched up as well.

RSC in Blue

 I got a little sewing time in and was able to correctly make the alternate BITA blocks in blue today.

Well, this set of 4 is correct. The 16 patch looks good. 

I see an oops in this one. Top left block needs a little fix. Out comes the seam ripper.

Wednesday night was the bands Pre-MPA. We did a quick run to Kohls for black dress pants after Guard practice Tuesday night. They did well and will work on what the judges recommended on their 2 pieces. Next Friday night is their MPA.

I had found a good recipe site - Amybakesbread. There was a yummy looking cinnamon focaccia recipe that looked good. I decided to try the chocolate chip scones instead this time. I am waiting for them to cool a bit before I try them.  

I'll link up on Saturday with the RSC.

Crochet

 

I knew I wanted to bring some grey into this project. After finishing off the dark granny, I pulled out the grey and added a round to each of the colors.

I think it will work, but I'm still in the deciding mode. I do have cream as an option as well. 

My sister is on her way home today. The kids are at school. Aidan has chess club after school and Emily has their pre-mpa music performance assessment for symphonic band tonight. They are grouped with 4 middle and 4 high schools tonight to each play 2 of their 3 pieces. Judges will give feedback for the actual MPA which is next week.

I've got normal work. 

My FIL was released from rehab Monday. Horrible communication as we had a meeting scheduled for Tuesday at 3pm. The phone call Monday morning saying he was waiting for a ride home was not expected. Sigh. 

Beach

 No tiny Midget progress, but I did get flower inspiration this week for my borders. The beach and walking in Shalom Park near my house gave me lots of ideas.

89 degrees last Thursday.  Terri and me. No, we are not twins. She is 7 years older than me.

A weekend at the beach

 My sister Terri is down visiting and we escaped to St. Augustine for the weekend. A little windy and overcast but it was lovely.

Yesterday was a few nature walks, beach time in the afternoon and mini golf and a soft serve in the evening. Lots of pretty flowers.

This was our balcony view.

A little crochet and reading got done as well.

Wacky Wednesday crochet?

 Ok, I'll work on a title for that one. 

I added 4 granny squares last week and I did the same since Sunday's post. It was a crochet type of week I guess. I did one in country blue, which is my medium and 3 lights. 

I was very excited this morning when I woke up and saw the sourdough starter finally behaved and rose last night and fell a bit this morning. I decided to try making a bread. It is in the oven right now. I'm just so excited it finally rose. Not sure if it was the warmer temps (it's been in the 80's all week) or that I switched to a bottle of water a few days ago when feeding it, or the new flour from Sams's club I just got into. Anyway... baking bread smells yummy.

I just need to find a recipe where the Dutch oven is not in the oven at 500 degrees for an hour. I pulled it out when the smell bugged me with 20 minutes to go. It was still plenty hot when I added the bread on the parchment paper to bake. I think the next batch will be in my Stonewear bread pans. 

We will see how it tastes for breakfast with some eggs.

Bringing back Tiny Tuesday.....

 In this case, I pulled out the midget applique that I hand pieced and hand appliqued into a quilt top. The borders need more flowers added to it.... and maybe some leaves?  I made these while sitting in the car line at the kids elementary school. It looks like I started it back in January 2015!  Probably time to get the top finished this year since they are in high school! Who knows, maybe I'll get it hand quilted before both are out of college? He he he

These blocks are so vibrant! Some of my favorites are in this photo.

Slow Sunday Stitching.

 I'll be doing a little applique today on 2 projects. This dresden plate circle, needs a little repair to secure it to the top. I'm hoping once Aidan is home from his ACT testing this morning, I can finally get my quilt holder up on the wall so I can hang this quilt in the kitchen/living room area. I need a tall person to help me!

My other applique is to get this body of the butterfly stitched down and then I'll add some embroidery for the antenna. I've got 8 more of these blocks to get onto their background and get finished off. 

Four more granny squares were crocheted this week to add to the pile. 

Yesterday, Emily's riding partner called out sick so our trainer asked if I wanted to ride with her. I've been sick all last month so no riding since early December. I just did a little walking and a trot a few times around the arena, then I was content to sit on my recliner... I mean Goody the horse and watch Emily deal with an ornery Doc who was not understanding to pick up the canter.

After our lesson, there was an estate sale about a mile from the riding place that I wanted to check on a Singer sewing machine. Alas, it was gone but Emily wanted to walk through the house. Everything was marked as they were going to gut and remodel it. In a punchbowl box of cut glass there was a cut glass platter. Ours dropped and shattered a year ago, so I pulled the platter out of the box and asked the price. It got washed last night and is all clear and shiny now and very heavy!

 It came home with us along with this pretty quilt rack. I was thinking I would paint it, but I wiped it down and polished it and now I am not sure. I'll think on it.

Linking up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers.

Rsc in blue

The chickens are finally all doing their job and we are getting 4-5 eggs a day! We are making sure that my MIL's friend is kept in stock with eggs as she is on a tight budget and goes through a lot of eggs. I did a couple of egg dishes for dinner on Monday night. I need to hard boil some tonight for deviled eggs. Greg used a few today making the birthday cheesecake with raspberries for the birthday boy.

Today, (Thursday) Aidan turned 17! How did that happen? We went out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse on Wednesday evening for his birthday. I was surprised how busy it was around 7PM mid week. He has had a great week, with a 2nd place Academic Team win at Regionals on Tuesday (North Central Florida). Not too shabby after the surprise County win last month. 2 Nice trophies for the School case.

My FIL was finally moved to rehab on Tuesday. He is doing much better today when we visited after getting a good nights sleep. He has quite the cold, but it appears they are doing a good job with medicines for it. He was taken off to PT as we were getting ready to leave today. 

That gave me the afternoon to do a little sewing. I had planned to make the 'alternate' bird in the air blocks in blue, but I guess I made the actual BITA blocks by mistake! Oh well, 4 less to make. I think I am down to needing 17 now. 

I made one 16 patch with 2.5 inch blocks. I dug deep into the blue bin and found some fun prints I had forgotten I had. 

I'll link up Saturday with the RSC.