RSC recap

 It has been a productive week for me.

I was able to get the Scrappy Kites from last years RSC quilted and bound this week for a finish. This one is a 42x50 finish and hopefully will be donated as part of the Hands2Help this year.

Then I moved onto sewing the split nines from last year together into this top. It is 48x54 with each 6 inch finished block. 

I finally made a chicken block in purple! I used the pattern from Sew Inspired. I made the red part a little different. I sewed them right sides together and then turned it out. I see I need to 'fix' that part on the lower
left to make sure it is sewn securely together, it must have come undone a little too much when I turned it. 

I will be making my Arkansas Traveller blocks today, but the fabrics are already picked out and ready to run through the Accuquilt Die, so the hard part is done!

Linking up with the RSC Challenge.

Scrappy Kites is Finished!

 

This finished at 42x50 and will be a donation quilt this year.

This is my 3rd finish this quarter for the Ravelry Winter 2024 Challenge. Might I get another finish in? We will see how the rest of the month goes.

Almost a finish

 

I always think machine quilting will just take an hour! It always takes longer. I did machine quilting around each of the colored kites. Then I did sets of 3 lines in the border. I used the cut off backing to make the binding and machine stitched it to the top. I started hand stitching the binding last night. The dog was in the study with Greg, so the cats came out to explore. Peanut did some quality checks. 

I see a quilt finish this month!

Sunday

I have enjoyed a very lazy start to Sunday! I slept in past 9AM and then got busy throwing a corned beef with some potato, carrots and onion into the crock pot for dinner tonight. I'll grab a little of the juice to add to the cabbage which I will steam in the pressure cooker later tonight. I do love my cabbage cooked that way! The kids will be expecting some Irish soda bread to go with their meal this evening. Yummy!

The dog got a walk well after 10:30 and it was getting a little bit hot here in Florida. I believe we are expecting mid 80's and sunny today. The pool looks so much better after some attention at the end of the week. I just need to test the water and adjust the chemicals, but it is sparkling clear again.  

My plans today are to putter in the sewing room and machine quilt the scrappy kites quilt and get the binding made and attached. Stitching it down by hand will be my stitching this evening. I was able to pin it last night, so it is ready to go.

I watched a video this morning on how to color your embroidery projects.  Melisa at Pinkernpunkin blog has some adorable heart embroidery stitcheries she is releasing each month this year and I love the look the coloring adds. I have the first 3 hearts printed off and will start prepping the first one for stitching today. I think I'll start with the March block. Now to find the crayons!

I finally got a good start on the String of Beads blocks for the RSC this year. I saw a photo in an old quilting pattern book from the 80's and this is the layout. A little circle will be added at the middle spot, but I'll hold off on adding them as I am not sure if I want a sunny yellow for all of them or a shade of the middle colors. Plenty of time to decide. The two purples are done so I'm starting in on the reds from last month.

Linking up with Kathy and the other Slow Sunday Stitchers. It's after noon, so I'd better grab some lunch (I seem to have skipped breakfast!) and then head to my happy place to play with some fabrics. Enjoy your week.

RSC Saturday

 We are half way through the month and I have yet to make my purple AT blocks! That will hopefully be remedied this weekend. I did finally start the string of beads blocks in purple and got these two completed. The green outer peels will be consistent throughout the quilt. I have the peels traced onto the next background and the reds are ready to go.

I did a lot of digging and made a backing with leftover backings for this little quilt. I also dug through the batting cut offs and pieced 4 parts together to fit for a batting for this. Just need to get it pinned and some basic machine quilting on it this weekend and I'm hoping for a finish this month. 

Bear is doing a great job of holding the quilt down! He went to the Vet for his annual shots and got his new rabies tag. The boy is 85 pounds! 

Linking up with the RSC Challenge on Saturday. 

Saturday RSC

 

It has been a week! I am so glad I had Monday off so I could get the Arkansas Traveller blocks completed for the month. I also got a couple more kite blocks added from last year's collection of blocks and got them sewn together. 

Linking up with the RSC on Saturday.

Wednesday, we tried a new to us restaurant of Greek food. It was yummy! Then I headed over to a local high school to watch 6 middle and high school bands preform their symphonic band selections for the MPA. This was the Pre-MPA where judges give them some feedback on their performance before the actual MPA next week. 

Thursday it was drop the kids to school, walk the dog then a quick shower before bringing the car for a new tire. Seems there was a nail in the back tire, not surprising with all the construction house zones we drive through at least 4 times a day! Then it was off to the villages to get my FIL and take him to his doctors appointment and pick up a script for him. We did not have time to do the x-ray his doctor wrote a script for, as I had to get him home and pick up the kids from school. Friday, I took the day off. I got the kids to school and the dog walked and then headed with Greg to his appointment for an MRI of his back. We were halfway to his Dad's, so we continued on and I dropped Greg off and loaded his Dad into the car to bring him for the x-ray on his hip. I got home to drop Greg off about the time I normally leave to go pick up the kids, so I headed back out to get the kids.  I was in the car pretty much from 8-4 yesterday!

Today is a dog walk and then horses with Emily. I might need to grab a few things and pop over to my FIL's as well as he is low on the ensures and juice. So, another day in the car for me. It tends to be about 3 hours to go over to my FIL's and back. Horses is usually a good 3 hours as well in the other direction. 

I think I need a vacation!

Kites is a top

 

I got a little sewing time in Monday and made a couple more of the kites to get the number I needed for this top. Each block is 8 inches so it is currently 32x40 inches. I think I'll see if I have a fun border to make it a little bit bigger. Maybe some monkeys dancing on bright green? We will see what I can pull from the stash wall. 

Greg is a little better and can move pretty good once he is up. It is just the sitting down and getting up that is an issue and painful. A bulging disk will do that. I have a feeling I'll be doing the kid morning drop off and potentially his and his Dad's doctor appointments later this week. 

I had some baby bella mushrooms, half a bag of spinach and frozen chicken breasts. I entered that into the magic line on the internet and hit enter. I found this recipe and gave it a try. Not bad! I served it with angle hair pasta and a tossed salad. I defrost my chicken breasts in a big bowl of cold water in the microwave. They were huge, so I cut them into thinner pieces for the 5 minute cooking time on each side. My handy dandy thermometer verified they were up to 165 temp before I pulled them from the pan.

I'm off to ride as Aidan drives to his guitar lesson tonight and hopefully I can do my meeting at 7PM for the planning of the April encampment in Tampa on my phone while he is in his lesson. 

RSC - Teal kites

 A 3 day weekend! Horses got moved to Sunday this weekend, so the kids headed to Grandma's to help run errands and do a few things around her yard for her. We'll go collect them later today.

The dog got a walk this morning - he didn't pull which is good! He has not been walked this week at all.  I think he knows if he pulls, he doesn't get a walk. Emily is on tap tomorrow to get up and out of bed for his walk. I watched F1 qualifying with Aidan while adding a few stitches to the Frosty's. I have 5 of the 12 crosshatch quilted. I machine quilted the sashing and cornerstones earlier this summer and already added the binding. I really spritzed well and have not had an issue this time with the blue lines reappearing. I hope to get the 6th one quilted tonight while watching Harry Potter. It is September... so I watched the first movie last night. I've seen them so many times, it is nice to listen to while hand quilting.

I tried something new for lunch. I had picked up these frozen falafel's at Aldi's a few weeks ago. I popped them in the oven and made some tzatziki. I had a nice salad with 3 falafel's, tzatziki and hummus. Boy, those babies had a little kick with the red pepper flakes in there. Good, but spicy. I had to get more tzatziki to tone it down. I'll have to pick up another package and have it for dinner some night and see if the kids like it. I still have 9 left in the fridge.

I took a look in the block container and saw I am doing kites and split nines. I was in the mood to make the kites today so got the Accuquilt out and some teals and added 2 blocks. I'm using the 8 inch cube so I believe these are 8 inch blocks. 

We really didn't get any issues from hurricane Idalia, but boy have we gotten storms the last two days! It was a deluge when I went to go get Aidan from school yesterday afternoon. I was nearly to school, going on a road through the greenway with beautiful overhanging trees.... and right before I got there - probably within a few minutes, a tree came down and a truck swerved to miss it and hit a car! The road was blocked. It was still pouring but someone had gotten out to check on them. I turned around and headed the other way to the school. (I am not good with blood at all!)  I saw the ambulance and fire truck heading there a few minutes later as I was heading back, so I knew it was under control. I hope they were ok. I picked up a very soaked boy and headed home. We had a moat at the house! A couple of the roads had flooding on part of the road, but we could get through. This is the edge of our front yard looking out at the busy 2 lane road. The water was over the driveway as well.  It was gone a couple of hours later when I headed to go get Emily. The football game was cancelled, since they were to play Crystal River and they got flooding with the hurricane and will make it up later. The band had a practice, since they got cancelled with school letting out Monday and cancelling all after school activities due to the approaching hurricane. The Atlantic is very busy right now and there is another disturbance forming off the coast of Africa. Just a normal September in Florida!

Linking up with the RSC.

Weekend

I figured I'd do a weekend post this time since I finally got to play with a little yellow this afternoon. I had planned to play yesterday, but I had nudged the boy to attack, I mean trim the front bushes while I was at horses with Emily. He had started before a quick rain storm went through. I decided to go out and help him in the afternoon by weeding the front triangle bed and then loading and hauling one truck load to the recycle yard waste and the second bed went into the back burn pile. It looks a lot better after a few hours of attention. Still more to do but that will wait for another day. The neighbors will be happy they can see down the road of cars coming since the tree got trimmed of the low hanging branches as well.

Mr. Snow Frosty got a little bit of hand stitching added this week but not much. I hope the lines come out ok, since they have been marked for a week now. 

I needed a spot to lay out the kites I have been making with the RSC this year and went with the bed. Ollie was supervising. 

He did nothing to keep Peanut off the blocks though!

What a big stretch!

Saturday was horses for Emily and here she is rinsing off Lance after her lesson. They were riding without stirrups so that her riding buddy could work on her posture and positioning in the saddle. Emily was able to walk, trot and canter with this big guy just fine!

The trainer wanted a photo of the girls and the horses would not look the right way, so another helper was off to the side jumping up and down and trying to get the horses attention. It got big smiles from both of the girls. 

The boy is off to Grandma's today. I have to go pick him up later... and might have mentioned if they decided on Mexican for dinner to let me know and I'll go down early! We will see. 

Emily has Freshman orientation for school tomorrow to get her schedule and walk around the school a bit. They start on Thursday. It will be interesting to see how they do getting up early again. It has been close to noon for both of them the last week. 

Linking up with the Slow Sunday Stitchers and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge where we are playing with yellows for the month of August.

 

RSC in red

After a walk of the dog this morning and then bringing Emily to ride Lance (horse) about half of the day was over! The temps when she got done around noon was feels like 109. Sigh, I miss Vermont temperatures. I did drink a 20 ounce water and a 20 ounce power zero. That power zero is a must for me daily with the temps down here or my electrolytes get off and my saline gets too low. That would land me in the ER so, this is a preventative measure I have been doing for years.

I ventured into the sewing room and moved a few things around to get to my sewing space. I pulled a few reds and some background fabric and cut out a few kites for one of my two red blocks. It joined the rest of the bunch. I had done a light blue and light green for last month. I'll make my next kite tomorrow and then work on the split nine patches this week. I need to make some light blue and greens along with the reds to keep up with those blocks.

Linking up with the RSC. 

Saturday in purple

 Starting off with the dog curled up on the quilt I am unpicking the machine quilting in the middle and replacing with hand quilting of each block. Curled up with Lambie his stuffed animal from Easter.

I did get the second kite block completed and there were some 1.5 inch left on the backing so I cut it to size and made a couple of these little blocks as leaders and enders.

Then I found the basket of purple and started with some random sewing for some crumb blocks.

The finish this week was of the Garden Path quilt. I made the majority of the blocks last year with this challenge. It finished at 48x60.

Linking up with the RSC.

The dog got a walk with Em and Greg and I. Greg and I checked out the floor plan of a house being built near us - with an in-law suite. Time for a shower before taking Emily to horses. I think I am taking a break from riding until fall when it gets cooler.

Rsc in purple

I enjoyed the morning with a sleeping household. I got up at 'normal' time and let the dog out. When he came in, I checked with a sleeping girl to see if she had fed him - No, turned over and back to sleep for her. I fed him and let him out to chase off a hawk while I shut up the chickens in their coop. I normally take him for a walk shortly after the kids leave for school at 8:15 (hubby is taking them to school now!). 8:30 and a snout on my chair arm with a whine. Sigh. I got dressed and took him for a walk. Still no one up when we got home! At 9:40 I woke up the girl asking if she was going to ride horses today or not? A sleepy yes, so I mentioned the time. Hubby got up around this time too. I got him to take her to horses today, and I cleaned up the kitchen and got a chance to sew! I found some purple scraps and cut out the kite shapes and got them sewn up. I need to pull more of the grey snowflake fabric and cut more of the side triangles for the next one. These are finishing at 8 inches using my Accuquilt.

 

I got off work a little early yesterday and hit the Market of Marion before picking up the kids from school. It is a vendor market that has one wing with fresh fruit and veggies that I like to go to on Fridays. I used to go right after dropping kids to school, but I have hubby bringing them now. I got some roma tomato's, a honeydew melon, some corn, swiss chard and green beans. Not bad for $12.  I also got a local raw honey as Emily finished the last jar last week when she was sick. I had some time, so decided to stop and pick some blueberries! It is blueberry season in Florida the month of April and there is a really nice U-pick farm near the kids school. I got 2.5 pounds and I think Emily ate half a pound of them on the way home! They were very yummy. I have plans to use my mini pie pan and try some blueberry pies this weekend. I'll probably go pick more next week. I still have some in the freezer from last year, but I do love fresh berries.

As for me, I plan to spend the day in the sewing room! I have 2 tops that need to get pinned for quilting and I hope to get one or both of them quilted this weekend. Wish me luck. (Garden Path and Frosty McChill).

Linking up with the RSC.

RSC in green

 

I got some time in the sewing room this week! Shocking, I know!  I pulled one of my green 16 patch blocks and turned it into a star to go with the pink and blue. 

I had cut a few extra of the snowflake background triangles last month, so the hard part was pulling some dark greens for the kite part. After that one was together I still had a few more extra parts, so I pulled some bright greens for the kites. I pulled out another offcut of the snowflake fabric and cut out some more triangles. I do love how easily these blocks go together. They finish at 8 inches. I use the Accuquilt 8 inch cube for these.

Saturday, I'm starting off the kids spring break by being in the woods with a handful of the girl scouts from Emily's troop. We are just doing the day but it will be a long one. I'll link up to the RSC sometime on Saturday.

Saturday in pink.

I'm happy to report I actually went into the sewing area and turned on my machine this morning! I needed to make another kite block and I have yet to do my split nines. Hopefully later today or tomorrow. 

Linking up with the RSC.

I'm hoping that by next week at this time, life should be a lot calmer. This last week was a lot of shuttling the kids here and there.

Sunday - we did a 4 hour cookie booth with the troop and the girls did great. That was after Emily did a booth Saturday night for 3 hours by herself as the other girl was out sick that day. I was at both booths. Monday was a day off.... and yet I did a much needed deep clean of the master bedroom. Cleaning is tiring! I got tapped with bringing the boy to guitar and hitting Sam's to grab things we needed and snacks for the kids for lunches. I was out of coffee.... and that needed to be remedied!

Tuesday, I offered to chaperone the band for the pre-concert for the main event on March 2. I picked up one kid and got him home from school, grabbed a quick dinner and then headed back to school for a bus ride over to the event. We got to listen to 4 other middle school bands preform their 3 songs for the contest and then the bus ride back to school (25 minutes). 

Wednesday - Emily opted out of her normal Wednesday after school club and I nixed Aidan's volunteering that day. Turns out that semi that got stuck under a bridge on I75... yeah, that is the bridge I go over to take the kids to school! Traffic was a mess, so I logged off work 30 minutes early and headed to school. Normally it is a 20-25 minute ride there and 30-40 to get home. I left my house at 2:35PM and got home about 5:15! I made it to the middle school in 65 minutes.

Thursday was a late pick up of the kids as Emily had band practice and Aidan volunteered at the middle school after school program. I got to ride Prism around 2PM and have opted to not ride anymore in the afternoons until fall when it cools down! It was upper 80's and I do not get along well with the heat. (I know, I live in the wrong state!). I'll try 9AM Saturday mornings starting in a month when my Saturdays are not so busy.

Friday, after getting the kids I picked up Chinese for dinner. Then Emily and I took Bear for a second walk. 

Greg and I tend to do a walk with him around lunchtime, but we will need to swap that to first thing in the morning as the pavement is starting to get too hot to walk him mid-day. While I was gone to get dinner, they changed the batteries in the smoke detectors. The high one in the kitchen area started beeping yesterday, so it needed replacing. I hear that the wire needed to get fixed on the one in Emily's bedroom and it might have flipped the breaker! Good thing hubby is handy in electrical and other areas. 

Saturday, Emily has fair things with the cow this weekend.  We are meeting at the school this afternoon for Emily to put her halter on before her teachers hubby gets there to transport Noelle to the fairgrounds across town. I'll follow with Emily and drop her off for the weigh in, meeting and then their skillathon paper test. I think they are decorating the area up after that. I have been told she'll let me know when to pick her up! I warned her we live a good 30 minutes from the grounds. Good thing I have some audiobooks lined up on my phone to listen to.

Sunday - she will need to be there bright and early (7AM!) to prep for the showing at 9AM. Greg and I will go and see how they all do. I have no clue how long that one will last and how long she will be there. I guess we will find out tomorrow!

RSC in pink.

I had an extra set of the wing pieces already cut for the kites, so I pulled a couple of darker pinks (I only have 2 or 3 darker pinks in the stash???) to make one of the kites for the month. It joined the 2 darker blues from last month. I guess I am using some leftover backing fabrics with grey and snowflakes for this set of blocks. 

I pulled out these strips which are extra's from a quilt I made for Emily. I also found a heart gifted to me from my friend Moneik. Somehow these two things will be worked into the ABC (table) scrap Challenge Joy hosts this month with the prompt letters of M and V! It also will check off my Winter UFO #13 to get these scraps into something usable and out of the sewing room! (Don't you love how I keep combining challenges?) There is pink in here too - to hit that Pink checkbox!

While sewing up the kites, I added some more pink flying geese from the parts leftover from Sweet Confetti. I know that had 96 colored fabrics - so there should be 10 pieces in each color with 6 for the last one. I'll have to check the quilt, but I think purple was the six.... so, there should be 4 more somewhere in a basket on the sewing table. These are using a white dot print that I seem to always have in the sewing room for the wings.

Linking up Saturday with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Looks like I just have horses with Emily on Saturday morning. Grandma is taking Aidan out for lunch and shopping for his 15th birthday on Monday! Where has the time gone? His birthday wish is another year subscription to F1. He sure has gotten his money's worth from last year's subscription. We watched a race from 2021 Thursday evening after they had a late dinner. 

 

RSC in blues

 I got a little time to sew this week! I have seen lots of pretty split nine patch blocks over the years and decided to make some this year. I think I'll dig a little farther into the blue box and make some more of these.

I sewed up the kites from last week and might make a couple more of these as well. I do love how easy these are to make with the dies.

I have had these extra quarter square triangles leftover from the Sweet Confetti blocks just sitting around and waiting in a basket next to my sewing machine. I was able to use some 2 inch white strips to make the flying geese wings with my ruler. I sewed these together, but I might take them apart and pop them into groups of 2 instead and see what will happen to them once all of them are sewn into geese. I'm thinking a nice little wall hanging or some placemats?

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge on Saturday.

RSC 2023!

 It is always fun to start a new year of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Since the scraps are still overtaking the sewing area, I'm joining in again this year. 

With a RSC 16 patch stars finish this week, I feel good starting some new projects this year. Everything is subject to change... you know, as life and what you feel like sewing tends to interfere occasionally!

I want to play with my Accuquilt Dies a bit more this year. I might make some one or two color quilts in certain months. I may play with some all year long! 

The first ones I want to start with are the kite dies from the 8 inch Cube companion angles - die #14 and #15. I reached into the blue bin and pulled out this pretty blue and since I have this bin unsorted, there was also 2 pieces of this white dotted print in there too. A quick press and they went through the die and cut out these parts for me. I'll plan to sew them up later today. I might mix things up and have some in the reverse with the background as the kite. We will see what happens!

Since it is the blue month, I also plan to work on quilting this blue and white UFO called Hoarfrost. Pattern is from Joanne at Canuckquilter, although I did modify 2 of the snowflakes a bit. Foundation piecing and I don't mix well. I appliqued the last 2 snowflakes!

Linking up with Angela and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2023. 

Emily and her Dad headed to school for morning feeding of the animals in a chilly start to the morning in Florida at 35 degrees!  I'll jump in the shower and be ready to take her to her horse riding lesson mid morning and then she also has the afternoon feeding. I see a bit of driving time in my life today. Horses is about 30 minutes away and school is about 20 minutes in the other direction.