February....

A new color at the RSC Challenge in February as Purple and Lilac were chosen this month. As that was the first color last year.... I have a lot of my existing blocks set in purple. I will probably still add some more purple blocks through the month...but I checked my UFO list and it turns out I have a bunch of blocks from the 1857 appliqué quilt in purple that need to be sewn together! I think that will be my goal this month - to get that quilt to a top stage. This is an old photo of all the blocks laid out on the floor... I know that circle block has the peel added so it is ready for play time to see how the blocks will be laid out for the final quilt layout.

It has been an interesting week. I had a root canal scheduled for Tuesday.... got off work and drove there to find out there was no power at the dentist office. Reschedule for Wednesday. Emily had an orthodontist appt Tuesday afternoon and got tightened and was in lots of pain with little sleep on Tuesday night. She stayed home.... which meant I had to have Greg get off work to stay with her while I went to my appointment. It took forever to get numb....seems I have stubborn nerves and it took 4 shots! Good thing Greg was home as I didn't get home until 2:15... so he had to do school pick up. Hopefully that is behind me now. Do you think I had hand work with me for that waiting to numb time? Nope, left it in the car, darn it. Oh well. I sent Dad to gymnastics with Emily as I was still numb and he had never been to see her. Now he know's what I get to do every Wednesday with her.

Off to bowling. Let's hope it is a good day.

Linking up to the RSC Challenge on Saturday. Check out what we did on Saturday with adding onto our family!

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.