FNwF and Another Look at a Finish

Last night was Friday Night with Friends and we come from all over the world. I love these get-togethers because, while we all do the same, styles are different in different locales.

What did I work on last night? Cross-stitching! My progress has been slow because it so tiny and my eyes are usually too tired to make any progress. However last night I wanted to watch some television with the family and I didn't have anything else put together to work on.

Here's where I started.

After a few hours of TV shows, I made it this far (be sure to look at the right-hand side of the project).

Sheesh! Doesn't look like much does it? Lol!

Just in case you missed my post from yesterday, I want to share with you my Strips & Nachos quilt. I finished it and washed it up on Thursday.

If you'd like to read more about this beauty, you can go HERE.

I'm sharing on Cheryl's FNwF blog HERE and with Angela's SoScrappy blog HERE. Have a great weekend!

Strips & Nachos Finish

I have a finish! That's right, I finished the Strips & Nachos quilt. Here it is ...

I finished sewing the binding on October 30 and threw it in the wash October 31 so I'm calling it an October finish. That was my goal and I made it by the skin of my teeth!

The pattern, Strips & Salsa (yes, I've called Strips & Nachos all this time -- DOH!) is by Gudrun Erla of GEDesigns. I knew right away that I wanted to make this quilt first: because I love her patterns -- they look difficult but she manages to make it easy; and second: my LQS had given her Quilt Club members surprise bags of coordinating 8 FQs and this pattern called for 7 FQs plus fabric for background & binding. Perfect! I was set with fabric. I needed almost 3 yards for background. Remember when I couldn't find the fabric for Red Threads quilt so I bought an extra 3 yards of something that might work? And then I found the missing fabric? I used the original fabric in Red Threads and used up the extra yardage in this quilt. Score!

Here are some close up pictures of my Strips & Nachos quilt.

Pieced Back

View of Front & Back Together

Some of the Quilting

Low Light to See Quilting Better?

The quilt finished at 72" x 56" before washing. It now measures 69" x 54". It's snuggly, colorful, and I love it. I think it worked up into a nice lap quilt.

A couple last beauty shots of Strips & Nachos.

Have a great Friday!

I Like Thurs #161

Happy Halloween! I like to see kids dressed up in costumes. I like the return of Fall. I like the changing colors of the leaves. I like tidying up the garden & yard for Winter. I like pumpkins and apples. I like Autumn!

Fred Carved Our Pumpkin

Jacob Picked Out a Pumpkin at the Farm 

Yes, we almost always have a carved out Jack o'Lantern or two at our house. The kids are carrying out the tradition with the Grands.

In the kitchen this week, I made Beef Barley with Vegetables Soup in the Instant Pot. Delicious except then the weather went all hot around here. Last night we got a cold front pass through so we'll have the leftover soup tomorrow night.

Sightings on our morning walks this week include beautiful sunrises. A little girl was getting dropped off at daycare and pointed to the sky, sharing the sight with her Daddy. Gracie & I appreciated the view up there too!

Pink Contrails!

The trees are looking lovely this time of year.

We even caught a rainbow earlier in the week. Very faint but you can see it!

I'm very happy about my orchid blooming again! Seems like it was quite awhile in between this time but I've got a lot of buds waiting to open too. It's going to be so pretty!

Wishing you all a great week. I hope you liked what I liked this past week! If you want more, go visit LeeAnna's blog HERE!

A Few More Pineapples

 A few more pineapples were added to the mix this week. I call these caramel brown pineapples,

I have two deep purple pineapples cut out. They'll get sewn up this week. I only need four more pineapples and then I'll have my 60 ready to lay out and sash. I'm thinking maybe a dark brown -- as in chocolate colored? Maybe I'll have this one put together soon (?)! Lol!

Here they are individually in case you wanted a closer look.

Today is day 2 of retreat. I forgot my phone yesterday so I can't show you what I worked on yesterday. I'll be sure to get pictures today. It's a Judy Niemeyer table runner that was started at a guild class so very long ago. I'm anxious to finish it -- I think it's beautiful!

Happy Halloween, everyone! Don't let the spooky Spidermans, princesses, or goblins play tricks on you Thursday. Go ahead and pass out those treats! Hahaha!

I'll leave you with a sweet picture of Brody. He went to the pumpkin farm on his kindergarten field trip this week.

Sharing with the other Rainbow Scrap quilters at SoScrappy.

I Like Thurs #160

Welcome to my corner of the world where I can usually find things that please me. I hope you like what I'm sharing with you today. Our weather has been wonderful lately -- cool/warm sunny days with cool/chilly nights. Great for walking the dog and great for taking care of garden clean-ups and firepit burns. We enjoyed the beautiful Harvest Moon this past week too.

The other day I spied Hootie! He was being chased by a couple of crows(?) which is what caught my eye. He even gave me time to set up my phone and let Gracie off the leash.

And aren't the leaves beautiful around him?

Speaking of walking, I happened to check my walking mileage on my phone app. 

Whoa! That's a lot of miles!

So that got me wondering how far exactly had I walked. Turns out I've walked quite a bit further than from New York City to San Francisco. So I played around and I'm over by 10 miles going from my house to New York City and then all the way to San Francisco from there. Guess I'm on my way back home from California! Lol!

Oh the things that entertain us, huh? Lol!

I finished up "All the Colors of the Dark" and now I've started "The Measure" by Nikki Erlick. It's the story of everyone in the world 22 and older getting a mysterious box dropped off where they live. Inside is a string which represents how long of a life they will live. Some get long strings (good) and some have short strings (panic!). Some of the people want to know their string length so open the box. Others do not. It tracks several different people and their reactions and their friends' reactions to this occurence. I'm only about 60 pages in but it's quite an interesting concept.

GoodReads Description HERE

I've been enjoying Survivor (so glad they gave Rome the boot last night! Haha!) and the World Series on TV. The family has been enjoying Tracker, Matlock, NCIS, Elsbeth, and also the game show Switch. Any new shows or series that have attracted your family?

Our prompt this week was do we enjoy going in haunted houses or watching scary movies? I've not visited any haunted houses but I don't think I'd enjoy it. They don't seem very real to me. Scary movies? Not so much on that either. Guess I'm more of a realist and they're mostly just weird to me. My mother would say I like scary books but only because I read Steven King. My favorites of his were "Pet Sematary" and "Misery" and "Christine". Guess those describe "scary" to me.

We'll be carving our pumpkins early next week and filling our pumpkin bowl with candy for the trick-or-treaters. I did make some delicious pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting this week.

I hope you found something to entertain you here. You can find more likeable blogs through our hostess LeeAnna. Check out her blog HERE.

RSC Deep Purple & Caramels

This week I counted up my pineapple blocks and, yes, I'm a little short of the 60 that I need. Of course, right now I can't remember how many short but last night I went ahead and started cutting fabrics for more. I made up the start of 5 more blocks. There will be two deep purple (almost brown) ones and three caramel-colored ones. (Yum! Caramels!)

Here's the work in progress. I'll get out my Sew Wonderful Curve ruler and start cutting this weekend and hopefully get a few more pineapples under my belt.

Have a great weekend, everybody! I'll be looking in on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge friends to see how they're coming along with finishing up 2024 projects. You can take a peek HERE also!

I Like Thur #159

Happy Thursday, friends! I hope you've managed to find some happiness this past week. All you have to do is look around and I bet you find something to like. I'll share what I've sound this past week with you.

I've been reading Chris Whitaker's "All the Colors of the Dark" and have been enjoying it. It's beautifully written and reminds me of the style in "Where the Crawdads Sing". Of course the subject is entirely different but both are use colorful language.

The storyline in this book is interesting but I do find that it drags a bit at times. Maybe the prose is just a little too rich for me? I'm definitely curious to see how this one is going to end so I'll keep reading.

On the culinary front, I saved this recipe from a 2022 calendar and finally got around to making it. Truly a comfort dish!

I also saw a container of blueberries that seemed to be hanging out a little too long in the fridge so I made a lemon blueberry cake. So yummy and Mom really loved it!

You can find Carole's recipe on her From My Carolina Home blog right HERE. It's easy and delicious!

What has kept me very happy lately? I've been quilting up a top most recenly. I love free-motion quilting!! Here's a peek ....

Have you noticed lately how dark it stays in the morning? Gracie and I have been leaving a little later on our walks because it's just so dang dark still at 6:45. The other morning as the sun was starting to light up the sky, I noticed this beautiful X in the sky. I hope it brightens your day too!

Have a great Thursday, everyone! You can find more "interesting" things at LeeAnna's Not Afraid Of Color blog where we all share things to like.