My Hexagon Obsession

Angela has chosen aqua/turquoise as the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month. Perfect choice since I've been obsessed with my Fishbowl Hexie project lately and there's plenty of aqua to be seen there. It's growing quickly as I assemble the main parts. There are more light hexies to go in the corners for the first outer border.

Currently 34" across at the Widest Point

Do you do English Paper Piecing? Should I remove all the papers now with the exception of the outer edges? Would that make LARGE assembly easier? I'd be interested to know your opinions on these questions.

Last week during one PT appointment, one hair appointment, and one podiatry appointment, I managed to applique just about all of both large flowers on Tangled Daisies (pattern by Jillily Studios).

Cross-stitching in the evening gives me a different kind of peace. I've been adding the lettering to Be Kind by Primrose Cottage Stitches. Slowly but surely, this project is coming along.

As for Gem Tones, I can tell you that both blocks have been fully cut out and the sewing may start this week. We also got our next clue for the mystery sew along from my local quilt shop. Maybe I'll work on that! Who knows what mood I'll be in later this week.

The All-Illinois Shop Hop started this month and will finish Sept 30. I've managed to squeeze in a few stores, one of which I didn't even know existed and is so close to me! Tarsha Homestead is a lovely small shop and the owner is just about the sweetest person you might meet on the hop! Maybe it's just that I fell in love with her "yard". It's full of chickens running around everywhere. She said she may have about 45-50! Here are some of her chickens

Strutting her stuff!

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

I had to call my brother, who also has chickens, to tell him about the beautiful chickens. My SIL sent me a picture of theirs -- including a rooster too!

In between all this fun, I've been trying to get some of the gardens under control. This was this morning's project. Check out the mess in the wheelbarrow!

My current book is Nightshade by Michael Connelly. How can you go wrong with that author, right? I'm in about 75 pages and all I want to do is keep reading! I think it's his latest book and it may have been recommended by my blog buddy Little Penguin Quilts!

Read about it HERE

I guess I forgot to let you know I finished Quilt City Murders by Bruce Leonard. It was pretty good and I like his style. It was fun to read also because I've been to the AQS quilt show in Paducah many times so the town's descriptions were mostly familiar to me. I'd definitely recommend it if you like a murder mystery and quilting! It's the first in a series of his books. I just noticed too that Nightshade is also the first in a series. Guess I know what I'll be reading in my future! Lol!

I think I'll wrap this up now. I don't think there's much more for me to share this week. Let's hear it for another week in the books. We'd love to say that things are cooling off here in the Midwest but not just yet. Summer is still alive and HOT!

Make it a good week!

Linking up at SoScrappy.

New Month & FNwF

Last month Angela, our fearless leader of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, announced that aqua/turquoise would be the color for August. I don't know why but I have trouble with those colors. Seems I don't use that shade much and so I don't have a lot to choose from when sewing with RSC. I like the color, just don't have much to work with. In spite of that confession, I do have some things to share.

August 1st also happened to be the first Friday of the month and that meant I would be joining my international friends for Friday Night with Friends. Many thanks to Cheryll for being on top of things and reminding us of the event. I set out to work on my current EPP obsession.

Sewed these together Friday night
and first thing Saturday morning

Added the two end hexies
to make it easier to sew later

Started sewing these together Saturday

What on Earth am I actually making? Here's the layout of my parts. Some assembly required.

That open area in the middle is actually together too
My "senior moment" didn't see I forgot it until seeing this picture!

Plenty of aqua/turquoise here! I'm having a lot of fun with this project. there will be an outer row of the white-with-aqua-dots and then a final outer row of the dark turquoise. That's the plan at this point anyway.

My TAS UFO table runner has seen some progress this week. I mostly finished the brown vines. Then I prepped some of the flowers and actually started sewing a few petals down.

Jillily Pattern - Tangled Daisies

Over last weekend I also got the green Gemtones blocks sewn together.

The other day I started a new 1000-piece puzzle. I should be able to finish it up today!

In other news, last weekend was Fred's 50th high school reunion. We had dinner out and Mom had Visiting Angels stay with her. Shelly was wonderful and she & Mom enjoyed each other's company and Mom was safe and I could enjoy a night out with open bar. Yahoo! As for Visiting Angels, expensive, yes! Worth every penny!

Photographer's staged picture of us

Selfie by me!

Thursday was the final day of Quilts & Stitchery: Past and Present, an exhibit at our Madison County History Museum. It was very nice and had some fun things to look at and admire. I'll show you what you missed.

Close-up of the embroidery stitches used in the applique

Love sewing and the look of partial seam blocks!

Laughed when I saw this sweet crewel embroidery
My sister made one like it for my Sarah when she was a newborn!

My favorites!

I hope you enjoyed the exhibit tour as much as I did.

My niece sent me a few pictures of her engagement pictures. Her dog Mac is always included (if you recall he was also featured in her graduation pictures! haha!). Such a good-looking couple plus a dog. Wishing them a future of happiness.

If you stayed with me through this very picture-heavy post, congratulations! You made it to the end!!! Thanks for coming along on the ride. Now I'll wish you a  fantastic upcoming week!

Please visit Cheryll at Gone Fishin' to see what others sewed this past Friday Night with Friends. Then go see Angela at SuperScrappy to see how others fared with their aqua/turquoise scraps!

Closing Up Purple

Here it is the last weekend of July and August is lurking around the corner. The weather has reminded us that it is still, in fact, summer. Wouldn't you know our A/C went on the fritz! We noticed that it was getting warmer in the house and our upstairs at night was getting really awful for sleeping. It just so happened that Fred went downstairs to check and lo! and behold! there was an Error Code 69! What did the code mean? I sure as heck didn't know but I did know what Error meant! I called first thing on Monday morning (7 am) and had it checked out around noon. Ugh! Computer board was the likely culprit as the compressor looked to be running OK. Hallelujah! We were still under warranty because our HVAC was barely three years old. Part was ordered and installed on Wednesday! Cool air has been blowing through the vents again and happiness has been restored in this house once again. You know, you don't realize how much you love your air-conditioning until it's gone and Mother Nature has thrown near 100 degrees at you with extremely high humidity (due to what is called corn sweat here in the Midwest) with Feels Like temps approaching 115. So all is right again here in Troy IL.

On Vickie's last couple of days with me, we decided to do a project together. I had seen on the Bernina blog We All Sew a tutorial on making a coiled rope cat basket. We both have kitties and Vickie had wanted to make a rope basket and these directions looked easy enough so let's do it! We followed the directions explicitly --except we didn't have the exact size needles required and I don't have a fancy machine with dual feed but I do have a walking foot and Vickie couldn't use her knee-lift for some odd reason with her computerized sewing machine right then. Yup! Directions followed perfectly! Haha!

Inner Coil Started

Let's Start Adding Color!

And Done!

Vickie's Completed Basket

We had so much fun making these baskets. When I struggled a little, Vickie helped me out. When she had trouble, I was there for her. Besties for sure and we had a great time making the baskets. Best part of all, our cats seem to like them, especially Vickie's Jasper who curled right up in it when she got home and put it out for him.

Jasper is a 17# cat

Vickie used fabric she had purchased at a thrift shop while on vacation in Nebraska before stopping through here. Isn't it beautiful??? Knowing her Jasper is on the larger size, she didn't stop at the 14" mark for the bottom but continued on to 16". She also added handles on hers because she's smart! Lol!

Polly is barely a 9# kitty

I used purple scraps for Rainbow Scrap Challenge on Polly's basket. She's a smaller-sized kitty so I stopped at 12" for the bottom measurement of my basket. If you're interested in this project, you can find the tutorial HERE. If you have a kitty, you really need to make one.

We were sad to see Vickie leave Tuesday morning
She was headed to start the All KY/TN Shop Hop

Now, what did I do after Vickie left and the A/C got fixed? I sewed RSC, of course! First up was to do the second purple block of Gem Tones.

16" Finished

As I was sewing the rows together, I glanced at the picture in the American Patchwork & Quilting mag and discovered my flying geese were pointed in and were supposed to be pointing out. Oops! At that stage I wasn't about to rip it out. Here's a picture of both purple blocks (see the difference? Well, poop!) up on the design wall along with a couple of other Gem Tones friends.

I also tackled the first July step of the Mystery QAL at Itch'n to be Stitch'n, my local quilt shop. Looks to be possibly the center block?

It's a huge 16" Finished Block!

In between these big blocks, I started Bonnie Hunter's 2025 Leaders & Enders project. I'm basing my colors on lovely hydrangea bushes. I finished two blocks and a third has been started. Bonnie is calling this challenge Four Patch Fun.

I think that's enough from around here so I will close with a couple more basket pictures since we had so much fun making them.

Silly Goose!

Silly Crane on Top of Neighbor's House!

I hope you had a great week and are planning a good weekend. I, for one, am looking forward to the end of this week when we are supposed to finally cool off a bit. Until then, you'll find me enjoying my sweet air-conditioner!

Thank you, Angela, for keeping us all together on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!