I Like Thursday #107

It's Thursday and you know what that means! We bloggers like to share happy things on our blogs because we believe happy thoughts make happy lives. We share on LeeAnna's blog Not Afraid of Color and you can see what we all liked this week right here.

My first "like" this past week has to be I LIKE RETREATS! If you know me, I didn't even have to say this out loud. Haha! I left for four wonderful days on Valentine's Day. One of the retreaters, my friend Carol, made these tasty heart sugar cookies. She said we were her Valentines. Sweet ... and delicious! I heartily ate my fair share of these! *wink*

Of course a retreat post can't go without a few quilty pictures. Enjoy!

Karen's

Edna's

Kathy's

Gwen's for a Dallas fan

Carol's

Gwen's for an LSU fan

Millie's

Karen's

What did I accomplish?

Two more words in the Letters to Santa QAL

A Chubby Charmer tote for me

I also quilted Twisted Valentine which I'll be sharing over the weekend.

So what about more LIKES?

Making progress on my jigsaw puzzle

Blue Vera Bradley Mini Hipster Purse
(my Christmas present from my son & family)

I love Sanders from Costco but
Fred found these heart Sanders
for my Valentine's Day

It was my birthday this week
and Polly loved my boxes.
My! What shiny eyes you have!

The beginning of a couple of crocuses

I'll leave you with  another photo of a beautiful cardinal. He practically matches my neighbor's barn-red houe.

Be sure to stop by Not Afraid of Color's blog where you can find more to like!

MIA with My Friend at Retreat

Hard to believe but my last post was almost a month ago, October 6. The last month just flew by and I was gone for much of it. Let's continue from October 7 and see how far we can go. I sure don't want to overwhelm anyone!

My best friend arrived on Friday, October 7th, traveling in from Knoxville TN. We got squared away on Saturday and left Sunday for retreat at Kinderhook IL. If you're wondering where on Earth that is, it's about 30 minutes due east of Hannibal MO, home of Mark Twain! The grounds are lovely and there were about 16 of us in the main retreat lodge. Another group of my friends happened to be retreating at the smaller lodge so there was plenty of fun.

Anyway, here are some of the pictures that I took while there from October 9th - 13th. First up is my friend and me with our matching quilts. Primitive Gatherings had this pattern in their book "American Gatherings" and all it took was 5 charm packs more or less. We loved the scrappiness which also made our quilts similar but not identical.

I'm on the right

Here is a quilt I put together using a panel from quite a ways back. The yellow was a fabric that I bought at my LQS. It was the "color of the month" and I believe it was called Highlighter Yellow. The corner stones of two bats, one skull, and one pumpkin were freebies from April Rosenthal, a talented Moda designer. Visit her website here and click the Free Patterns tab at the top.

Take a look at this beautiful Christmas plaid quilt that my friend made. Isn't it gorgeous??? She found the pattern in a Quilts & More magazine. I don't know which issue -- sorry. I think this quilt would be a great gift for a graduate in their school colors too!

I managed to get another word sewn up in the Letters to Santa QAL. They really are fun to sew!

Of course I have to include a few pictures of quilts made by some of the others. This one was Sandy's. I just love the colors and the striped border she made for this panel.

I just LOVE this quilt by Jody. Wish I could remember the name of the pattern she used. Could it have been Flip Flop? Hmmmm. I don't know.

This quilt was nicknamed The Green Monster by its maker. Michelle had it all put together, didn't like the way the colors went so she ripped out A LOT of stitches and resewed it back together. Turned out  beautiful!

While I was retreating, hubby had his quarterly endocrinology appointment. He is a type-2 diabetic and once again his numbers weren't good. The doctor decided to slap one of these on him to help monitor his sugar levels for two weeks.

After a few days, it looked like this. Does anyone know if this is normal? He is on blood thinners so maybe normal for that?

When we removed it at the end of two weeks, it looked like this. We're thinking that if it was stuck somewhere else it might not bruise so much? We'll get the report from the doctor at the next appointment. I just thought I'd share since it was so odd! Ha!

I think that's enough for now. Stay tuned for the next October Chapter post.

Have a great weekend!

A Finish and a PHD Report

Today I'll share with you a quilt I finished a couple of days ago. Give me a couple minutes to tell you the story behind it. Each year in October, Autumn Jubilee begins. Who wouldn't love quilting with friends while celebrating one of the most beautiful times of the year? Autumn Jubilee is sweetly given to us by Carole @ From My Mountain Home. Over the course of this month, she'll offer her original projects freely which include a quilt of different sizes, wool applique, card stamping, recipes, you name it -- she's got it! So much fun to see what she's offering each year and I'm really looking forward to this year's group. Oh! And did I mention that there are prizes??? Haha! She has rounded up oodles of prizes from her sponsors and others. There's plenty to go around so you really ought to jump on board. Click the Autumn Jubilee 2022 button on my sidebar to see the rules and regulations. There really aren't that many and they're sensible but just need to be said. So hop on over but come right back here.

Last year's Autumn Jubilee 2021 quilt was offered, as always, in many sizes. I chose to do the wall hanging size 42" x 42". The pattern was thoroughly explained and wasn't too difficult to make. The fabrics were mostly bought at Rosemary's Quilts & Fabrics during her basement sale. I picked up a baggy full of Fall scraps for a couple bucks and the background fabric was clearanced out as well. So here we are -- Autumn Jubilee 2021 wall hanging.

Ta Da!

A close-up of some of the quilting

More quilting and a look at the variety of fabrics
from that bag of scraps

Such beautiful Autumn fabrics!

A look at the back

A close-up of the back to see
more of the quilting

Relaxed over a lawn chair

We all know that the quilt isn't finished
until it's labeled!

I encourage you to read all about Autumn Jubilee 2022 by clicking on the button on the sidebar. There's sure to be something of interest for you over the next few weeks!

Autumn Jubilee 2021 was on my PHD (Projects Half Done) list and I'm happy to say I FINALLY got to check another project off. Thank you, Gail @ Quilting Gail, for helping to keep us focused ... too bad I just started another couple of projects. The Letters to Santa QAL is being offered through Moda's website and I found it just too adorable (and challenging!) to pass up. The other project, Sweetheart Sorbet, has been added from a class I just took on October 1. It might be a good car ride project! So, to sum up my PHD, there was one finish, one new QAL project, and one class project. Man, oh, man! Here we go again. I just can't say NO!

A last look --
relaxing on the deck!

Have a great month. October looks to be wonderful!

FNwF, RSC Light Blue, Letters to Santa QAL, and IL Shop Hop

The post title seems long but the actual post should be relatively short. Let's begin.

For quite a while I've been working on the Noah's Ark counted stamped cross stitch baby quilt. It has entertained me so much for the $5 (or was it $10?) that I spent on it which included the top and ALL the floss needed to complete it. The guild was selling off the remaining items from the quilt show boutique at deeply discounted prices. I am enjoying it so much! It's a great pick-up project!

The quilt stores in Illinois have started an Illinois Shop Hop which lasts all of August and September. Fred & I have been taking several Friday road trips exploring the towns and finding new and remembered fairly local quilt stores in our Southwest Region of the hop. Yesterday's trip was a long one as we ventured 129 miles straight north to visit Ma's Got a Notion in Havana IL So worth the trip! Tons of wide backs and civil war prints, flannels, and homespuns. I was in 7th heaven!! On we went to Jacksonville IL to visit Times Square Sewing and Sew Sweet Quilt Shop. We also made time to grab a bite to eat at Kim's. It was a small cafe with a friendly staff -- just the kind we place we like to eat! We made a note to try again to eat at Babe's in Havana. We tried to get in there but it was very crowded. Must be good, we thought! We tried to get in at Dora's Spinning Wheel but she's closed Friday - Sunday so that will be another day. After picking up my car for a brake job, we finally made it home .... 281 miles round trip.

With all that travel time, I couldn't just sit and chew poor Fred's ears off. I brought the embroidery and stitched in between stops and definitely during highway mileage. Check the header at the top. That's pretty much where I started the cross stitch on Friday. Here's a picture at the end of the day. I also sewed Friday evening watching Serena Williams lose to an Australian woman and it was a very exciting match! Now for the picture. Check out all the extra blue waves stitched! Now that's progress!

I'm considering the blue embroidery part of my RSC post because it is a light, bright blue too!

The Letters to Santa QAL hosted by Moda is proving very fun also. Stitching the letters is not difficult but there is a lot of cutting to be done before the sewing can begin. I'm OK with that. Just letting you know if you'd like to jump on board too! If you want to, here are the current links: Introduction, 1st Clue, and the Current Clue. I started sewing the letters at last week's retreat and accomplished JOY, CHRISTMAS, and the M for Merry. I now have the first three words finished.

 Click on one of the links above to see a picture of Moda's finished quilt so you can see where my words are going. I'm looking forward to sewing TWINKLE so I can mix in a little green!

Looking back, I guess I got a little wordy so this post is longer than I anticipated. Hope you at least looked at the pictures! Ha!

Have a great weekend and, if you feel like looking in on more quilty posts, check out the Friday night sewers HERE and the other rainbow scrappers HERE.

RSC Orange

Yup, I finally got some orange scraps sewn up for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Our leader Angela  chose orange for August and some of the others have really gone crazy with the color. You can see lots of this beautiful color HERE at SoScrappy.

Here's my orange zigzag border piece for String-X. Look at all those orange strings! There is an elephant, an owl, neck of a giraffe, a pumpkin in the orange fabrics. There are peace signs, writing, and cross stitch in the neutrals. Can you find them?

I think some of the problem I was having getting motivated to finish String-X this year was I just wasn't sure how I was going to turn the corners.

Looking back at what String-X looks like so far showed that the corners would entail dark blue, aqua, purple, and black. The color for July was purple, I believe, so I really needed to get a plan in place. Here's what I came up with:

This will be one side.

This will be the other side including the corner block.

When set together, it will turn like this. It's not perfect since I was fudging around with ideas but it'll do. I'm pretty sure I made a couple of extra sides for at least one other corner and, now that I have a plan, I'll have to go back and see. We had dark blue in June and aqua in February. This quilt is getting close to finished!

On a side note, I sewed with friends today (Friday) and will again on Saturday. Have you heard about Moda's Letters to Santa QAL? You can read the introduction HERE and then link up with the first two clues. I jumped on because I thought it would be fun. Turns out I'll have even more fun since I found out a friend was also sewing alone. I think this quilt will look so fun on the guest bed at Christmas time! Today I sewed up JOY and CHRI of Christmas. I'm looking forward to getting my machine busy with the rest of Christmas. Might even squeeze in a little MERRY if there's time! Wish I'd taken a picture or two of what I accomplished. Will do so next week!

Until then, have a great week!