End of July PHD Report

I've really been trying to keep my nose to the grindstone. So many projects I'd LOVE to jump on board with but I'm keeping myself in check. Well, until August 16th when I'll be joining in on Gudrun Erla's next sew-along. You can find all the details on Gudrun's Quilt Crew group on Facebook this Tuesday. She'll let us know what pattern we'll be doing and fabric requirements.

But until then, I'm quilting, quilting, quilting! I finished up Winnie the Pooh. Now it's not on my PHD list but I did start it in June and finished it July 31st. Counts as a good finish!

I was hoping for some sunshine for the photo shoot but it just keeps raining. I took this picture while it was sprinkling and you can see the rain drops on our deck floor.

Sorry to say that I didn't write down the name of who gave me the brilliant idea of how to do the quilting. She had done a wall hanging and described her method for it and I thought it would be perfect for this little 46" x 46" quilt. I didn't want to detract from the characters! This is what I did following someone else's directions: Bernina stitch #4 (serpentine), stitch length 3.0, stitch width 5.0. I followed the vertical seams which are 2" apart. Then I was afraid that the channels in between (2" x 46") would be too long to stay secure so I quilted horizontal serpentine stitches 6" apart.

View from the back

Quilt Label - Used my Bernina Built-In Letters

This quilt will be mailed out sometime next week and it goes in the "Done" column!

The Star In a Star quilt has been my other focus lately. I managed to get the large 24" blocks assembled, the 12" Celtic knots for the outside cornerstones were completed at a recent retreat, the borders finished and the outside frame attached.

This big boy is 96" x 96" and is pictured without the outside frame. I didn't even have room in the basement to lay it out completely but I think you can get the idea. The top is now finished and I'll be basting and quilting it as quickly as I can but it will surely take some time!

Let's check my To-Do List at the start of the month and see how I did.

________________________________________________________________________

1. Quilt, bind, & label Winnie the Pooh - Finished!

2. Finish Patriotic Wall Hanging 100% - Finished!

3. Get Star in a Star top assembled. This quilt is due at my LQS on August 25th. It finishes as a queen-sized quilt. For credit at the shop, it will also have to be quilted, labeled, and bound. Definitely a big job for July & August. Currently, 5 of the nine 24" blocks are assembled and the top & side borders are complete. What's left? Assemble the final 4 blocks and finish the 4 border cornerstones. They are hand appliqued Celtic knots. Sounds like a hospital project to me! -  I ended up doing the applique by machine. The top is officially a flimsy!

4. Quilt, label, & bind Hope. - No progress here.

5. A little more progress on Eva Grace would be nice too! - A girl could dream, right?

So what's in store for PHD progress in August?

1. Get Star in a Star to the finish line.

2. Quilt, label, & bind Hope.

3. Stay caught up with Afternoon Delight applique blocks.

4. Get 7 Heartfire hexies done in RSC color PURPLE.

5. Get 9 Awesome Land blocks done in RSC color PURPLE.

That ought to keep me out of trouble. I'll check in with you around August 15th. Wonder how the others are doing with their PHDs. I'm going to see for myself right HERE and I invite you to see too!

August = Purple!

Friday evening, Angela let the cat out of the bag that the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for August will be PURPLE! I will be looking forward to working with purple fabrics in August because it is one of my favorite colors. It will also be a great month for visiting all the Rainbow Scrappers to see how they work with purple. But first we need to wrap up July's color - DARK BLUE.

I was happy to take this month off because I needed to catch up my Heartfire hexies. I managed to get all 7 green blocks sewn for a January catch-up last week. You can see those blocks HERE. This week I played around with a few smaller projects and check it out! There's DARK BLUE in the midst!

The block on the left upper corner is Easy Breezy, Bonnie Hunter's Leaders & Enders block for the year (July 2020 - June 2021). I'm going to concentrate on oranges and blues for my blocks. The 4-patch in the bottom left corner will be the center of the next Easy Breezy block. Just look at those adorable animals ... I spy a giraffe AND an elephant! I'm using these blocks for leaders & enders at my sewing machine upstairs, where I do most of my piecing.

The Half Square Triangle in the bottom right will be used in another of Bonnie Hunter's quilt patterns. It's called Split 9-Patch and is one of her many FREE quilt patterns which you can find HERE. There are a lot of HSTs in this pattern so I had a stack of them going. I'm using this pattern for my leader & ender at my sewing machine downstairs. This is where I do my machine quilting and also where I sew on borders, bindings, and where I also sew together large quilts. This  Split 9-Patch project will probably take me a LOOOOONNG time to finish since I don't spend as much time down here!

The upper right and bottom middle blocks will be little pillows or pincushions. The top one is complete except for the pillow finishing and measures approximately 3-1/2" x 6". The 2-1/4" star will have red & white stripes attached to be flag-like. I plan on using these as little pillows in a basket. The pattern is called Sweet Liberty Tuffets and you can find the FREE pattern HERE. They're really fun to make and don't take any time at all! I'm thinking you could make these in Christmas colors or even Halloween fabrics! Lots of fun!

Speaking of fun, I'm very excited because Gudrun Erla of GE Designs has announced that she will be doing another Sew-A-Long Day on August 16th. It will start at 9am Central Time with clues given every 2 hours. She will be sharing all the details this Tuesday, August 4th at 7pm Central Time on her Facebook Group page (Gudrun's Quilt Crew) to reveal the pattern, fabric requirements, etc. You can bet I'll be there and,  just like when I sewed along with her last sew-along Hope, I'll be sewing with my sister who lives in Texas! But wait! There's more! I'll also be sewing with my BFF who lives in Ohio! She will probably have to set her alarm because that is 8am Eastern Time! Lol!

In the meantime I finished up Winnie the Pooh. That's right! I saved my finish for last. It is quilted, labeled, and bound. Unfortunately it's in the wash right now but I can share a couple of pictures that I took last night while finishing up the binding. Stayed tuned for the photo shoot later.

Polly Loves a New Quilt!

In other good news but not quilty, I got to "harvest" a zucchini this week! I'm having trouble with the flowers falling off but no fruit. I'll water more frequently, I guess, to see if that improves my production! Thank goodness for my rain barrels!

My red giant hibiscus bloomed this year! It's a favorite of the Japanese beetles so I'll have to take care of that next week if we get some sunshine.

This week I spied a visitor soaring through our backyard. Hubby actually got a decent picture of this Broad-Winged Hawk before it didn't like being the center of attention and flew away.

Have you stayed with me this long? I just noticed some more quilty pictures to share with you. I'm all caught up with the applique blocks on Afternoon Delight, the block of the month from The Quilt Show.

Block 22

Block 23

Block 24

August blocks will be released today sometime. I think there are only two again which is manageable for me. Unfortunately, these past two months I've been supposed to be making twelve double 9-patch blocks along with the applique blocks! That means a total of 36 DNPs by the end of August! Oh no!!!

For real that's the end of this post! I'm linking up with Angela at SoScrappy HERE. Can't wait to see everyone's joy at the color purple for August and to see their wrap-ups of dark blue!

Checking In with RSC & FNSI

As you may recall, I'm playing catch up with some of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks this month. I caught up my Awesome Land blocks last week which I posted HERE. This week I tried to work on a few (no, I was actually thinking I could do all 7!) Heartfire blocks in bright green, January's color. Here's the four I worked on and, as you can see, these are not finished.

Part of the reason I lagged on those is because I was working on Star In a Star. Those Celtic cornerstones took a long time to prep and that's all I got done on those this week. They're glued in place and just waiting to be machine appliqued down. Maybe get a start on them this week?

My other distraction was Winnie the Pooh. I want to get this one done and out in the mail SOON but I'd been dragging my feet because I couldn't make a decision on the backing. I saw some cute Pooh fabric online but order processing & mail is so slow right now at times that I couldn't see taking that chance. I also visited one of my LQS but didn't find anything appealing. Then all of a sudden I remembered WAAAAAAY back I had made a Winnie the Pooh (different than this one but still Winnie-themed) and had used some Pooh fabric in it. Did I still have any of that left? I dug deep in my  mind to try to remember what the fabric actually looked like so I'd know what bin to scour and sure enough, I found it!!! It measured about 12"x 42".

It is pieced into the back with a bright yellow fabric and is sure to be cheerful. Next task is to find a 54" square of batting. I dug around this morning and found two pieces that, when sewn together, will be just right! Now it's all about finding time to finish this puppy up!

Of course my week would not be complete without a squirrel. Very Busy Monkey on Ravelry has a free mystery knit-a-long going on for a pair of socks. I absolutely LOVE her patterns so I downloaded what she had and completed Clue 1 last night during Friday Night Sew-In. I knit two-at-a-time so it takes me a little longer to get the clues done but here is a picture of my yarn and my progress so far. Thanks to Wendy for hostessing FNSI again this month!

Clues 2 & 3 have been released as they are coming out on Thursdays. You can find all the information HERE if you'd like to join in too! There's only one more clue but the downloads are still available!

Now I'm hoping to make some progress this week on all these projects but mostly I'm planning this week to enjoy my DIL & Brody's visit. They arrive tomorrow (Sunday) and will hit the road again to go home Tuesday morning. Yes, short but oh! so very sweet!! Amanda sent this picture of Brody getting ready for the trip -- haircut time!

I also wanted to give a quick share of a funny thing Gracie & I saw on our walk the other day. We happened to be cutting through a subdivision and came upon this:

Linking up with Angela at SoScrappy later today. Have a perfectly-pink flamingo weekend! Lol!

PHD Report - July 15

Well, what do you know? We're halfway through July. Hopefully I'm keeping on schedule. Let's see what I hoped to accomplish this month.

1. Quilt, bind, & label Winnie the Pooh - Don't have anything to show but I found some Winnie the Pooh fabric from a previous project. It will be incorporated into the backing so I'm anxious to get it pieced and ready to quilt!

2. Finish Patriotic Wall Hanging 100% - Yes! Finished and hanging! See my post HERE!

3. Get Star in a Star top assembled. This quilt is due at my LQS on August 25th. It finishes as a queen-sized quilt. For credit at the shop, it will also have to be quilted, labeled, and bound. Definitely a big job for July & August. Currently, 5 of the nine 24" blocks are assembled and the top & side borders are complete. What's left? Assemble the final 4 blocks and finish the 4 border cornerstones. They are hand appliqued Celtic knots. Sounds like a hospital project to me! - Progress here has been slow but steady. The final four blocks need the final seam sewn and then on to assembling the main part of the quilt. The cornerstones have been prepped but not sewn. The original plan was to hand applique these as recommended by ones that have finished theirs. The directions explain how to machine applique these. I'm thinking machine at this point. Maybe give it a go tomorrow?

4. Quilt, label, & bind Hope. - Nada!

5. A little more progress on Eva Grace would be nice too! - Nada!

So there you have it. Thank you, Gail, for keeping us on track. I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone else is doing and motivating all to get those Projects Half Done DONE! Will be joining the linky party HERE.

See you August 1!

July PHD Report

I'll make this short & sweet ... hopefully. What did I hope to accomplish by month end?

To-Do List for June

1. Get that Kyoto to the finish line!!! - Finished in time for Show 'n' Share at my LQS via Zoom. This counts on my PHD list!

2. Get Pooh finished too! - Top is completed. Count that as a win too! Started this QAL with Quilting Gail in June.

3. Cross Patriotic Wall Hanging from my list! - Finished except for stitching down the binding & hanging sleeve and writing on the label. This is the project I found when I was reorganizing my upstairs sewing space due to the baker's rack I snagged. You can read about it HERE.

All in all, I think I did pretty good reaching my June goals. Just a couple loose ends and then I'm done. So what will I hope to do for July?

1. Quilt, bind, & label Winnie the Pooh

2. Finish Patriotic Wall Hanging 100%

3. Get Star in a Star top assembled. This quilt is due at my LQS on August 25th. It finishes as a queen-sized quilt. For credit at the shop, it will also have to be quilted, labeled, and bound. Definitely a big job for July & August. Currently, 5 of the nine 24" blocks are assembled and the top & side borders are complete. What's left? Assemble the final 4 blocks and finish the 4 border cornerstones. They are hand appliqued Celtic knots. Sounds like a hospital project to me!

4. Quilt, label, & bind Hope.

5. A little more progress on Eva Grace would be nice too!

Thanks to Quilting Gail for keeping us accountable with our PHDs. I'll be linking up with the others and cheering my fellow PHDers on!

Final RSC Saturday in June

As I'm sure you already know, Angela picked pink for our Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month. Last post I said that I was short one pink Awesome Land block. Dopey me! Forgot it was finished yet still under my needle so all nine have been accounted for. Too bad I can't say the same for the aqua and the light blue ones. I think I'll just make a few extra ones in a different color. I think I've got enough blue variations for this project already. To keep me honest, here's a picture of all nine pink Awesome Land blocks.

I also have 4 of 7 Heartfire hexies/blocks done. The last three only have the outer ring to go so they'll be done by June 30, I'm sure. I'm wondering what July's color will be ....

What really took up all my time was getting Kyoto across the finish line. It was due for a UFO Challenge at my local quilt shop this past Tuesday, June 23rd. Finished it up the night before and got the label done that morning. The pattern was created by Jinny Beyer and this was a 2018 BOM. I bought the fabric kit from Jinny so I could learn how to use stripes better.

Here are a couple pictures of the finished quilt, its label, and pieced backing showing some of the quilting. I love using the fabric design on the front as my quilting motif. That's what I did for the outer border. I quilted Kyoto on my domestic home sewing machine.

This quilt finished at 58" x 64". It's rather large, too large for a wall hanging, not sure about using it for a lap quilt. It was a lot of work since it was hand-pieced. I might lay it across my dining room table .... Hmmmm. We'll have to see.

Of course, the UFO meeting was held on Zoom. Nice to "see" the ladies again and catch up a little with them. At the end, our fearless leader (Cindy) chose the next number. I'll be working on Star in a Star in a Star which was a Twisted Mystery quilt that I worked on through my guild. Most of it is done, only the four cornerstones to make. Then I'll need to sew it all together and then get it quilted. It will take a while as it is a queen-sized quilt. When I locate all the pieces, fabrics, and directions, I'll let you know the exact size! Due date is August 25th but I don't want to wait until August 24th to start working on it! Hahaha!

I've also been busy with the Winnie the Pooh sew-a-long. I posted pictures of Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, and Piglet HERE, HERE, and HERE.Yesterday I finished Eeyore.

This afternoon I sewed the flimsy together.

Awfully cute, isn't it? Need to get it sandwiched & quilted. It's pretty good-sized too at 46" square. Nice size for a baby quilt.

Two more blocks appliqued for Afternoon Delight.

All in all, I'd say it was a very good week. Now let's get this weekend rolling! I'll be linking up with Angela on Saturday.

FNSI and RSC

My goodness, I sound like some sort of governmental agency or something. FNSI. RSC. Oh brother! Follow along and I'll explain if you don't already know.

FNSI (Friday Night Sew-In) is hosted by Wendy at her Sugarlane Designs blog on the third Friday of each month. Quilters all around the world have the opportunity to join in the linky party, take the opportunity to enjoy stitching, and then sharing what you worked on and check in on what the others have done with their evening. This month you can see the activity of all RIGHT HERE!

So what did I work on? I got some fabrics coordinated for the next block of Afternoon Delight and put some stitches in it. I managed to get the outside of this circle appliqued down and the start of a few of the points. Check the bottom left corner ....

I really should have prepped the circle that goes into the middle of the previous block so I could put it away.

I apologize for not pressing it before taking its picture!

Earlier this week I sewed together Tigger for the Winnie the Pooh sew-a-long. I think he looks magnificient!

Of course, in between I sewed Awesome Land blocks as leaders & enders. That's one of my RSC (Rainbow Scrap Challenge) projects. This month's color is pink. I'm linking up with Angela's RSC Linky Party HERE! So much pink to look at!

Bottom row, middle block is the last of the dark green blocks finally sewn up from last month! I'm getting quite a pile of blocks for this project which isn't too surprising. After all, we started this in January and here it is June already!

The reason there are three sets turned out is because I counted what I had this morning. Oops! There's only eight pinks done and each color needed nine. Then I discovered there are also only eight aqua/turquoise blocks and, oh my gosh, only seven light blue ones! I'll be playing catch up with those colors this week for sure!

I finally got this young lady's picture. Activity started out a little slow at the hummingbird feeders this year but it has been picking up lately. I think maybe the tardiness might have been caused by our unusually wet & cold spring maybe?

On Thursday my mother turned 87. I made birthday scones for her and dropped them off at several friends' and family's homes on my way to her house. Everyone loved them and Mom's neighbor actually called me to say they were the best scones she's EVER had!

The tidbits in them were cinnamon morsels made by Nestle. I had a hard time finding them for a different recipe but, when I found them, I bought several bags. Mom & I saw the scone recipe on the back of the bag and we agreed that we should try these one day since they sounded so tasty. Oh my! They're even better than we imagined. I think it's probably because it called for roasted (not toasted) walnuts. I had to actually cook them in the oven and wow! Soooooo good! I might double up the nuts next time I make these .... and I'm not even a nut lover!

Have you ever seen black hollyhocks? I hadn't but I spied these in someone's back yard while walking Gracie this week.

There were also pink ones. I loved the double pinks in the back. They look like carnations.

Here's a picture of my favorite hosta. I love that the stems aren't super tall and the stems are loaded with flowers. The leaves are really textured too.

In other news, my husband's surgery has been set up for noon on Tuesday, July 7. The kidney will be officially outta here!

Have a great weekend! I'm ready to get Gracie out on the trail this morning followed by (hopefully) finishing up the quilting on Kyoto today .... right after I make some potato salad for dinner tonight!