Gifted, Shared, Loved...

i've been absent from bloggy land, and missing my RSC friends. i'm back with a plethora of catchup posts! mostly from RSC23...

 

 

granddaughter L turned 5 in late October. i mailed her 2 of my favorite quilts from RSC22. 

just 2 very simple designs; i like to focus on color and contrast, rather than fiddly piecing. 3" squares, and 3" HSTs. she loved them!  no pics of the colorful backing, though...

my favorite DIL turned 30 (!!!) the end of July. P had commented in RSC21 that she really liked the scrappy twinkly stars that i was making- so obviously, the quilt needed to go live with her! (full picture of this quilt in my header photo, but now it's finished, not just a flimsy...) youngest grandson T had to get in on the happy occasion... 

Daughter #2, A, turned 17 June 29. (see, i'm really behind!). as a budding young writer, the Full Stop quilt seemed like she was the best one for it to be loved by... she was really happy! 

sharing and gifting a favorite quilt to one of my loved ones is the best ever. it's great when they find a home to go to; where they'll be appreciated and used. 

June 30 my youngest son passed away tragically and unexpectedly in a motorcycle accident. although i kept sewing along with you all, i just didn't have the energy to blog for awhile. 

i'm doing ok, and so is the family, though it was quite a shock, and so sad. 

 

the above 2 quilts were not pieced as part of my RSC shenanigans. the first one is for a great niece's baby in CA, the second (Baby Shark; inspiration found here, although now that i revisit Katy's post, i realize she used HSTs, not isosceles triangles... ) was pieced for the Nebraska MCC quilt sale, and is on its way into the world...) 

i appreciate the friendship and camaraderie of all my RSC bloggy (and Instagram!) friends! go see what every one else is up to- you just might be inspired! 

finishes and progress!

life has been busy here... a "big" upgrade started here in our house 2 months ago, when the 4ft.  lightbulb in the laundry room died. what started as a quite simple "hey, Dave, can you please put a new light in the laundry room fixture" turned into:

1. buying a NEW light fixture for the laundry room. (in the 13 years since it was installed, those 4ft bulbs became obsolete, requiring another fixture altogether...) 
2. drywalling the laundry room ceiling
3. finishing ALL. THE. TRIM. in the laundry room
4. painting the laundry room ceiling
5. installing new "luxury" vinyl plank flooring in the laundry room
6. closing the access hole between the  laundry room and the master bathroom
7. installing new "luxury" vinyl plank flooring in the mudroom
8. finishing ALL. THE. TRIM. in the mudroom
9. painting all the trim in the laundry room (white)
10. painting all the trim in the mudroom (tan)
11. painting the bathroom ceiling (!?)
12. painting the bathroom wainscoting
13. replacing the sink base cabinet in the kitchen
14. getting a new sink/faucet for the kitchen
15. installing new quartz countertops in the kitchen
16. installing a new granite island countertop in the kitchen
17. finishing ALL. THE. TRIM. in the kitchen
18. painting all the trim in the kitchen (white)
19. painting MORE trim in the kitchen (yellow)
20. i think that's the end of the list... 

so, actually, our *tiny* home improvement project became a lot like the book If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. (there are several books like that- If You Give A Moose A Muffin... If You Give A Pig A Pancake...) I'm sure you're familiar with these delightful children's books...

anyway- NOT complaining at all! we really stalled out in the home improvement/DIYprojects in the last 10 years or so. it's really nice to have these 3 rooms DONE! 

so: on to the quilty stuff- i know that's why you really came! 

February is aqua- and i have more than i thought... i made all these HSTs, in the "magic numbers" of 3, 6 and 9. (read more about them, and magic numbers here.)

while cleaning/tidying some of my baskets in the sewing room last month, i came across these fabric sayings on a panel. i divided them up into quilty sayings, Christmas sayings and bible verses. i decided to work with the quilty sayings first. 

i remembered that i had some pieces left over from a Kona cotton honey bun after piecing this quilt for my 3rd granddaughter, AK. i thought to improvise log cabin piecing around each saying. again, i used the "magic numbers" theory, cutting each block/rectangle some variation of a 6", 9" or 12" square or rectangle. 

 and finally- here's the shoo fly and donut quilt (one of them) that I pieced during RSC21. it's all finished and on its way to the PA Relief Sale. 

so, now you're caught up on the recent happenings in our neck of the woods. (mostly, anyway!) thanks for stopping by. I'll be linking up to Angie, our hostess with the mostest for all things RSC. and stay tuned: i started a few more RSC projects that I'll be sharing about shortly... 

if you care to see our kitchen in its raw, recently purchased state, and follow along on our progress in fixing it up, just click here. 

and here's a bit of the back story (and cool features!) of our mud room. (just read the first couple posts. they're the most relevant)

it's a double rainbow!

i have TWO finishes to share today!  the first is a flimsy, so maybe technically not a finish? but it's high on my list to get done, once i make some final decisions about where it's going to live, and with who. (whom?) 

Angela designed this quilt #fullstop as part of RSC21. i chose to do my punctuation marks in a consistent Moda grey, instead varying the colors of each of my rows. ( i used more stash that way!) to round out the rainbow, i added a few filler rows: the lime green, aqua and the medium blue. i forgot to measure the quilt's final size, but it's somewhere around 64" X 70". it's more squarish than rectangley... 

another change i made was to omit the row of colins ::: (maybe that was the aqua row?) i felt they were too close to the quotation marks """, periods ... and semi-colins ;;;. unfortunately, the row of semi-colins is nearly lost in the purple row. 

i had in mind all along to either gift it to a History teacher friend (who seems more like an English teacher type) or a shirttail relative that is an actual English teacher. but: both my girls seem to really like this quilt, and i'm contemplating giving it to one of them... 

actually, in processing and typing out the above, i think i'll go with my original plan. both girls, A & B have heaps and hoards of quilts. i should spread the love a bit, i think. i plan to quilt it in straight lines through the rows, and maybe even do some big stitch quilting with pearle cotton. we'll see... i 'll keep you posted! 

the above quilt, Rainbow Rectangles, is genuinely finished (quilted AND bound!) and was made by my youngest daughter, BJ. she's 14 and i think this is maybe her third quilt? she doesn't LOVE quilting but she doesn't DESPISE it either. she likes to make things, and really enjoys the satisfaction and beauty of a completed quilt that she made herself. 

this quilt was made all from scraps/stash, and we used my studio2cutter and the 3" X 6" (finished) rectangle multiple die.  *the above links are not affiliate links; i just really love my S2C! even though the cutter can be quite spendy, i've been careful to choose practical and versatile dies, and i get alot of use and enjoyment out of my cutter.*

if you're on the fence about getting a cutter for yourself, i'd HIGHLY ENCOURAGE you to take the plunge. (but wait for a sale, is also my two cents worth...) 

BJ laid out the rainbow rows top to bottom along her quilt to get the maximum impact of the rainbow asn the quilt is on the bed... the above and below pictures are a bit closer up, so you can see the wide variety of fabrics included in her quilt. 

it's SO COLD here this weekend: supposed to go down to 0° the next few nights. YIKES! so i'm sure i'll be spending some time in the swewing room, or maybe also huddled under quilts! 

linking up all over the place this weekend! grab a cup of coffee, settle in and see what everyone else is working on!

Alycia @ Finish It Up Friday

Michelle @ Brag About Your Beauties

Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation

Angela @ So Scrappy (RSC22)

just plugging along quietly in the background...

i'm thrilled to have a flimsy finish to share today! I've been working on these wonky star blocks in the COM all RSC21, and finally finished the blocks last month. (was it really that long ago?!) 

             

Daisy {the miniature donkey} is *always glad* to see me head out to the pasture with a quilt. she knows that for just a little co-operation, and minimal lip quivering, she'll be rewarded with some special treats! 

we also have our big, galloping, goofy and friendly steer, Wellington Xaviar Basset. (Welly for short) but he's not nearly as cute and he's much more muddy (and other brown stuff, too...) so, he dones't usually get to be in on the photo shoots and treats.

it was quite the puzzle to get the blocks together and blending (colorwise) on the design wall. (some sneak peeks of that over on Instagram) the quilt (unfinished) is 68" X 87", and it took 3 evenings to carefully take it off the design wall and bring it to the sewing machine and sew it together, with lots of partial seams. thankfully, i got it right the first time, and no major seam ripping was involved. phew!

it took several iterations of block and color arranging to get the color flow to go the way i wanted... then, there was more digging in my 3" square stash, and finding other bigger pieces and colors in my stash to get enough blocks in the right colors to fill in the blanks. 

here is a "detail" shot of the 4 corners of the quilt- the pics should supersize if you click on them...

just in case you're interested in seeing some of the different fabrics!

i will admit, there are just a few duplicates in this quilt (not counting the wonky stars, of course) ...at least 2 that i know of... 

 but other than that, i'd say it's a safe estimate to say that there are over 700 different, unique fabrics in this Rainbow wonky stars quilt. 

i plan on quilting this one myself (soon?) and entering it in our local County Fair in July. then, i have a special recipient in mind, so I'll keep that a secret for now. make sure to go see all the other colorful, rainbow finishes this week- it's a colorful time of year!

Rainbows, Everywhere!

it's October (almost November) in RSC Land: and what does that mean? time to get all those monthly RSC blocks into tops! all year i've enjoyed playing with my scraps and squares, and i've been making waffle blocks, (2 different versions) and also the shoo fly and donut blocks. 

last week inspiration and motivation hit like a ton of bricks, and all in a rush, i pieced 4 different RSC tops, using up nearly all of the blocks i pieced this year. (go, me!) 

This waffle block quilt is about 62" X 75". i used my stash of 3" squares in the COM, making about 2 blocks each month. the brown waffle stripe (strip) is the same in each block. i only had to make 2 more blocks to complete this layout. 

i'm definitely working through my pile of 3" squares. i'm even considering taking a break from piecing RSC blocks with the 3" squares next year (!!!) and focusing on crumbs and strings instead for RSC22...

(as i'm writing this post, i realize i should take a better picture of this quilt, so the details of the fabrics can be seen better... this quilt is at church now, but i'll try to post a closeup soon...) 

since i can never leave well enough alone, (and tend to be that annoying firstborn overachiever) i did TWO waffle block quilts. For the second one i used the COM as the waffle strips, and 25 LV (low volume) squares, again making 2 blocks per month/color. this quilt i also pieced an additional 2 blocks to complete the "rainbow" layout. 

AND: after the 10+ months of piecing, i had 188 of the donut and shoo-fly blocks. (Kona lighthouse is the grey i used, in case you were wondering...) i was a bit stumped on how to put the blocks together, undecided as to whether i wanted to do a GIANT quilt, or what my other options might be...

then: A FLASH OF LIGHTNING, and a CLAP OF INSPIRATION! i was working from my Farm Girl Vintage book, making pear placemats for my 5yo granddaughter Es birthday (more on that later) and i saw this sawtooth star quilt layout in the back of the book. i realized that if i "pretended" my donut blocks were the big stars (by combining 4 donuts) and treated my shoo-fly blocks as the smaller sawtooth stars, i could use this design as my layout! 

i quickly got a "volunteer" to help me lay out the blocks on the design wall, and i was (am!) thrilled with how it turned out! after the year of piecing these blocks, we had lots to choose from, and combined the like (monochromatic) colors to make the layout here. 

after sewing that top together, i realized that there were (of course) many blocks still left over. so we just reversed the design, so to speak, and substituted the shoo-fly blocks for the large star, and the donuts for the smaller star. ( i'll say, though, that i like the first layout better... the donuts combine better than the shoo-flys) 

so, the end of this RSC21 story is that we have 2 waffle quilt tops for local donation through our church sewing group, S2W. and my long arm friend, Karen, adopted the 2 donut and shoo-fly quilt tops for an upcoming MCC auction. 

 i'm looking forward to RSC22, and starting some new projects (!!!). (i'll confess, tho, i still have a few RSC 19 block piles to get into tops, and a growing stack of leftovers and RSC orphans that need a purpose...) 

it's fun to visit the  RSC Saturday link-ups every week and see what everyone else is working on- you just never know when a great idea might explode! 

August = Aqua

the people at my house keep asking (or thinking) if things will slow down after next week? i'll join them in thinking that i only can hope so!

a few random evenings, or treasured afternoon moments have produced a good start on my aqua blocks for August. (after i received my snail mail package of Kona lighthouse. emphasis on snail mail.) 

my shoofly and donut blocks were at a standstill until i had a fresh infusion of the grey background fabric. 

i'm sure i say this for every color, but i had WAY more aqua in my stash {of 3" squares} than i would have guessed... 

a few waffle blocks were constructed, too, and just have some more waffle blocks (with aqua yardage), the Full Stop question marks and the twinkle stars to go. 

our summer has been busy, that's accurate. but i can't really help but wonder why- we're not doing a CSA this year, and our garden is quite small. (by normal people standards). i have been making lots of pickles, that's true (70+ quarts and counting) 

and watching the 3 grandchildren several times a week is part of our normal routine. we're raising meat birds for our freezer this winter, and hubby got a steer, too. (Beef) Wellington is 6 weeks old; he's still fed milk replacer twice a day. Welly will be ready to butcher for steaks and burger in the winter of 2023. 

so, we just keep plugging away with All. The. Things. and life is good here on the little farm.

Repeating Rainbows!

sporadic, but colorful sewing happening in the sewing room these days! youngest daughter, BJ (13) wanted to make a Rainbow Quilt for her bed. how's a mother to say no? (purely a rhetorical question, of course! she doesn't...) 

using my AccuQuilt Studio2 cutter, we sorted through my stash of {white based} LV fabrics, and a nice gradation of rainbow colors, and cut out enough rectangles to make her a quilt about 80" X 90". 

BJ wants all the colors to be visible across the bed, so she designed/sewed it with the red rectangles at the top (pillow) end of the bed, going down through to the purples at the bottom. as you can see, the quilt is not all sewn together; it's still on my design wall. i'm loving this quilt, too. it's one of the best rainbow quilts i've seen... 

AND: i even have a finish to show! RSC19 was the year of the 9 patches for me: L/D centers, as well as eclectic AND bohemian color combos. i was hoping to mimic the soft and muted look of Jolene's quilt from Blue Elephant Stitches .

obviously, i didn't quite achieve that, but it's ok! this quilt was completed in time for our *big 4th of July bash*, and it's not really a quilt, per se, it's a tablecloth.  it's shown here on our schoolroom table, which is also the Big Crowds and Family Is Here So We Need More Places To Sit table. 

do you recognize the jelly cupboard in the corner? it's from our New Albany rental house. after a bit of scrubbing and wiping, i decided to bring it to our home and use it for extra schoolroom storage. although, i will say, after bringing it into a *relatively finished and clean* house, i can more clearly understand why it was relegated to the cellar in the first place. it's easy to see more potential in a cellar environment than may actually exist... 

there is no batting in this quilt- it's just the top and a backing. (just like our summer bed quilt.) i love how it turned out- i set the blocks on point, used a brown for the side setting triangles and the binding. ( i read somewhere that brown has all the colors in it; it's great to use it for binding a multi-colored quilt. i follow that advice often.) 

 there was a method to my madness in the laying out and design of this quilt, although it's hard to see in the quilt itself. the colored drawing above makes it much more obvious. i was going for the cascading, converging and melding of the lights/darks/rainbow colors. if you squint hard and run by quickly (or fill the table with lots of food) i guess you can see it?

anyway, if anyone asks, or wants to know, the name of this Family Tablecloth quilt is Converging Memories. there are fabrics from a lot of the sewing that I've done for the last 30+ years. as i was photographing the quilt this afternoon, i spotted a yellow calico from 1988 that was the kitchen curtains in our first home!

also: i should have refreshed my memory by reading my posts from when i first started these 9 patch blocks for RSC19. that was the year that i made the L/D 9 patches, as well as the eclectic AND bohemian 9  patches. i had blogged that i intended to make 2 tablecloth quilts: one for WITH the leaves and one for WITHOUT. 

oops! 

well, this one will fit really well with just 1 leaf. (it fits fine with 2 and no leaves as well, but i wish i had remembered that... ) 

be sure to go see what everyone else is working on- there are lots of creative quilters to meet, and colorful quilts to see every Saturday morning over at Angela's blog. 

a slower pace

since i've already worked through all my blues, i had some "extra" time this month for a couple other projects. 

i decided to do only 4 waffle blocks with my neutral squares. 

grey, tan, brown and black. 

since the main color of my waffle blocks has been the brown with the color of the month, i didn't think i really needed any more brown waffles. 

every year i enjoy participating in some sort of UFO quilty project. this year a reader let me know about the facebook group UFO Bingo. basically, you fill out a bingo card with your UFOs (repeats are good) and each month a letter/number is called. 

i happily jumped on board right before January 1, finding about 20 things for my Bingo card. i'm so excited to realize that i'm nearly done with every project/UFO that i had on my card! (i really work well under pressure. haha!) 

this month is G33, but i already "finished" that project into a flimsy. (my SnowflakeQAL top) so i chose a different project to work on. shown in these few pictures is the map fabric that i chose for my #onlyonequilt. (be sure to search the hashtag on instagram. there are some pretty amazing quilts out there!) 

 i'm about 1/3 of the way through piecing the blocks, and have a few ideas scrambling around in my head of how i'd like to do this quilt. but for now, it's just a work in progress. (or maybe some would say a squirrel!) 

click on over to Angela's on Saturday morning to see what everyone else is working on- we're over halfway done with RSC21!