A Pink to Beat Them All...

i've pieced several more of my {Kona school bus} house blocks (finishing at 6") in pinks. i've started on the browns, grays and blacks for November, too. this brings my total up to 12 little houses. 

but who wants to talk about quilts, when we can talk about BABIES! our 7th grandchild (4th granddaughter) was born last Friday!!! She came a couple days early, a surprise to all of us, since my daughter, M, is typically a week late. 

of course, we're all just smitten with baby Sadie Ella, and love her to pieces! 

her baby quilt, Hop Skip, was finished (and washed to crinkly softness) just in time, too! 

M, (Sadie's mama) bought the deer fabric and i combined some muted Kona pastels for a subtle, but cozy quilt for our newest little one. 

Aunts A&B are also always thrilled with a new niece, and we've tried really hard to all be polite to one another and take turns holding the new baby. ha!

Sadie has a big sister, Addie Kathleen (who will be 2 this week!) and i'm sure they'll be the best of friends!

here's the whole family: M and husband K, along with C (5½), L (4), A (2) and newborn Sadie. as you can imagine, their household is busy and noisy! 

in other exciting news: A and B talked me into going with them to a for King & Country concert in Bingamtno, NY. (it happened to be the same day that Sadie was born, and also my first in-person, real live concert. i'll readily admit I had fun, and wasn't as bad, boring or loud as i thought it would be...)

we made a weekend of it, staying overnight in a hotel, and doing some shopping, too. it was  a lovely time, and we made some great memories. 

in more quiting news, A decided that she wanted to make her piano teacher a quilt. (free pattern here) this was truly a labor of love for A, as she really doesn't enjoy sewing. Mrs. Weed has taught  A piano for 7 (?) years, and last week was A's last piano lesson from her for a while, since the Weeds are going to Italy for a mission trip. 

I'm almost done quilting the top, and we'll put the binding on and gift the quilt early this upcoming week. We've found a new piano teacher for A (Mrs. Davis studied at the Cleveland Conservatory!) and we're all confident that although we'll miss Mrs. Weed, A will continue excel in her piano endeavors. 

 and since it's Saturday, and the RSClinky party, I'll close with just a *bit* of green for this rainy May morning: obviously, i have lots of green in my crumb jar, and I'll be busy making some green crumb blocks this week. (in my spare time. ha!) 

in which: the blogger starts 3 new RSC22 projects...

yikes! here it is, for all intents and purposes, the middle of February, and i've started 3 new RSC22 projects! (click here to see what all the other colorful quilters are working on) 

 but: in my defense, i'd have to say- i felt pretty scattered and unorganized 6 weeks ago at the beginning of the year, and didn't have a clear idea yet of what i wanted to work on. even though i don't post much (even as often as i'd like to) i do faithfully visit all you guys, and other blogs (and Instagram) nearly every day. it's a source of great inspiration, and now i finally know where i'm going...

on one of my *very infrequent* trips to Wal-Mart a few weeks ago, i happened to stumble across this issis of American Patchwork &  Quilting magazine. i instantly recognized the quilt on the front as one by Jo Kramer. i wasn't interested in piecing the cover quilt, but on a whim picked up the magazine to page through it. 

i was thrilled to see a pattern for a paper pieced house included in the projects of this issue! and better yet- in 6" and 12" block sizes! I've always wanted to do a house quilt, but in 40+ years of quilting, I've never checked that off my bucket list... BUT: here's the thing that was the absolute clincher for me: the solid color is Kona School Bus- one of my favorites!!! 

I'm thinking to make a few houses in the COM each month, depending on how much of that color i have. and also, I'm planning to do this a bit more *fancified* than i might normally- I'm pondering 9 patch sashing and cornerstones (indigo?) and maybe finish this to hang on my stairwell wall. 

so, somewhat impulsively, this project (I'm doing the 6" houses) was added to the queue for RSC22. i ordered 5 yards of kona school bus from FQS, and I'm all caught up! 

still: the 3" squares! another inspiration from Jo was her Two-Step quilt. (i think I've seen a few others around on bloggy land, too) and i thought i'd weed out some of the singletons from my 3" square stash and do one of those, too. i still had lots of the LV 3" squares from the waffle quilts last year, so why not? 

(although, in going back to Jo's post to link up, i see that my memory was a bit off. the blocks are 2/2, not my 2/1 as i've pieced them here. i guess that's why it's called a TWO STEP, right? oh, well...) 

lastly to be started is what I'm going to call a Framed 4 Patch. when i was cleaning off the computer desk, i found a diagram i'd scrawled on a piece of scrap paper, outlining this block. (that means i saw it {was inspired} somewhere from you guys. if this is your design, let me know; i'd be glad to link back and give you credit!) 

i have a "home made" jelly roll of these Kona colors. ( the colors I'm using for the sashing are black, ash, snow, coal, charcoals, titanium and silver. I'm considering adding in expresso to round out the tan/brown spectrum) i thought they'd be perfect to outline the 4 patches in each color of the month. each block will finish at 9", so not sure how big this quilt will end up being.