It’s the last Sunday in January and time to link up with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching!
I have a few stitches to put into this Kathy Schmitz SAL, Woven Wreaths. That will be easily accomplished today.
And then it’s the day I put all the stitches to record the last week’s high temperatures in my Temperature Stitch! As promised, I won’t bore you with each week’s 7 stitches! So next Sunday, I’ll show all of January!
And I’ll put some stitches into the finishing of GROW.
And now I’m putting the iPad down to focus on a favorite early Sunday activity. Watching Sunday Morning on CBS. Today they are all about Charles Osgood. The host of that program for 23 years, he passed away last week. He was 91.
There's been a lot of sewing happening in my sewing room this week. Only a little bit of green though. But it’s a project I’m pleased with. I made a pillow with scraps of fabrics used in the one and only Christmas quilt I have made.
If you look closely, you will see that the dark green fabric in the pillow is the same as the dark green fabric where the lower left hand corner is pointed. And the lighter green shows up in the lighter four patch in the lower right of the photo.
I completed a small wall hanging for Project Quilting 15.2. There was no green, but I used scraps. A crumb pieced gray background and a small bit of yellow crumbs cut into a circle.
The wall hanging that I’m working on for SAHRR is perfect for the February color, picked by Angela.
I’m linking up with Angela at SoScrappy. Rainbow Scrap Challenge is one of my favorite sew-a-longs to participate in . You should join us. It’s not too late to jump right in.
IT'S TIME for SAHRR 2024. Hosted by Quilting Gail with the help of several other hostesses for each round. I posted my Center Block here. And now will link up for round 1 with Wendy at Pieceful Thoughts.
Whew! I've been busy this week. I finished the Project Quilting 15.2 project. Sky Colors. You can see my link here.
And I wrote and posted the Table Scraps Challenge 2024 challenge that was to be green & snowflakes. I posted about that HERE.
My center block for SAHRR was a cute little stitchery. I call him Rudy! I decide to add border and bring it to square. It is now 8.5" square and ready for Round 1 of Stay At Home Round Robin. Wendy at Pieceful Thoughts is the host for this round. She presented A Signature Block. Click on the link to her blog to see her tutorial and how she added to her center block. Also there is a linky party so you can see other entries using the signature block.
Now that I made Rudy square, I've decided that I want him to be a tall rectangular shape. So I used 4 signature blocks only on the bottom for now.
Now I'm excited to see what Round 2 will be and on Saturday we should find out what Angela has in store for Rainbow Scraps Challenge. February is just around the corner.
Welcome to the first post for Table Scraps Challenge 2024! I’m linking up with The Joyful Quilter. I love this challenge!
I copied the following directly from Joyful’s blog post, but then blogger edited the font!!! But it’s all mine after the snowflake icon! 😊
January's theme was...
SNOWFLAKES
Here's what transpired as a result...
The Color of the Month was Dark and/or Bright GREEN ❄️
Ummm? Green snowflakes?? I’ve been working with green for RSC 24. But stripes, giraffes, shamrocks, chickens and ladybugs. Not snowflakes.
Then, look what came in the mail the first week in January! A pattern from Carolina Moore! I had signed up for her newsletter earlier in 2023.
Scraps from the front and some odd other table scraps!
The front, empty! Without a pillow form!
I made a Christmas quilt in 2016 using the Five and Dime pattern. It used a layer cake. There were pieces left over in my Christmas fabric tote. Now there is a pillow to be displayed with the quilt next Christmas
So I think did it! A snowflake, using green scraps! And best of all I love it.
Project Quilting 2nd challenge for 2024, the 15th year of this fun challenge!
Trish from Quilt Chicken challenged us with Sky Colors. Her only caveat was there shouldn’t be any blue or if you did use blue only 10% of your color could be blue. My home, in Big Wyoming, has lots of blue sky. Mostly blue skies in fact! Even those mornings last week that were 17 below zero, the sky was blue. At first I thought, maybe Navy isn’t really blue. I could do a Bronco themed something. The Denver weather people are always saying the sunsets are Bronco Skies, they are orange and blue! I thought some more. Then my friend Susan posted this picture on Facebook on Sunday.
I have Susan Denton Jerke’s permission to post this.
Not much of that sky could be called blue. Definitely gray and orange and maybe even the Fuzzy Peach nobody is thrilled about this year. When I saw all the gray, this song came to mind. DickVan Dyke singing in Bye Bye Birdie.
Then I couldn’t get it out of my head! And I have all that smiley face fabric! That was Sunday.
Monday I went to my sewing room to gather supplies, but could not find the smiley face images I knew I had! Lots of talking to myself, a few colorful ( possibly “blue”) words ! But eventually I found what I was looking for and got busy!
Tuesday evening , the background was done, some yellow stitching was done and the blue marking lines had been sprayed with water so that they would disappear !
Wednesday evening I hand stitched the binding down. I used a fat eighth that’s been in my scrap basket for more than five years. It was nearly done at 9pm, but my left thumb was screaming! So I stopped stitching and rubbed my thumb with Deep Blue!
Thursday done! I’m calling it Name That Tune! 🎵 🎶🎵
Hanging on my sewing room wall! The “happy face” has a tiny magnet in it.
Here , it is attached to a magnet that resides under the label on the back! ⤴️
Label and backing smiley faces!
Or you can put it on the sun. There is a magnet there too! ⤵️
Can you name this tune? I’m linking up with Kim at Persimon Dreams.
I found the above reminder on Sweatpants and Coffee, a page I follow on Facebook! I think it fits the bill of our I Like Thursday friends! I’m joining LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color
After our new flooring was installed in our downstairs family, I decorated for Christmas. This space had a purchased “Believe ” quilt hanging there. After I took it down it was really empty and I remembered this Snow Flurries quilt that I made several years ago. It’s been waiting in the closet for extra beads. I hung it beardless and it’s ok. It needs a longer dowel or rod, it’s a bit wrinkled. And it’s been folded for 4 years. Has anyone ever tried Downey Wrinkle Release on a quilt! I use it all the time in the laundry. It doesn’t seem to fade or stain the things I spray! I might try it on the back and see if it works!
I made Sweet Potato Stoup on Sunday. It fed us twice, plus one bowl leftover for my lunch! I love this stuff. Have I shared the recipe? It’s a Rachael Ray recipe and still available on her website. The full name is Smokey Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup! The only thing I didn’t have in my pantry was dry White wine. So I followed a hint from the internet suggesting a 50/50 white wine vinegar and water! It worked very well!
I also made sugar cookies using a Betty Crocker mix. There were supposed to be 22-24! I had enough for 26, so I squeezed 13 onto each pan! One has some crushed peppermint candies sprinkled on top, the other pan has yellow sugar sprinkles. They were very good!
My old Christmas cactus has started to bloom! I love that it still manages to do that! It makes me smile.
January 25 2024
does your family play games? what kinds and are any of them new ones this year? Cards? board games? puzzles? action games like darts or horseshoes etc?
We are a game playing bunch. Except for Mr Busy. He plays card games and he does puzzles, but please don’t invite him to play board games. Not Trivial Pursuit( my personal favorite), or Trouble ( the great grand’s favorite) . We used to play cards with friends monthly. Rotating houses, sharing a meal and a round of GRAB, a variation of rummy. This year our son sent us Rummikub! We played while he was here, and we want to play again. Mr. Busy plays tons of games on his iPad, I play Sudoku and Daily Crosswords, Wordle, and Connections.
I'm joining Kathy at Slow Sunday Stitching and friends to share our creative slow projects. Today I'll stitch as we watch the playoff football games, The Buccaneers at The Lions and our favorite, The Chiefs at The Bills.
I’ve been continually stitching in the evenings on GROW. The letters are done, and the extras on the same row. Just getting started on the borders.
Design by Sheri Berger from Colorado Cross Stitcher.
Stitched on 28 ct Cashel Linen, Ivory with suggested alternate DMC colors. It will be a bit bigger than the designed size. She used 36 count Winter Woolens and stitched with Weeks Dye Works floss.
I’ll be putting last week’s temperature pluses on my heart cross stitch. This is definitely a slow stitch. Each little plus, for each day of the year, takes edited 5 not 4x's. So every Sunday I stitch the last 7 days or 32x35 crossstitches.
And last week I started stitching on Woven Wreath sampler SAL with Kathy Schmitz! I’ve watched her video twice, and again this morning before Mr. Busy got up. I think I’ve got it! I've embroidered for years, but can always use pointers from other stitchers. Especially from artists like Kathy Schmitz!
Last week I showed some green and cream blocks. There was more green sewing this week. These scraps were joined in Crumb block fashion.
They were then joined by some other green scraps and a pushy red snow people scrap that wanted to play with their green sisters and brothers !
Also these are all the green blocks for this month’s RSC. Four zipper blocks, and 5? Split 9’s. What am I going to do with 5 green blocks! Wait for light green to happen in the future, I guess!
I wrote to Diann that I could probably make enough green split nine patches to make a whole quilt. That could happen down the road, but I’m committed to participating in Project Quilting, so I’ll be busy for the next several weeks.
Who knows, there could be green happening with Project Quilting and there will be a Table Scraps Challenge entry at the end of January.
I’m linking up with Angela for Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Thanks again , Angela, for this event that keeps me sewing up scraps!
I’m joining LeeAnna and friends late today! Check LeeAnna’s post for I Like Thursday and visit other bloggers.
I. meant to write a post! I hoped to get some photos to share. Neither thing happened! On Friday I posted about my Project Quilting entry. If interested you can read the post Here.
Saturday we invited friends over to watch the wild card game streaming only on Peacock. My friend Connie is a KC fan. They don’t have a Peacock subscription. I invited them for supper too, but she already had supper in her crockpot. As it turned out, it’s a good thing they didn’t accept. My potato soup was a fail. I used a recipe I found on line, decided to make the one marked creamy. Evidently my potato to cream cheese ratio was off. You definitely could taste the cream cheese, Mr Busy said it tasted sour! He usually doesn’t comment! So…..guess I’ll have to dust off my recipe box and find my old recipe! 😕 So no photos!
I finished my first book of 2024. Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. As you might suspect from the cover it’s about Frank Lloyd Wright!
I enjoyed it right up to the last four chapters. The story took a definite turn. One I did not expect and I won’t share. It was a well researched story, but a novel. Historical fiction!
I gave it 4/5 stars on Goodreads!
Oh, and I decided on my center block for SAHRR hosted by Gail at Quilting Gail. You should join the fun. Read all about it here. SAHRR stands for Stay At Home Round Robin!
Finally, my Christmas cactus is blooming. That always makes me happy! She’s an old plant, a cutting from a friend of my sister’s. The mother plant is almost 100 years old and mine is 25 years old according to what my sister told me.
LeeAnna’s prompt for this week:
January 18 2024
An event that had a big impact on you this year.... and how did you handle it?
I cannot think of a single impactful event this year that I am willing to share. I’m trying to be mindful of the privacy of others, so I won’t share. But as Diann pointed out, sometimes the only way to handle difficult things is one step at a time. My mother always said to us, “ one day at a time!” My father was killed in a car accident when I was 23, my sister was 20 and in college, my two brothers still at home, 17 and 14. I think that’s how she navigated that terrible time in her life.
