Small finished and the next step to a bigger finish.

A couple of finishes and one not yet!

Some time ago,  I mentioned a use of flannel scraps. I had bits and pieces of leftovers from several baby quilts. So, I can't throw them, I made a good sized square.

Then it went back in the drawer.
Now that our great grands have moved it, and Miss B received another baby for Christmas......Gwamma needed to finish that project. I looked through my bin of larger flannel pieces and found a cute pink monkey print. It was big enough.

So I cut it to size, put right sides together, left an opening and did a flip and turn.  Then put bright pink thread on the machine, and did some decorative stitching around the edge and a serpentine stitch, in thirds.

It's being used and that is the goal, always!

And the only other "finish" was to get the label on my Bowtie quilt. Mr Busy and I took a quick road trip to South Dakota last weekend. A chance to get away for a bit and rest. So no sewing was done, but this hand work was completed yesterday at my Thursday Stitchers group!

There is a scrap of washi tape over the quilters last name and mine. Just for privacy!

Last but not least the final borders are on my 2019 Temperature Quilt. It needs to be backed and quilted. Then I will applique the year in the upper black border and add tiny buttons on the family birth dates. I am thinking about a stripe of the color range on the back. That isn't done yet, as I haven't decided on backing fabric and who will quilt this 51 x 52 quilt.

This is hanging in the hall at the bottom of our stairs. I can't get far enough to get it all in one shot. So here is the top 2/3s and:

here is the bottom 2/3s. You can see the end of the railing on the right! GEE!

None of these are necessarily post worthy, certainly not Whoop Whoop worthy, but at least they are documented.

I'll link up to Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
and to Can I Get a Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.    (I apologize for the linky photo, the crop confused me!:(

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

December OMG, Done and Done!

Well, after the snafu ( see this post) with the batting and the backing for my December OMG ( my scrappy Bow Tie quilt), I got it back from the quilter. She picked it up from me on Sunday and Thursday it was delivered back to me.  The binding was ready. I cut the strips for the binding from the leftover backing fabric. Lots of seams. I worried about a seam landing on a corner. I measured quickly and decided to add a piece of navy grunge to the end so I wouldn't be short.

The binding went on and guess what, not one seam ended up at a corner.  Some were close, like 1.5", but that worked. And I did not need the added navy piece.

The binding angels were looking over my shoulder!

This  post was written on the 17th of December. On the 19th, our grands and great grands moved in to our house. The first night at Granma and Pa's was a bit of a drama. It's was strange for the littles,  they are 6 and 3.  Different routine, different bed and they have "pink eye"!!!!

Our house guests (our granddaughter, her husband and her two littles) will be moving in sometime before Christmas, then we will have an additional guest( our daughter) for a few days at the end of the month. I hand sewed binding while watching Goliath on Amazon. It was not a binge session, but several 2 episode sessions. I can't sit in a chair longer than a couple of hours without having to get up and move!

And here is the entire quilt, not the rolled up version!

It is done as of Dec 16th. I also got our tree up. Our daughter's birthday is the 16th, so that is always my goal. From her first Christmas, 55 years ago, to now!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays to all!

I'll link up with Patty's OMG Finish post after the 24th 26th!

I completed every monthly goal this year!  Not so much with some of my other challenges. But it's all good. I am going to try to catch up on my challenge and goal recaps, after Christmas.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

ScrapHappy Saturday

It’s almost the last Saturday of 2019! A new decade starts in a few days! What will 2020 bring? I pray that peace, love, kindness and hope are involved!

I promised to show my one completed RSC19 project. I worked on bow tie blocks in a Rainbow colors. The backgrounds are scrappy too! I’ve named my quilt, “We Switched to Chevy”.  In late November, 2018, we bought a new car. A black Equinox. It’s a Chevrolet! I love it, it’s only the second brand new car we have owned in 55 years of marriage. No doubt it will be the last!


In early 2019 , I started seeing commercials that used the “we switched to Chevy “ tagline. The Chevy emblem on the grill is referred to as a bowtie! My quilt idea was born! This quilt will be a car quilt. To throw over my knees if the A/C is too chilly, to spread on a bench if we stop for a meal, whatever.

The backing is dark so the dirt won’t show so badly! I had to piece the backing, there was a post about that snafu a couple of weeks ago. The binding is left over scraps from the main backing fabric.

I also worked on the Tiny Tuesday blocks and some Scrappy Spouts. Neither of those are to a point of completion. Maybe my TT blocks will be one of the first UFO's I work on for the new year.



I'm linking up with Angela's ScrapHappy Saturday post.


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Finished or Not Friday 12/20/19

Last week, I showed progress on my Winter QAL.  This week I can show you that I have the rows together. I did have a couple of little issues with some points. I unpicked a few, resewed and they are better. Some are just going to have to be "not perfect".

I did not measure this quilt top. But Mr Busy is 6'1" ( he has shrunk a bit as he has gotten older) is standing on a dining room chair and holding it up!

And my Bow Tie quilt is complete, except for a label.

A pieced backing, lots of strips to make a binding and finally done. It is washed now and all wonderfully crinkly!

I'm linking up with Alycia for Finished or Not Friday!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy
(it gonna be busy and I hope happy here)

Dec OMG Goal

This is a photo of my Bow tie quilt top. It was one of the blocks I did for RSC19 at So Scrappy. It is at the quilters now. She promised to have it done for me before she left to go south to AZ for Christmas and the following 4 months. She will, I am sure.  So I will prep a binding. My goal is to have the binding on the quilt by New Year’s Eve. 

It's a small goal, but there may be a snafu in there. We will see. Our granddaughter and her husband and 2 kids will be moving in with us at the end of Dec. It’s a long story as to the why. I’ll spare you the details. It will only be for about 60 days.( we hope)  We only have 2 bedrooms, it will be cozy. But my quilting and hand sewing time will be limited. J is at school M-F and Miss B goes to pre school in the afternoons, M-TH, so there will be those times. I haven't learned yet how to sew with littles around. These 2 are so curious and so busy!

You may get to hear me rant a bit or at least vent. I'll apologize in advance.

I am linking this post with Patty's Goal Setting Link Up. 


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Retreat Project 10-2019 and some RSC19 sewing

I did not get the last 3 Tiny Tuesday blocks done. I will work on them soon. I was at a retreat for a few days the 3rd week in October and some scrappy sewing was accomplished.

First and foremost was the completion of the quilt top for my RSC19 Bow Tie blocks. Mr Busy held it up from behind the back fence. Wish I would have pushed the gate shut....then you would not have to look at our trash cans!

I had made black bowties all along, because I knew I wanted to feature them. This will be a car quilt, to go in my "new last November" black Equinox.  Chevy logo=bow tie. Maybe you have to be married to a car guy to "get it", but it works for me. I'll be looking for a dark backing so we can use it for a picnic quilt and not have to worry too much about getting it dirty. Plus we have " littles" in the car sometimes, so you know it will get used. Some of the blocks seem a little light in the big picture, but it is what it is and they were all from my stash. But a lesson to remember.


While at retreat, this happened too!

Lots of squares and strip piecing to make 9-patch and rail blocks. Here are 6, I made 14. I haven't put them on the design wall yet, I may need 2 more for a 4X4 layout for a good size kid quilt. Again, only scraps from my stash!  And the novelty bin is still "full"

And these 2" squares became:     I used Bonnie Hunters Essential Triangle Tool to make the 2" HST from 2.5" matched strips. Some neutral and blue, some neutral and red and some red/blue.  The layout on my portable design boards was a bit tricky. We were limited in space, but I just did the 4 quadrants , one at a time and that worked.

I'm early for 4th of July!  There is a sashing strip of neutral down the middle with a red square in the center. I kind of like it this way though. Guess I'll make the sashing strips and then decide. It's a pillow cover.


That's it for my scrappy October sewing. I'll be linking up with Angela at Scrap Happy Saturday and spend November working on my Tiny Tuesday blocks.

I'm also linking up with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop! over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict!


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

ScrapHappy Saturday October Dark

October color is dark: browns, blacks, greys

I already made black Bow Tie blocks for my "We Switched to Chevy" quilt! There are 8 black blocks here.

And the first Tiny Tuesday block:

When you cut for tiny blocks, sometimes you can't include all the fabric= (Cho)colate!

Then I did one more purple sprout block, because all the pieces were already cut and ready to go.

I wasn't sure I wanted to make brown/black/gray scrappy sprout blocks....but I have a large basket of brown fabric. Some yardage, some fat quarters, some scraps. So I dove in, cut 2.5" squares, 2.5" strips of light and dark to make HST and some neutral 2.5" squares. Two done and they aren't too bad!

My first week of brown is in the books. Not sure about more brown/gray/black sprouts, but I can always do some string blocks.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

I'll link this post to Angela's ScrapHappy Saturday link up party as soon as she posts in the morning. It's 8PM in Wyoming and it's raining. No snow yet, so that's a plus. Tomorrow is our local NEW (North East Wyoming) Quilt Show. I entered 2 small quilts. I'll try to remember to take photos of the spectacular ones and post them next week.

Finished or Not Friday - 10-4-19

I'm linking this post at Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

Not a lot accomplished in the finished department this week. I got my One Monthly Goal on the design wall, decided on a layout, made the 3 necessary blocks to complete that.

This project is going with me to Retreat on the 22nd. So I marked all the rows and webbed the first two columns together. Then stacked columns 3,4,5,and 6 in order top to bottom.

I also did a bit of sewing that wasn't a quilt. In my stash, and I save most everything, I still had a piece of black and white gingham left over from a gathered skirt that I made when I was 15. My  paternal grandfather embroidered trees in white on the bottom of the skirt. Border fabric was very popular then and he and my grandmother "made" border fabric. My sister's skirt was lavender and white gingham. Oh, I wish I had a photo!

When my own daughter was about 4, I made her a dress out of the fabric. ( there is a lot of fabric in a full gathered skirt.) Now, her granddaughter, my oldest great granddaughter is 3 and that leftover small chunk of fabric needed to be used. I purchased a black t-shirt at Walmart. I followed  a tutorial
from https://www.coralandco.com/blog/2018/04/easy-t-shirt-dress-tutorial.html.  I would have liked to have enough fabric to make a really full skirt, but sometime you work with what you have.

I found a half a package of covered button blanks and there was just enough fabric from squaring up the skirt rectangle to cover two 1/2" buttons. I sewed them to the neckline, vertically. I haven't tried it on Miss B yet, but I took her measurements last week so I am sure it's pretty close. I will finish the final hem, after she tries it on.


I'm cutting brown, dark scraps for Scrappy Sprouts. Not sure if brown sprout blocks are going to work, but I will make one to check and see.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

One Monthly Goal for October- Bow Tie Quilt (flimsy)

I’ve been making bow tie blocks as part of RSC19 at so scrappy. I wasn’t sure of the layout I was going to use, but I knew it was going to be a throw for my new (then) car. It’s a black Equinox, the Chevy logo is referred to as a Bowtie, so I knew I wanted to include black bow tie blocks.

My OMG goal is to get this flimsy put together.  You can see that I need one more pink and one more yellow block. In the 6th column!

OOPS!  This can happen when your use directional fabrics and you don't know what your layout is going to be. I cannot live with this, even though it will be folded up in my cargo area, or secured in a bag, it's not right. So I will make one more yellow bowtie block.

 So I made 1 pink and 2 yellow. I’ll use the “wrong way” yellow one as a label. I will take this to my October retreat on the 22nd. That may be cutting it close, but I will make it my first project of the time there.

We woke up to this:

It will be a good day to stay in and get projects ready for retreat. I am sure we will have a few good days to put the deck furniture and the baby pool away!  At least I hope so.

I am linking up this post with Patty's October link up:


Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal October Link-up.



Stay Busy and Stay Happy