Project Quilting 17.6 A Happy Handful

 

 The last and final prompt from Trish.  This year I  missed #4, Of Another Era. I started and failed in the completion.  Also I missed starting, doing, completing #5, My Complements. No post! I had company and doctor’s appointments. I planned on an Orange and Blue Tablerunner.

Anyway here we are. A Happy Handful.  The rules

Your project does not need to be a traditional quilt, but must meet at least one of these three requirements:

• include patchwork

• include appliqué

• have 3 layers stitched together by hand or machine.
  And this week, small enough to fit in your hand. For a while now I have been thinking of a year long and rather intense project. I want to make initial pincushions for every member of my stitching group. When I first had the thought, we had about 8 members. Now we are up to 15. So, I’d better get a move on!
  They will be birthday gists and this challenge is just what I needed to get going. The alphabet charts are from Jenny of Elefantz. The free alphabet is no longer on her blog, but there are lots of tutorials for her lovely designs.
  I started with L. The next birthday is in April. So this lovely will go to Lynn. The rickrack defines a tiny pocket. It could hold a small embroidery scissors, or snips, or a tube of beads for her projects.
  

  
  
  Thanks Kim and Trish for another fabulous year of pushing me to think outside the box and “gitter done” !
  I’m linking this up at Persimon Dreams, Kim’s blog.
  Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful. 
  
  
  
  
  
  

 

September 21.... I LIKE Thursday

LeeAnn at Not Afraid of Colorsuggested this prompt for today:

favorite herbs/spices

Your most used spices or herbs... what do you seem to use over and over? 

how do you store spices and herbs? jars they come in, special holders, etc. 

ex: I LOVE fresh ginger, and keep the root in our fridge, along with fresh garlic cloves

I use Garlic a lot!  I prefer fresh garlic, but somtime in a pinch I use jarred garlic. 

I also am a fan of rosemary, dried. I really want to grow rosemary next season. It doesn't survive in our winters and will need to be brought inside. But the Herb Festival I attended in August said it was very successful and easy to do. So I am going to tryl

I have grown basil. Love doing that. I use it fresh and then preserve it by chiffonading it and freezing it in olive oil in an ice cube tray. Great in sauces all winter. 

I have a plethora of jars and containers for spices. I wish I could be more organized, but I am not. I use the jars they come in and have decanted into small Tupperware spice keepers, especially if I make my own spaghetti seasoning, or chili seasoning. 

I'm off to stitch with my Thursday Stitchers group.  I'll be back later today, to read and respond to all who participate in I LIKE Thursdays!!  Thanks LeeAnna!  

 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

Finally a Finish! A Hands 2 Help donation!

Yesterday I met with some friends, 15 of us, to socialize and stitch on various projects. Some stitched on wool, some did regular embroidery, some Brazilian embroidery. Some of us bound a recent project. One friend is doing a kind of weaving, I think she called it huck weaving! She’s using Monk cloth and blue thread. 

 I stitched the binding on one of my Hands to Help donation quilts while I sat and visited.  I didn’t quite finish, there were lots of distractions, but did finish it at home. 

Happy Blocks all done for a gender neutral or at least not girly quilt.

And there is that smiley face fabric again!

And I also made house block #5 for the Rainbow Neighbourhood QAL. I’m think I’ll call this the Day Care Center.  The smiley face fabric is not gone yet!

Three more to go, because the Christmas House is finished, but I haven’t shown it yet. 🙂

I’m joining Alycia at Alycia Quilts for Finished or Not Finished Friday. 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

I Like Thursday. March 16

I’m joining in with fellow bloggers at Not Afraid of Color and our hostess LeeAnna! It’s a great place to share your joy, gratitude and good stuff! If you’ve never joined, write a post. Tell LeeAnna your blog details and she’ll add you to her ever growing list!


This week, her prompt is:


do you like Spring flowers? Which ones are your favorites? Do you plant them in your yard? is there a particular color you like? Any interesting story to tell about seeing Spring flowers emerge? Is there a time you were stunned seeing a whole collection of them somewhere like I was at Longwood Gardens?


My response:
Spring flowers are my favorites. Crocus ( the State Flower of my birth place, SD), tulips, daffodils, grape hyacinth, lilacs. I don’t have any in my yard. That’s sad isn’t it. I meant to put bulbs in last fall, but a bad knee kept me from it. And now working in the garden is just that, work! I probably need a gardener as well as a housekeeper, and neither of those things are going to happen!
So I’ll be content with some pots of summer flowers, in red, yellow, and purple (my favorite color). Mr Busy and I will try to add some perennials this year, with the help of our granddaughter and her partner. And more Xeriscaping.
Every year the Master Gardeners in our community sponsor a Garden Walk in late Summer. For a ticket price of $10, you can walk around 5-9 gardens in our community and see other’s spaces. It’s fun and inspiring.


On to other Likes:


Food


I made a blueberry pie for Pi Day! Mr Busy is happy!

No special recipe, store bought Pillsbury ready crust. Canned blueberry pie filling from Kroger. I did go online and use these suggestions to “beef it up a bit!”


https://thetastytip.com/how-to-make-canned-blueberry-pie-filling-taste-better/


It made a very full pie and it cooked over. I’m glad I had a disposable oven liner ( bought for sorting large quilt blocks) on hand. It saved my oven from being a total mess. Also stained four hot pads, but I quickly washed them and they are fine. ;)!  My ancient 9 in pie pan is not very deep, I’ll keep that in mind next time.


I also made Vegetable Soup, using my old stand-by recipe from Weight Watchers and Beer Bread, definitely not a WW recipe!


Entertainment:


Still watching Suits on Prime. Trying to catch up on some of the Network shows we like. NCIS, Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, East New York, and Blue Bloods! Do you see a pattern here! LOL!,


Today, I’ll be stitching with my friends. I’m still working on November for A Year in the Garden.




And then I have an appointment for a haircut, finally!





And I’m working on Project Quilting 14.6.






I’ll post about it when complete or by Sunday for sure !


Until next time! I’m back in the sewing room! There are UFOs, some ironing and of course tidying up to do!



Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

I LIKE Thursday #85

'

 Good Morning Positive Thinkers!  Thanks LeeAnna, who posts at Not Afraid of Color for this opportunity to share the positive good things in our lives. Join us, won't you?

I have a few "Likes" to share today!

Words of course!

I've been playing WORDLE:  Have you tried it?       Here is a link:

This is my board from yesterday!

Wordle 256 4/6

⬜🟩⬜🟨⬜

🟨🟨⬜⬜🟩

⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Entertainment.  Mr Busy is working his puzzle.  The blue trays are sorter trays. He added a set of 4 more, the white ones, that he made out of Dollar Store foam board. 

It's a tough one, but cute. Dogs, dogs, dogs and a football!

We have been watching 1883 on Paramount +.    It is awesome!     Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Isabel May!   Great story, great cast!

If you don't know, it's the story of the settlers who travel across our country and some are the Duttons from the Yellowstone series!  

Misc:

I picked up my regular Friday grocery order at WalMart. Some of my groceries were in Home Depot bags!!  How funny is that?  Several friends told me that they( Walmart) had run out of regular plastic bags, which I hate anyway. So they purchased some from  our local Home Depot. Way to be a good neighbor, HD!   But I wish they had just asked me to bring my own fabric bags and loaded them from the totes into my bags in the back of the car.  That's how they do it in California!

I learned how to make a collage photo for my Google profile!   Fun! 

Food:  I made quiche for supper one night!  Yup, that's a Christmas coffee cup but I like the shape so I use it occasionally! 

It's a recipe from my mom that I tweaked a bit. I used bacon, left-over broccoli, onion and peppers. 

Today I will sew with friends at the library. We call ourselves the Thursday Stitchers. We don't carry our machines, just embroidery, or stitching on binding. We have some that work with wool or felt, one is working on a Kawandi of sorts. I have an embroidery project that it ongoing. And there is always Show and Tell. And we visit and,visit and visit.are 

Today the weather is good. A high of 66 today!  That is unseasonalby warm for out area. Then back to more winter like 46 on Friday, then a high of 28 on Saturday. Typical March!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy

I LIKE Thursday #56

Good Morning All!  I'm here to share some likes from the last week. 
Thanks LeeAnna  at Not Afraid of Color, for giving us this platform to share the good in our lives. To focus on the happy!

 I like finding something new on my morning walks.

This scraggly bush has been here a long time. My route usually takes me a different way.

I’ve never noticed the flowers before! I don’t know their name but their orange-y color is nice! 

I like that I am finally able to reach my goal of 10,000 steps, I haven’t done this since before 2019! And the added bonus is my weight is down also! 

I like calm breeze less mornings so I can have coffee on my front deck.

Looks like maybe I should be making a Table Scraps table mat for this little table!  The sun is really doing a number on the plastic! Yikes!

And I like that I have a community of stitchers and quilters who will give me solutions to this dilemma! I found the perfect piece of soft green checked flannel to go on the back of the nearly vintage cross stitched baby quilt. It had been in the drawer for awhile, so I decided to press it. Smack dab in the middle was a snag or flaw! It even had tape on it, so I’m sure the shop who sold it knew it was there. Now what? I have few ideas what to do…I’ll see what my friends think! 

It was the perfect size and the soft baby green was perfect too!

Til I discovered this!

I'm off today to spend some time with friends. Hoping that we will be able to continue to gather. We are having more cases of the virus variant in our community, but so far no closures or masks mandated. I will wear my mask when I am indoors with big groups of people!  

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy!

I LIKE Thursday #50!

 

A Kathy Schmitz design! 

 Good Morning friends! Here it is Thursday again! And it’s July 1st! And it’s our opportunity to share likes and good things in our lives. A chance to be grateful! I’m joining friends at LeeAnna’s blog Not Afraid of Color, to share this morning!

Every Wednesday I wonder if I can put together a post for I Like Thursday. And most every week I am successful.

 I’m thankful for people who “listen”! Sometimes it’s just a little thing. Lamenting about finding a top for the birdbath pedestal. My friend found a plastic birdbath bowl while shopping and thought of me! It’s perfect! 

We had a few days of rain and lots cooler temperatures. The rain was welcome. Though this wasn’t enough to stave off the extremely dry conditions in our area!  Our county commissioners have enacted a ban on selling and using fireworks! The county sponsored fireworks display has been canceled. I know that some people are mad, but it’s not worth loss of life or someone’s home!

I trimmed one pot of petunias. Allowing the geranium in the middle to get some sun. It bloomed and the white petunias are coming back,

 Our tomato plants have small green tomatoes! I’m excited! Nothing like fresh from the vine summer tomatoes,

Ooh! Here are 3 more!

Some special mail came on Tuesday.

They contained Original art work for my fridge from my great grands in Florida

Happy Dance!

Today, I am slow stitching with friends! We meet at our library! We bring our own lunch! Much fun! Much talking and laughing happens! 

My long armer is a stitching friend. She’ll have my Follow Your Own Path ready for me. Then there will be binding! 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy 

Not finished but...........

... it’s on the design wall! That’s a step in the right direction!

I’ve been working on these blocks for a year, slow stitch mostly at a weekly gathering of other stitchers. We meet in a smallish room in a Catholic school. No machines. Just hand embroidery, stitching down of binding, crocheting, knitting, hand piecing.

So now is the time to make the sashings and then I’ll have to decide on a border. I have squares cut and lots more available to cut. The pattern is Hometown Christmas by Sweetwater. It was lots of fun!  A combination of embroidery, applique and now the piecing of the sashings.

I used Christmas fabric from my stash. I "heart" Nancy Halvorsen fabric and her Christmas lines are favorites.

I'm linking up with Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts.

 

Click on over and see what everyone is up to!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy (and Healthy)