Project Quilting 15.2

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’m also linking with Alycia at Quilty Girl for Finished or Not Friday! 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

I LIKE Thursday 24.4

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.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

Slow Sunday Stitching. 1-21-24

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 32x 35 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!

hat, face and snowflake done

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful! 

ScrapHappy 24.3

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!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

 

I Like Thursday 24.3

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.

And I say that to myself almost daily!

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

SAHRR 2024

This is the first time that I have officially participated in the SAHRR hosted by Quilting Gail. I did work on a project last year, but it wasn’t worthy of linking up to the challenge! 

I was so impressed by some of the entries last year! They set the bar pretty high!  But I really loved the blue and white stitchery based wall hanging submitted by Diann at Little Penguin Quilts! 

You can see her finish here! 

So this year I went to my To Be Finished stitchery drawer. I found this little redwork Elf. I should be tired of Christmas themed quilting but I didn’t do much this year. I’ll have a new cute wall hanging for Christmas 2024! 

,

He’s lying on top of lots of red, and some multicolored Christmas fabric! This should be fun. 

I’ll link up with Gail to show my Center Block at Stay at Home Round Robin or SAHRR

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!

Slow Sunday Stitching! January 14th

Good Morning from 🥶, Frigid 🥶 NE Wyoming. The temperature was -27 when I got up at 6:45am. The predicted high is -1F . I’ll be staying in today, putting last week’s temperature colors in my x stitch temperature heart! 

This is Jan 1st - 6th. Today I had to go to my floss stash to get the proper color for -6 F and below! I think I’m liking this SLOW Stitch. ❤️💙

And then I’ll be starting on the January snowman from Kathy Schmitz’s Woven Wreath sampler.

I showed this last week, but didn’t get it started. I want to watch the video again, before I start! 

 I see Kathy , our hostess here at Slow Sunday Stitching is working on it too. And Diann from

Little Penguin Quilts has hers done. Check it out! 

I have a friend who snowbirds in AZ, she, too,  is doing this fun stitch! I haven’t seen her progress, but I’m guessing she done! 🙂

Stay Busy and Stay Happy and Healthy and Hopeful!