Sunday Sundry - Vol. 39

Summer is flying by fast, isn't it?  This past week found me slowing down a bit to savor the season, taking time to enjoy the simple things.

Being that it was my birthday week, I got to hear from and visit with some of my favorite people, and enjoy a great steak, a birthday cupcake (!), and a couple glasses of wine, among other things.

I potted some mums for a little color on the front porch.  Took turns with Mother Nature keeping the new plantings and grass seed watered.  Spent some time lounging and reading, including the latest issue of Men's Journal (what? there are some good articles in that mag).  I made another batch of fresh pesto and some tasty butternut squash soup.  And I went for a decent walk just about every day.

I also cut out another kaleidoscope quilt, version 2.0.  These fabrics, as I have mentioned before, were a kit of FQs that I thrifted.

I love the bright, saturated colors.  The retro mod look is what I'm shooting for in v.2.0, along with brighter halos (don't we all kinda wish for brighter halos)?

Tangent:  When I was in high school, our time periods during the day were called "mods."  Mods were 20-minute blocks, and a class was typically two or three mods long.  We also had open mods, where we could congregate in the cafeteria and yak it up with friends or go to the library and pretend to study or finish homework, etc.  

A lot of crazy things happened in the '70s.

I loved the mod system, and it seemed to work well while it lasted (about six years) before the school reverted to hour-long class periods and more regimentation.  Thankfully, I had graduated by then.

Anyway, after laying out a few blocks of kaleido 2.0 on the floor, it was okay, but I was not particularly loving it.

So I emailed a photo to Rita, who helped me envision some alternatives using her Photoshop skills.  At the same time, I consulted my Flickr favorites, and the whole process led to a second attempt using white in the alternate blocks as well as the corner triangles.  I like this better.

But I'll probably still play around with it, mixing up the pieces and experimenting with a scrappy/random look before I decide to sew anything together.  Besides, I have to get more white fabric.

Check out the small dot print in the center, above.  It reminds me of candy buttons!  I always managed to eat some of the paper they were stuck to.  Sugar + fiber!

I also started cutting out a quilt using the Sherbet Pips jelly roll from Sarah's giveaway at the start of the H2H quilt challenge.  Instead of a white background like on the pattern here, I'm going to try an ash solid from Connecting Threads.  I think it'll work well against the lighter colored strips in the jelly roll.

And I got a little squishy in the mail this week, a giveaway by Sarcastic Quilter from this spring's Paper-Pieced Quilt Along.  What a cute FQ bundle!  Thanks, Becky!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  Hope you enjoy yours and the rest of these "dog days" of summer!