August Circles for Quilty 365

Another month, another crop of circles for Quilty 365!  This month's color was yellow, and as I had suspected, I have less of this color in the stash and scraps than others. 

Fifteen was as far as I got.

I ventured into the golds and tans and have enough to complete the set of 31 circles for August, but they're not done yet, so I have some catching up to do.

It kind of messes with my color theme game plan for September, which was supposed to be, as you might guess, gold and tan.  Maybe I'll just mush August-September together and be good with that.

A few other things happened in the sewing room this past month.

I finished the baby quilt for my friend's newest granddaughter.

Also started a scrappy Hunter's Star quilt with batiks.  Mama like!

Back to the circles, my tally is 228 so far.  How are you doing?

Linking to:  Quilty Folk

July Circles for Quilty 365

Where did the month of July go?  It seemed to fly by!  

I got a little behind on the Quilty 365 circles in July because I was working on a couple other things, namely, the Pulse quilt and the start of a new baby quilt.

I did get caught up on circles by the end of the month, though.  All's well that ends well!

The theme for July was black-with-bright fabrics.  Thanks to a scrap swap with fellow quilter friend Marei last year, as well as my own scraps and stash, I had it covered.  

I've always loved black fabrics with bright accents.  Way back in the day, when I was about 11 or 12 and shopping for an Easter dress, I saw the coolest matching skirt and blouse, black with little bright flowers on it and some kind of lace trim at the bodice.  I remember my dad didn't think wearing black on Easter was appropriate, but thankfully Mom sided with me and I got the outfit.  Unfortunately, I was growing so fast, I don't remember wearing it much after Easter, but it still remains one of my all-time favorites.

When I started sewing a lot of my own clothes in the 1970s, those wild, silky polyester prints were really in style.  I remember making a black with bright floral accents long-sleeved silky blouse.  It had a mandarin collar that tied together with a spaghetti string bow.  Hard to describe, but it was pretty cool.  While I didn't wear it for long myself—this time because my teenage sense of style changed on a whim—my mom borrowed it and wore it often to work, as a hostess and bartender at a supper club at the time.  I remember feeling pretty good about the fact that she liked something I made well enough to adopt it into her own wardrobe.  It wouldn't be the last time either.

Since I started the Quilty 365 project on January 1, I have 213 circles done.  August's color theme is yellow.  I'm pretty sure I don't have 31 different yellows in the stash, but we'll see how it goes. 

Linking to:  Quilty Folk

Starts and Finishes

To begin with, the finish is my Quilt for Pulse.  It's done and ready to go to Orlando, as soon as I attach the label later today.

I really like how this quilt turned out with the made-fabric hearts, and hope it gives comfort to a family of the Pulse nightclub victims or a first responder, etc.  It was an honor to put my thoughts and energy into making it.

I used an almost pastel variegated quilting thread, which blended well.  Funny (and serendipitous) that I found it while rummaging through a different drawer than the thread drawers.  I was looking for a fresh rotary cutter blade, but found just the right thread instead.

 The back is pieced, and the binding is a diagonal stripe.

As far as the start, I am beginning a baby quilt that a friend commissioned for her new granddaughter born in May.  This is how the HST blocks look on the design wall at the moment.

I'm using the colors in the baby's room—lavender, navy, aqua, and gray—which I had a hard time imagining all together in a quilt, but it works! To get an idea before I started cutting fabric, I Googled "lavender navy aqua" and it seems like it's a thing.  As in there were a lot of images incorporating those colors for weddings, decor, etc.  So I was out of the loop, apparently—which shouldn't really be news, least of all to me!

Speaking of loops, we did a little bike loop this weekend which took us through some beautiful farmland.  Wisconsin has a lot of rolling hills, but this particular area where we biked is a pretty flat expanse. 

Along the way, we spotted a pair of sandhill cranes.  They blended in  with the landscape and we almost peddled right past, except that I noticed a little movement in my peripheral vision and turned to see what it was.  Can you find them?

Sandhill cranes have a unique rattling bugle call, but this pair was being "vewy, vewy quiet," as Elmer Fudd would say, and looked as though they were tiptoeing through the field. 

Quilt for Pulse

It's a good thing I finished all last month's Quilty 365 circles by the middle of June (that post is HERE), because it was right about then that I read about the Quilts for Pulse drive headed up by the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild.

I decided to use the made-fabric I had been assembling from various monthly one-color scraps from the Quilty 365 circles, and use that in making rainbow heart blocks for a donation quilt for the victims' families and survivors of the Pulse nightclub tragedy.

The top is now done, and my trusty quilt holder-upper helped me get a few pictures of it today.  He has impressive technique and flair, no?  Just look at those fingers.

The light was shining through it in this spot on the deck, which made for a neat effect, but then we moved to the shade for a truer shot.

The backing is now sewn together as well, and I'm ready to baste and quilt it after the 4th of July.

* * * * *

In other news, we continue to enjoy the trails and this gorgeous summer weather.  

 

I have rediscovered a new "happy place," other than my sewing room:  On my bike.

Where's (one of) yours?

Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict-Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

Happy Solstice

Happy longest day of the year, Northern Hemisphere!  Also Happy June Full Strawberry Moon!  Which kind of sounds like a sketchy movie title, if you think about it: "Happy June's Full Strawberry Moon."  I think I'll pass on that film, thank you.

I have an unexpected free evening due to a glitch at work.  Of course, it's not really free because that means tomorrow I'll do double duty, but let's live in the moment.  In a little while, I'll take a nice walk as the sun goes down.  I feel like I should do something more than that, it being the solstice and all.  Like, oh, I don't know, twirl around in a stone circle with a couple of paper lanterns and a precious jewel tucked into my gauzy frock, all while singing the theme from Outlander? 

Sing me a song of a lass who is gone...say, could that lass be I?

Nope, still here.

It was Day 9 of the 21-Day Decluttering Challenge yesterday and the task was to "declutter your hobby."  And then I laughed and laughed!  But she added, "Or a hobby you no longer enjoy."  Okay, that's doable in a day.  I made a donation pile of vintage knitting, crochet, and cross stitch books because I no longer do those things, and drove said pile directly to Goodwill along with three other boxes of junk from Days 1-8 of the challenge. 

But before taking that drive, I happened to thumb through one of the books and saw this.  Moppets!

What in the ridiculous world?  

I think Moppets deserves a good caption.  "Moppets: For chills or spills!"

Eh, that's all I've got at the moment, but maybe you can think of one.  Leave it in the comments!