Five Shadows

Welcome December! Oh how quickly this month fills up with lots of holiday extras! I was slow going this past week on quilting as I filled up time with some fun outings with friends and family. My son’s house was part of a Holiday Tour, 10 houses in a historic neighborhood in our town. I did the neighborhood walk and tour with two friends and we even took a horse drawn carriage ride. Next up was taking our grands to the Botanical Gardens to enjoy the Christmas decorations.

Our ladies group at church put together these Reindeer bags as gifts for teachers.

The bags are filled with treats, encouraging words, quilted mug rug, and gift card for coffee/tea.

We made 42 mug rugs or coasters, if you like, for 42 bags gifted to elementary school teachers.

To-Do Tuesday, November 29, 2022

1. Continue Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden. ✔️
2. Decide on a few little gifts for a few friends.  Not decided yet, store bought or handmade. ✔️
3. Quilt & bind one charity quilt. ✗

This week I didn’t get much accomplished in my quilting world.

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Week 35 is stitched up and I’ve started to attach it to the quilt. But no photo.

2. Gifts for friends. I decided on buying a few little sewing notions for several friends, and travels mugs for a few others.

3. I did touch a charity quilt this week. But I did start a Squirrel. I knew it was coming – Helen Godden’s Countdown to Christmas. I was thinking of passing on it this year, but decided I’d be mad at myself if I didn’t jump in.

If you follow the link above, you can download this free Christmas Countdown. This year we are FMQ a Nutcracker.

I used Crayola Crayons to color in my Nutcracker. Each day Helen demonstrates FMQ in one of the small areas of the drawing. This is a December 1st – 25th countdown and is rather low key once you have traced the Nutcracker on fabric, sandwich, and stitch on all the drawn lines. Then the fun begins of a small fill each day.

To-Do Tuesday, December 6, 2022

1. Hopefully make progress on Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
2. Now that I have a Christmas Countdown going – keep up with it!
3. ?? I’d like to say work on a charity quilt, but I don’t know if I’ll get to it.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays Friends!

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving & weekend! We had two days of delicious meals with family and friends. More about those below.

To-Do Tuesday, November 22, 2022

1. Today I start cooking for Thanksgiving! ✔️
2. Keep moving ahead on Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden. ✔️
3. Will I sew on anything else this week? Time will tell. ✔️

Focus this week -

To-Do Tuesday, November 29, 2022

1. Continue Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
2. Decide on a few little gifts for a few friends.  Not decided yet, store bought or handmade.
3. Quilt & bind one charity quilt.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the USA this Thursday, I hope we each remember to whom we are giving thanks. May God Bless you all!

To-Do Tuesday, November 15, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 33. ✔️
2. Enjoy visit with sister & BIL. ✔️
3. Friday is sewing day with quilt group. Hmmm. What to take along? ✗

Here’s what happened with that list -

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Week 33 completed. Those leaves slow me down with the tiny background pieces. I started attaching it to the quilt last night, no photo.

2. Visit with my sister and BIL went well! I invited my kids and their families over and all but one joined us for an enchilada dinner. Good time, good conversations.

3. I didn’t make it to my friend’s home for our sewing day. Just as I was reading a text from her that her drive was very icy, my husband came into the room and said he just heard of three car accidents in the direction I was to head. Icy roads. He didn’t want me driving. I thought plan B would be staying home and sewing on the project I planned for the day away, but since I was home other household projects kept popping up. You know how that goes, right?! Then once roads cleared, I ended up heading out to get the Covid Booster & the first Shingles vaccination.

Shingles is nasty folks. Have you gotten the two part vaccination? I know too many people who have suffered from Shingles, and one even lost their sight in one eye. That has prompted me to get the vaccine.

I did do just a bit of other sewing, again with my granddaughter.

Two 4 1/2″ square coasters for the grands to use Thanksgiving Day. Granddaughter selected the cat paw print and built from that for her coaster. And her brother loves orange, so we went with those two fun prints and pulled out the green and blue to coordinate.

Granddaughter likes smoothing out the corners with this hemostat.

A friend dropped by with a fabric donation for charity sewing. She was cleaning out her sewing room and part of what she gave me was a bag full of cat and dog prints. My grands enjoyed digging through those fabrics with me! The cat paw print in the coaster came from that bag of fabric.

My DIL got in on the fun and pulled out this cute cat panel. The green and purples were pulled from my stash. The beginnings of another charity quilt! Maybe a white should be added to make HSTs to border the panel. Unless my DIL takes up this project, it will sit for a while as I am still working through my own pile of  To-Be-Charity quilts!

To-Do Tuesday, November 22, 2022

1. Today I start cooking for Thanksgiving!
2. Keep moving ahead on Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
3. Will I sew on anything else this week? Time will tell.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday with Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

I squeezed in some extra sewing this past week. With two birthdays coming up next week, it was a good thing I remembered a gift I had planned. Then yesterday my granddaughter wanted to make a gift too!

Here’s what happened this past week -

To-Do Tuesday, November 8, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 31, maybe start 32. ✔️
2. Borders for the HST quilt. ✔️
3. House cleaning, guest room, Sister & her Hub might be visiting next week. ✔️

1. Homage Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Week 31 pieced.

Weeks 1 – 31 all attached!

Week 32 pieced!

Weeks 1 – 32 attached! I spent Sunday afternoon watching 2 movies and hand stitching. I’m twelve weeks behind on the quilt-along. But hanging in there!

2. HST quilt has a border.

Border is on the HST quilt – it will be 4″ finished. I decided to put leftover HSTs in the corners. The top measures  49″ square.

3.  Sister & her Hub should be arriving anytime now! Maybe I’ll get some photos during their visit.

Extra sewing happened with my granddaughter. Her mom’s birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day this year. My granddaughter wanted to make a craft for her. Kim, my DIL had mentioned to me she would like a new mug rug. I had my GD pick out a design and fabric.

And we worked together to create this cute 4″ x 6″ little butterfly mug rug! We couched yarn around the edge instead of binding the little piece. Decorative little hearts had to find a place on the mug rug. Turned out Cute as can be! GD is pleased!

One more extra sewing project happened this week – I luckily remembered I’ll be seeing a friend this Friday and her birthday is next Tuesday. So I pulled fabric I thought she would like, purples and pinks. And sewed together Sew Organized.

I picked up a few gifts to put in the organizer as well. The front purple piece is a pincushion. It is 5 1/2″ wide and 8″ tall on a metal frame that was included with the pattern.

That’s my sewing for this week!

To-Do Tuesday, November 15, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 33.
2. Enjoy visit with sister & BIL.
3. Friday is sewing day with quilt group. Hmmm. What to take along?

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden continues to grow! If I was keeping up with the quilt-along I should be on week 45, but I’m piecing week 31. I’ll keep moving along as I stitch almost every evening. It is a relaxing activity.

Broken wrist Hubs asked me to help “steal” 9 tarp loads of leaves from our neighbors pile by the road and move into his native garden. His plants really like the over winter mulch.

One to this week’s sewing.

To-Do Tuesday, November 1, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 30. ✔️
2. ???  ✔️
3. Get over this sinus infection! Started a new RX Monday that seems to be knocking it out.  ✔️

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

This is Week 30 with leaves in place. I had holes there last week.

Weeks 1- 30 stitched together!

Week 31 progress – I need to pick out fabrics for the two rosettes.

2. My mystery from last week, since I wasn’t feeling well last week, I didn’t know what I’d work on.

I found this fabric at the LQS on the clearance wall. I hope this will be enough for border, back, and binding.

20 of 44 Mug Rugs for teachers as part of their Christmas gift from our Women’s Ministry Group. Seven ladies worked on putting these together. I’ll show the cool Reindeer bags the ladies made when we put the gifts together the end of this month.

3. I’m still taking the RX for the sinus infection. I’m feeling almost back to normal. Still some occasional coughing, but no sinus pain! Thank the Lord!

To-Do Tuesday, November 8, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 31, maybe start 32.
2. Borders for the HST quilt.
3. House cleaning, guest room, Sister & her Hub might be visiting next week.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

It’s Thursday. Where did Tuesday go? Posting slipped my mind this week until this morning. So here is To-Do Thursday.

What did I do last week?

To-Do Tuesday, October 25, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 29. ✔️
2. Wednesday meeting with sewing group to make mug rugs for school teachers. ✔️
3. Finish the HST quilt top. ✔️
4. Quilt giraffe quilt top. It’s sandwiched and waiting for quilting. ✗

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Week 29 stitched together.

Weeks 1-29 all attached.

Week 30 progress. Needs three leaves to fill in the spaces.

2. Wednesday Sewing Group

We are making 42 mug rugs for school teachers as part of a Christmas Gift Bag. 9 finished, the rest ready for the backing fabric.

3. HST Quilt

40 1/2″ square top. Might add a border.

4. Quilt giraffe quilt top – not touched.

To-Do Tuesday, November, 1, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 30.
2. ???
3. Get over this sinus infection! Started a new RX Monday that seems to be knocking it out.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

Things are moving along. Rather slowly as broken arm hubs came down with bronchitis and I picked up a sinus infection. We are both so looking forward to feeling normal again! Our kids want to meet at a state park Saturday for a little family time, hike, enjoy the Fall colors, and then have supper together. Surely Hubs and I will be feeling better by Saturday!

Here’s what I accomplished before that sinus infection hit.

To-Do Tuesday, October 18, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, attach week 28, start week 29. ✔️
2. Quilt two baby quilts, and hopefully bind them too. ✔️ Well, one of two.
3. Meeting with friends of WMWM (Wednesday Morning Women’s Ministry) to cut fabric for charity quilts.  ✔️
4. Thursday Hubs post-op appointment, stitches taken out.  ✔️

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Week 28. Isn’t this one an odd shape?

Weeks 1 – 28. And here is the odd week 28 sewn into place. Still looks odd! But future weeks will fill in the gaps in the left corner.

Week 29 coming long. I ran out of glue. And since I’ve been a bit under the weather, darn Fall allergies, I’ll shop once feeling better.

2. Quilt two baby quilts

I only worked on one baby quilt this past week.

Colors in photo are way off. But it’s quilted, bound, and washed.

This photo is true to colors in quilt. I simply stitched in the ditch around the triangle geese.

I did little open free motion flowers around the border.

And a free motion flower in the center of the quilt. This Flying Geese quilt was made with leftover blocks from another quilt I made for my nephew’s baby girl earlier this year. This quilt measures 36″ square. Quilted with Auriful 2600 Dove 50 wt thread.

3. Meeting with friends to cut fabrics for charity quilts.

This also happened before I got hit with the sinus infection – We worked our way through a bunch of odds and ends donated to our group for charity quilts. In the pile were 5 1/2″ floral triangles no one else wanted to bother with, so I said I’d take them. At home I paired the flower triangles up with my solids which I cut into 5 1/2″ squares. Then I sewed two triangles 1/4″ from the center diagonal of each of my solid squares, cut apart, pressed, and trimmed to 5″ for a total of 81 HSTs.

Here’s as far as I got sewing the squares together. I think it will make a nice charity quilt. It will be 40 1/2″ square as is once all sewn together. Maybe add a border fabric?

4. Hubs got his stitches out from his broken wrist surgery. X-rays show one little shattered piece is not cooperating, but the doctor believes it is close enough to the bone to heal properly.  He will have another X-ray taken in four weeks to see how that is going. He has to continue to wear a brace for 6-10 weeks. Praying those bones do knit together and he gets full use of his right wrist again!

To-Do Tuesday, October 25, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 29.
2. Wednesday meeting with sewing group to make mug rugs for school teachers.
3. Finish the HST quilt top.
4. Quilt giraffe quilt top. It’s sandwiched and waiting for quilting.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

I missed posting last Tuesday, October 11th. What a week! Our friends from TN arrived for a week long visit Saturday 8th, after many postponed trips.

Monday, October 10th my husband had surgery to repair his BROKEN right wrist! Shattered actually. He miss stepping off a ladder and now sports a plate and screws in that wrist. Stitches come out this Thursday. He was in a lot less pain after surgery than right after the fall. Meds and ice helped to keep the pain at bay.

A broken arm and surgery were most definitely not in the plans for the week but here are some things we DID enjoy – LEGO Brick World, walk at a park as Fall colors are just about at their peak. Shopping, eating out, and Quilting!

Here we are out in nature. I’m on the left. Hubs next, see his iced arm in a sling? He’s smiling!

Pretty Fall colors

My friend, Janie, has a much loved Trip Around the World quilt her grandmother made and it is very worn. After deciding it’s too worn out for repairs, I suggest she make a new one. Fabric was purchased a while ago, I cut all the fabric for Janie and she got busy making her first quilt!

Here’s Janie with the quilt at the half way point! That’s as far as we got this week. Look at that happy face! Janie’s first quilt!

Did I do any quilting on my list these past two weeks?

 To-Do Tuesday, October 4, 2022

1. Keep plugging along on Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden. ✔️
2. Quilt up a baby quilt. ✗
3. Friends coming for a visit this Saturday through the following Saturday. Janie would like to start a Trip Around the World quilt for her daughter. We will attempt that! ✔️

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

Weeks 1-27 all attached.

Week 28 ready to attach to the quilt.

2. I didn’t quilt any of the baby quilts waiting for me.

3. We had a lovely visit with our friends from TN – even with surgery fitting into the schedule! The week went by too quickly. We didn’t do all the fun things on our list so another visit will just have to happen, hopefully in the Spring of 2023!

I’ll end this post with We Got An Inch Of Snow last night! Where did that come from? It was a heavy wet snow taking down many tree branches through out the neighborhood and town. Cool Fall weather one day, and snow the next. Weather forecast is for temps back into the low 70s this coming weekend. The weather is acting crazy!

To-Do Tuesday, October 18, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, attach week 28, start week 29.
2. Quilt two baby quilts, and hopefully bind them too.
3. Meeting with friends of WMWM (Wednesday Morning Women’s Ministry) to cut fabric for charity quilts.
4. Thursday Hubs post-op appointment, stitches taken out.

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

Only a few things happened in my sewing room this past week. Playing around type things. I had the grand kids in and out a lot this week. During one visit they asked to watch Youtube – they have a few kid friendly shows their parents will allow. The computer is in my sewing room, so I gave in to their requests – hate to have them doing much screen time – and while they watched for a bit I managed to get a binding on a baby quilt. Then outside we went!

To-Do Tuesday, September 27, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 27. ✔️
2. Work on back and maybe sandwich Eagle quilt.  ✔️
3. ???  ✔️

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden

I’m still stitching away on Week 27. Not together yet. I’m not sure where this week has gone, but it wasn’t in my sewing room!

2. Eagle Panel

I did sew together a back using muslin and the fabric used for the outer border. Not sandwiched yet.

3. Looking around my sewing room, I found a fusible batting. I bought it a while ago to test out and see if I like the stuff.

I sandwiched the flying geese baby quilt with the fusible batting. I have yet to quilt it.

And I also used it to sandwich these two giraffe prints. Again, not quilted yet.

I’m pretty sure I don’t like this fusible batting. See all the wrinkles? I’m hoping I can smooth them out as I quilt. It’s stiff batting. So once the tops are quilted, I hope they wash up to be nice soft quilts.

One more thing I played with – tested out – was Minky fabric paired with this bear print. Not my best quilting. I could not get the tension right on my sewing machine. I cleaned out my machine, changed the needle twice, fiddled with tension and just could not get it centered in the batting. So maybe I don’t like Minky? I bought enough for two baby quilts. So have to “play” with it again. Maybe I’ll switch to my Baby Lock for the second attempt at quilting with Minky. This baby quilt is 35″ x 40″ bound and ready to donate. I used Aurifil 1130 Very Dark Bark, 50 weight for bobbin and top thread.

 To-Do Tuesday, October 4, 2022

1. Keep plugging along on Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden.
2. Quilt up a baby quilt.
3. Friends coming for a visit this Saturday through the following Saturday. Janie would like to start a Trip Around the World quilt for her daughter. We will attempt that!

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.

The end of September is near and Fall has arrived. I’m so enjoying the cooler days. Especially as I work over at my daughter’s house helping with the remodeling.

What happened in my sewing world this past week?

To-Do Tuesday, September 20, 2022

1. Complete week 26 Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden and attach to quilt. ✔️
2. Continue on with  Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, prep week 27?  ✔️
3. Maybe finish borders to eagle panel quilt. ✔️
4. Helping out at daughter’s house!  ✔️

Weeks 1 – 26 attached to the quilt top. You can see the wreath taking shape now. I’m using 1/2″ hexagon papers.

2. Work on Week 27

Slow going on Week 27.

3.  Finish borders to eagle panel quilt.

Quilt is ready to be sandwiched and quilted.

4. Helping out at daughter’s house!

It’s a fix-er-upper! And if you know anything about that, it gets worse before it gets better.

Our daughter said the first thing she was going to do was rip up carpet in the bathrooms. Its rather odd that every room in the house has beautiful natural wood floors but some previous owner decided to carpet over linoleum in the two bathrooms. When our daughter pulled up the carpet in the main bath she found water damage around the toilet. She called Dad in for help. Further demo showed rotted wood along tub too. After removing four layers of linoleum found under the carpet, and pulling up rotted sub floor, FIVE floor joists also had water damage. One can not put a new floor on rotten floor joists. Do you see where this is going?

Simple ripping carpet out of the bathroom became a full gutting of the room. Why not rewire and update plumbing while replacing floor joists? And since everything down to studs and in-between studs has been ripped out – there was old lead piping still in the walls but not in use – why not rearrange the floor plan and purchase all new fixtures? Daughter has shopped for her new tub, toilet, double sink. But it will be a few weeks before they can be delivered and then installed. Which is fine since the whole bath – floor, walls, need to be rebuilt with new plumbing & wiring installed.

That’s it for this week.

To-Do Tuesday, September 27, 2022

1. Homage to Grandmother’s Flower Garden, week 27.
2. Work on back and maybe sandwich Eagle quilt.
3. ???

Linking to To-Do Tuesday hosted by Linda of Texas Quilt Gal.