Monday Again

I hope everyone had a good weekend….I did until Sunday when I woke up congested and with a sore throat. I took a decongestant and laid on the couch for a few hours. I did miss church though. By late afternoon I felt well enough to walk one of the dogs two miles. 

Anyway, there was a shop hop last week, but I couldn’t really participate because of other commitments. Each shop, five in total, had a Villa Rosa kit that was custom designed for their shop. They were giving out goodie bags with their pattern it it. I did manage to go by the two Victoria shops on Friday morning and get these two patterns.

The patterns each take 10 fat quarters and a yard of contrast. I went ahead and bought one of the kits at Quilters Patch. They had it kitted in three color ways, but I liked this one: 

The fat quarters are Poppy Cotton. I bought extra of one of the fabrics so I can add a border and make it a little bigger. Without a border, it’s 50” x 62”, which is a little small for an adult. 

My plan is to make this for my daughter. She was telling me my son-in-law doesn’t like sleeping under a quilt because it’s too warm, and she is freezing at night. My husband and I had the same issue so I made twin to full size quilts for my side of the bed that covered me and not him. When I made the bed in the morning, I turned the quilt sideways across the foot of the bed. Of course, she asked for one! She likes these softer type florals, so I think she will be happy with it. She’s 5’10”, so I can’t see how a 62” quilt would be adequate. The border will help with that. 

I got all the blocks pieced and laid out yesterday.  

I’ll post an update when I get it all together and get the border on. 

SAHRR Round #3

Welcome to Round #3 of the Stay at Home Round Robin. Oh my, now that my quilt top is getting bigger, it’s taking more time to complete the prompts each week. Last week my top was 52” x 52”, and I was trying to decide if I wanted to stay with a square or make it rectangular. 

There’s really no right or wrong decision, and that is why I was having a hard time deciding. 

I had been thinking about flying geese, dark blue on a light aqua sky, and I was hoping for a prompt that would let me accomplish that. I was so pleased when I read Emily’s post, and it said “Animal Kingdom”! Ahh! Just what I hoped for! I already had my colors picked, so I only had to decide on a size and start cutting. I finished adding the borders last night.

You can see I decided to make it rectangular. I had to add some narrow strips to the right and left to make the math work out. I like it—in fact, I like it a lot. I think my goal for the next prompt will be to reintroduce some of the white. 

My size is currently 55” x 65”. I know we have more rounds to go, but I typically make large quilts, so I’m okay with the size. If it gets too big I don’t have to add every round. No rules.

Blue and Green and Everything in Between

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for February is green. I wasn’t quite ready to give up on the blues, so I made a couple more of these: 

I may do even more blues if more 2.5” blue strips appear. I also made a couple of greens. 

I have more greens cut out, but I ran out of motivation to work on them. Hopefully I’ll get some done next week. 

Other than RSC blocks, I worked on some more of my favorite improv scrap blocks. Here are eight more I finished. 

I don’t really have a purpose for these; they are just fun to do!

I signed up yesterday for Walk Across Texas.

There are 8 people per team, and we have until April 3rd to walk 100 miles each. Being that it’s 832 miles across Texas, each team is covering approximately that amount. I started the year doing well on my walking goal, but the cold weather last week derailed me, so I’m happy to have a motivation to do better. I looked at the sign-ups, and there are 44 teams signed up in Victoria. That’s pretty exciting when you think about South Texas being one of the most unhealthy places in the US. Another thing I’m excited about is that one of the ladies on my team is a marathon runner. She runs every day so we won’t have a problem hitting 832 miles even if the rest of us slack off completely.

I won’t be able to walk today (most likely) because we are hosting Equipping the Saints at my church. 

There are three sets of sessions during the day, and there are some great topics. Here are some of the session 1 topics:

Each session has 8-9 topics participants can choose from. I may need to help in the kitchen some, but the lunch is catered, so it will mainly be a matter of making coffee and helping serve desserts. Anyway, I think it will be an interesting day, and hopefully I will learn some new things. 

A Few More

I have been getting a lot of quilting done.....unfortunately, none of it is for my own quilts. I'll get to those later, I hope! 

Yesterday I played thread chicken with this one:

The Glide Robin Egg was the perfect shade of blue, but I only had a partial small spool left. This is all that was left when I finished. 

I kept watching it, and toward the end, I think I was holding my breath. I got lucky because I have no more of this color and would have had to order more and take the quilt off the frame to wait for the thread order. 

I got these three done for Donna. This happened over the last few days. 

A baby quilt for a new granddaughter: 

I quilted it in pink with a leaf pattern, and it turned out so pretty. 

It was a sunny day when I took the pictures, and the light kind of washed out these soft colors. 

This was a type of Yellow Brick Road pattern. The fabrics are really pretty, and I quilted it with Champagne Bubbles. I have used that pattern before on Donna's quilts, and she requested it again. 

I have been texting the Regional Coordinator for the Day 1 Graduation quilts to see when and where I can deliver our quilts. I have collected 15 from guild members, and there are 10 more being worked on. I should have 25 by the end of the month which is what we pledged to do. I will get back in touch with our Regional Coordinator when I am ready to deliver the quilts. 

Oh, I wanted to work on my own stuff last night—I’ve gotten some things cut out that just need to be sewn—but I was so tired. I ended up going to bed around 9, so not much got done. Maybe tonight I will make some progress. 

Rockport Quilt Show

We went Friday, but I’ve been busy with other things and didn’t manage to sit down and write a post. First of all, it was cold! It took a little over an hour to get there plus another few minutes to find the Presbyterian church. They had antique quilts on display in the sanctuary. 

I wasn’t really in the mood to take pictures, but I did enjoy looking at the quilts. The show quilts were in another part of the church. I don’t know what it was—maybe a fellowship hall? It just sort of wound around and down some halls. I tried to take a few pictures—I did like some of the more modern quilts. 

I wanted to get a picture of this double Irish chain….or is it a triple? I’m not sure. The way the place was configured, this was a high traffic area, and I had to come back a few times before I could get an unobstructed picture. 

So, this was apparently a judged show, but I’m not sure how the winners were chosen. I saw quilts that I knew were a kit and not that well executed get higher ratings than something beautifully constructed and completely original. Of course, I wasn’t a judge and that is just my opinion but I did wonder how they made their choices.

I enjoyed visiting the vendors, but I didn’t buy very much: three patterns and some replacement blades for my big rotary cutter. 

I would definitely like to make these patterns, but I truly don’t know when I’ll have the time. That seems to be the story of my life.

We did get to have lunch at Charlotte Plummers. The gumbo was perfect for a cold day. 

It was only a cup, but I had the salad bar also, so it was enough! 

SAHRR Round #2

Happy February and welcome to Round #2 of the SAHRR. The prompt for Round 2? "Make mine a double." How funny! Last week I had added a double hourglass border for my Round 1.

It would have been the perfect choice for Round 2! I am always either a little ahead or a little behind. 

I had to think about it a while....I was lacking on inspiration. I was hoping to just add a solid border of the focus fabric. 

Reba agreed with me! (She wanted to play and wouldn't stay out of my way.) I knew I wanted to use the focus fabric, and I knew I didn't want to use white and finally settled on a strip of the focus fabric with a narrower contrast strip on either side of it. A "double stripe" of something scrappy. 

The focus fabric is primarily blue and aqua.....I thought the opposite colors on the color wheel (orange and red-orange) would be a nice contrast. I wasn't sure how much orange I had, but more than I thought.

Why does a fightin' Texas Aggie girl have so much orange in the stash? I do like orange; it's such a happy color. I cut up some pieces and sewed them into strips. Then I added the orange strips to either side of the focus fabric.

And here's my "double stripe" border. I'm still trying to decide whether I want this square or rectangular. I need to decide soon, I think. Right now, the measurement is 52" x 52".

The Last Week of Blues

Well, the last week of blues for the 2026 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I’m sure we will get to make more blues next year. There are only so many colors to pick from, so they will continue to make an appearance every year. And the scraps continue to accumulate every year. Speaking of every year, I was cleaning out some of my stacks and found some blocks from a previous RSC. And, there are some blue ones!

I got way too excited when I found these! I didn’t do the RSC last year, so I’m thinking they were from 2023 or 2024. Anyway, I got excited enough to make some more.

This block was from s Stashbuster challenge that I never did finish. I’m going to try and get more made. I need to figure out what I did with the ones made in previous years. I should have other colors somewhere. I may get a few more blue ones made today before I move on to the next color. 

I’m linking this post to SoScrappy. 

Just for fun, I made a collage of all my January blocks. 

I am going to try and maintain the momentum for the following months, if possible.