Month: April 2025

A New Rose

Here’s a cute story for Sunday morning.

My neighbor brought me flowers for my birthday back in March. The beautiful, heavy vase was one of hers, and I thought one that should be returned to her. So on my next trip to the grocery store after these flowers were spent, I brought flowers for her, put them in the vase, and returned all to her.

Some weeks later, she returned the vase to me, chuckling, and said, “well, it looks like we’ll be passing this vase back and forth now.”

Around Easter, I had the vase full of flowers as two of my nieces visited and also brought flowers. My neighbor appeared with a handful of flowers Easter Sunday morning–three of these amazing orange roses with dramatic green centers and a spray or two of tiny white roses–and put them into the vase alongside the flowers already there. These large roses are so, so fragrant. I could even smell them with my bad nose.

I took a picture of the roses and showed it to my DIL later that day, and a friend of hers found out what they are:

https://www.rosaprima.com/catalog/mandarin-x-pression-rose

How fun is that?

Meanwhile, the geranium on my screened porch wintered over and is now FULL of blooms. It loves this cooler spring weather. (I did bring it in for a few days during the worst of the ice and snow last winter.) And it actually managed low 30’s temps just fine.

Who knew?

Have a great week coming up everyone!

“Tunnels to Towers” Quilt is Done

This quilt is made with the 8-inch Cat’s Cradle ruler–the bigger ruler than the first original one, which stops at 4-inch blocks. Each use of either ruler produces TWO blocks, so you can vary the square color if you like. Or, if you are reversing light and dark, you could also vary what are the light triangles here. This quilt measures 64 inches square. And, of course it used a lot of my scrap stash.

Isn’t the red striped border perfect? I think so. The whole project is just so…cheerful. I’ve had this Blue Jay fabric for some time in my stash. I used it on the back of another quilt years ago. And I had enough left to use it on this quilt.

This quilt is a donation to our Charleston, SC, Tunnels to Towers project that will house 90 homeless vets. I so hope that the person who chooses this quilt (they will be able to choose) does so because it will brighten his/her day just by looking at it.

I will make another version of this quilt again–meant to be a donation quilt likely and to have a nice leader/ender project in the making. It’s easy, fun to make, is scrappy, and uses a lot of stash fabric.

PS: the 4-inch Cat’s Cradle top needs only its bottom 4 rows sewn now. YEAH!

Here it is with the blocks unsewn, except for some of the center blocks.

The 4-inch Cat’s Cradle Quilt

I’m sewing these blocks into rows and sewing rows together.

This quilt feels like a monster project right now, LOL. But, slowly and surely. And I do love it! It is so colorful and interesting. Boy has it eaten up stash fabric.

“Big Slice” is on the longarm with one pass done–and is waiting for me to finish her and put on her binding (which is cut).

I’m still drawn to the “prickly” version of this block–I made one and posted about it when I turned it into a stretched canvas piece.

Tara Faughnan made a quilt with the “Big Slice” block that is very engaging and interesting. You can see that on her Instagram or on her newsletter page. I hesitate to reproduce it here as that probably isn’t legal.

Meanwhile, I’ve been distracting myself by playing with two other projects as kind of “leader/ender” projects.

But…

More on that later!

Quilty Update: “Gradations” Is Finished and More

“Gradations” is the 4th and final quilt in my half-rectangle triangle series, using Latifah Saafir’s Hurty Ruler. I am so happy with this quilt. It was so fun to make. The center sat on the design wall for some time until I saw the fabric I used in the outer border. Then, poof, I was off and running.

I used that fabric for the backing and binding–and cut it so that the strips ran sideways rather than up and down.

I made another block to go on stretched canvas. This block is from Tara Faughnan’s Blocks 2 class and was one of the choices for her Big Slice wedding ring block–which you can see further down in the quilt top I made.

These blocks are kind of hung “willy nilly” but they also work just fine in my sewing quilt room. They all make me smile. The middle piece is a quilt and is not on stretched canvas.

My 4-inch Cat’s Cradle ruler quilt top is coming along. I can see the end. I like making this block a lot, so there’s no pain involved here. Each block makes TWO blocks.

“Tunnels to Towers,” my donation quilt is off the longarm and has had its binding installed. This is the 8-inch version of the Cat’s Cradle block. It’s now downstairs getting its binding sewn down at night.

Next up on the longarm is “Big Slice.”

It’s kind of funny how lots of projects come together all at once. Funny and Fun.

Have a great week everyone!!!

The Flowers are HERE!

There is nothing quite like SPRING, is there?

It is a bit cold for us right now, but my red roses are spectacular. They curve around the porch, which I just cleaned as the deluge of pine pollen seems to be over.

The Asian jasmine vine has really taken hold. It’s not a true jasmine, but it will bloom in weeks to come. I’ve been told the blooms are very fragerant.

The white azeleas on the side of the house are so, so pretty. I transplanted them from the front of the house as it was way too hot for them in that spot.

The little yellow rose, gifted by a neighbor, is full of blooms. I put a weighted bucket over it for protection in the worst of our snow and ice last winter.

And in the front, the Drift roses have…drifted…and are now twice as big as last year when I planted them. The hollies are also thriving, and the local bees love their blooms, which will eventually turn into bright red berries.

Speaking of bees…

One of our homeowners has a huge bee hive in this dead tree trunk. They won’t bother walkers on the sidewalk, but neighbors are freaked out about their presence. There is no telling how much honey these bees have inside that trunk!!!

I don’t know whether or not our HOA will try to poisen them. My DIL just told me a man she knows who rehomes bees and saves swarms might be able to get this hive to relocate via using a pheromone bait.

I’m thinking about if I should contact this man to see what he thinks. Otherwise I’m sure poison will be used…

 

My “Scrap Cabin” Quilt is Done

You’ve seen pics of this quilt off and on, I know, but I do like to do a final photo when a quilt is all completed. “Scrap Cabin” is a Rachel Hauser (Stitched in Color) design, and she held an online sewalong in January to make her second “Scrap Cabin”–this new one, meant to have more color combinations than just two. I also chose to use two color families in each of the nine blocks. I fell in love with the border she designed.

And I’m still in love with that border. I especially love how she designed the border’s corner blocks. So clever…

This quilt used up A TON of my stash strips. I even had to cut some strips out of bigger pieces of fabric in my stash to get the colors I wanted. ***If I make this quilt again, I will keep the neutral pieces very light and not use the lighter greys in my stash as the lighter neutrals look a lot more lacy. I did figure that out by the border as I had not seen the full impact of the lacy border effect until I started making it.

I kept the backing plain–and did buy that fabric. The panto is “Check and Chase” by Hermione Agee. I love the texture and the curves this panto added to this quilt. I used a parchment colored 40 weight Cotton thread (Signature).

This quilt is my 239th quilt made.

My Blocks2 Class

This six-month online class taught by Tara Faughnan started in October and ended in March. Each month Tara encouraged us to take time to “play” with that month’s block idea.

I thought it might be fun to review my own “play” time and to show you one of my favorite pieces from each month.

“Hourglass” was the first month’s project. I was drawn to the half-rectangle triangle version–and here’s where I learned to diagonally cut a half-rectangle triangle block and recombine it to make a whole new block–which eventually wound up in my half-rectangle triangle series made with Latifah Saafir’s Hurty ruler. But more on that series later as the final and 4th quilt is now getting its binding sewn down.

Here are some small pieces I made with that half-rectangle “hourglass” block. I had fun with playing with hand-stitching and with trying a facing on one.

“Log Cabin” was the second month’s project, and here’s where I started learning how to put a project on stretched canvas. Tara gave us MANY variations of this narrow log cabin form, including triangles and hexagons in all sorts of sizes. I had to make myself STOP.

I hung this one in my quilt room, but all the rest of this month’s work have been gifted.

“Abstractions” was the third month’s project, and again, I made many different blocks with this method, plaing with density and color combinations.

I hung this one downstairs, and I smile whenever I see it.

“Wayward Arcs” was the fourth month project. And predictably, I had a lot of fun with this improv curve method and hand stitching.

“Big Slice” was the fifth month project–a new Tara Faughnan “wedding ring” block. I had made her older version years ago. I loved her fabric palette for this project, so ordered those fabrics and added a few more colors from my stash. This one is waiting in line for the longarm. It is 60 by 60 inches.

“Grid Work” was the sixth and final block idea.

I had made a type of grid work project last year in our Charleston Modern Quilt Group’s Sit and Sew, taught by Cathy Beemer, so after viewing projects shared on our online Community page, I moved to this idea of a city scape installed on stretched canvas. It wound up being 24 by 30.

Here’s the gridwork type of work I did last year and a picture of my recent treasures on stretched canvas hanging alongside.

After a lot of thought, I hung my Grid Work project, now called “City Scape” in my tv sitting room. It really makes the space next to my tv come alive. Here’s the view from my seat. The improv quilt on the chair is made from all the blocks I did in Blocks1.

Blocks3 will sign up in September. I’m thinking of doing it again. These past two years have been rich in experiences and new methods learned or old lessons expanded. Go to Tara’s web page to get her newsletters.

Grid Work Project

It’s April, and Tara Faughnan’s online class Blocks2 is finished for this year.

The 6th month March project block was “Grid Work.” I was late in the month starting to play with it, but while being late I checked into our Community page several times and got inspired by the kind of city scapes people were making. Some made whole small quilts of this kind of “grid” block–some even tried the funky blocks and made whole small quilts by joining their many blocks.

My project took me about a week to make and wound up being stretched on canvas that was 24 by 30 inches as I needed more room at the top for a big, orange moon.

I did not try to add in hand stitching as I just wanted this piece to be really graphic.

I am very pleased with this project and now am not sure where I want to hang it. It will probably wind up in the upstairs quilt studio.

What a fun class this year’s Block2 class has been!

Thank you Tara Faughnan!