Month: November 2025

A Bit of Happiness

…that makes me smile.

This low-growing camellia blooms in the fall and early winter. This winter is her second winter, and she is…happy.

The other camellia I planted is on the other side of the house and blooms later in the winter. There are buds… Last year it lost most of its buds in freezing weather, even though I put a protective cover on her. This one is a taller form. Camellias can get quite big and wide.

AND, here’s another smile.

These trimmed back trees along the path I often walk are LOADED with orange berries this year. More than I remember from the past two winters I have been here. They are probably some holly form, and they are all along this path.

Can you imagine if they weren’t trimmed so drastically? They would be…glorious.

“Garnish” is set up for hand-quilting. Yes, I put the binding on as well, as that task prevents the edges from fraying and the batting from shedding. I used Dream Cotton’s thinnest weight batting for hand quilting–Request.

My “Garnish” is one of many forms of this idea given to us by Tara Faughnan in the online Blocks3 class that is happening now and will last six months, with a new block idea every month–and a new palette.

Here’s another form of this block–which I will put on a stretched canvas when it is done. The batting is already glued to the canvas.

If I were going to use this form in a quilt I think I’d separate it with narrow sashing. Otherwise the flower form would dominate.

This piece is waiting for the “brass” color to arrive in the mail–12 wt. cotton thread–for that top right “pickle.” I order this thread from Red Rock thread online as our local stores don’t carry much 12-wt. cotton thread–which I love best for hand quilting. You can the smaller “petite” spools online for a reasonable price, so I have a good collection of colors. And many thread makers produce 12-wt thread now, so if one doesn’t have the “right” color, another might.

This afternoon my DIL and I are driving out into the country to pick up our local organic turkey. I will join her family (my younger son) for our meal, and the whole family will gather at the older son’s house for dessert. All the grands will be there, along with two grandmothers, one grandfather, and a possible boyfriend.

Have a great Thanksgiving if I don’t visit with you here before Thursday.

The Traveling Flower Vase

My neighbor spoils me on a daily basis. Look what she brought me the other day!

These falls colors are just so gorgeous, and I love the little bit of frilly white that breaks up the density of the fall colors.

For the past year, and maybe a bit more, we have shared “the traveling flower vase.” She started it! She gave me flowers, and I returned the vase with flowers in it for her. Now this vase goes back and forth between us. We each enjoy the flowers the other puts into the vase, and sometime after the flowers have faded, the one with the vase puts in new flowers and delivers it to the other.

It’s so much fun!

One of my favorite meals is best done in the fall when the butternut squash is nice and ripe. I cut one into cubes, add lots of chopped garlic and fresh rosemary, some REAL olive oil (not the kind with mixed seed oils added), and a bit of rough salt. I roast on a fairly high heat (375 or so) until the squarsh starts to carmelize a bit–which makes it so so sweet. I usually turn it all over once with a spatula as the bottom will burn if you don’t. Don’t cook it too long as you don’t want it to get mushy.

This month’s Tara Faughnan Blocks3 class is “Garnish,” a pickle dish quilt block form. Tara gave us extensive instructions on how to improv cut this block AND many templates of different sizes if we wanted to have a bit more precision.

Here’s where I am now–with blocks ready to be sewn together. Each “flower” will finish at 8 inches, for a 32-inch square…something? A table topper maybe. I’m going to hand quilt it.

I could keep moving around blocks forever I think, but I’ll stop here. I love how the warm black is working with the other colors in this month’s palette.

What interests me also is the pattern where two big blocks come together and form a circle. So I made one of those which I’m now hand sewing and will put on stretched canvas if it comes out ok.

How did it get to be Friday already?

It’s still very dry, and I’m going to have to water the flower beds again, as I don’t see any real rain on the horizon. I’ve given up on the grass for this year.

Have a great weekend!

Design Wall Fun

With “Under the Maple Tree” off the design wall, new projects are emerging–including this month’s Tara Faughnan Blocks3 block: “Garnish.” It’s “the curve month,” and the block is a “pickle” quilt block variant. As usual, Tara has given us many sizes with which to play if we want to do perfection sewing, but she has also walked us through making improv blocks.

Me, I’m using the templates she has provided. And I started with the 6-inch version to trial the block, which I added to my collection of quilt blocks made with solid fabrics on the design wall:

I went then to the 4-inch templates next and will stay there–maybe until I mostly use up this month’s fabrics.

This month’s palette is really pretty, so I’m enjoying sewing with it. Having a palette selection of fabrics sent to you makes sewing decisions easy and immediately interesting. It is a treat.

Thanks to Tara’s many lessons over the years, I’m quite good with curves these days. These 4-inch blocks joined in a four-patch will each finish at 8 inches, so I’m thinking something that is 32 by 32–maybe a table topper that I can hand sew to quilt it. Of course, I’ll probaby move around blocks before sewing them all together.

These little X-Plus blocks inspired by a Bonnie Hunter project may work out to be another donation quilt. Who knows? I don’t. The components are all from the 3.5-inch bins of squares and my stash strip bins (which I’ve organized by color now as they have gone down in size these past years). I’m not planning to make all the centers “fussy cut.” Some will just be light or dark.

Note: the mini “folded corners” ruler is a real plus for making these flying geese blocks easier and quicker to make. I love the regular size of this ruler too. Maybe something with all flying geese is in my future…

Have a great week everyone! And enjoy your Sunday.

A Cold Spell

We’ve had temps dropping into the freezing area these past two nights, so it’s been time for me to seriously undertake the outside late fall cleanup chores. The red roses have survived the cold though, so I have not had the heart to cut them back.

Here’s what rosemary does in this climate: it makes bushes. Right now it is blooming, and the bees and hummingbirds have found it. But I think I’ll cut it back some after a hard freeze.

Still no rain though. But the walking has been delightful in these clear, sunny, cold days. Of course, if I were in Maine, I wouldn’t think this weather “cold” yet. I’d just put on socks and add a sweater layer. The wind here, though, was quite biting and strong for at least one day. And the trash cans, put outside the night before the weekly trash can pickup, had their tops opened with the night wind. We are all still picking up bits of trash that littered our front lawns.

I finished the quilt top for “Under the Maple Tree,” a Rachel LaBour’s Stitched in Color blog sewalong. The perfect backing fabric finally got here–delayed due, perhaps, to the slowdown at the airports during the shutdown. It’s a Tilda fabric. Yesterday I found a fabric for the binding locally as I couldn’t find something I liked in my stash. This quilt was a lot of work, fun though that was, so I wanted the backing and binding to really “go” with this top. The leaf blocks are all from my scrap stash.

These blocks are sewn on point, and those little cute gold side pieces were a bear to get “just right.” I worried and worried during the final trimming, but it all came out well. (Thanks Rachel LaBour.)

This little no-name donation baby quilt–made as a leader/ender with my 2-inch square bin and half-square triangles cut from scraps–is done. The pattern is from Bonnie Hunter’s free selection on her blog. It’s “Patches and Pinwheels.”

The on-point squares that form caught me by surprise. I didn’t see them coming. But I love how this secondary pattern makes this quilt so much more interesting. I’m still using those 2-inch squares to make four-patch blocks as leader/enders. So there may be another donation quilt from at least the “patches” part of this quilt down the road.

Next: a design wall update.

Good Morning!

How did it get to be November already?

We had a lively Halloween here in my small subdivision, which is filled with small children who delight me with their laughter most days as they play outside. It is so fun to see them growing up–but they are growing up so fast. In no time at all, it seems, these children leave their strollers and are pedaling small tricycles.

It’s time now to do the fall outdoor clean-up chores, but the roses are still blooming, so it’s hard to get the motivation to cut back those bushes for the winter cold that is coming.

I can still have my noon dinner on the porch most days, but often need a sweater. Yesterday I had baked cod and for a real treat, some delicious Carolina “gold” rice. I had some crunchy fresh salad veggies, so I cut those up as an addition and dressed them with some leftover homemade mayonnaise.

I’ve spent the summer cutting starchy carbs as I’m trying to drop a few more pounds, but all the summer fruit got in the way of that goal. I can, apparently, eat good fats or fruit, but not both outside of about an 80-20 ration for one or the other. LOL. Still I have dropped a few pounds, and the rice didn’t show up on my scale this morning, but eating only a half of an apple illustrates this truth.

I am ALMOST done with the blocks for the leaf quilt sewalong with Rachel LaBour of the “Stitched in Color” blog. Maybe today I will be able to start sewing that quilt top together.

There may be more moving of blocks around. But I’m really loving this quilt. I ordered a Tilda fabric for the backing that will work with these fall leaves, and it will come Saturday. As for binding… Maybe the gold fabric? I don’t know… Yet.

This little quilt is done. It was to be a donation quilt, but I’m holding it for either a family baby or a neighborhood baby. (My neighbor’s baby is due any minute now, and I’ll gift the finished pink quilt when she arrives and will share pictures here on the blog.) All the fun neutral fabrics are so fun.

The backing is a cheddar color from my stash, and the pantograph is “Bayside,” which lays down lovely texture without dense quilting. (When in doubt, pull “Bayside” out.) I used a pale peachy orange from Signature cotton threads, which does not draw attention on the front.

The other little donation quilt is getting its binding sewn down, so a final picture for the blog and my archive will happen soon.

Meanwhile, we have our November block for Tara Faughnan’s Blocks3 six months sewalong. It’s “Garnish,” a curvy orange-peel improv block, though I may make mine via precision cutting. I have a batch of block parts cut in all the colors, so will carve out some play time to try out various combinations.

Here’s Tara’s sample of one idea.

This month’s palette (13 colors) is so pretty too. It’s “dustier” than I would normally choose these days, but rich and very “Tara Faughnan.” I love it.

Of course, as usual, Tara has given us MANY ways to manipulate this block and the colors involved.

Quilty “play” is…everything. So fun!