Sunday Sevens, 11-15-15

Tags

cats, Columbia Park, Columbia River, Kennewick, Sunday Sevens, Washington

Sunday Sevens is a blog series in which we post some pictures from our week to show the non-bloggy business we’ve been up to.  It’s all the fault of Natalie over at Threads and Bobbins and you should totally join in!

Yeah, I tend to run a little bit late but I get there in the end.

Another walk in Columbia Park with my mother this week.  Sunny weather and many, many well-fed geese.

Now here’s something you don’t see every day:  fresh sprouts in the market alongside the last of my mother’s homegrown tomatoes.

Another walk with the MeetUp group on Saturday.  Not much in the way of a trail out here–it’s called the Richland Bend Habitat Management Unit and is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers–but a disturbing number of animal bones.

Hmmm . . . .

(Don’t worry–no pictures of animal bones here.)

Did a big push to get the quilting done on my runner this weekend.  It’s not actually finished, but the end is in sight and all the hard decisions have been made.

I’m SO glad I’m quilting this in two pieces–would’ve been even better in three pieces, but good enough.  And I feel like I’m gradually honing in on the kind of quilting I want to do–I’m interested less and less in traditional designs and colors and more and more attracted to irregular, free-form shapes.  I’ve realized as I’ve worked on quilting this that the runner combines very non-traditional fabrics and colors with very classic-looking blocks, and the farther I get from the traditional, the happier I am with quilting.  The usual super-precision, sharp points, and straight lines are feeling very constraining right now.

I was going to do straight-line quilting on these setting triangles, but the thought felt so . . . straight.  I wanted something softer, more welcoming and tranquil, and nothing feels more welcoming and soothing to me than a flower shaped like a rising sun.

And, finally, not a very exciting picture, but watching this last night reminded me of the good, hopeful things that humans can do.  Very uplifting and positive after the sadness and violence of the past few days.

And, just for fun, here’s Shelby looking like she’s in the middle of a dive.

Have a great week, everybody.

STH

 

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Sunday Sevens, 11-08-15: Maximum Color

Tags

Columbia Point, Kennewick, Richland, sewing, Sunday Sevens, swears, Washington, Zintel Canyon Park

Sunday Sevens is a blog series–begun by the ever-fabulous Natalie at Threads and Bobbins–where we put up some pictures of our week and chat a bit about what we’ve been doing.  All are welcome to join in!

Lots of outdoorsy pictures this week, as I actually got my lazy ass out for a walk twice!

On Monday, I did an expedition into the further reaches of Zintel Canyon Park, farther than I’m able to go when my mother’s with me.

Love this colorful plant!  Note how black the wood is here; there was at least one fire at the park this past summer.

Have no idea what this tree is, but the combination of the blue berries and red stems is just gorgeous.  Plenty of birds in this park, but they never seem to eat these berries, so I wonder if they’re poisonous.

Look what I made this week.

Heh.

Instructions are here, though I basically used the idea and ignored the instructions, partly because I didn’t have a functional iron when I made this.

The sweatshirt is from the Eddie Bauer outlet near Portland and I’ve had it in my mending/remake pile for a while now–despite the fact that I looked like a big ol’ fashion DON’T when I wore it–because I love the color and the soft rib-knit fabric.

Removing the bottom band and cuffs made it fit SO much better (seriously, does anybody look good in a sweatshirt with a bottom band?)  I finished the bottom and sleeves with blanket stitch.

I LOVE THIS and plan to wear it every day until Thanksgiving.

OUR LONG NIGHTMARE IS OVER.

On Saturday, my honey and I had a late lunch, then took a walk at Columbia Point in Richland.

Enlarge to see all the colors!

Since the new appliances were delivered, I have cooked SO MANY THINGS.

Here’s Sunday’s dinner:  ham and cheese quiche, herb biscuits, and a salad.

I have so many more pictures from last week’s walks; will throw those up on Flickr later today.

Have a great week, everybody.

STH

Modern Rainbow Quilt

Tags

2015 FAL, quilting, sewing

Here it is!  This is the birthday quilt I made for my honey, and I’m really happy with it; I tried some new things, made a first tentative little foray into modern quilting, and gave him something he really likes!

This project started with him mentioning how sterile and colorless his office at work is.  AHA!  Nothing cures sterile and colorless like a quilt!  Then it just happened that I got a Keepsake Quilting catalog in the mail and it seemed like a good opportunity for some intelligence-gathering, if you get my meaning.

We looked through it together, and talked about what we liked and what we didn’t, and both agreed that this quilt was very cool.  Problem is, it was WAY too big for his little space, and too busy for his taste (he tends toward the minimalist).

So my idea was to do something similar, but very simple, small, and in the colors of the rainbow.

I picked up a yard of good-quality white quilting cotton from SCRAP to use as the base and cut an 18″ x 24″ piece from it.  The stripes are fabrics from the stash; I sewed tubes, wrong sides together, pressed them flat with the seam on the center back, and hand-appliqued them on (the Stix quilt pattern has you topstitch, but I wanted a cleaner look).

Some time in the middle of this process, I came across this post on a quilted pillow cover and just loved the great texture and modern look of the quilting on it.  I knew immediately I wanted to use the same technique on my quilt.

The green backing fabric was from the stash, and I thought its modern, abstract look went well with the feeling of the quilt.

To make the quilting easy, I just used the edge of my presser foot as a guide for the quilting.  The lines of stitching are a little over 1/4″ apart.  Now, that sounds like a lot of quilting, but it really wasn’t on this small quilt, and it went very fast since I didn’t have to mark anything.

This was such a fun project!  All the things I love–bright colors, hand applique, small size, quilting without stress.  More small, modern quilts are definitely going to happen in my life.

And he loved it!  He says it’s too nice for his office, so he’s hung it up in his office at home.  🙂

ETA:  this is finish #1 for the 2015 Finish-Along.

STH

Sunday Sevens, 11-01-15: Appliance Attrition Edition

Tags

cooking, CozyAfternoonQuilt, quilting, recipe, SCRAP Tri-Cities, sewing, Sunday Sevens

Sunday Sevens is a weekly series in which we share some pictures from our week and yak a bit about what we’ve been up to between blog posts.  See Natalie from Threads and Bobbins for more info.

Just a few photos for you today–it has been a MOST un-photogenic week around these parts.  A lot of time was spent running down boxes for my mother to pack her stuff in for the carpet installation.  Then she discovered that her water heater was leaking, so a day was spent going through the contents of the closet and tearing out moldy carpet.  The whole week has felt like a bit of a struggle, to be honest.

But enough about that, let’s get to the important stuff:  FALL PASTA.  I’m in full fall cooking mode now and wanting all the hearty pastas and soups I’ve been avoiding all summer.  This was a delicious dinner and helped clean out the vegetable bin; I also threw in some Italian sausage, and we both gobbled it down.

I appear to have acquired another project (just what I needed).  I grabbed this wool suiting at SCRAP ($15 for 3 1/2 yards with my volunteer discount!) with the idea of making some sort of cycling jacket for my honey with it.

My initial thought was to surprise him with it for Xmas, but I remembered how particular he is about his cycling clothing–and couldn’t come up with a way of getting his measurements without him noticing–and decided to do it with his input.

He ended up being quite excited by the project and I’ve ordered Kwik Sew 4017 to use as a basis for the jacket.  It’s going to need several changes, though . . . this could turn out to be quite an ambitious project.  Adding zippers to welt pockets–um, there’s gotta be a YouTube tutorial somewhere, right?

On Saturday, my partner and I had planned to take another hike with the MeetUp group, this time up Badger Mountain and IN COSTUME.  Alas, though, the weather turned out to be just ghastly–rain showers and wind of 30 miles per hour–so we decided to skip it.  That left time for sewing, though.

I’ve been stuck on the next step of my Cozy Afternoon table runner, as I was a little intimidated by doing setting triangles for the first time.  I set a goal to have the top done by the end of the week, though, so I finally pushed myself to work on it on Saturday.  It’s been slow going with all kinds of problems–triangles too small, fabric shortages, etc., etc.–but I got the sashing on and the whole thing pieced together.

Here’s part of it before I got it sewed together:

That’s just part of it, because this sucker is HUGE.  My table is 6 feet long, and the runner hangs over the edges.  The top is in two pieces now, and I think I’m going to try to QAYG so that quilting it is less of a wrestling match.

The good news, though, is that the farther I get on it, the more I like it.  I just love those colors against the wood of the table, and I think the finished runner is going to be beautiful.

Plans for this week:  get outside, now that the wind has finally died down.  Appliance shopping, as in addition to my mother’s water heater, our stove also met its maker and our microwave is on its way out as well.  Oh, and my iron died today, too.

On the bright side, I plan to make myself a turkey tee this week.  Because I just happen to have a happy yellow sweatshirt that I’ve been meaning to refashion and happy yellow is exactly what I need right now.

Have a great week, everybody.

STH