My creative week A mantle quilt finish, and an apron

 

This week I finished and hung on the mantle my acorns piece.... a testament to the lovely rich and varied color brown. 

I love color, so I admit to often bypassing neutrals but that's the scrap color of the month at RSC. I have an actual brown scrap bin, and used it this month

3/4" hexies

I have shared my process weekly with the acorns starting with the pattern, tiny scraps cut just so and sewn with care into 6" blocks! 

in making the block you do HST units by sewing, flipping open and trimming little triangle pieces of brown. I turned those into improv geese, as I love to do...

and sewed 2" strips to the geese units

and put them between the acorns to make a mantle piece for our long fireplace

I surrounded these with strips of tan fabric from scraps, and love that I was able to put in one with words...

After it was quilted I fused on shiny copper leaves and baguette beads to catch the light of the fall lights already there

a pretty brown binding of a coffee print fabric worked for the binding, some leaves quilted in the ends with copper metallic thread 

how to hang it stumped me, so to just get it up there for this year, I pinned ribbons along the length, just under the binding, and taped them to the top of the mantle which you can only see when you hover over it...

I took this pretty picture before I centered it, heh heh... excited to finish something!

So it's interesting to me, that one block can be used in so many ways.... I bet the designer made a quilt with them... I made a long quilt 10" X 68"  

Oh and we live in Colorado, in a (public ) golf course community that has open areas and ponds, that attract Canadian geese all winter.  Lately I'm in love with doing improv geese. I like to work in seasonal colors too. This quilt was made for the Table Scraps challenge to interpret "Mini" and my acorn blocks which finish at 6" have about 30 pieces in each....those geese are also tiny

Now that Thanksgiving is over, here comes santa claus!

I was looking through my Christmas fabrics to make this last week

and came across an apron fabric gifted to me from a friend long ago...

in fact the selvedge says Alma Lynne 1997!! It's a canvas fabric, really suited to aprons

since I've been baking so much the last few years, it was time don't you think?

the pocket says Santa's Helper.... I think I'll use this apron today when I try again to make rugalach, and a big pot of veggie soup. I successfully made my own flaky crust for the pecan pie also made yesterday!

Time to pack up the pumpkins and fall decorations and think about Christmas lights. We'll try to clear the dead leaves out of the rocks in the bright Colorado sunshine, in 60 deg weather near December. Our recent snows are melted, and it's time to start thinking of Christmas! 

want to paint? I like this instructor for her clear and easy tutorials

and a fast paper star to make, imagine these as a banner!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=patGIBQCwZs

happy Arting y'all

Table Scraps Challenge...."Mini"

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

https://myblog-lunchbreak.blogspot.com/ 

patchwork Sunday    

 slow stitching Sundays                

oh Scrap Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays 

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss

Midweek makers wednesdays  

http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/ 

https://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/ 

off the wall Fridays   

peacock party

tgiffriday

finished or not

I Like Thursday # 325 music soothes the soul, happy Thanksgiving !

Welcome to this week's list of likes, and happy Thanksgiving!

right off the bat, our prompt this week is music that reminds you of autumn...like the charlie brown pumpkin patch music? For me this combines a love of animals (a turkey) and a man who plays music for them at the sanctuary

watching on tv....

I like reality baking competitions and we're watching the Great British Baking show series. In America there are holiday competitions on the Food Network that we love.  We are looking forward to catching up on PBS Miss Scarlett, Magpie murders, and Annika. On Acorn is one of our favorite series, My Life Is Murder set in NZ with a wonderful cast of characters solving complex mysterious murder cases, Lucy Lawless is superb, her assisstant is a love and dresses like I'd like to, the acting is great and I get to see scenery from another part of the world.

  Art-wise

 I finished the Mantle piece of acorns/geese and will post those close ups tomorrow. It's hanging in the family room now and so pretty. I love quilt making.

 I always watch youtube tutorials and this really intrigued me...

this video must be played from youtube but it's a zentangle ornament, fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KGatM2YO8E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk9nlRIvPtU

 funny...

this week I kept hearing a slight tinkle sound and dragged dh around to see if we could find out if some appliance was breaking. He said, could it be your slippers? I said, no. I had started wearing them again to keep my toes warmer...but forgot they were on... they are like Jester shoes with...

tiny bells on them than tinkle

Audio book 

 

so good, set in WW2 which I tend to avoid as I feel there is a growing trend toward fascism and it terrifies me, but this story about women is wonderful. The reader is too! How women in England took old dresses and cut them up to make something to wear, how they collected wedding dresses and loaned them out so women could have a white dress on their big day.

Fine Dining or Home Cooking? 

look a cookie mandala!!! from this recipe from Gasparilla Cookbook... I add pecans too

I have been cooking more, and we decided being just the two of us, to have mini Thanksgiving dinners this week... Tuesday night I served chicken strips baked with my sweet and sour sauce, the best, with sauteed squash a la Southern home cooking, and twice baked potato casserole. Also a little of the cranberry sauce already made. 

yeast rolls made with bananas and cranberries instead of raisins link to easy tutorial

 

after first rise, you divide into 9 rolls, ball them up in an 8" baking dish

done! you can see the cranberries and they smell wonderful!

You know how good twice baked potatoes are? Instead of messing with the skins, I peel them, boil them, mash them with sour cream and butter, S & P & garlic powder, chives, then top with cheese and broil to melt it. OMG what flavor!

We are grateful for abundant food. We still need to get food delivery to lower infection possibility and whole foods here in Denver is awful but we have enough and more. Luckily I can figure out how to best use the food we have. 

For instance they delivered meat two days out of it's date after driving it around for two hours in a hot car,. The zucchini and squash were the tiniest I've ever seen as were the grapefruit. Whole foods in Annapolis was teeming with beautiful produce. The one here said it was out of common foods we wanted. Still... we are able at this time to get food, and have each other and a home from which we can sit in front of a tv watching a movie and have traditional food.

Milo's Moment

 Milo here.... For music, I like what ever Daddy plays on his guitar, and am content to lie next to him while he plays it. I'm thankful that Mama loves me, and I am sorry I fight her on cleaning my ears but they hurt. I am grateful for a dog bed /toy I can move around the room.

Mama: yes,... about that.... it's a bed, not a stuffie even though it's plush

Milo: blah blah blah.... I am grateful for my toys and a yard to play with them in...

Mama: toys...why don't you go to sleep for a bit so I can throw away all the broken toys and there will be room for Santa's new ones??

big poodle sigh!

 Milo: Nooooo! I just got them broken in! The chickens are all just skins, their legs are finally loose and still squeak! 

Mama: both balls are busted in half, bent in and won't roll, the ring toy is half skint, the "skins" stink

Milo: Mama, don't you need to go bake something instead of looking at my stuff? 

More pretty fall songs.... enjoy the lovely music

 autumn serenade

autumn leaves by a group of 4 young musicians
 

please visit these people to read their lists this week 

https://www.su-sieeemac.com/2022/11/a-fortunate-child.html

https://www.mmmquilts.com/ 

http://littlepenguinquilts

 craftscaviescontras   

https://canadianneedlenana.blogspot.com/   

 http://imworkingonaproject.blogspot.com/

 

 the knitty quilter

https://lavenderdreamstoo.blogspot.com/

princess bubbles creates   

https://knittingquilter.blogspot.com/   

 

https://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/

https://whataboutrheema.blogspot.com/   

https://www.homesewnbyus.com/

https://faithtrustandbreastcancer.blogspot.com 

 grammajudyb.blogspot.com 

http://www.piecefulthoughts.com 

 

http://3poodlesandanana.blogspot.com  

 

                                                                  LINKING WITH 

https://brianshomeblog.com/ 

http://itsasmalltownlife.blogspot.com/   

http://goodrandomfun.blogspot.com

thankful thursday

friday smiles at a stitch in time   

floral passions  

rosie and the boys nature pics  

My creative week.... workshops, learning, and sewing

 

welcome to this week's creativity round-up!  I signed up for three workshops of varying demands for this week, how did that happen... the reason I sign up for these free online workshops is you never know what you'll learn in them. For instance, the fabric hanging bucket above came from day one on Rebecca Page's Christmas crafts workshop. 

the back of the folded hanging container

I didn't end up making any others of the 41 projects on offer, but I did print out the patterns for several

that look like things I'd like. Back to the container....I made two actually. The one out of mary englebreit fabric is the smallest size, and this is the largest 

since I thought it was to be for Christmas, I got out my bag of Christmas print strips to use

instructor Katy McKinley

sewing them together to fit the pattern piece, had just the right size fusible batting for it, then quilted it while it was open, with of course sparkly mylar threads....

you sew a side seam, and a bottom seam, fold it to stitch across the last two bottom seams

finishing off the outside... sew the lining into a bag too, tuck one into the other...

sew across the top leaving a place to turn it right sides out, inserting a hang tab. I think it would be good for my winter knitting projects by my chair

you could fold the top down like a sock

the pattern was only available in the workshop I think... and came with four sizes, I like that it has a square bottom and sits up usefully. Like I said, I watched the other videos but haven't made the projects. 

the collage workshop was a bust but I watched the available videos. Not everyone is good at these. 

the third workshop through Strathmore,(LINK) drops a video once a week and was excellent! Free too.

I did try to start quilting the big kaleidoscope quilt top from last fall:

All the seams, plus warm and natural batting made it so heavy and cumbersome it set off my shoulder blade injury so I had to stop after doing a couple rounds of straight line quilting to lock it in.

Moving on to the color of the month, neutral... I finished up putting setting strips in tan/beige around the acorns. I kept them in two sections to make quilting easier, and will join them after that is done, and reveal the finished project for Table Scraps next week if all goes well. the finished tops are 10" X 33" and 10" X 37"

but the acorns are made of 1" squares, and the improv geese even smaller... see?

Table scraps challenge is to use scraps to make something "mini" and use the RSC color of the month, which is brown/neutrals

a few months ago, I started doing little hexies in the scrap color of the month to have a hand project to work on in front of the tv

I'm doing them in diamond shapes, in that month's color, three are now done, orange, purple/green, and 

Brown!

and I'm starting with my 2" squares of neutral with prints....

I like the illustrator, Joanna Basford and get her newsletters. She sent a link to her free coloring advent calendar this month...

and the images are Saaaaa-weet! One could blow them up for their kids, or do them yourself with colored pencils.... sign up for her newsletter and she sends out notices and free things every other month or three.  Lots of ornaments to make on youtube tutorials... go finding.... but for now... we're officially starting the holidays and happy Thanksgiving ....

happy Arting y'all

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

https://myblog-lunchbreak.blogspot.com/ 

patchwork Sunday    

 slow stitching Sundays                

oh Scrap Sundays

design wall Mondays at smallquiltsanddollquilts
lovelaughquilt.mondays 

http://www.inquiringquilter.com/ Wednesday wait loss

Midweek makers wednesdays  

http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/ 

https://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/ 

off the wall Fridays   

peacock party

tgiffriday

finished or not