Monthly Mini and Churn Dash progress

Just a bitty thing (5"x7") made from some tiny leftovers after cutting up a bunch of 30s repro fabrics.  I bound it in yellow and named it "A Little Bit of Sunshine". 

It is is machine quilted with diagonal lines that form tilted rectangles. The photo below shows the quilting better, and gives you a better size perspective.

Linking up with Wendy (The Constant Quilter blog), where you can check out the other mini makers and what they have created this month.

Here is my progress on Chooky's Churn Dash SAL. I haven't decided yet if I am going with 41 or 50 blocks, but I am on track for 50 with these 25 blocks at the halfway mark.

These are 9" blocks, so the little churn dash centers of some blocks are 3". There are 42 official participants in this SAL--you can find them all in a link list on Chooky's sidebar. And there are several others who are making churn dash quilts with the group "unofficially".

We just returned from our annual family reunion/campout. We reserve a large, private campsite and my siblings and our posterity are invited. We had 55 participate this year, but the little intruder we found in a banana my hubby had hung in our camp, was definitely not invited. Do you think he thought he was camouflaged? Click to enlarge for the full effect.

Don't want to leave you with that photo, so I'll leave you with this one.

These clouds are over the eastern mountains, but this is the sunset, not the sunrise--the colors were just reflecting clear across the valley.

So much going on in this world of ours, it can leave your head spinning. Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay kind.

Until next time,

Janet O.

July Monthly Mini

Look at me--posting my monthly mini before midnight on the last day of the month! I will be linking up with Wendy, our fearless (cheer)leader, at The Constant Quilter blog.

This month's mini came together mostly from leftover units and scraps kindly donated by Kevin at Kevin the Quilter blog.I did dig around a bit in my own scraps to come up with the sashing, border, and binding, but no actual yardage was harmed in the making of this quilt. It finished up at just over 13" square.

In my last post I received a comment from Lady Locust saying this made her think of Neapolitan ice cream. I liked that idea, so I am naming it Neapolitan. And with our temps reaching 100 these days, I could use a scoop of that about now.

This was finished with what I like to call "hybrid quilting". I used machine quilting for all of the stitch-in-the-ditch, and for the quilting in the outer border. Then I hand quilted down the center of each narrow sashing piece, and diagonally through the 4-patch blocks. I felt it needed a bit more, so I did echo quilting in the neutral triangles. You can see the quilting better in the photos below. You can also see very clearly that I drew no lines to follow on the hand quilting. I eye-balled it--so let's call it organic quilting. :)

Do you ever mix machine and hand quilting on the same piece? I have done it many times on my minis, but never on a large quilt. On the back you can see the machine quilting more clearly. And I see a space I missed. Can you spot it?

It is good to have an excuse to sew something fun in these monthly minis, since mask  making continues to consume most of my sewing time. Have now made over 300. Anyone need a mask? LOL

I have notified those whose names were drawn to receive the bag of HSTs (Dortha), magazines (Liz and Barb V.), and the stencil (Robin). As so often happens, several of those I originally drew have no email linked to their name, so I had to draw again (and again).
                      

We have been trying to have dinner on our deck most evenings. This is what I captured there the other night--the video quality isn't the best, but listen to the birds, and watch the swallows swoop. You might want to expand the video screen to see the birds better.

Find something around you that makes you smile.
Until next time,
Janet O. 


RANT: At the risk of changing the mood and ending on a downer, I spent 3 hours last night in the new blogger trying to create this post. This is not my first rodeo--I have used the new blogger on the two previous posts with minimal inconvenience and adapting. Last night as I typed, the letters would appear slowly, one at a time, taking a couple of minutes for one sentence to show up after I had typed it. A paragraph could take 10 minutes to materialize. Photos would actually drag and drop this time (which they wouldn't on my last post), but resizing didn't always work. One photo was so huge it covered most of my post. It wouldn't resize. When I finally deleted just that photo and tried to preview the post, the preview wouldn't load--even when I went away and came back later to see if it was completed. I finally cut my post short and hit publish, only to have half of my words--in random places--not appear, and only a couple of photos show up. I deleted the whole post and walked away. Tried again this morning and saw things were much the same. Just to get this posted without tearing out my hair, I reverted to "Legacy Blogger." I am hoping these are all just glitches and won't be regular occurrences. Even Legacy Blogger was a bit touchy, but nothing like my trial with new blogger last night. Anyone else have a similar experience?