The First Week of August

 It is amazing how much more productive I can be when I stay home.  Who’d have thought?

The first sewing project I worked on was the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  It didn’t take too long to piece my two split nine patch blocks.  These were actually completed on Saturday morning, before the big sewing room tidy up.

I cut out two hexy flowers at the same time and pieced them yesterday at my patchwork morning.   Rather glarey, aren’t they.  I channeled my inner frugalness, as the orange floral vintage sheet fabric was left over binding from my Crossroads quilt.  There was the join in the binding, so I decided to leave it in place.  You often see pieced small pieces in vintage quilted.

Just for fun, and to use up some of my tiny scraps, just now I have pieced another crumb block.

Here is my little collection so far.  They are quick and easy, and use up those scraps that most people would throw away. I really should do more.

I have decided to give the Fishy Business blocks a miss this month, as I want to use orange in next month’s fish.  I’ll catch up next month, by swapping colours.

This is how much is left in my orange scrap box.  The bright one at the bottom will be ideal for the fish next month.  Now, everyone has a different definition of a scrap.  Most would call mine crumbs, as I don’t add anything to these boxes less than a layer cake sized piece of fabric.  Most other colours are jamb packed, so some more crumb blocks will be a great way to use them up.

Of course, I finished off the little HST Baby Quilt.

Once that was done, it was time to turn my attention to the little blue sampler stitchery.  I couldn’t resist adding a red front door to the house.

This is what the finished article looks like in Gail Pan’s book.  I felt that it needed something else.

Time to make an almighty big mess on the dining table.  Yes, can you believe it, it was all tidied away before the afternoon was over.

This is kind of what I was thinking.

Then I remember that I have a box of Mum’s laces and trims and found this little cutie that might just work. 

Honestly, I could open an Etsy store with the amount of laces, trims and old linens that I have.  We won’t go there.

I’ve have this lovely vintage coathanger for years and would like to use it as the hanger.  That will dictate the size.

This is where I was up to yesterday.  The fabric that the stitchery is worked on is a linen offcut from my doyley quilt that I made a few years ago.  It already had a hand stitched hem on the bottom.  The two toned ric rac has been added to the bottom of the stitchery.   The narrow lace under the stitchery is also an offcut from my doyley quilt.  The green huckaback hand towel off cut with its lace edging, surprisingly, also comes from the quilt.  Fancy that!  It’s good to find a use for them.

I’m looking forward to having a play with the embellishments.  I think I will use a thin wadding and just do a facing type edge.  I don’t think I want a binding and would have to work something out at the bottom with the lace edge anyway.

I have done a tiny bit more today, but the light is too bad to take a photo. 

As you can gather, I managed to achieve my 15 minutes of stitching each day.

What else did we get up to?

Can you believe that I actually tried not one, but two new recipes?

The first was a recipe I came across on Instagram.  It was a one pot wonder chicken and rice dish.  It was cooked on the stovetop and ended up rather gluggy, hence no photo being shared.  However, it tasted great.  I reckon that I will use the ingredients/flavours and translate it to an oven baked risotto, using aboria riced.  That should be a success.

The second was a whole orange cake, also from a recipe I came across on Instagram.  Let’s call it a middling success.  It wasn’t a boiled orange cake, rather the orange was just chopped up in the food processor.  It rose rather unevenly and is a tad dry.  It was still very tasty and there is none left.  However, I think there are probably better recipes out there.  Actually, I have had one for years, that my old next door neighbour gave me, that I have never made.  I should give it a whirl.

That pretty much wraps up all I have to report for the week.  Now to see what next week brings.