Adieu to Yellow

Time again for the Saturday progress report for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  It's been fun working with yellow, but I'm not sad to see her go.  There just weren't that many yellow scraps in my stash, so I'm about out of fresh combinations for scrappy blocks.

I finished a few more leader-ender spools using yellow scraps.

A few yellow wonky log cabin blocks from yellow & gold scraps.  I'm going to set these aside because I just don't have a large variety of yellow scraps to do these justice.  Maybe I'll have more yellow scraps later down the road.

I did have a blank design wall earlier this week, so I popped all the happy scrappy houses up for a look.  Seeing them altogether really made me smile!  I'm still contemplating how I want to assemble these into a finished quilt at the end of the year.

You may have noticed a new button on my sidebar - Celebrate Sewing with St. Anne.  I'll be featuring St. Anne sewing machine post cards on Tuesdays during the month of July.  At the end of the month there will be a linky party to celebrate St. Anne's feast day and share our love of sewing.  I hope you'll considering joining the fun!  The button should be grab-able if you want to share it on your blog.

I do have one more yellow New Orleans house to share this week.  The house is located on Bayou St. John, an inland waterway that travels from Lake Ponchartrain to the center of the city.  It's not far from City Park, where Dear Hubby and I like to Geocache on summer evenings.  It was on one such evening I captured this rather magical picture:

Scrappy Orange Finish (Almost)

I usually don't like to share a finished quilt until it's truly finished, i.e. the binding is attached and stitched in place.  But I'm so excited about the quilting on this quilt I decided I had to share it right now!

My local long-arm quilter, Cindy Braiwick, did the quilting on this for me.  She was a little unhappy with the results, pointing out the quilting designs don't always meet closely enough along the edges of the blocks.  I didn't care, I was just blown away with the design she came up with for the quilt!  This started out as a quick and easy way to use up a vast amount of orange scraps and Cindy really turned it into something special.  I suspect the quilting "errors" will pretty much disappear after the quilt is washed.  I can't wait to get the binding completed so I can enjoy the whole package!

Speaking of unfinished projects - this chair is my latest estate sale find.  My plan was to paint the chair white, make new denim cushion covers and use it at the camp.  While waiting for a trip to the camp, the chair wound up here, where my husband pronounced it perfect for a reading niche.  Either way, it still needs new cushion covers!

Trade Card Tuesday: Vive St. Anne & Pfaff

A sepia-tinted Vive St. Anne card from my collection, featuring a Pfaff sewing machine.  The card was printed in France, but mailed in Belgium; the postmark is from 1912.

I've mentioned previously that St. Anne is considered the patron saint of seamstresses and her feast day is celebrated on July 26th.  Over the next month I'll be blogging about different Vive St. Anne cards each week in anticipation of her feast day.  

During the weekend of July 26th, I'd like to invite everyone to celebrate their love of sewing by joining a linky party in honor of St. Anne.  Share a current or favorite sewing project and we'll have our very own feast for St. Anne!  

Hand-Stitching with the Stars

It's always difficult to justify starting a new project when surrounded by UFOs.  On the other hand, it's always good to have a hand-stitching project ready to work on during quiet moments.

I have been contemplating my own version of this quilt...

from this book.

To that end, I've been drafting

and practice piecing.  Oops, the center didn't meet up very well.  Will have to work on that!

I made a good start on cutting pieces for the LeMoyne Star blocks.  The beige fabric will be the plain squares and the large floral print will be the border.  I'm hopeful I'll get a chance to start hand-piecing later this afternoon!

To keep me motivated and inspired, I'm linking up with Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.  

Still Shining with Yellow

It's another Rainbow Scrap Challenge Saturday, and the color for June is yellow.  There will be lots of sunshine-y scrappiness over at Angela's blog, so jump over there if you need a yellow fix!

Sharing a slightly different "house" this week - my sunflower birdcage!

I've written before about my love of sunflowers; this is my little bit of sunflower sunshine at our camp.

I was more inspired by fabric than sunflowers for this week's Happy, Scrappy House.

A few leader ender spools were made this week.

The pile of yellow spools is growing slowly.

Another yellow New Orleans house for your enjoyment!  I spotted this one a few Saturdays ago when I was taking a scenic route home from a Magazine Street shopping trip.  I wasn't able to get a picture at the time, so I turned to my trusty friend Google Street View.

I'm glad I looked at Street View, or I might never have noticed all the houses on that side of the block are architecturally identical!  Unfortunately, they can't all be seen in the picture, but there are 4 houses in a row that have the same basic exterior features.  Wouldn't it be fun to take a peak inside to see the interiors?

Yellow Starshine

I was afraid I wouldn't get a yellow house sewn up for this week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge link-up.  Our niece and her husband spent the week in New Orleans, and although they didn't stay at our house, we spent several evenings and a good chunk of this morning and afternoon with them.  The good news is I got to give her her Rainbow Scrap Quilt in person!  On the other hand, I had very little time for sewing this week.  Still, this yellow house with pink accents makes me smile!

This yellow house makes me smile, too.  Even though it doesn't have a porch, it's still considered a shotgun house - a double shotgun, in fact.  This would have been more of a working-class family home when it was built - very simple, few frills.  It's a good example of a house coming straight up from the banquette,  which is New Orleans-speak for sidewalk.  In the days before air-conditioning, the folks from this type of house would sit outside on the front steps - or stoop.  It was the place to search out a cool breeze and chat with the friends, keeping up with what was going on in the neighborhood.  I can't tell for sure from the picture, but it does look like the short overhang over the front doors is painted "haint" blue!

And now that I've shared this week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge entry, I'll be wandering over to Angela's Soscrappy blog to see some more yellow quilting sunshine!

Sunny Saturday

I can't believe I missed posting a scrappy yellow house for last week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  Dear Husband and I had undertaken a rather extensive painting challenge (photos soon) and the day slipped away before I knew it.  Happily, I already had a scrappy house ready for last week, so this week I have two houses to share!

The yellow floral fabric for this house has been in my stash for as long as I can remember.  There are only scraps of it left, so I thought a summery, flowery house would be a great way to preserve the last of the fabric.

In the same spirit - I love this bungalow-style home with its cheerful yellow color, Bahama shutters and tropical plants!

I was completely oblivious to the fact I had made two flowered houses until I took pictures of them this morning!  This fabric leans a little more toward gold, but still makes a happy, scrappy house.  The chimney scraps were left-overs from appliqued sunflowers.

I took this picture one January morning.  The sunlight doesn't do justice to the yellow color of the house, but I wanted a good example of this particular house style to share.  This is what is known locally as a "camelback".  It's a shotgun type house with a second floor set on the back of the house.

I also added a few yellow leader-ender spools to the growing collection.  There's not a lot of yellow in my scrap collection, so I may find myself reaching into the gold scraps before the month is over.

If you're of a mind to see more sunny yellow scrappy inspiration, do stop by Soscrappy and see all the links shared today.  I hope everyone has a stitchingly good Saturday!

Stairs and Squares

It's been a block by block kind of week.  

Quilt block, that is.

A recent Grandmother's Choice block was Endless Stairs.  These Barbara Brackman flag prints had been sitting in the Grandmother's Choice fabric basket, but I had never been inspired to use them in any previous BOM blocks.  I decided this block was the perfect opportunity!  Block #39 done.

Next up #40 - Art Square.  The block went together easily, but the fabric choices were frustrating.  There have already been a number of blocks with a large diagonally-set feature fabric.  I didn't want to repeat one of my large prints yet again, so I tried something different.  I was too lazy to do the math to put a pieced block in the center, so this is it!  I don't love it, but it's done.

It's nice to be caught up with the blocks for this project - I'm looking forward to tomorrow's block!