Scrappy fall colours!

I'm just quickly checking in with my Rainbow Scrappy Challenge "blocks" - Angela chose orange for September.  Up until June or July, I didn't have a lot of orange fabric, but, now that I've had a chance to gather some, I managed to get my blocks done!  I'm using my peach and rust fabrics too, so that it looks like I've got a biggish stash.
I've had my fabrics cut for 2 weeks, but life has just been too busy to get to sewing.  Thankfully, a lot of the things that have clogged my calendar are now behind me - and I spent about an hour in my sewing room today, pulling these blocks together.
First are the Japanese x and + blocks:

I LOVE the orange dots with the random brown spots in the 2nd block!  The little triangles on the bottom left corner of the 2nd block have little brown and peach turtles on them - so cute!  Also, you might have to enlarge the pic so you can see that the + in the 2nd block isn't made of the same fabric as the upper right corner....

Next up are the 5 braid strips: 

I'm getting really excited to see what colours Angela chooses for the last 3 months - and then these strips will be finished!

Finally there's the Kickin' Stash blocks - I repeated some of my favourite fabrics, but I was surprised to see how many "orange" fabrics I really had!  I found some scrappy bits left over from a jelly roll - that gave me an additional 4 fabrics!

So, now that I have my September blocks finished, I'm ready to find out which scraps will see the light of day for October!

What to do....

I'm quickly running out of time to choose a project for September's "A Lovely Year of Finishes' - and the problem is, I have too many to choose from!  Plus, September is going to be a really crazy, busy month, so I have to choose wisely!
I HAVE to finish this Christmas wall-hanging

by Sept. 24th, to be able to enter it into one of my local fairs, so it's the obvious choice, AND it might be the best choice, seeing as I may not have enough time to do anything else.  The center of the wall-hanging was created with my Twister tool, and, once I got the hang of it, it was fairly easy to do.  Now that I have the hard part done, I just have to put on the 2 borders (narrow red, and wider green and white Christmas-sy fabric) on it, and then quilt it and add the hanging sleeve.  I recently bought some great gold "pearls" on a string that I might add to give the illusion of garland, but I haven't decided on that yet....  Come to think of it, that may be more than I have time for, but that's the purpose of ALYoF - challenging myself to finish a project!
So, that's it then - here's hoping it will get done in time!

August updates

Hold on to your hats folks - this is going to be a long one!  I have 3 different updates to catch up on, and they all need to be done by midnight tonight, so here goes!
First off, my knitting - last week I had almost 1 slipper sock knit, and I was very confident that I'd have the second one done by this past Friday - and I almost made it!  The slipper sock is done; it just took a little longer to finish.  If you look at the post from Aug. 22nd, you'll see that the top 3 bands didn't really slouch the way they should have, so I decided to tack them down enough to make them stand out.  Now that the knitting is done, I've tacked the bands down, and they look SO much more like the pattern picture - have a look - what do you think?

I've tried them on, and they feel nice and warm - so I'll set them aside until the colder weather sets in - like in January maybe....

Then, on Aug. 6th, I posted my ALYoF goal for August - to complete the top for my herringbone quilt.  I used 2 Vintage Modern charm packs and some Snow Kona cotton yardage to make the 2-block set needed for each "blade" of the herringbone.  When that was completed, I crawled around on the floor, trying to get a pleasing mix of colours and patterns, and finally accomplished that.  More crawling ensued, so that I could pin the strips together, and it was finally ready to assemble.  Some green Kona was used to make the first narrow border, and a wider border of Vintage Modern fabric completed the top - and here's that picture: 

I would have preferred a less "busy" fabric for the outer border, but it was difficult to find any of this fabric line, so we'll carry on with this one!

Finally, I haven't shared any of my Rainbow Scrappy Challenge blocks for this month...  That would probably be because I didn't get them assembled until yesterday afternoon!  So, instead of getting them a bit at a time, you'll be seeing all 3 of my challenge projects at once (and hopefully, that won't happen again!)  Here they are: Scrappy Braids,

  Japanese X and + blocks,

and finally my Kickin' Stash blocks:

Congratulations if you've hung on all the way to the end!  I promise that I'll try harder next time to post throughout the month!  Thanks for checking in!

On the Needles

It's been a while since I shared an "OtN" report - partly because I haven't done any more work on my blue shrug / sweater.  It hasn't been terrifically hot here this past summer, so I can't use that as an excuse.....  I have been doing some gardening and preserving, and some crocheting - but most of the knitting things I have on the go right now require a fair bit of attention as I'm knitting, and that's been hard to give lately.
BUT, I did start a quick and fairly easy project 2 days ago, so I thought that I'd share it with you.
Here is my first attempt at making a slipper sock that my girls can use when they come to visit in the winter. The yarn is some unlabeled stuff that I picked up at a tent sale last summer, and it's the perfect weight for this pattern.

The slipper sock has 3 sections of reverse stockinette at the top of the leg - the first and third bands are a coordinating green yarn (that's also used for the heel and toe), and the second band is the variegated yarn that the rest of the slipper in knit up in.  For some reason, the first band curled up like it shows in the pattern, but the other two don't seem to want to, so I may end up tacking them down to give that look.  

At the rate these are knitting up, I should have the pair done for next Friday!

This is what I'm planning to do this month!

It's already almost too late to enter my quilting project for the ALYoF challenge - August seems to be flying by as quickly as July did!  But, I still have a day (phew!) to link up on Melissa's site so I'd better get going!  I'm choosing a fairly simple project for this month - it's bound to get kind of crazy around here, so a bigger project probably won't get done in time.
I've seen a number of Herringbone quilts around blogland, and I've wanted to make one for a while.  I had 2 charm packs of Vintage Modern that I had cut in half diagonally about 2 or 3 months ago to use as leaders and enders - but, you know how that goes - you can't sew just one!  Pretty soon, my original project took a back seat so I could piece these blocks (that might explain why my June project didn't get done on time!).  But that's where the fun ended - trimming blocks isn't my favourite thing to do - but I'm thankful when they're done!  So, the HST blocks just sat there for a few weeks...
Now that July's project is out of the way, I'm ready to go!  I stitched a few blocks together and staged them as they'll end up in the quilt - and I discovered that you really have to make sure that you piece an equal amount of left-hand and right-hand blocks, or the pattern doesn't work.
I have no idea how big this quilt will be - but as long as it's at least 32" square, it will do for the organization that will be getting this quilt.
So, here are a few of the blocks:

I think I'm going to like this quilt!

It's finished!!!!

It took an extra month, but my Black and White and Lime Swoon is DONE!!!
I have no idea how big it is - bigger than I need it to be, so borders aren't going to happen.  I LOVE this quilt!

Each of the B&W fabrics are different - the Lime is a tone-on-tone, and the background is Kona Snow.

Catching up with quilting and knitting posts

Sigh.....  I think that I'm at least one day late for posting my "On the Needles" update, and almost late for my "Rainbow Scrappy Challenge", but I have a few good reasons!
First - my knitting report - my prayer shawl for Ila is finished AND delivered to her.  Thankfully, she was allowed to go home from the hospital on Thursday, I believe.  I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet, but I'm hoping to be able to do that Monday maybe.  This is the completed shawl:

I ended up having to hem up the bottom edge - even blocking it didn't stop it from wanting to curl and roll up.  Sewing up about 1/2" minimized that nicely.  I almost forgot to take the pic, so it isn't stretched out properly, but you can see the completed shawl.

Then, my sis and her hubby came to visit this afternoon - they live about a 3-hour drive away, so we don't get to see each other very often, but when we do, it's non-stop chat about all sorts of different things.  After they left, I had an hour or so to hit the sewing room - I've walked into the sewing room a few times this past week, but this was the first time I actually got to sit down at the machine.  I got the 3 red sections sewn onto each of my 5 rainbow Technicolour Braid strips - and here they are: 

The strips are starting to get too long to fit in the picture, so I folded them each up a bit, and then you get an idea of the "rainbow" aspect of them.  

I'll be linking both projects up to their respective challenges in a minute, but I wanted to show you a rather big "OOPS". I'm starting a strip quilt using a "Bobbins and Bits" jelly roll, and as I finish a section of whatever I'm sewing, I stitch up 2 sections of jelly roll as a "leader - ender" project.  The fabrics are nice and bright, and I can hardly wait to see how the strips are going to look when they're assembled into the quilt.  As I was pressing a few of the blocks, I thought that I saw something unusual, so I tried to get a better look.  When you design a fabric line, it might be a good idea to have a proofreader if you're going to use quilty sayings on some of the fabrics - can you see what I found in these 2 strips?

I also have about 1/2 yard of the cream fabric, but the spelling is correct on it - interesting, VERY interesting!

I'll have to make more of an effort to get sewing this week - I'm nowhere near finishing my July ALYoF project, and I'm not sure I have enough time left to finish it.  Maybe I should get back to that now!