What Color is Humidity?

If you follow along with the quadrillion several block of the month's that I'm making this year, the theme I am using for the Country Threads BOM is colors or fabrics that remind me of the calendar month.

June is the beginning of Georgia's long summers of smog alerts and humidity.  Sometimes this starts in May and stretches all the way through October.  This year, we have had more moderate temperatures (less than 90 F) and lots and lots and lots and lots of rain and thunderstorms.  For the past several years, Georgia has been in a miserable drought.  This year is making up for all that.

So what color is humidity?  I couldn't come up with anything so send me your suggestions and I can use it next month or in August.

I did come up with this color combination for the small 6" block to represent the nearly daily thunderstorms we have had this year.  Stormy grays and black to represent the dark clouds rolling in.

For the 12" block, I used this weird mustardy brown color to represent the smoggy summers in Atlanta. And the pattered fabric in the pinwheels looks like suns.  This year, the rain has helped keep the air quality better than in other years. 

I still need to catch up on the Blogger Girls BOM.  In between the rainy days I have been busy busy busy with outside projects, while the temperatures are moderate--priming and painting my porch, reglazing windows, washing windows, refinishing an Adirondack chair, and all sorts of un-blogworthy chores.

As Google Reader keeps reminding me, Google Reader is going away at the end of this month (sob!).  After much research, I moved all the blogs I follow over to Feedly (I decided that bloglovin was not for me).  I found Feedly easy and useful and it works well on the laptop and on iVan the iPhone.  

May Blocks & Cat-Mom Day

I hope everyone had a great mother's day yesterday.  I celebrated Cat-Mom Day since I had a rare mother's day Sunday off from Starbucks.  The cats decided to celebrate Cat-Mom Day by waking me up every half hour beginning at 4AM and continuing until I finally relented and got out of bed at 8ish.  Apparently, the cats did not get the memo that the only thing I wanted to do was sleep in for a change....

Of course, being cats, they were all back to sleep by mid-morning....
Case in point:  Remy basking in the sunlight.  I *may* have woke him up after taking this photo.

Remy Kitty 

Nameless Star

 I did get some sewing time in this weekend and since it's nearly halfway through May, I thought better get caught up on those BOMs and BOWs that keep rolling on in.

First up, this week's Votes for Women block. An easy peasy one for a change.

The Civil War Dixie Diary BOM for May and April (below)

Country Threads BOM Sampler 12" block and 6" block (below).

Centennial: New Zealand Victory

More Votes for Women:  catch up blocks from December. There are 10 more blocks to go and I am still 9 blocks behind so it is a race to catch up to the end.  I hope to get more done this week.  

Capital T:  Sarah Pellet

April Blocks

Some sewing but no finishes yet for this month.  I had a wonderful day visiting with my IRL friend and sewing buddy Karin at Life in the Slow Lane.  It was supposed to be a sewing playdate but we spent the whole time chatting and catching up since I haven't seen her in a couple of months.  Although no actual sewing was done, we did talk about:

1. projects we need to finish
2. projects we will probably start instead of finishing (#1) above 
3. speciality rulers that we bought but haven't used
4. the likelihood of beginning projects involving said (#3) rulers
5. the status of buying new fabric vs. using stash
6. new fabric lines that we would like to buy but really don't need to and will not buy even though we really want some
7. whether above #6 ever works in real life
8. the status on a scale of 1-10 of piles of fabric/projects/general chaos in our respective sewing rooms
9. the likelihood that we would do any or all of the above (#1-4) before organizing said sewing room
10. our cats

Thank you again Karin for a wonderful day and lunch too! Next time we really will work on hexagon projects already started (not new projects) and use fabric from our stash (not the new Minick and Simpson we kept talking about).

The first week in April brings new Block of the Month blocks:

Blogger Girl's BOM block #4, version 1

and version 2

Country Threads BOM (I'm doing a calendar month theme and trying to use up a bag of Jo Morton fabric.)

For this month's churn dash blocks, April reminds me of Easter (even though this year Easter was in March) and bright green leaves and newly opened flowers.

 6" block has purple and cream (similar to the irises blooming in my front yard now)

and fabric for the 12" version reminds me of the Eastern Redbud trees that bloom this time of year.

March Blocks

I am keeping up with the (several) Blocks of the Month that I'm working on this year.  Here is block 3 for Barbara Brackman's Dixie Diary quilt.

The Country Threads sampler with blocks in two sizes is lots of fun.  I am making mine in colors that remind me of each month.  For March, of course, green for St. Patrick's Day with some vaguely shamrocky looking fabrics .  

March 12" block

March 6" block

March is also Women's History Month so I used Jo Morton's "lady" fabric for the second 12" block.

Block 9 for the Fat Quarter Shop's Designer Mystery quilt.  I better get hopping on the finishing kit and get some rows sewn together.

More Blocks of the Month

I hope everyone in the Northeast is snug and warm and/or digging out after the big blizzard!!  I've been looking at photos of the amazing amount of snow dumped on you in  just a few hours. Up to 30" in some areas WOW!

I spent yesterday afternoon working on some 2013 blocks of the month from blogland.  (Like I need to add more to the list...)

Remy was an excellent supervisor.



Country Threads is celebrating their 30th year in business this year with a free online quilt sampler. Their designs were some of the first that I made when I began quilting in 2001.  In keeping with my theme this year of joining in on too many blocks of the month using up fabric, I got out my bag of Jo Morton fabrics and am using those for most of these blocks.  For this sampler,  a 12" and 6" block is made each month. For a color theme, I'm picking colors that remind me of each month of the calendar.  Here are January's blocks in blue; January is either dreary and cold or clear skies and sunny so to me, that says blue.

I also think this sampler would be great in solids or bright modern fabrics (I'll just stick with making this one version though).






February's blocks are red for Valentine's day.

I also finally decided on the fabrics for Barbara Brackman's 2013 Civil War block of the month, Dixie Diary  I have a fat eighth bundle of Barbara's Metropolitan Fair line.  Does anyone remember why I purchased it?  I couldn't remember so I decided to use it for this quilt along with some assorted other reproductions.  I decided to make the 12" versions of the blocks and use the recommended on-point layout to make a full-size quilt.  Again, trying to use up that stash.Here is January's block.  

And February's block.  I am making only stars for the appliqué (not a heart-kinda girl) and decided to do machine-applique, figuring I was more likely to keep up with these blocks with a quick appliqué method rather then needle-turn.  I also found fabric for the setting blocks and triangles in my stash. 

More shopping in my stash and I have the backings and bindings for two quilts that I need to get basted and quilted on my days off next week. Hooray for a productive Friday.  Today was a long, busy day at Starbucks and I got nothing done this afternoon except a taking nap and watching The Walking Dead marathon.