Wedding Shower Gift and RSC purple Drunkard's path blocks

We were away visiting our daughter last weekend and did not get home until Wednesday night which meant that there was not a lot of sewing time this week. Since the end of July is quickly approaching, I needed to get my purple Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks finished up.  The colour for August is orange so I will dig out my orange scrap bin and my orange selvages this coming week. 

Our daughter is in her friend's wedding party this fall. I decided to make the bride some hot pads as a wedding shower gift.  These are the colours that she likes. The selvages are top stitched down onto the insulbrite and then I add the backing and the binding--my hand stitching project this week. 

A few weeks ago, I showed a block I was making from 100 1.5" HST's.  It has been on the back burner while I made the baby quilt and the Quilt for a Survivor of a residential school but today, I got back at it and finished the block.  It is 10" square.  I'm not even sure what I am going to do with it!  For now, it will just live on my design wall while I wait for inspiration to strike.  I'm always surprised how much the block shrinks after all the seams are sewn. 

We had a fun visit with our daughter and Finn last week. We went on lots of walks. One walk took us past Finn's favourite place--the pet store where they get his food.  He was very disappointed that the store was closed and he could not go in to greet the staff and get a treat. 

In 2019, we purchased tickets to see Hamilton in 2020...  We all know that that didn't happen in 2020, and then it didn't happen in 2021 either, but we did see the play this past week with our daughter.  It was really good--great music and wonderful acting.  The tunes have been running through my head all week! 

I took this picture of some thistles on one of our walks with Finn. Great flowers for purple month!

I will link up with Angela and the RSC folks now and with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

I found a kit in the sewing room...

I am in the process of cleaning out my sewing room.  When we finished our basement several years ago, we had a smallish sewing room made which I used for a little while. It does not have a window and I felt isolated from the rest of the family when I was in there, so I started sewing on the dining room table instead.  A few weeks ago, we cleaned out what used to be the home office and bought new custom sewing furniture for the new sewing room.  You can read about my new furniture here.  I am slowly cleaning up the old sewing room to make it into an organized fabric and sewing supplies storage area.
Here is a "before" picture...not a pretty sight...

Great progress has been made but I still have a ways to go.  I go at it in 15 minute intervals, maybe once or twice a week. It is slowly becoming a more useful space. The shelves actually have bins of fabric on them now...

This week, I found a bin of UFO's and kits waiting to be made.  One of the kits I found was for a hot pad.  The fabric and pattern were all in a little bag.  When Christine was here earlier this week, I worked on the hot pad while she pieced a backing for a new Christmas quilt.

There are 28 5" squares of fabric in this hot pad! 

Tonight, I hand sewed the points of each folded square down and did the binding.

Here it is with all the points sewn down:



The binding is cut on the bias so that it will go around the curve smoothly.



Here is the back.

This hot pad is a gift for someone who does not read my blog. I hope she likes it!

I am linking up to Kathy's Slow Sunday Stitching.

Star Hot Pad Class

I took a class with Jacqui this past Wednesday night and learned how to make these round hot pads. I think I am going to give this one to my MIL for Christmas (don't tell!). I am going to put a loop on the back so that she can hang it up in her kitchen. She likes sheep so she should like the fabric! I would like to make a few more before Christmas. I have a long list of projects to finish before Christmas but I am not crossing them off very quickly!!!