Orange You Glad I Sewed Midweek?

 Have had little time for anything other than work and working out but I found a few hours midweek to sew these two Rainbow Scrap Challenge Sampler blocks!  Trying to stay caught up before my cruise...these were really fun to make!  Whirling blades above and Twirling Four Patch below.

Linking up with Angela over at SoScrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  It is fun to watch this group grow every year.  You can join anytime and it really is fun to get a few blocks done each month that turn into a quilt by the end of the year!

Productive Day has More Progress!

I Skype sewed with Barb while Kathy continued work on getting her rows together for Grand Illusion.  A few weeks ago I had decided on a quilt to do for the Nimble Thimbles President's Challenge--Turkey Tracks and had picked out the fabrics.  Today I cut them all out and sewed this together.  The solid red was given to us by Suzie who is our guild president and we were to use it (and add what we want) to a small quilt which is to be bound in black. She also gave us two thimble charms--one to add to the front and one to the label since we are the Nimble Thimbles. It is supposed to represent what Nimble Thimbles means to me.  So Barb helped me come up with a fun name for the quilt--Making tracks to Guild!  I put the quilt themed words in the center (not sure how I am liking them with the green border) to related it to quilting and thought doing four unique fabrics conveys how each member is unique.  I may make another one (I accidentally cut out almost a full set of double blocks (the pattern was for two in one color red and two in a second red..I did all four different colors) so I might as well do one for a future NT quilt auction and one for the challenge for me to keep.  May change the sashing and see if I like it better.
Anyways it was fun and went together in a few hours.
My migraine was gone today by mid morning.  It was THE most productive day I have had in awhile! It was so nice to not feel like crap...got housecleaning, laundry, sheets done and worked out thirty minutes on the elliptical too. I LOVE myself a Sunday!  Oh and the Packers won!

Book Look Blogger's Review of "Brave Queen Esther"

It has been awhile since I did a book review and this book has been waiting patiently for me to get around to it.  From the Adventure Bible Series "Brave Queen Esther" is illustrated by David Miles.  I was looking forward to the book because I do love to hear stories of the women of the bible, however I was not crazy for this story.  I think the lens I look at books is a bit feminist and I would not want to read a story to my children or grandchildren in which the woman is chosen to marry the king because she is beautiful. Why are no internal character traits included?  This ruined the story for me.  

Anyway the story is retold from the bible and is one in which Esther and her cousin Mordecai are secretly Jewish and live in the king's palace.  Another man, Haman, advised the king to be rid of all the Jews and after some prayer Esther went and and confessed her religion to the king and asked him to spare her people. The king agrees and Haman is arrested.  

The story is an "I Can Read! Level 2" book for young children, but it is a bit simplistic with many details that help the story to make sense left out.  Its one redeeming characteristic were the pictures.  Realistic but colorful and fun the pictures were bright and well done.

I was disappointed in this book though I am sure it is difficult to condense a complicated bible story into a book for children--this book gets a 2 from me.

*Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. They did not require me to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”*

Sunday Funday!

 Friday night I quilted and bound this little tablerunner (from Kathy's leftover Celtic Solstice blocks) just in time for Lee and Candy's wedding shower. I had a migraine and didn't go as planned.  And the backing is cute too!

 Also got my 99 back from the repair/cleaning guy.  Martha still runs like top!

 Today I quilted up my paper pieced jackolantern.  Loving it!

 And for more orange, I made my Rainbow Scrap Challenge--Whirler. I am linking up with SoScrappy!

 I also got borders and backing on my Happy Scrappy Halloween Houses and made a backing!

In My Happy Place!

Last weekend I didn't get to blog about Sunday's sewing.  My new tiny laptop/tablet would not post pictures to Blogger.  Today I decided to try downloading Chrome and see if that worked.  It did!

 There is lots of ORANGE going on in this post.  I finished up the binding on Orange Crush which I am keeping for myself, Ros did a fab job on the quilting and the embroidered label.  LOVE IT!.

Finally got the rows together on Colton's Eye Spy quilt.  I may add some borders and get this done so I can pass it on to him.

 Last Tuesday was our Nimble Thimbles guild meeting.  Here are all of the batik blocks everyone did for our last block party for this year.  I really enjoyed that program and am happy I won once!

 We also played Quilto.  I brought in buttons and won three times!

 Not the best picture, but here are my winnings!  Really tickled with the book!

 Today I did the Quiltmaker Bitty Blocks in orange for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge,

 Here are all the blocks so far.  Really fun to make these tiny ones.

 Kathy is making progress on her Grand Illusion too.

 I made another orange Talkin' Turkey blok (and accidentally put peach flying geese on it.  I have two peach blocks to make and a bunch of orange points  UGH!  Looks fine on this block as far as I am concerned.  I may just cut more peach.

 Here are all of the blocks so far.  Half way done since the goal is 24.  This one is the UFO challenge my guild gave me so I have to make some progress on it each month.  I want to do Bonnie's cool border and have not figured out how I will do that with the rainbow yet so I need to get going on it!

 And since I was on a roll, I made two Betty's Choice blocks in orange.  One for me and one for Amy!  Didn't take a picture with all of them this month though.  Linking up with SoScrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

In other news today we ran all over...Pilates, pedi, haircut, shopping, etc.  I am at 101 pounds down now and we are getting up early tomorrow to go hiking because the temp is supposed to be lower than usual for this time of year.  After that up to my brother's place for a pool party.  Glad I got some sewing in today!

Wicked Indigo!

Last Thursday night Kathy and I went and saw Wicked!  A few years ago she gifted DJ and I tickets but didn't get to go herself.  I thought it was time she got to see it too. It was great again!

Sewed up my indigo log cabin bitty blocks today.  Just in time for the next month's pattern to come out.  There just doesn't seem to be enough time for sewing these days.  Not sure if it is my work and exercise schedule or what but just less time that I can sew somehow.

Here are al the bitty blocks so far.

We have a wedding shower and wedding coming up soon (and another wedding after that) and the couple loves green and gold (but not like Packer fans, lol) so I found three of Kathy's leftover Celtic Solstice blocks and added borders to it so we have a table runner for the shower.  I found fun backing fabric and now I just need to get it quilted!

Last weekend we met up with Ros and traded out Orange Crush for Grand Illusion.  I got the binding attached to one side tonight.  Tomorrow I hope to finish it off.

And I caught up on indigo for the RSC.  Here is Mr. Roosevelt's Bow Tie and Road to California.

All three of this month's indigo blocks. Linking up with SoScrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Indigo Sunday!

 I sewed up two blocks for the Nimble Thimbles Block Party today.  Kind of fun to work in batiks since I have been hoarding them but almost never do anything with them.  They gave us the center fabric and we were to add anything batik to it.

 Here is the RSC Betty's Choice in Indigo.  One for me and one for Amy.  These blocks are still super fun to make!  Linking up to SoScrappy!

 And here is the first of the indigo RSC Sampler blocks--this is bullseye!

Challenged myself to do a 5K on my elliptical tonight.  Took me 52 minutes--normally I do 30.  Pretty proud of myself since I could only do two minutes on the thing when I first started!