Buelah is about 70% finished now, and I've moved my hoop to the next position.
When I made my way into the sewing room, I finished sewing together Block #24 for the Solstice Challenge. This one is called "Lucky Girl," but mine is to celebrate Memorial Day.
There were two clues to catch up on with Kathleen Tracy's Welcome Home Small Quilt Mystery Challenge. Clue #6 was to make 4 churn dash blocks. These are 3 1/2-inches square.
Clue #7 was to take the nine patches and 3 1/2-inch squares I made a while back and sew them as the next border around the quilt center.
It might be a little too scrappy, and this is my gripe about mystery quilts. If I can't see what the quilt looks like ahead of time, I'm not very good at choosing fabrics. My goal with this one was to use scraps from my stash, and I've done that. There's so much color and contrast, it's a little hard to see the house in the middle. Oh well...onward. There are still quite a few blocks already made, and more clues to come. It might end up a kitty quilt when it's finished.
Sadie was no help at all. She was lying down on the job today.
Earlier, she and Smitty had been hanging out on their catio. Smitty, gentleman that he is, kindly allowed her to have the corner shelf, which is ordinarily his territory.
This seems as good a time as any to tell you that Mike and I have been easing into the Cooking Light Diet over the past several weeks. It was a little hard to keep up with it while we were traveling, but now that we're home, we've gone hard core. I'd been watching the ads pop up on my feed on Facebook, and all the food looked really good to me. Back in May, I took the plunge and subscribed to the website. It's $38 for six months worth of menus (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack), all from Cooking Light recipes. As a bonus, I got $5 off for the first six months, so it's fairly inexpensive to give it a try.
So far, the food has been very good. We really haven't had anything we didn't like. It seems like a lot of food, and so we have not been hungry. The website is very easy to use, and the meals are fairly simple to make. If you don't like the suggested meal, you can request something different. What I liked most about it is that the recipes are searchable, and so I can make it work for the CSA vegetables in a given week's share. Dinner from a few nights ago was a Sausage and Broccoli Flatbread (essentially, a pizza) with a kale Caesar salad. I had Romaine on hand, and so I used that instead of the kale.
It was really good. I'd make it even if we weren't on the diet! There's also a Facebook community (if you're into that), and I've found that helpful. Folks post the recipes they've tried and liked, and people are very helpful about answering questions and offering support.
So, we're keeping it up. I gained a couple of pounds while we were traveling, and taking those into account, I've lost four pounds since we've been back. Mike has lost six. Not bad at all. Of course, we don't expect that rate of loss to continue, but it's encouraging. Next week, we have a goal to start walking more. We've both been waiting for him to retire to make it a little easier to work on getting more exercise and taking off a few pounds.
Today we're heading off to the Farmer's Market with Erik and Mae. Certainly I don't need a single thing from the farmer's market, but I might pick up a few things for canning. If I can find some tomatillos, I'll work on fortifying our supply of salsa verde. We're working on the last jar now.
11 comments:
I don't do mystery quilts since it's a lot of work to end up with something I don't like, Bonnie Hunter tempts me though since her's always seem to be gorgeous.
Ditto for the mystery quilts.....few give you enough details for fabric choices or placements. I spent tons of money for one mystery and had to change and alter it in the end as the pattern was so bad.
I've not done a mystery quilt as I like to know how a quilt is going to look before I get started, but I do love scrappy quilts and yours looks fun. Good luck with the weight loss and getting a little fitter. I will get back to it after two more chemo treatments. I have managed to hold my weight steady but getting enough exercise is getting quite difficult now. I lost a stone in the second half of last year and need to lose another stone later this year.
I should have joined Kathleen Tracy's Welcome Home Small Quilt Mystery Challenge. I realize now that I did not need the small and Scrappy book to join the mystery. I have finally ordered the book, so I will need to pay closer attention to the Facebook group. I also need to find the 12 week mini sew along you posted earlier this week. It looked like a fun project, too. I bound two mini quilts. a lap quilt that my Granddaughter pieced and an over size twin that my Daughter-in-law pieced. My husband quilted the two larger ones and I used my embroidery unit and a program called Edge to Edge quilting on the Mini's. I will try to post them tomorrow. We try to get the whole family engaged in quilting!
A friend and I were just chatting about mystery quilts this weekend and feel the same as most of you. Neither of us like not being able to see the finished product. It makes it a challenge to choose colors. Yours isn't so bad; you might end up liking it in the end (or the kitties will). The Cooking Light diet sounds interesting. How are the breakfasts?
To continue the comment theme.....I, too, am leery of the mystery quilt idea...unless there is some common element (a 'solid') that will obviously be the common tie-together. The stash-busting variety is even more questionable, since extreme print "busy-ness" overall seems to be the common end. I like your center block and would possibly add some embellishments to more clearly define its dominance, but, either left as is or altered, it will be a very cheerful scrappy stash buster finish.
You've done a positive act in announcing your weight loss plan. When you publicly make that statement it gives more weight (😜) to your words. My husband and I are on the medical weight loss program. Is it severe? Yes. He went on it to support me. It's a 1 and a half year program as it isn't just about going on a diet. We all know what we need to do. It's just as much about changing your thinking. Aside from the low calories and no cooking and little chewing in the first phase you get more time to work on your hobbies! The kitchen stys pretty clean, too. The one thing I've come to accept is you can't only exercise off your pounds, you can maintain a weight but you will need to cut the calories to the right amount and type.
Good luck on your plan.
I love the scrappy look of the Mystery quilt and your embroidered Beulah looks wonderful, you could add a few embroidery touched to the house block to define it more if you think it looks lost. Good for you on the weight loss, I myself am down 3 this week and every loss is a win.
Beulah is an interesting character! It's quite the combination of food that she has in her bags!
I love mystery quilts and love how your mystery is turning out! Scrappy is my favourite!
ENjoy your stitching!
I have been pretty happy with the mystery quilts that I've done. I did stick with a color theme for each one. One my first ones was pink and cream & green and I am NOT much of a pink person - but my Mom loved it so that worked. I did one with orange & turquoise and boy was that BRIGHT! I ended up sending it to a gal who sent a bunch of quilts to deployed soldiers & heard that "my" soldier was very happy with the bright colors. I was thinking on your mystery, maybe outlining the center house with black embroidery or stitching would make it show up more? I like all the scrappy blocks, but there's nothing wrong with a new quilt for the cats either!
I enjoy mystery quilts, but I usually limit myself to ones that do a good job of describing up front how the fabrics will work together. Yours is very fun, I like the scrappy look.
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