Placemats, MHMH blocks, and Nature Pretties

 So, it's been a minute. May was a busy month for our family. We went to the Chicago area on the train for our granddaughter's choir concert (so good!), then we went back by car for her 8th grade graduation (and more singing), her weekend volleyball tournament and our grandson's baseball tournament. In between I did a tiny bit of sewing. That's what Meals on Wheels placemats are for: tiny sewing when you don't have a lot of time. I sewed the binding of one during one of our trips, but didn't really have time to finish the other two until we got home.  And here they are.

You might recognize the fabrics from this first one. They are the leftovers of the double churn dash quilt I made in April. Each set of churn dashes had one unused set of HSTs so I stitched them together with the leftovers of the backing fabric.

I had just enough fabric for the back along with a very old scrap for the binding. I used an old spool of rainbow colored thread for meandering quilting. As usual, the size is 18 by 14 inches.

For my next placemat I used my new favorite way of construction, using a leftover piece of fabric (this one is from a pillowcase I made for my granddaughter a few years ago) and finding bits of scraps to make a colorful strip and some binding.

I was able to use more of the black print for the back, but had to make another colorful strip to make it fit. Quilting was with the same rainbow colored thread I used on the first placemat.

I found another larger scrap for my third placemat. Leftovers of a top I made a few years ago in a sew along with Bernie of Needle and Foot. (Thanks for the memory, Bernie and the fabric which I bought from you, too.) It was fun picking out browns for the strip.

There was plenty of fabric left for a simple backing. I quilted wavy walking foot lines with off white thread, and used a leftover bit of a tiny brown check for the binding.

I thought these photos were a bit boring, so I tried a bit of staging. Meh. I'm not a still life photographer. Backgrounds and good lighting are a mystery to me. Oh well. 

Okay, one more look at all of them together and then we'll move on to June's progress so far.

This quarter of the Many Hands and Many Hearts block collection hosted by Cynthia is a version of the Potato Chip block made in complementary colors. What fun for another project that can be done a little at a time. (I won't promise that it will keep things neat. Those little scraps pile up everywhere.) I had so much fun choosing scraps. I started with my bins and used up whatever could be cut to the right size. Then I dug in my drawers for other pieces. These are still mostly scraps, but they are bigger than the ones in my bins because I can wrap them on a piece of cut-up comic book board to fit my drawers. I tried not to repeat too many fabrics. 

First, orange and blue.

Red and green.

And, yellow and purple.

The lighting is not great in these photos. Our house tends to be darker in summer than in winter because of trees. Imagine them as brighter. I found that I tended to place fabrics sort of symmetrically with similar hues or values placed across from each other, often diagonally. This seemed to bring a bit of order to the scraps and helped me place more modern and more vintage fabrics in the same block. 

Here they all are together.

Kind of saturated. It will be fun to see how they get placed with the blocks of other contributors. 

So enough of the dark interior photos. Let's finish with what's going on outside this month. 

Peony

Spike Speedwell

Liatris coming up

More spikes with penstemon

Baby Spikes

First daylily of the year

Cute deer on our bike ride this week

And a gorgeous rainbow at golden hour out our front door

And one more just for fun. The sunrise bothers me three hours before I'm ready to get up, so I finally did something about it. I grabbed some old soft knit scraps from long-ago baby or doll clothes sewing,  rough-cut three layers, sandwiched some tee shirt mask tie loops from Covid sewing days and messily sewed them all together. As soon as the sun comes in, I grab the mask, and it's back to sleep I go. It actually works. Perfect. But probably a bit scary looking to my husband. Maybe someday, I'll make a pretty quilted one. But probably not. Ha Ha.

That's it for this month. I have some ideas swirling for another quilt, so we'll see what happens over the next few months. I'm linking this up with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap on Sunday. In the meantime, I hope you are enjoying projects whether big or small as well as the beauty of nature. 

Hope. Such a wonderful word. Something we all need now more than ever.

(Just a reminder: I'm not affiliated with ( any company, so when I mention products, services, or stores, I'm just documenting what I used or liked, not officially promoting anything.)