Another Thing off my bucket list for this month....

Been catching up with the Cozy Holiday Sampler QAL by Apples and Beavers. I bought this last year and only had time to do 5 of them.  So I gave up.  Now I'm back on track, doing one a week with email prompts from Apples and Beaver.   Sometimes even 2nd one for the week. There are 20 paper piece blocks.  I had 7 of them done before this, so now I have 10.  I wanted to do 4 of the following this month and I marked which ones I have completed.:

• Teddy Bear
• Snowflake - done
• Ms. Santa Claus - done
• Female elf
• Male elf
• Sock wasn't on my list but I got it done.

Sock in blue.

Star with two colors white, one is shiny.

I had fun with this one and the eye glasses were so cute.

I also am in a challenge of the week for water coloring that I found online.  So I completed the following as a practice of a YouTube video I found online.  Below is mine and after is the YouTube video:

Then I purchased some acrylic tubes on Facebook (6 of them but one was bad so I threw it away) and she also gave me some huge canvases for free.  Right away I wanted to use the colors so I painted this:

You can see the sun set better with a light shining on it.  There's also birds in the top left corner.  It was about 30" wide and 46" length.  It really was gorgeous but I didn't have room for it, and my husband said no....   You have to understand I have tons of pictures all over the place, mine in acrylic, mine in watercolor, and my mom's in both watercolor and acrylic (she was a professional artist - she did portraits and landscapes of the prairies.) so I have no room.  I circulate my pictures (take some down and put up new ones).  It's funny how many I have.

So I offered it to three people and all said no.  It's the size.....  Finally I told my husband "Hey listen all I wanted to do is try this out, and I learned something about it, so it's OK, lets give it to a second hand store as a donation".  So off I go to do this and while in the elevator of our condo another person steps in, says she likes it and my husband says "you want it?  It's yours" and she says yes that its a beautiful painting, I say thank you and she's impressed that she knows the artist.  So that seals the deal, she takes it.  Funny hun???

But in the end when I offered the painting to one friend she said no it's too big but she really likes this other one in my place, and I end up giving her that one.  I have way too many pictures, so one less is enough.  But it wasn't enough apparently because I finished another item on my goals list.  This ended up on a wall that my husband said "No pictures are going up here, I want one wall clean, nothing on it".  Not any more:

This was the 2nd part of my challenge of the month to finish a quilt, but really I always wanted to make it, but was always scared to do so,  It had so many little details to add, and then to embroider.  But in the end it's done, and in my own style.  I didn't make it exactly like the pattern, but I still like it and so does my husband.

The 1st part of my challenge of the month to finish was the Cat in the Hat quilt, which I completed a week ago.  You can read about it here at this link but I've included a picture of the quilt below.  Really, it turned out great for a gift for a brand new mother.  She'll love it.  And I'm gifting it with a couple of Dr. Seuss books that I bought at a used book store.  It's perfect!!!  All flannel.

I also did one more as a surprise to my hubby, a quilt he's been asking to get for the past 2 years, his LA quilt.  Here it is.

He's a huge LA Kings and LA Dodger fan, so this just made it for him.  Finally done, 16" by 30 inces and on the wall in the hallway.  He's happy!!!

That's it for quilts.  I'm following Crystal Coast Quilting Guild for the numbers of the quilts to do for the american Quilting Society UFO challenge.  I'm sure I covered 2 of them, and the Summer BOM was an extra that I started this month and completed this month.  That's a first in a long time lol.

I'm also hooking up to Stories from the Sewing Room One Monthly Goal for completing so much and also for starting a new one and finishing it in the month....  Can't believe I did that   Here's my goal stating blog post.  On to the next month.....  and back to school subbing.  Have a great week.

This month I joined the Summer Block Party 2025.  It was a free BOM with some really cool blocks that were 18" big.  The blocks were  so cute I could not resist (and I should of because I was going to add another UFO to the list!!!!).  But instead of a quilt I wanted to make a bed runner, and that's exactly what I did.

There were 9 blocks in total by a great group of people.  I was following A Bright Corner for her links and getting emails from all the girls who were putting this on.  It's over with but I did complete the quilt.  I quilted it, and did all the blocks in a month.  I AM SO PROUD of myself.

Love the bathing suit, but it turned out to be bigger than the other blocks so I had to cut it down a bit.  The hardest block to do was the umbrella with the chairs, something that I really wanted to complete but I made a mistake.  Can you see it?  I want to do that block again so next time I'll do it right, hopefully.

Now the next watercolor challenge:  to paint sea life so this is what I want to attempt:

As for the next quilt, who knows but it will definitely be a new one and one that I started and need to  finish, like the girl with the red blocks all around it (the blocks are from RB and the applique was a piece I found in a 2nd hand store.  It's a quilt I want to make for our bed with no batting, so it's nice and light, especially after this heat wave in BC we're having.  We are in the north, and here Lipton BB was in the 40 degree mark, breaking another record.  What the heck.

Good luck to everyone finishing their UFOs.  Take care.