Rainbow Quilts and Other Things

Hello Everyone! We are back from our camping trip and I’ve been trying to get ready for my daughter’s visit this week. We had a great time as usual on our trip although it was hot and humid on the last day. I’ve shared some pictures at the end of this post. Before we left, I had made all the units on the Pumpkin Run table runner. I also spent Thursday and Friday binding the two rainbow quilts.

First though, I want to show you the sunset from our walk a few weeks ago. This farm backs up to the back of the neighborhood and it was just so pretty! I’m looking forward to many pretty sunsets this fall. We have finally had some good rain in the past few weeks and everything greened up nicely again.

Let’s start with the finished quilts.

I started making these quilts at the beginning of 2020 for a guild challenge in Georgia. Each month you were supposed to make blocks in the color of the month. I got a pretty good start with the first couple of colors, then fell behind and Covid hit, then we moved, so they only got worked on sporadically until I finished the tops in late spring.

This one is made from my favorite Moda fabrics. There are several older fabrics in it, especially from older Kate Spain and Sandy Gervais collections. I need to name this quilt. I’m thinking about writing a pattern for it. If I do, it will be free or very reasonably priced.

I’ve been calling this one the Scrappy Rainbow quilt, which it is. Originally, the plan was to donate this quilt to our guild charities. But I have to say, I really like it and am going to keep it. I want to use it as my picnic quilt and take it to wineries to have just in case we need a place to sit.

All the colors came from my fabric collection. I thought this one would be a good scrap buster, but I still have plenty of fabrics to make many more scrap quilts. I had some of the dot fabrics and the background fabric. I did have to buy a few of the dot fabrics to go between the color strips. I may write a quick tutorial for this one, too. I’m glad these are both finished! Now to get to those other lingering partially finished quilts.

Just before we left for camping, I finished all the units for the Pumpkin Run Table Runner by Carried Away Quilting. I was able to lay them out before we left. Please excuse the messy design boards. My to do list includes pulling off the batting and replacing it with new.

I played with my Pumpkins and Blossoms and All Hallow’s Eve fabrics by Fig Tree for two days before deciding what I had wasn’t working.

Pumpkins and Blossoms Vanilla and Charcoal Cinderella Pmpkins

I really wanted to use the above fabric for the background and kept trying to fit in the charcoals and browns that I had in my collections for the star. I just didn’t have the right colors without it looking more like a Halloween table runner and I wanted Fall. So I went off to the local quilt shop looking for something new. The local shop is nice, but does have a limited fabric selection. I brought home several pieces of new fabric and spent another afternoon playing with those. Then I decided to try a different background, the light Timeless Treasures fabric I bought. After I did that, my whole thought process changed to let’s try making the pumpkins white and the stars orange using the Fig Tree fabrics. It was the nice soft look I was going for!

I also ended up with some bonus pieces. When I first saw the construction technique for the star point units, I thought there would be a lot of wasted fabrics.

• 

• 

But, I went ahead and sewed those extra triangle pieces as I went and I have enough units to make another small quilt or pillow. I’m going to try and at least get the blocks for the table runner sewn together before my daughter gets here.

For our camping trip, we chose to go back to Pennsylvania, this time to Codorus State Park in Hanover, just east of Gettysburg. We went to Gettysburg on the first day and walked around, shopped and had a nice lunch because we didn’t do that in May. Placards were all over town explaining what happened in town and what some of the homes and buildings were used for during the war.

Codorus SP is on fairly large lake. There were two marinas, one for powered boats (20 HP or less) and a sail boat launch, plus several places to put in kayaks and canoes. The campground had almost 200 sites, but only a few with full water and electric hookups. There were also quite a few sites with no power. It has a nice large pool and bike and horse trails. There were a few hiking only trails, which of course we did the longer of the two.

We hiked the Mary Ann Furnace trail early the second morning. While searching for the site of the furnace, we hiked past this beautiful setting.

We never did find the furnace, but had a good time looking at the barn. We see this style all over in our part of Virginia, too. We took a peak inside and the beams supporting it were massive and still in good shape. We finished by walking by the lake and heading back to our campsite.

We were supposed to stay for three days, but decided to come home early. The weather the next day was supposed to be hotter than the day we hiked and there were supposed to be severe thunder storms that night. While we were sitting watching the storms at our house the next night, we knew we made the right decision. The whole area we were in was covered with red on the radar. It would not have been a pleasant night in the Rpod worrying about the storms.

I hope you all have a great week and are starting to get a little fall weather. Later this week, it’s supposed to drop into the high 40’s overnight. We should have some nice temperatures for our daughter’s visit. Take care and thanks for stopping by!