DrEAMi! #30 A Passle of Pouches and Placemats

Wow, this is a special Drop Everything And Make it! The 30th! That means DrEAMi is in its third year...who knew.

There are a lot of us quilters who chase squirrels. A lot. We see a project that just GRABS our attention and we go a little nuts (pun intended) drop the regular programming, and succumb to tunnel vision to get this new shiny project made and made NOW! That's a quintessential DrEAMi! but there is another type of DrEAMi, that you do Drop Everything but the Making it takes a bit longer than one sitting. I shouldn't take a few months because that isn't a DrEAMi, although it is a distraction and I've had my fair share of those! 

So, once again, with July being full of summer celebration, I'm sure there were some fantastic fat squirrels begging to be 'fed'... but first we need to revisit a couple of quintessential DrEAMi! projects from last month.

I Like/Love #30

Once a month I write my gratitude post, collecting nuggets all month long. Practising gratitude is so worthy an activity.

1. Nana mug
I posted this on Instagram and there is so much within this single photo for which I'm grateful.

I am grateful for:

• my cat, Bella
• the wicker table she is on, shelf that she loves to perch on (usually when it's inside) and grateful that I can buy white paint to turn it back to the white it originally was.
• the Mandevilla vine that has been through so much since last summer, and is doing quite well, despite Rufus pruning it, and even Bella attempting to that morning get a hold of a branch
• that mug. Grateful that I am a nana, grateful that I have two daughters who think of me that one, Brianne would buy me this mug and send it to me in the mail for Mother's Day. It arrived, broken. I was very sad as it is such an à propos phrase to me. About a month and a half later, Dayna showed up with a mug, "I know you said you don't want or need any more mugs, but you're getting this one because it's so perfect." And there was the exact mug that Brianne had sent me! Neither knew of the mug history. Isn't that perfect?
• My beautiful deck, private yard, early morning sunshine, peace, birds twittering, and the first cicada of the season I heard that special morning.

Q3 FAL My List

2019 is half over. Something I thought of the other day is that we are six months away from finishing off the first 20 years of this millennium. It seems like about oh, maybe ten years ago that it was the whole Y2K scare, not 20!

So how did I do in Q2? Not bad!

9/11 finishes off the list! That's the best I've ever done.

Night Watch

I am on a roll! Two challenge pieces done well ahead of time! This month the challenge came from Aurifil, "to use any fabric art/non-traditional quilting/sewing/thread-painting technique using three Aurifil thread weights." We were to include three photos of how weights were used. Photos is never a problem for me! 

All of the fabrics, threads, and batting were provided to me by Island Batik, Aurifil and Hobbs, respectively. Allow me to walk you through the process that ended with this not-square, not round, not oval quilt.

Patio Chillin' Table Topper

This little DrEAMi! happened because I saved all the corner cut-offs from making individual flying geese from Lift Up, (how interesting, posted July 12, 2018, almost a year ago to the day), knowing they'd grow up into something useable, and then it was Wendy who gave me the 'something useable', idea a really cool table centrepiece for her patio table that you can see here at Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life. However, it did get stalled because of really big deadlines. So I put it onto my Q2FAL list because I wanted to use it this summer! I'm so glad I did two DrEAMi sessions to get it done!

TBT #19 My Winter Garden

Yikes! I was happily finishing up visiting DrEAMi! linkups on the deck, enjoying the breeze and birds, and MacGyver came to ask me if there was anything on July 9 as he was setting up lunch with a friend. I opened up my phone calendar, because that date rang a bell. Nada. Went to my dayplanner, which seems ridiculous when one is retired and only works 4.5 hours a week, but it is essential to my life and blog, and what do I see when I open the 2-page spread for the month of July? "TBT - me"
WHAT???

It's Thursday, the first Thursday of the month. I did remember my eldest daughter, Brianne's birthday, so that was the main thing. Incidentally, the ringing of a bell in the recesses of my brain? An afternoon sewing date with a couple of friends!

Anyhow, on with this month's TBT which is for those quilts we made pre-blogging. Mine is from 2005 and is named My Winter Garden.

More Cat Mats and a Wee Tutorial

One of my Q2FAL goals was to make two more cat mats, and on the last weekend in June, I completed the goal. My Q2 list is here.

These will go to the Leamington Kittenaide Program which is an organization of foster homes for cats and kittens in Essex County.