RSC, Other Scraps and More

Lots of bits in this post. It's a fun summer of sewing. First off, more blocks for Rainbow Scrap Challenge/52 weeks of Scrappy Triangles. Blue again. This time, darker blues, maybe? Since all of my blocks are half dark blue, I wasn't sure I wanted to do these. But I found some prints with some dark blues in them to mix in that wouldn't blur into the navy HSTs. 

Five blocks since there were five Fridays this month. Funny, last batch of blues was also a five-block month, so they've kind of taken over the quilt. That's okay. I'll need to make extra blocks for a whole quilt, and other colors will get repeated, too. Here's the year so far:

Let's play a game: Spot the misplaced block 

I think it needs some orange and turquoise, don't you? I suspect by the time I post this we will know the next color.

I've also been collecting new fabrics this year in the color of the month. I really didn't want any blue as my mission lately has apparently been to get rid of blue. So I bought a loooong length of black dot fabric instead for my next quilt project and then realized that it also fits with the color of the month because an alternate color for this month was dark neutrals. 

So what am I doing with all this dotty fabric? It's the background for another scrappy project: the Confetti Quilt by Rachel Hauser. She had a quilt-along for this pattern recently. I couldn't take part, but now I can make it. It's a fascinating pattern for me. Crumb blocks. If you've read my other scrappy posts, you will know that I don't really care for making crumb blocks. But these are different--a combination of chain piecing scraps to width-of-fabric strips and paper foundation piecing. There are four different blocks to mix together so that the whole quilt will look improv pieced. I love it!! I have pieced three of the first block so far, all from the scrap bins. (Well, except for that background). I'll have more to share about this quilt later.

What else have I been making? I do have my Mercyful Positivity Quilt-Along Quilt finished. But it has to wait for its turn to shine (on location!) later in August. I can show you these placemats that I made from the bonus HSTs from snowballed corners of that project. I'm proud to say I used them up (and added four extras to complete the last placemat). These were sort of fun to make, but more fiddly than I expected. In fact, I think it takes as long to make a set of placemats as it does to make a quilt. Worthwhile to use up scraps, though, and to make for donations to Meals on Wheels. 

This one is 14 1/4 by about 18 inches. I quilted it with turquoise thread in the dark areas and off-white in the lights. Too time consuming, and lots of threads to bury. I needed to piece the back to have enough fabric, but I like it.

 

This one is 13 1/4 by 17 1/2 inches. Diagonal quilting with off-white thread. Pretty rustic quilting. I had pressed seams open and was pretty wobbly in following them. But overall it's fine. Note to self: no in-the-ditch quilting on these projects. Here's the back (easy peasy, and two different lime prints for the binding to use up scraps):

The last is my favorite.

This one is 13 by 18 1/4 inches, with simple off-white quilting in wavy lines. So quick!! And another easy back:

I hope to make more placemats to use up scraps. I learned from this little project how to make them more quickly, so I think I'll enjoy them more. Bigger pieces, simple quilting will be the way to go.

One more project for July. This one is not scraps, but I want to share it. My granddaughter was here a couple of weeks ago and bought some fabric for a purse. At 9 1/2 years old and well on her way to 5 feet tall, she had outgrown (in more ways than one) the mermaid purse I made for her several years ago. I made the new one sort of based on this pattern by Aleah at no time to sew, but I made lots of changes to it (size, process, materials) but it was a good place to start. I won't share how I made it here except to say that as a mostly reluctant bag-maker, I was slow, slow, slow, measuring 50000 times, reading 1000 tips on the internet, and cutting/sewing once. 

I really like the combination of fabrics she chose.

Four pockets inside, and

a big pocket on the back for all of her treasures. I did check with Allison at New Every Morning, as she has been making bags lately, and decided to cut my batting smaller so that there was no sewing through it. It made a huge difference in ease of sewing, and I was able to make the entire purse on my Singer Featherweight without it balking at the bulk. For anyone interested, the purse is 8 by 11 by 2 inches, just the right size for a growing girl and all her stuff.

Okay, I can't resist just a few more photos. We haven't been vacationing yet, but we did go to my dad this week, and instead of taking the highway, took the backroads for a day-cation. We passed some barn quilts; this is the only one I could get a photo of.

And then, this hayfield. It was gorgeous. Photos just don't do justice to a hayfield, but I tried.

Couldn't capture the expanse and light. But, backroads rock!

I hope your July projects and activities brought you as much joy as mine. Sometimes little things are so satisfying! 

I'm linking up this Saturday with Angela at So Scrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday and this Sunday with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap.

Okay, now back to those Confetti scraps.

(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.)  

The Positivity QAL Link-up 2

Uh, oh, I've gone way ahead on the Positivity Quilt Along that Preeti at Sew Preeti Quilts set up to benefit Mercyful Quilts, a hospital hospice program that Bernie at Needle and Foot champions. You can read about both the QAL and the program by clicking on those links to their websites, and you can look back at my last post for my quilt up until now. 

My problem is that once I started this quilt, I just could not adhere to the schedule. I wanted to sew and sew and sew. And after my last post, I forgot all about taking photos as I worked. So I have no whole flimsy photos. Let's pretend that my quilt has not been done for several weeks. I'll show you a couple bits and pieces, and in my next post I'll try to have some photos out in the wild (if it ever stops raining) and the stats. 

Let's look at a section of the back first.  

I challenged myself to find something at the sidewalk sale of a local fabric store. I really wanted to stay with the geometric fabric print theme. There were hundreds of bolts, but, I kid you not, only one bolt that had anything that seemed like it would work. I was hoping for something lighter because I didn't really want the quilting to show so much, but the tiny print in this navy fabric worked fine to (mostly) disguise any quilting issues. We'll just call those wobbles my signature style of walking foot quilting. I had some leftover pieces from the front and decided to work them into a strip to add a little more vibrancy. 

Here's a closer view of the backing fabric. (Those little turquoise dots really do work well with the front):

Here's the flimsy on my basement floor (because rain outside) waiting to be trimmed. (Ignore the fact that it's quilted.)

For the binding I cut more blues (still trying to use them up and getting closer). The binding looks like solid navy here, but it is those same tone-on-tone prints that I used for the plus signs. 

Remember all those bonus HSTs? I knew that if I didn't use them right away, they'd go into the scrap bin never to be seen again. I played around with them a bit and came up with some placemat ideas. Our local Meals on Wheels program collects these through a local fabric store to gift to the recipients each spring.  This one is waiting for a back.

And this one needs a border to bring it up to the requested size.

I tried to keep fabric placement random, but now I see some side-by-side stars that look a lot alike. (Funny how photos let you see what you don't notice in fabric.) Oh, well. Random is random. I have enough yellow and cream HSTs left yet to make one or two more placemats. 

I'm linking up today with Bernie at Needle and Foot, where we are sharing our progress in the Positivity QAL.

I'll be back with the finish link-up on August 22. In the meantime, I need to scope out some places for a photo shoot, finish the placemats, and get started on my next quilting adventure.

I hope your quilt-making is positively delightful this month! 

 

The Positivity QAL link-up 1

Recently I made a quilt to use up all my blue fabric. Okay, I'll wait until you finish laughing. Who uses up all their blues? The quilt was intended for donation to Mercyful Quilts, a project near and dear to Bernie's heart at Needle and Foot. The quilts are donated to a hospital hospice program to comfort patients and their loved ones. Well, my quilt ended up instead in my blue-loving husband's hands for his birthday, so I knew I needed to make another for Mercyful. At just the right time, enter Preeti at Sew Preeti Quilts to encourage us to participate this summer in The Positivity QAL to benefit Mercyful quilts by making a plus block quilt. You can read all about it in her post about her original quilt and in the related tab at the top of her blog. There is a lot to read, including block options/instructions, layout ideas, a schedule for making/linking up and tips.

So, of course, another opportunity to use all of my blues. Ha Ha. Again. I chose a bunch of tone-on-tone dark blues that read solid from far but have subtle designs when viewed from a lap. When Preeti posted the possible blocks, I knew the one with snowball corners was the way I wanted to go. 

I used my Quiltography app on my Ipad to plan the color layout, with mostly blues for the pluses and some turquoise and lime green sprinkled in, and the green and lots of assorted yellow scraps for the snowball corners. (For the darkest teals in the plan, I used a dark blue fabric with teal dashes in it.) I made 6 different colorations of blocks, some with 4 yellow corners and some with 2 yellow and 2 green corners on the diagonals. I had a fat quarter of a neutral that I bought recently, and guess what the design was. Pluses!! I ordered four more yards of it, and that became the background and overall inspiration for my colors. 

Preeti generously gave us the whole summer to make this quilt, figuring that quilters would have lots of other activities occupying their time. (Especially this year!!) The early part of my summer was uncertain with Federal jury duty for a month and then possible need for lots of daycare help for my son and DIL due to my son's nasty softball knee injury. Thankfully, I was never called for a jury, and my son did not need surgery, just a long recovery period. But I had started working ahead on the quilt just in case I needed to take a break, and once I got started, I couldn't stop. So this project kind of turned into a squirrel. I threw the schedule out the window. By the time Preeti shared the optional layouts I was well on my way to a quilt. Good thing, too, because if I had followed the schedule I would have been still dithering over all the possibilities Preeti shared with us. 

I put the main pieces of the pluses on the design wall curtain to plan the placement.

Corners in progress:

It was really hot for several days, so I moved my pressing station to the basement. Aaah.

The only thing I don't like about snowball corners is the waste. I sewed the extra seams on this project, so now I have a bunch of HSTs that I'm going to challenge myself to actually use. Maybe in placemats? With more blues? Ha!

Placement was random and easy for putting up the snowballed corners on the design wall, probably because I had so many different yellows.

Arms of the pluses waiting to put it all together:

Because I chain pieced this, it was really easy to make the blocks quickly. And because I get bored--or maybe it's impatient--sewing a whole quilt together after the blocks are all done, I did the joining as I went. As you read this, the binding is made and the quilt is more than half quilted. But in the spirit of a relaxed-pace QAL, I'm going to stay with the schedule for linking up, and I'll just share the top half of the quilt for now. 

How about a few close-ups?

Okay, I'll stop. If you haven't decided whether to participate in this QAL yet, I strongly encourage you to. It's really doable, whether you spread it out summer style or chase that squirrel. (I've seen that even Preeti has thrown out the schedule for her quilt.) And it's for a wonderful purpose. I'm linking up with Bernie on Sunday for the first linky party to share our progress. Thanks to Preeti and Bernie for getting this all together! 

We interrupt this post for a weather statement. I'm sure I'll have lots of time to quilt over the next few days. We are in a non-stop rainy weather pattern, so there really isn't much else to do. I've had to move plants from my deck to my covered front porch to keep them from getting water logged, and I've tented the ones I can't move. 

This afternoon I took the tents off because some storms were predicted, and I didn't want them to blow away. While writing this post (Saturday) we had to go to the basement for awhile for a tornado warning. I did cut some zinnias for our table just before the storm hit. Aren't they cute? Anyway, spending some time in the basement and in rainy weather just reminds me once again: I really need some hand work to pick up at odd times. Any ideas? (Other than EPP)

In my last post, I mentioned that I'm going to use follow.it for people who want to follow my blog by email. So if you have been following me through email notifications with the old service in the past (or want to follow me in the future) please sign up in the box at the top of the right side bar to continue getting emails. (I hope I set it up right.) I'll also put a heads-up on Instagram when I write a new post. I'm still mulling over how I will find you to keep following your blogs if you also are losing the old notification system.

Okay. Bye now.

(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.)  

Purples

Before I get to Purple, I want to draw your attention to the top of my sidebar on the right. There's a new widget there to follow this blog by email. If that's how you follow me, please take a moment to sign up again. By now you may know that the old email service for following this blog is going away. I'm going to try follow.it instead, but I'm not tech savvy enough to transfer subscribers myself, so thanks for helping me out. You've probably seen posts by other bloggers about this. I plan to also put a note on Instagram when I put a new blog post up, so that might be helpful to you, too. I'm most concerned that I will have trouble finding your blog now that my email notifications are also going away, and am still mulling over how to approach that issue. Change is not fun, but I'll figure it out. I've adjusted before...

Anyway. Purple. 

Purple was a challenge this month. My goal for Rainbow Scrap Challenge and 52 Weeks of Scrappy Triangles is to use as many scraps as possible from my multicolored scrap bin. And there just wasn't much to pick from with purple or with the sizes I needed. So the combinations in these blocks might seem a bit odd. One thing I do like, though, is how each block sort of has its own personality. And there is purple in every scrap.

And when they get together with all their friends from the other months--ooh, I like a lot!

My purple stash has been pretty poor for a long time, so I knew an infusion was needed this month. Now it just so happened that we noticed a quilt shop we hadn't seen before in a strip mall while we were on our way from our son and DIL's home a few weeks ago. The shop wasn't open at the time we passed by, but we knew we'd be going that way again in a few days. In the meantime, I looked the place up online and discovered that their whole inventory was on an etsy site. It was fun seeing what was available, and that made it easy to make a quick stop on our way home after our next trip to the kids.

The top two groupings of fabric are from that store: Hartland Quilt Shop and Sewing Studio. My favorite purples have blue tones, but I did buy reddish ones, too, because I liked the prints. I'd like to find a few more bluish purples with a little more figure in them, but I can collect them gradually. Oh, and the three purples at the bottom of the photo? Impulse buy at my local quilt shop the other day when I was buying something else. :)

So that's purple There are still a few days of June left. I could make one more purple block--or I could wait and do a block in the color for next month. We shall see...

Until next time, have fun with your scraps. And if you can, please check back here tomorrow for a post related to a QAL for a purpose. Yes, two blog posts this weekend!!

I'm linking this up today with Angela at So Scrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday and on Sunday with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap.

Oh, and don't forget to sign up for the email notifications.

(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.)  

Clearly Red

I'm late, I know. We'll just pretend it's Saturday. I'm going to sneak in here real quick to share my Rainbow Scrap Challenge/52 Weeks of Scrappy Triangles blocks for May. These days I prefer clear reds, and my supply of them is a bit thin. But I made it work, using as many of my multi-color scraps as possible along with the reds. (That bin is still jam packed, though.)

I'm loving the dark blue triangles with the colors. These blocks were fun to put together if we forget about how long it took to get the ladybug almost all the way on the block. Lots of do-overs, but I think it was worth it to get that scrap in kind of the right place. 

Here's how the year of RSC/Triangles looks so far. (Fuzzy photo, I know, but I was in hurry and the light was dim. I'll get a better one next time.) 

Still crazy, but in a good way. I will definitely have to supplement with additional blocks at some point or continue the project into next year to have enough blocks for a quilt of a decent size.

It's time for a red infusion, so this time I bought an already-put-together bundle from Winter Creek Cloth. I don't usually care for bundles as I'm picky about what's in them. But this one was perfect. The fabrics are from all different lines and are just the kinds of prints I'm trying to build: perky, but still reading as a single color. 

So that's May. I've been occupied with a whole lot of non-quilty things lately, so I'm happy to have just this much to show for now. I'm excited to begin the Positivity QAL with Sew Preeti Quilts this month. I'm glad she is making this a leisurely sew. I do have some of my plus parts cut and am planning to cut backgrounds today so that I can hopefully keep up. (Yes, really. I'm on call for jury duty this month and have some other things going on, too, so I need to kind of work ahead while I can in case I'm needed elsewhere.) Do go over and check out her blog. She has a tab for the QAL to follow the parts after you read her post about her quilt. This will be a fun project with lots of layout options. And it's for a great cause. 

I'm linking up today with Angela at So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap.

(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.)  

Squirrels for Safelight

I was relaxing and reading through some blogs a few days ago, as one does, and suddenly a big squirrel popped up in the form of the annual collection of bags for cosmetics and sunglasses (and now, tissues, too) that is happening this month by Carole of From My Carolina Home for Safelight Domestic Violence shelter . In my fogginess of last year, I totally missed it, and it seems that might have happened again this year if not for the blog post. Actually, it was one bold squirrel. Then her shyer, more elegant sister ventured out after I responded to the first one. 

Anyway, here was my project this week. It should have only taken an hour or so, but because I can never make a set of these bags without complicating the process, it took me a few days. 

I had some lovely fabric that I won maybe three years ago in a giveaway through Sandra at Musings of a Menopausal Melon--mmm quilts!. Wonderlust by Paula Nadelstern for Benartex. I had used some of it in other projects, including some bags for Safelight. I still had some of these marbled pieces. I loved the look and luxurious feel of them, but they had never quite fit with other projects, so I knew it was time to use them. I didn't have large enough pieces to just cut and sew, so I decided to do some improv piecing. I had to also piece one of the linings, but it all worked out well. I quilted with free motion flowers, stipples and wiggles using several different colors of threads. Here are the outsides of two of the bags before the final construction. 

And the linings.

Fronts

Backs

Peeky lining

I was pleased with the set and was ready to package it up and send it. But then that shy squirrel whispered, "Why make only one set, when two sets are just as easy to send?" Well, yes, I could do that. I searched through some other fabrics that I had won in a Fenceline Fabrics giveaway through Rachel Hauser last year. There was a lovely fat quarter of leafy fabric with a metallic sheen that I really liked, but also knew that it might never really fit in with the fabrics I usually use in quilts. It needed to shine on its own. It would have been so easy to just pick a lining and sew it up. But I noticed that the design was directional (I probably am the only one who would have noticed this, but I did), so I made some additional cuts  with added seam allowance to shift the fabric so that it would all be facing the same way when folded into a bag. In the same batch of giveaway fabric I found a sweet tiny plus peach fabric that picked up on the copper metallics in the main fabric, and thought to use it as a liner. The only place it would show was on the tissue holder where it would make a piped edge. I thought that was a shame, so I decided to add a strip to both of the other bags. See, this is why these bags take me longer. I just can't stop fiddling. I had to first measure carefully to make sure I had enough fabric in my fat quarter to do this. I did--just barely. I was going to slice and insert the strips, but that would have required lining things up carefully, so after stitching a 1 1/2 inch strip diagonally across main pieces of the bags,

 I folded the strip up to the stitched line, pressed it, 

and then folded it up again and stitched along both edges. 

That looked so much better to me. I think it makes the bags coordinate with each other more. Then I free motion quilted wiggly lines back and forth. 

A little crease-y--I've been folding these a few times.

I fiddled more, sewing the hook-and-loop closures on. I had been using blue thread, but didn't want it to show on the peach strip, so I changed thread colors part way through. Fiddle, fiddle. 

These were a lot of fun to make. Someday I really have to make a set without all the little changes. But I work with the fabric I have on hand, and it tells me what it wants. (Or maybe it's those pesky sweet little squirrels that tell me.) 

These projects are so satisfying (and probably usually really quick). Each set uses two fat quarters with little waste, and are a great way to use up those cut-offs of batting that don't work easily for other projects. Plus, they are a wonderful way to fill the tote bags that Carole puts together for Safelight every year to brighten the lives of people going through a really tough time. If you haven't made any, go check out her site. Yes, I do complain that they take me more time than they should, but they are also a neat way to try something a little creative and to practice quilting motifs. I have to say one thing, though, to quilters who quilt with lots of colors of thread to match their fabric: As a person who usually quilts with one color (mostly off-white), I have extreme admiration for your persistence in thread-changing. It was so time consuming for me to keep changing colors, and I really had to keep on my toes to remember to do it. New appreciation here for people who use multiple colors of threads!

I'm linking up today with Michelle at From Bolt to Beauty and on the last Saturday of this month with Sandra at mmm quilts for DrEAMi (Drop Everything And Make it). I didn't want to wait to link up because maybe some of you will still want to make some bags this month, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to draw them to your attention. You can get the info you need at Carole's site here. 

Have fun with your squirrels!

(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.)