Christmas Eve Scrappy Saturday

The only scrappy project I've been working on this week is the new 150 Canadian Women sampler quilt. I have printed out the patterns, cut the pieces for several blocks, and have sewn these 7 blocks so far. I am enjoying reading the short biographies that are posted with each block pattern. 
This project will continue well into 2017 and will use up the red scraps from the Aurifil BOM from this year which I did in red. There is only one more block to make for that project, which is a paper pieced block that I am itching to get to work on.

 I did "need" to pick up a piece of this great fabric to add to my Canadian Women quilt.
To see what the other Rainbow Scrap quilters have been sewing this week, hop over to the weekly link up here.

Rainbow Red

Since the big finish of my spools quilt top, I haven't had much time to sort out my other rainbow scrap projects. There are several needing attention and after Christmas I'll be taking an inventory and setting some goals for the new year. But for now I am trying to get my red scraps under control. 
I have worked on a couple of red projects this month (Aurifil BOM and 150 Canadian Women) and there are a bazillion red scraps all over the place. Today I am cutting the 1" tiniest pieces for Omigosh blocks.
To see what other scrappy quilters are working on in their sewing rooms today, hop over to the RSC link up.

Scrappy Saturday Spools Quilt Top!

My RSC goal for this month was to finish sewing together my scrappy spools quilt top.
Drum roll please....mission accomplished!

There are 612 scrappy spool blocks in this quilt!
I don't mind saying that was a lot of hard work to get this quilt top together and I appreciate those of you who have put up with my complaining over the past few weeks on the RSC link up posts. Thank you for all the encouraging comments and emails! 
There were so many seams to match from blocks made over the last 3 1/2 years. I started making spool blocks in July 2013 (read about it here).
I started working on the layout in April 2015, but it was hard work and required concentration I didn't have at that time. I took it to quilt camp in February this year and with the encouragement and organizational assistance of my fellow quilters, I got the top organized, photos taken, and some momentum going to make more progress on this thing.
When I commit to doing something, I do it! And in spite of all the distractions, other projects, and preparations for Christmas, I met my goal and finished this top. Can you tell I am excited?!? 
Now I am thinking about how to quilt it. I have a few ideas, but will put off making that decision until the New Year.
To see more RSC finishes, hop over to the link up.

Scrappy Saturday Spools week #5

For the rest of the year, I am trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt.  You can read more about it in this post.
I really put a push on and forced myself to sew those long, unwieldy diagonal seams. There was a lot of matching to do, and lots of fabric to shove, push, and pull through the machine. It's hard to man-handle all these blocks and it is surprisingly heavy with all these seams!

This week I focused on the bottom right corner of the quilt top. I was making good progress until I noticed this. There are too many blocks made from the same purple with dots fabric. There are 3 of them in the same area. I had this problem when working on the left side of the quilt! I decided the block in the middle had be extracted.



There we go... see the spool block with the pin in it? It's a new import to replace the extracted purple dots block. Much better. I can live with that. 
Now to finish up the remaining long diagonal seams. I may need to bribe myself to get it done and chocolate will likely be involved!
To see more RSC finishes, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday Spools #4

For the rest of the year, I am really trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt. You can read more about it in my post from the beginning of the month here. The picture does not reflect the effort, but it was a lot of thinking to get those bottom blocks right!

Once I finished the bottom of the quilt and filled in the setting blocks with spools and neutral squares, I moved over to the grey and black spools on the top right of the quilt edge.
Major progress! 

Here it is so far. I am really happy with it! You can see how it is bigger than my biggest design wall! There is only the bottom right corner to sort out now!

It's hard to keep focused on this huge project and I am constantly distracted by other more fun projects I could be working on. 

Wow I am easily distracted! 
Squirrel! 
Must keep focused!

To see more RSC finishes, hop over to the weekly linky party.

Scrappy Saturday Spools #3

For the rest of the year, I am really trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt. You can read more about it in my blog post here.

Add caption

This week I am working on the bottom left corner. I have to make the right colour of spool block to fit in the spaces of the setting triangles at the end of the diagonal rows. Then each of those spool blocks needs two neutral squares added to either side. 
I'm really tempted to put this away and make some fun scrappy blocks! Part of my challenge is that I had been working on Allietare which is also an on point layout and I am tired of tackling these long seams. I keep getting distracted by thoughts of wanting to start something new, but am really committed to finishing this quilt top.
Must. Push. On.
To see more RSC projects coming to completion, hop over to the Saturday link up.

Scrappy Saturday Spools #2

For the rest of the year, I am really trying to finish my scrappy spools quilt. You can read more about this project in last Saturday's post.
Progress has been made and I have completely finished the top left corner. That was a lot of work filling in the setting blocks on the edges and sewing the diagonal rows together.

I think I procrastinate this stage of quilt making because it is challenging to sew the long rows together and the whole thing is just unwieldy and not fun. I am pinning every seam join as I go along which takes a long time. Sometimes I don't use pins at all, but this project just needs them.
Linking up to RSC over at SoScrappy and Oh Scrap.

Scrappy Saturday Spools #1

For the rest of the year, my Rainbow Scrap Challenge focus will be to sew together my spools quilt.
In 2012 Bonnie Hunter hosted a spool block leader-ender project using a 3" spool block. I didn't start my spools until the summer of 2013 because I had so many other leader-ender projects on the go at that time. Each month I sewed a few spool blocks in the colour of the month with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I did that for 2 years and then sewed them into colour blocks of 4 spools each.
Then the blocks were put on point and roughly organized into colour ribbons.
I worked on it at quilt camp in February and made a lot of progress.
Here is how it looked on the design wall. Where to start? 
I decided to start on the left side and work on filling in the setting blocks.



While working on the edge blocks, I realized there were too many brown Sweetwater fabrics with text. Can you see that there are 3 of them right there? I was hoping that this spools quilt would be like a traditional charm quilt, which features a repeating block and never repeats a fabric twice. And for sure it doesn't have 3 blocks from the same fabric right near each other!! 
I will have to fix that by either separating those blocks or eliminating them from the quilt.
To see what other scrap quilters are finishing up this month, hop over to the RSC link up.

Scrappy Saturday

It's yellow and orange month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I have been focused on using up my yellow scraps. I used a lot for this Mad City Mama block... 157 scraps to be exact! This block pattern is from Bonnie Hunter's book Adventures with Leaders and Enders. 

Here are the 6 blocks I have made so far. I like how they are all similar yet different. I just noticed that the blue block needs a one quarter rotation to be right side up on the design wall!

To see more scrappy projects, hop over to the Saturday link up at Angela's.

Scrappy Saturday

This was my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project this week. I was using this "Circle of Squares" block as a leader-ender in between piecing other projects and finally finished it today. It's so fun to dig around in the scrap bags and boxes to come up with 8 pieces to cut into the required squares.

And here it is with my other finished blocks for a total of 6. I want to make at least 6 more, so this project will continue well into next year.

To see what the other RSC folks are sewing this week, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday

Here are more blocks for my ever growing  Alamo Star collection. I keep thinking that I will get tired of making these little cuties, but I've been making them for 4 years now and still enjoy them as much as ever. Some of them are 2 fabric blocks, but my favourites are the ones that are totally scrappy and use up very tiny pieces of fabric about the size of a thumb nail.
Perhaps this is a sickness that has taken me over? Maybe I need to join a 12 step program?
Hop over to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up to see what the quilters are creating with their yellow and orange scraps this week.

Scrappy Saturday

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge has us sewing up our orange and yellow scraps for the month of October. I hope to get a lot accomplished because I have a lot of these scraps!
I started with the Circle of Squares block using some orange scraps. 

Here are the 5 blocks I've made so far for this scrappy project. I was hoping to get the yellow one finished to add to the group, but didn't have enough time. I think they look great together so far!
To see more RSC projects, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday

Some quilty friends came over to help supervise the sewing last night. They brought a few refreshments. It was a fun evening filled with conversation, eating snacks, and a bit of sewing. 



I had already finished up some leader-ender Alamo Star blocks. The top two blocks were leftover from August, and the two red ones were from September. I wonder what colour we will be sewing with in October? 


Last night I worked on sewing my broken dishes blocks for Barb's swap. 

You have to make 320 HST blocks for the 80 swap blocks, so that's a lot of cutting, squaring up and sewing.
A lot was accomplished by some of us last night. And some of us had fun playing with the snacks. Halloween Cheetos ... who knew there was such a thing!?!
Hop over to SoScrappy to see what the Rainbow Scrap Quilters are up to this week.

Scrappy Saturday

The colour for the Rainbow Scrappers this month is red and I have plenty of red action going on in my sewing room this week. With my smallest of scraps, which are 1" squares or strips I made a few more red blocks for the never-ending Omigosh project. The neutral squares are 2". I have been making these blocks for 3 years now, and am hoping to reach the half way mark by the end of this year. 
To see the other red RSC links this week, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday

The Rainbow Scrap Quilters are working with variations of the red scraps this month. Many of my projects already have some bright red blocks, so I'm going to work with some of the darker red scraps in my bin.

First up this month I made a red "Circle of Squares" block (tutorial here). It's such a fun block to sew and it turned out well with that spotted background fabric from the Wintergraphix II line. I sure wish I had bought more than a FQ of this fabric! 

Here are the first 4 blocks together on the design wall. It's going to be a great quilt!

To see more RSC postings, hop over to SoScrappy.

And if you haven't already signed up for my 10th blogiversary fabric giveaway, hop over here and leave a comment to win some Good Neighbours fabric.

Scrappy Saturday - National Sewing Machine Day Sept 10th

Today is the day we honour our sewing machines! It's National Sewing Machine Day! I use a sewing machine almost every day of my life and cannot even imagine my life without them. 
To honour my sewing machines (and keep track of them all!) I created a page on the top of my blog called "The Herd". It details all of the machines I have, where I found/bought/inherited them from, and why each one is special. It might be an unhealthy relationship I have with my sewing machines. I leave it up to you to decide. I'll be in my sewing room playing with the herd and cutting fabric for my next Alamo Star leader/ender blocks.

These are the Alamo Star blocks I made over the last couple of months... two pink for July on the bottom row, two light purple blocks for August, and I'll be cutting fabric for some red blocks for September. No wait... I'll be fixing that crazy looking star block first!
To see more rainbow challenge blocks, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday Paper Piecing

Last week we finished up working with our light purple scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I hadn't worked on my Palm Branch project for a while, so I decided to add a light purple block to that collection. I didn't have any extra patterns to sew on, so I had to print out a pattern. 

size difference in paper piecing patterns

That proved to be a challenge since my old computer refuses to talk to our newer printer. So I went over to my parents where you need to hop on one foot, hold your mouth just right, and/or say magical words to get their printer to cooperate! I hate printers! The first few attempts resulted in patterns that were not the correct size, and I had to resize the scaling several times.  Note to self... print all the patterns you will need for a project at the same time!

Palm Branch block #10

I made my first palm branch block in 2012 and really enjoyed having a paper pieced RSC project. But I haven't worked on it much this year and was happy to spend some time making this block. You can still get the free pattern called "Red Herring" over at Quiet Play (who has a new pattern coming out in September that is perfect for all you rainbow scrap quilters to make for your sewing room!) Click here for the free tutorial and palm branch block pattern.

It's interesting to note that this is the 14th block for my palm branch quilt and each block uses 14 small coloured scraps and a background fabric. The number of the day is 14! 
I need 2 more blocks for a total of 16... which two colours should I add?
To see more RSC projects, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday

My Maverick Star (pattern here) collection had some new additions this week. I made two new scrappy purple blocks, this one with a dark star on a light purple background, and a second block that is the reverse. It's in the collection below... the block in the top row, second from the right. Wow those purple striped fabrics really stand out!




I have 30 Maverick star blocks now and enjoy seeing this collection grow.

To see more RSC postings, hop over to SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday - Circle of Squares

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilters are sewing up their light purple scraps this month. Last week I made up some scrappy sprout blocks and this week I worked on a block called "circle of squares". The colours are a little pale and somewhat blah, but when this block is in a quilt it will be a nice contrast with all the other high intensity blocks.



Here it is with the other two blocks made in previous months. I'm really liking it so far!

To see what other projects are being worked on this week, hop over to the link up at SoScrappy.

Scrappy Saturday

The August colour for the Rainbow Scrap challenge is light purple, otherwise known as lilac or mauve or lavender. It's not a colour I know very well, but I do happen to have a few scraps to work with. I started out this month making 2 more scrappy sprout blocks, for a total of 14 blocks.

And here is the garden of sprouts that is growing in my sewing room. They look way better than plants I've grown this year. I totally gave up on my garden this year, so am enjoying my fabric sprouts instead. No rabbits will eat them, no weeds will choke them, and no drought will kill them!
If you would like to sew your own garden, the block pattern is free over at TraceyJay Quilts.
To see more Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, hop over to SoScrappy.