Well we survived the l-o-n-g-e-s-t night of the year since yesterday was the winter solstice.
I'm already tired of the darkness...
getting up in the dark (being unable tell if is it daytime or still night), going to work in the grey, rainy weather, and driving home in the dark. There were 2 days in the last couple of weeks which were sunny and everyone went outside on their lunch breaks desperate to soak up some sunshine and feel better.
The only sunny place is in the quilt studio, where last night was Friday Night Sew In. I made a little Christmas gift for my friends, a mug mat made from leftover HSTs from my Angel Solstice quilt, and a package of holiday napkins.
We hadn't been together for a few months and it was such a fun reunion.
We had a few nibblies, lots of laughter, and a bit of sewing went on. Well, actually three of us (not mentioning any names) did not do any sewing!
One was trying to repair a "new to her" toy sewing machine, one was fussy cutting fabrics for a block exchange, and one was trying to avoid sewing (WHY?!?!?!) and actually went to the MALL on a Friday night (to see the Salvation Army band play some Christmas music) and missed the first half of the sewing time!! EEEKKKKK! But then she fixed a problem for me and all was forgiven :)
Look at these custom made cloth bags that Barb's niece Erika created for us! Aren't they fabulous?!?
Drop by the blog tomorrow to see the some of the hand stitching projects that were worked on. I didn't do any hand sewing on Friday and spent most of the evening putting pieces of the Good Fortune mystery quilt through my sewing machine. Although I made a few mistakes (more about that in Monday's post), a lot was accomplished.
I even continued sewing late into the night after they all went home. I got all 5 rows sewn together for my Circle of Squares RSC quilt. I started this quilt in June 2016 (click here to read about it) and one of my December RSC goals is to finish this quilt top by the end of 2018. It's totally doable!
Hop over to the weekly linkup at Angela's to see the RSC projects that are being finished.
I started participating in Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge at the beginning of 2011. You can read my first post here, and the hilarious thing about that post is... the quilt I was working on then... is still a UFO!
I have enjoyed 8 years of being inspired by Angela to sew up my scraps and have been linking up regularly over the years. A few wonderful projects have been finished (my favourite finish this year was "Tied up in Knots") but dozens more have been started!
When playing with scraps I like to have several projects on the go so that there is a use for every size of scrap. Block construction is my favourite part of quilting, so I tend to make a lot of blocks and then start to lose enthusiasm for projects as they approach the layout phase. I usually try to be more focused on finishing some RSC projects in November and December.
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| Mad City Mama |
In December last year I finished Mad City Mama quilt top and the year before I finished Scrappy Spools quilt top.
My goal this December is:
1) to quilt Mad City Mama and
2) to assemble 2 Rainbow Challenge quilt tops - Circle of Squares and Carrie Nation. It's a totally ridiculous overly ambitious goal, but I really want to see some progress on these projects.
Hop over to the RSC link up and see what other quilters are trying to finish up this week.
October was the last month for making sampler blocks for the Squared Away project. November is for figuring out the layout, and December will be finishing the quilt (a very optimistic plan!)
I made my month #10 blocks (call "Dewey Dream") in dark green. One of my favourite parts of sewing scrap blocks is finding light and dark scraps that play well together. These blocks are some of my favourite mixes.
The last colour to be added to my project is brown. It just seemed to need the warmth that brown brings. I sewed these last block sets on my white Featherweight 221K sewing machine.
For my last blocks I used the bonus block pattern called Rolling 9 Patch. Instead of using squares as the pattern shows, I used rectangles and sewed them together using a partial seam. It's a fun block addition to the sampler.
I am so happy to have finished all my Squared Away blocks!
And here are all the blocks on the design wall.
This it the orderly straight set layout that would measure approximately 21" x 55". That's a weird size for a quilt so that won't be my choice
Here is a straight set having 5 blocks across and the colours layed out kind of diagonal. It would measure about 27" x 43".
This is what the blocks look like on point which would measure approximately 38" square. It might be fun to make more blocks next year to add as borders for this layout.
To see what other scrap quilters are making today, hop over to the weekly link up.
The Rainbow Scrap Challenge BOM called Squared Away will be getting lots of attention in the quilting room this weekend. I want to finish this quilt by the end of the year, so I have to get cracking. Click here to see the 32 blocks I've made in previous months.
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| "Dewey Dream" |
I have 2 more months to finish.
Here are the protypes:
Block #10 will be sewn in green scraps. This pattern is called the "Dewey Dream" and is from 1899. That's one old block pattern!
I need to sew 3 more of this block.
And to round out the sampler, I needed one more block pattern. I really like the bonus block pattern that Mari posted called Rolling 9 Patch. This block pattern is from the 1960's. I'm going to make these blocks in brown, because I think my scrappy sampler quilt needs some brown.
To see more RSC projects being sewn, hop over to the weekly link up at Angela's.
One of my projects that needed only one more block was the Circle of Squares quilt. I asked blog readers to tell me what colour was needed for the last block. The overwhelming majority voted for something dark (green, multi, or red) so I went with brown since some of the scraps from the chocolate sister quilts were still sitting on the cutting board. There are some pieces from Save the Bees, and the bird on the basket in the middle at the top is from my friend Helen's scraps.
So... here are all the Circle of Squares blocks on the design wall. Time to sew these fun blocks together!
Hop over to the RSC weekly link up to see more scrappy quilts being created.
I can't believe this is the last RSC link up for green scraps. Where did October go? Most of it is a blur for me, but I did have bits of time to get a few green scraps sewn into various projects.
Many little pieces went into the new Temecula Secret Santa mystery, one more Circle of Squares block was made in green, and my Squared Away blocks are in production.
But just look at these 3" arrowhead blocks!
I adore how they look and how much fun they are to make!
I have 9 blocks made so far.. an orange test block, 4 from blue September and 4 from green October.
These will make a terrific quilt!
This project will go on my 2019 RSC list to make each month. If I sew 4 a month, I could have 48 more blocks by year end, but that would still only make a small wallhanging sized quilt... a layout of 7 x 7 would measure 21" square! Maybe this will be a multi year project?!?
Linking up to the RSC weekly scrap party.
October is green month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It's time to sew up our little green scraps into something useable.
I started the month making another Circle of Squares block using dark green scraps.
Here is the block collection on the design wall. It only needs one more block to make my goal of 20 blocks. What colour does it need for the last block?
Hop over to the RSC linkup to see more green scraps being used up.
Over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge it's the last week for working with navy and dark neutral scraps.
To finish up the blue month I made a few more Maverick Star (pattern here) blocks. These have dark backgrounds to balance out the layout a little more. They were made in leader-ender style while working on other projects this week. I am especially liking the plaid background stars and feeling the draw to work with more plaids. Maybe this is an autumn thing? Perhaps with the arrival of lower temperatures the desire increases for cosiness and comfort associated with plaids? I haven't seen any scientific studies to prove that, but it feels true!
This is the growing pile of Maverick stars. Click here to see the entire star block collection on the design wall.
Hop over to the RSC weekly link up and see how the quilters are finishing up the blue month.
In case you were wondering why I am not showing my September Squared Away blocks, this is why...
at the beginning of this RSC BOM project, the very first block was supposed to be light blue. And for some unknown reason, I made my first blocks dark blue. So then September rolled around and these blocks are supposed to be dark blue, but I had already made dark blue blocks in the first month. So what to do?
There is one month left in the project so I decided to wait to see what the remaining colour will be, and then determine what colour to make my September blocks.... maybe light blue, dark green, brown, or grey.
And in the meantime, I made a dark blue Circle of Squares block while sewing at my friend Gayle's house.
I took a "glamour shot" of the block in her beautiful backyard. Do you see the cute little knitted monster (sitting right above my block) that Gayle was making while I was sewing?
So cute!
It was very relaxing to sew beside the fountain and hear the calming water sounds. It was almost like being at a spa!
Here are all the blocks on the design wall. The new dark blue block is second from the left on the top row. I think I'll make 4 more blocks for this project. I'm trying not to see these blocks as ferris wheels because that makes my creative brain want to add pieces to the design to make the blocks look like wheels. I hope that thought goes away!
Anyway, that's where things are at with my RSC projects this week. To see what others are working on, hop over to the weekly link up.
Did you know that today is "Sew a Jelly Roll Day"?
I had hoped to get together with some friends to sew today, but it's such a busy time of year for me that I couldn't get it organized. All my spare time has been filled with fall fairs (entering, visiting and judging). And besides... I'm not really a jelly roll kind of quilter. I don't actually own one. But I thought I could cut a bunch of the stash into strips and pretend that I had one to make a quilt out of! Instead I hope to spend a few minutes today sewing the next step of the Scrapdash mystery.
I enjoyed cutting up some blue scraps this week and sewing the pieces for 4 mini log cabin blocks. You can see the cutting instructions on Julie's blog here.
These are my first blocks for my RSC project - orange from last month and blue for this month. With the 4 log cabin blocks sewn together the block measures 8.5" unfinished. Linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and the Log Cabin Loonies.
Dark blue is the colour of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I have been working on a new quilt I started in a class last month. The blocks are called Anita's Arrowhead and they finish at 9". Here are the first 30 blocks on the design wall.
A beautiful sea of blueness!
This isn't the layout. It's just the block collection so far. I'll probably make double this number of blocks because I love it, I have a lot of blue fabric to use up, and I want it to be a bed sized quilt.
I'm also making a mini version of this block which I showed last week. Those blocks finish at 3".
Hop over to the weekly RSC link up to see what the quilters are sewing with their blue fabric scraps!
Just a quick post today for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. It is colour change over day, and we are leaving behind our orange scraps and getting out the dark blue. I have made a couple of mini Arrowhead blocks (you can find the cutting sizes here). These measure 3.5" (finish at 3") and are so adorable I wish I could just keep making more of these.
But alas, the big reveal for Block #2 for Save the Bees BOM happens on Monday so I need to put the finishing touches on my block today!
Hop over to the weekly RSC linkup to see what the scrap quilters are sewing today.
It's the last week for sewing orange scraps over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and a new colour will be announced this week. So I had to get my August Squared Away sampler blocks finished up. This block is a 1935 pattern called "State of Georgia" and the instructions can be found here.
I will add these four blocks to my other 28 blocks. Here they are on the design wall.
Such a fun project!
And while I had the orange scraps out, I just had to try a mini version of Anita's Arrowhead pattern (see my post about the 9" blocks here). This is the 3.5" version... so darn cute! I think I just started a new RSC project that will take me another 10 years to finish! UGH and YAH!
To see more RSC projects, hop over to the weekly linkup.
Also linking up to Oh Scrap!
Orange is the colour of the month for August. It seems to be a controversial colour and quilters either love it or hate it.
I am in the "love it" camp and find that it really brightens up any quilt it is a part of. Most of my ongoing RSC projects already have plenty of orange in them, but I'll be adding in more this month.
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| disorganized scraps |
I tackled this pile of scraps from my friend Debby. She gave them to me for dog bed stuffing, but these pieces were way too big for that!
The first step is to organize the scraps into colour families and either cut them immediately for specific projects, or put them in the appropriate scrap bins (by colour).
I started with the maverick stars project and chose these scraps to make 5 more blocks. This is all organized and ready to feed through the machine. There were a few orange scraps to work with.
Here are 4 finished star blocks. The centres of the stars are either 2.5" squares (the two blocks on the right) or scraps pieced together and trimmed to 2.5" (the two blocks on the left).
And here are all the blocks on the design wall.
Over 60 blocks have been made so far. The pattern is here if you want to start your own collection.
Hop over to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up to see more scrappy projects being made.
It has been a long week, and I am looking forward to lots of sewing today and tomorrow to get me back on the right/healthy track.
Here are all the 15 blocks made to date. Looks like I need to add in some darker blocks (dark green, navy, brown, etc).
July is red month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The goal is to sew as many of our red and maroon scraps as possible into quilt blocks.
It used to be that my red scraps were mostly Christmas themed, but once I started the 150 Canadian Women project, I accumulated a wide variety of reds. (That quilt hasn't seen any progress lately... maybe I should get it out this month?)
Anyway I did use up a lot of small scraps for my Squared Away sampler blocks for July. This month's pattern is called "Round the Corner" and the pattern can be found over at the Academic Quilter.
I am making 4 blocks each month at the 5" size. And here are all my fantastic sampler blocks made this year.
Thanks to Mari and Angela for this fun project!
Hop over to the link up to see more RSC posts.
In a demonstration of great self restraint, I am NOT joining in on the Moda Summer Camp Quilt Along. It sounds like so much fun, but really how much fun can one quilter stand?!? Also Bonnie Hunter announced her new leader and ender challenge Jewel Box Stars, which looks like lots of fun too.
MUST STAY FOCUSED!
Okay... staying focused means working on quilts already in progress, so instead of starting anything new, I better buckle down and get to work on my multi-year Omigosh project. Last month was teal month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge so I've been working on some tiny teal blocks.
These are the alternate blocks in Omigosh which are a shoofly variation. There are 41 pieces in each of these labour intensive little 5" blocks. Because they are so small, there is no wiggle room and all components must be squared down to the exact size.
Here is the collection of the alternate blocks made so far. I have finished 27 as of today. Only about 80 more to sew!! LOL
See how wonderful they are when put beside the double nine patch blocks?!? YUM!
To see more Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, hop over to the weekly link up. I'll be looking for some red scraps to stitch up today.
