Scrappy Saturday Sprouts

This month I decided to focus on my scrappy sprouts project.  I started making these blocks in June 2015 and apparently I'm really tired of these blocks because I haven't made any this year so far!!  
It's time to finish this quilt ... but how?!?

One of the things I love about being part of the online quilting community is the never-ending creative ideas. Recently I visited 2 RSC blogs that helped me to solve the challenge of my scrappy sprouts project.

Scrappy Sprouts blocks on the design wall

I sewed the blocks into columns and then remembered that Diann over at Little Penguin Quilts added a sashing between the columns of her scrappy sprouts project... good idea. I put some sashing on the design wall. Maybe I need to make a few more blocks?

Then I remembered that Cynthia who blogs at Quilting is more fun than Housework made a wonderful RSC project this year with fruit and veggie blocks, and on the top of her scrappy sprouts, she made a rolling stones block. You can see her wonderful quilt here.

I used Cynthia's inspiration to make a rolling stones block which I think looks like a sunflower. I made the centre section slightly wider than the sides to fit the top of my sprout stalk. I like it!

This week I will work on sewing 2 more rolling stones/sunflower blocks, and then start sewing the columns together. 
Might this be finished in 2019??!!
Hop over to the weekly RSC link up to see more projects being finished this month. 

Scrappy Finish!

It's so exciting to announce a Rainbow Scrap Challenge finished quilt! And it's so amazing and rare to actually finish an RSC project within the same year in which it was started!

Finished Economy Path

I started making the 3" Economy Path blocks as a new 2019 RSC project in January. It was a project to use up the smallest scraps because these blocks finish at 3" and each block has 13 pieces.

There are 48 blocks in this quilt, made from 98 different fabrics and I enjoyed sewing each and every one of them!




Maybe we always love our most recently finished quilt the most, but you guys... I really love this quilt!!

This is where the quilt is hanging in my sewing room. 

Thanks to the RSC quilters for all the colourful inspiration each  week and for helping me to finish this quilt by voting on the layout two weeks ago (popular vote was Layout C).

Size: 18" x 24" 

Total # of pieces: 624 

Hop over to the RSC weekly link up to see more scrappy projects.

Scrappy Saturday

Progress is being made on my Economy Path quilt.
 The vote on last week's post was overwhelming positive for layout C, so that is how the blocks were sewn together. There were lots of other wonderful creative ideas shared, but I didn't go down that rabbit hole. I wanted to finish the quilt and I know myself well enough to recognize that layout indecisiveness makes my quilts head toward the UFO closet!
I quilted a very simple stitch in the ditch grid, and put on a grey binding.
Don't you hate it when this happens and your binding strip is just slightly too short? UGH!
I added another strip and finished sewing down the binding, so hand stitching the binding down will be tomorrow's Slow Sunday Stitching project!
Hop over to the RSC weekly linkup to see more projects moving toward completion.

Scrappy Saturday

Four more 3" Economy Path blocks were made this week (pattern here). This was one of my favourite 2019 Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. During the months of November and December we are encouraged to finish up our RSC projects. It's time to turn these blocks into a finished quilt!

Layout A

Piecing the blocks is easy... deciding on a layout is not!
Can I ask for your help in picking the layout? 
Each of these 3 layouts has a slightly different colour arrangement.

I tell myself "there are no wrong answers", and truly I do like them all! 

Layout B

Layout A above has all the brighter colours at the top. Layout B put the purple blocks in the top half and brings the aqua and green to the bottom half.
Oh shoot I have the grey blocks turned incorrectly... ignore that!
I like this layout also but does it make the aqua blocks stand out a bit too much?

Layout C

Please help me decide by voting on your favourite layout in the comment section. Final decision will be made after a tally of your votes and I'll try to get it finished by next week.

Happy Scrappy Saturday!
Linking up to the weekly RSC party.

Scrappy Saturday

It's time for the weekly rainbow scrap update. 

FNSI with Barb and Sandy

Last night was "Friday Night Sewin In" and here are a couple of us sending an instagram photo to another group of quilters sewing in different city. Sew fun!

Sandy brought me a collection of little grey triangles that she rescued for the guild orphan box, and half of them are a print with tiny little dogs.  
So I had to make 2 fun Shoo Fly blocks.

Can you see the dogs in the little triangles? So cute!
There are lots of grey fabrics in the sewing room right now from working on the Modern Alphabet paper piecing baby quilt. So I "whipped up" (over the course of a few hours!) 4 grey Economy Path blocks (free pattern here). 


This is not a good photo and was taken late at night, but here are all the Economy Path blocks made so far.
That's a lot of sewing over the course of the year, and it's still a very small quilt about 18" x 24"! I'm working on the brown scraps today and hope to finish another set of 4 blocks.

Hop over to the weekly Rainbow Scrap Challenge linkup to see more scrappy projects.

More Shoo Fly Love!

Did you start the Leader-Ender challenge with Bonnie Hunter this past July? It's never too late to join in! You can make a mini quilt, a table runner, a king size quilt... whatever you want.

I am making the 4" size of the Shoo Fly blocks and love making them. I always have a pile of pieces cut out and waiting beside my sewing machine to put under the needle between the other projects I am sewing.

I have been using up some charm squares leftover from other projects. This is how I cut the squares to make the background pieces for one block. There is very little waste and it's awesome to get these pieces used up. You can cut 4 to 6 of these charm squares at a time if your rotary cutter blade is sharp.

I do try to focus on the colour of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge when I'm sorting scraps to use. This month is using up the darks... browns, greys and blacks.
One of the down sides to using the leader-ender technique for sewing blocks is that sometimes pieces get lost because they sit beside the machine waiting for their turn to be sewn. The block on the bottom left is missing an HST. I wonder when that will show up?!? Eventually I'll make a replacement from other scraps if it doesn't reappear.

Here is the Shoo Fly block collection as of last week. 
Oh my goodness... every time I put these on the design wall I see a problem block to fix! Do you see the problem one this time?

Hop over to the RSC link up to see more scrappy projects in development.

Scrappy Saturday - Arrowhead

Wow that was a long hard week! So happy that Saturday has arrived and it's a long weekend here to celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving. I look forward to hanging out with my sewing machine a lot this weekend.  

3" Purple Arrowhead blocks

I am very thankful for all my scrappy quilting projects and send a big thank you to Angela who has kept the Rainbow Scrap Challenge link up going for many years in spite of such her very busy life! It has brought me great joy Angela!!
I seem to be having a hard time letting go of the purple scraps! I'm still sewing purple blocks and just finished my mini Arrowhead blocks. They are so fun to sew and it is one of my favourite scrappy projects.
Here they are on the design wall. 

There are 56 blocks so far in this collection and I love it. This is the first time I've tried this layout and it gives an interesting secondary design. And now I'm digging through the dark scraps and cutting pieces to sew for my scrappy projects this month.
Hop over to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Linkup to see more scrappy goodness!

Scrappy Saturday

Purple month is over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
I had time to finish up 8 more Economy Path blocks and sewed them into two groups of 4.
Here is the magenta purple collection.



And here are the darker indigo purple blocks.
You can see the other Economy Path blocks here. I didn't have time to put them all on the design wall, but I will in October for sure. It's time to get working with the brown, grey, and black scraps for October.

Today I am getting organized for the Slow Sunday Stitching Retreat Day being held tomorrow. It will be exciting to spend a full day with like minded hand stitchers and I am very excited!

Scrappy Saturday Shoo Fly Shoo

When I was visiting my friend Deanna, she brought out something guaranteed to bring gasps and squeals from every scrap quilter - a scrap basket full of strings! 

Playing in Deanna's scrap basket

It would not be possible for any quilter to resist the urge to immediately start digging in this basket! Then you start saying things like... "oh I have this fabric in a different colour, "ohhh I love this fabric", "I have some of this in my stash", and "this piece is perfect for a Shoo Fly Shoo block"! You can see that I have pulled out some strips and started to trim and organize some pieces I intended to steal. Deanna was very generous and said we could help ourselves to anything we liked... and so I did! You can see in the bottom left of the photo that I was cutting triangles using the Easy Angle ruler for Shoo Fly blocks.
And then this leader-ender project kicked itself to the top of the main projects list because the blocks are so darn cute and I couldn't stop working on them! They are addictive like chips... you can't just have one and feel satisfied with that... 
** m u s t   h a v e  m o r e **

Shoo Fly Shoo

Here is the block  collection.
It is fun to vary the values to make some of the blocks look a little different.
But I don't want them to be as different as those two renegade Shoo Flies? 
What the heck?!?!
Why didn't I see that when I was making the blocks?!? I'll fix those two and keep cutting more.

Purple Shoo Fly blocks

I've sewn a couple more purple Shoo Fly blocks to add to the collection. See how I like to play with the value:  a muddled low contrast block on the top right, a crisp high contrast on the bottom right, the light/medium rectangles on the top left give the block a circular feel, and the bottom left is just a regular looking medium value block with my favourite Kaffe Fassett Paperweight fabric in the centre.


And while I was playing with purple scraps, I cut up some purple scraps to sew into Wishing Rings this week.


Go visit the RSC link up and pop by Sarah's to see what other scrappy adventures are going on!

Scrappy Saturday - Big Reveal

It has been such a busy week in the middle of Fall Fair season. In spite of all the busyness, I have a big Rainbow Scrap Challenge reveal to share with you!
I have been sewing a few Maverick star blocks here and there since April of 2014. That's 5 and a half years of collecting little pieces for these scrappy 6" blocks! These blocks have seen a lot of my life and hold so many memories.

This is my Sweet Baby Jayne 1964 Singer Featherweight sewing all my stars into a quilt top. There were a lot of seams to match and many pins were used in the top construction. But I was surprised at how well it came together considering the blocks were made on many different sewing machines over several years. 
And then it was time for the big reveal. I hung the quilt on the clothesline at my friend Deanna's house for the photo shoot. 

Do you see my friend Barb's whale block also hanging on the clothesline to the left of the stars?!? It makes me smile that the whale looks so small swimming beside the stars!

I'm not going to share all the secrets about the lengths to which a crazy blogger would go in order to get some good quilt photos from the right angle, but let's just say a ladder was involved! And bless their hearts, Deanna and Ted never rolled their eyes or talked about me being crazy (in front of me anyway!) when I asked if I could borrow their ladder to climb up to the shed roof!! LOL

I wanted to take a photo with the quilt by some of my favourite birch trees that are dying and will have to be taken down. But I couldn't get far enough away from the quilt to get a full angle shot. So I climbed a ladder on the other side of the shed to get a shot from over the roof. And then when the wind picked up,  Deanna tried to hold the corner of the quilt to keep it still. I love this action shot and it still makes me smile!

I couldn't really think about ending the Maverick stars project until I had another scrappy leader-ender project that would use up all the small scraps in my quilting room.  And now I have that focus thanks to Bonnie Hunter's Shoo Fly Shoo challenge. Here are the latest blocks made last night. The RSC colour for September is purple and I don't seem to have many purple scraps laying around, so I'll have to dig deep!
Hop over to the RSC link up to see more scrappy projects.

End of the Summer

I am so lucky to be spending the weekend at Ted and Deanna's in the Great White North. Deanna calls herself my Northern Blog Stalker! It's the perfect way to recover from the busyness of the summer.

I have a few blues ready to sew another little log cabin loony block. But I'm distracted by the reveal of Kevin's mystery quilt and want to get sewing those blocks.

We have enjoyed relaxing walks in the forest, and playing in the creek. Now it's time to get to work in the sewing room. I've already sewn the V blocks for the last step of the mystery and took a photo of them by the creek. It was a little breezy but none of them fell into the water!

This week I needed to add the "verify that you are a human" step for commenting on my blog, which I don't like to have to do myself when I'm visiting blogs, but the spam is out of control, and sometimes adding another step is enough to discourage a spammer. Sorry about that but hopefully it will be time limited.
What are you sewing on the last day of August?

Scrappy Saturday

The sewing room has been a whirlwind mess, with too many projects on the go, and fall fair season is upon us with entries to prepare, and fairs to judge. And also there is too much negative energy in the sewing room from recent unhappy sewing with seam matching struggles.

So I got out the blue scraps and starting organizing which pieces might be good for which project. 1" pieces are for Loonie Log Cabins and Omigosh, 1.5" are for Economy Paths, Shoo Fly Shoo and Wishing Rings, and 2.5 is for scrappy sprouts, and larger pieces are for Arrowheads.


Here is a handful of goodness! 
All 112 pieces cut to make four 3" Economy Path blocks. It doesn't look like much, but it was a couple of hours of work sorting and organizing scraps, and then cutting them into small pieces.

The sewing part is the most fun for me, but as with all fun things in life, it went way too quickly and before you know it, the blocks were done and more cutting was required.
Here are the blue blocks for August and they will join the collection which you can see here.
Hop over to visit the RSC weekly linkup here.

Scrappy Saturday

I got completely distracted this week with the multi-year Omigosh project. It started with just sewing a few 1" pieces into this double 9 patch block which was one of the RSC Tiny Tuesday blocks this week. Cute! 

So I kept making more blocks with the scraps on the cutting table, and ended up finishing these 4 blocks to add to the project.
Then I went in search of the other blocks. They are stored in the refrigerator - the fabric one, not the food one!


I decided it was time to take stock of this project and see where it's at. 

Omigosh project in the freezer

The double 9 patch blocks are on the left. I have enough of those and really should stop making any more! 
The small pile of alternate blocks on the right is another story. The piles should be the same size. They are not as much fun to make as the double 9 patch and require more coordination, but I need to focus my efforts and make lots more of those. 

I got out all the alternate blocks and put them on the design wall for the first time with the double 9 patches of the same colours. Here is what it is looking like. Omigosh!

Wow! That is awesome! There are some colours that are over-represented and some that are MIA, so that will have to be sorted out by the project manager LOL! I counted all the colours and will try to be more purposeful about filling in the gaps now. No more willy-nilly making random blocks when I feel like it for this project. Focus is required!
So see more RSC projects hop over to the weekly linkup.

Scrappy Saturday

August is the month of light/bright blue... I just happen to have lots of those scraps! I started with some blue miniature arrowhead blocks. They are fun to sew and I made 8 of those this week. These blocks will be 3" in the finished quilt. If you want to try making these blocks, the pattern can be found here and the sizes for the starting squares can be found here.

I had fun playing with the blocks on the design wall and tried a diagonal colour layout. I really like it! It needs a lot of blocks, particularly violet, greens, browns and golds, but it's a good start. To see more Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, hop over to the weekly link up.

Scrappy Saturday

It's the last week for pink scraps at the RSC. Pink is one of my favourite colours so I'm sad the month went by so fast. I have 3 projects which need some miniature pink blocks.

The first one is a new project started by Bonnie Hunter's new leader-ender challenge called Shoo, Fly, Shoo. I love these little blocks which use up 1.5" scraps and are 4" finished. I have many more cut and sitting beside my sewing machine ready to become blocks in between other projects.

The second project is the Economy Path collection. These adorable plus sign blocks are 3" finished. Sometimes I feel like my fingers are just too big when I'm sewing these little things. 

Here are all the blocks on the design wall. It's a labour intensive, multi year project, and I really like it so far.

I didn't get around to getting the pink Log Cabin Loonie blocks finished yet this month. Hopefully this will be done by next week when we will already be working on our next RSC colour. Hop over to the weekly link up and see the pink projects.

Scrappy Saturday

July is pink month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I have finished sewing my pink "Wishing Ring" blocks. These blocks are inspired by a Temecula Quilts project and use up 1.5" scraps. It makes me happy to look at these blocks and remember the quilts in which the fabrics were originally used.


I arranged the blocks from January to July in vertical colour lines to see if I would like that layout. I have been making approximately half the rings light and half dark each month, but not having an exact plan made this layout harder to organize and I couldn't put the colours in the order I would prefer. Oh well, I don't like this layout as much as the diagonal layout I tried last month anyway.

To see more pink scrap projects, hop over to the RSC link up.

Scrappy Saturday

3.5" Arrowhead Blocks

I'm having fun with the pink scraps this month. I must admit that I love pink.  I don't wear pink clothing and don't want to see pink in my home or office, but I do love sewing it in quilts. It brings energy to a scrappy quilt and it's such a happy colour. The Rainbow Scrap Challenge is a great opportunity to play with all the colours!
These are the most recently made mini Arrowhead blocks. The pattern can be found here, and to learn how to make it in different sizes, click here.

Here is the 42 block collection on the design wall! 
Wow I love it! Although the blocks are small (finish at 3" in the quilt) I can totally see myself making a bed sized quilt of these because they are fun to sew, and because I love the look of it!

To see more scrappy endeavours, hop over to the RSC weekly link up and Oh Scrap!

Scrappy Saturday

Maverick Star block collection

It's been such a busy week and there hasn't been much time for sewing. But today I am putting away the to-do list and giving myself a whole day to rest and sew!
It's pink month over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so I got out the pink scrap box and made 2 more Maverick Star blocks.
I first started making Maverick Star blocks inspired by Bonnie Hunter's scrappy pattern in April 2014. Today I realized that I have 89 blocks which is enough to make into a quilt top. 

2 Maverick Stars and 2 Shoo Flys

These star blocks are great to use up little triangle scraps, but now that Bonnie Hunter announced her new "Shoo, Fly, Shoo" Leader/Ender challenge, I have another project that can use up these little triangle scraps. 
So this photo marks the end of Maverick Stars and the beginning of Shoo Fly! 




Here are all the star blocks on the design wall. I love how each one is totally unique. Some are plain using only 2 fabrics, and some are very scrappy using up bits of 4 or more fabrics.
Time to sew these blocks into a quilt top!

To see more RSC projects, hop over to the weekly link up. Also linking up to Cynthia's Scrappy party.