Scrappy Saturday

I decided today that it was time to finish a rainbow scrappy project from last year. It doesn't have all the rainbow colours in it, since I wasn't really consistent on working on this each month. And then, I only had eight blocks, which wasn't enough to do anything with. I figured if I laid it out 3 blocks wide, by 3 blocks high, it would be a good quilt to donate to the Children's Aid Society, that our guild supports, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what to do as a centre block. When I posted this several weeks ago, someone suggested that I put a big pinwheel in the centre. What a perfect idea. so that's what I did. During my figuring for it, doing a 12 inch pinwheel for the centre required four blocks. Well, the four it needed translated into my mind into four sets of six inch finished pinwheels blocks. I was halfway through sewing them all when I had one of those hit the side of the head "duh" moments. I only need four triangles, not sixteen!! So, now I have 3 twelve inch pinwheel blocks left over that are going to be pieced into the back. However, after all that, this classifies as a finished top, measuring 42x42. I'm linking up to Scrappy Saturday. Then maybe I'll do the backing.

What I'm Working on.......

The Blooming Nine Patch is finally done to the point where I was able to get it off the wall. Now, I've put up the Rainbow triple Four Patches. I've been playing with the layout this afternoon, and I think I've decided I like this one best. I still have one more red square to make, and the eight orange squares before I can start putting this one together. I'm hoping to at least get the last red one done tonight.
I had a bit of a funny happen today. Our guild is doing a Canadian themed Row of the Month quilt, and I'm writing up the instructions. Once I get them written up, I send them off to the other members of the program committee for testing to make sure there are no mistakes in them. This months' row is fairly simple in construction, but it requires some attention payed to the placement of colours and direction of different pieces. All through writing the instructions, I emphasized the care needed in the placement and directions of the fabrics. I even took pictures as I made my own block as an example. Imagine my embarrassment when one of the testers emailed me to let me know that the patches in my example square were going in the wrong direction from the layout picture. Oops...... It's all fixed now, and the revised version is now in their hands, or at least their email inboxes. My task this evening..... rip out the 2 1/2 blocks that I've already done, and get the fabrics going in the right places. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get the last red square done, and the oranges cut to finish this quilt.
Before I do that, I'm going to link up to The Needle and Thread Network.

Scrappy Colour Saturday...

I'm back at working on my Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. However, I'm way behind on making the blocks, and skipped a few colours, as well. Yellow, which was June's colour, wouldn't have worked at all with the background fabric for this project. I could have used golds, but I have another project that I'm saving golds for. July's colour was red, so that's what I'm working on now. I have four more of the larger blocks to make out of reds. I can probably get those done today. My original plan for this quilt was to make it 8 blocks wide, by 10 blocks long, and border it with the double four patch blocks. I'm re-thinking that plan, and instead might make the center of the quilt square, 8x8 blocks wide and long. I have tons of those single four patches in a bag, and I think I'll use those at the top and bottom of the quilt to make it rectangular. If I do that, I only need to make one more set of these blocks, probably using the September colour of orange. So, I'll link up this page to today's Scrappy Saturday, and then go back to making more reds.

Scrappy aqua bow ties

I made up my monthly bow ties yesterday, in the March colour of aqua. This is as close as we are going to get to the colour of open water for quite some time yet. When I got up this morning, it was snowing.....sigh.
It's a good thing I got these done yesterday. Becca and I went out shopping today. I have discovered that letting her and I loose in a Fabricland, looking for patterns and fabric for making clothes  is very dangerous. There was so much there that we both liked, and some of it was even the same thing. But, we exercised a lot of restraint, and came home with fabric for a top and a skirt for Becca, and a top for me. All of it was much reduced. I've got her top basted together, and she just tried it on for fit, and it worked, so I can now go and finish off the seams, and get it finished. It's been a long time since I've done any garment sewing. I think the last of it I did was the bridesmaids dresses for her wedding. The funny thing about all this was that  I decided, only a couple of months ago, that I probably wouldn't be doing any more garment sewing, so I got rid of my dress maker form...... oops. We'd been spending a lot of time, since we moved here, moving it from one place to another, without being able to find someplace for this red thing on its stand to go, so it finally went. Oh well....
I'm linking up to SoScrappy Saturday.

Saturday In the Pinks

February's colour is pink. I'm a day behind in getting to these. I haven't been feeling that great, and sleeping at night is a distant memory, so yesterday was spent on the couch with sock knitting. Today's a bit better, but still not great. But anyway, I got some of my pinks selected and cut out to make my triple four patch units. Four are sewn together and the parts for the last four are ready to go.

I've discovered that I don't have a lot of the darker pinks that would work with this block, and have enough contrast to allow the beige diagonal line of squares to show up. It was a struggle to come up with eight on them. The last four of these might end up getting set aside to be worked on next weekend.
I'm linking up to SoScrappy. There's lots of other fun pink stuff to see over there.

Scrappy Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014

This, being the first Scrappy Saturday, hosted by So Scrappy, has produced all kind of anxiety and indecision for me. Well, maybe not the anxiety, but certainly the indecision. There are so many projects I want to do, and I'll never be able to fit them all in. And then there is the decision, do I work on one per week, or do I do a little of each each week? I've finally narrowed it down to 3 different projects, but I reserve the right to add more, depending on how these go. One is a continuation from the one I started last year, the double four patch blocks, where I'm doing 8 blocks out of each colour. The original plan had been to do 2 blocks per week. That was before I found a couple more projects I wanted to do. You see, the idea is to use up scraps. But because I wanted all of the fabrics in each of the double four patch blocks to be the same,
I was cutting from fat quarters, rather than scraps. And then, because I already had the fat quarter out, I continued to cut it down into various strip sizes. That created the situation that, instead of using scraps, I was actually adding to them. So, I have picked 2 more projects that will last at least all year long, to actually use the scraps. One is a quilt from one of my books that I've been eying as long as I've had the book. It will use 3 1/2 inch squares and 2 inch squares. It will end up being a bow tie medallion.  This is from the book Quick Quilts From Your Scrap Bag. I've figured out that, if I do it in the year of different colours, I'll need 13 of the 6 inch bow ties and 10 of the 3 inch bow ties per month.

And the other is going to be 3 different sizes of pinwheels, which will use up 3 1/2, 21/2 and 2 inch scrap strips, when cutting with the Easy Angle ruler. And then, inspired by Cat Patches scrappy sewing machines, and her idea of using the complementary colours for her accents, I'll use the complementary colour for the outer strips and the dark squares. These will finish at 14 inches. Thirty of them will give me a decent sized quilt. This is just a mock up from EQ7. The blues will be much more varied in the actual piece. I think once all the different colours are done, and set side by side, it will be quite striking. So, after making those decisions, all I now need to  decide is, one project per week, or little bits of each per week? Right now, I'm leaning towards one per week. It might be less confusing that way. I'm linking up to ScrapHappy Saturday, and then I'm going to play with some more bright blues.