Roll Out the RED Carpet!

Roll out the red carpet, because it’s red month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!  Woo-hoo! I’ve been waiting for red for months because my red stash keeps growing and growing.

Last month was a sort of “color rest” month for me, and it gave me a chance to finish up or greatly advance a lot of the projects that I want to have done by year-end. But before I get to those, let me show you my start on Red. It’s not much, as the announcement was just made last night. But it is a good start, and I`m excited (did I say that already?)

My Dresden and Mama cats are already cut out (in the foreground). The rest of the scraps have been sorted by HSTs, strips, and size of scrap. No, that is not all of them - that is just one tub. I have almost another dozen partial FQs or F8s.

There will be no red vintage sheets this month, because I have never seen or collected them. The Vintage Sheet Rail Fence quilt I am making is mostly pastels, so I took last month as an opportunity to sew up the last color - yellow - into 11 rail fence blocks. And then, before I knew it, the top of the quilt was pieced.

I’ve also pieced a back out of miscellaneous pastel floral fabrics, and it is waiting its turn in line to be basted and quilted.

I finished my Aria quilt top and backing. Here is a picture of it lying on the floor before the borders were added. It’s a monster; 86x103”

This one was delivered to the long-armer last week to be quilted. The binding is made and waiting for the quilt to return, which may or may not be before the end of the month. We’ll see. There was no way I was going to attempt this one on my Bernina.

But I am quilting the Notting Hill quilt. I decided that, being a sampler, an overall quilting design would probably not be the best choice. So, I am quilting each block individually, even though many of those individual designs may be simple and repeats (like stippling, loops, etc). Here is a portion of what I have done so far.

Now, if it seems like I’ve done a lot, please remember that this is just the time of year when things start coming together. Most of the actual sewing work has been done month after month. In fact, I only have 5 finishes year-to-date through August. So the three above that are so close will bring me to the one finish per month average.

And this week I also did another block for the Cozy Christmas sew-along hosted by Lori Holt. This week was the Cozy Tree Block. I have sewn my three blocks together, added the sashing, and here is the first row.

And finally, I cut out two new quilts that will be Christmas presents this year. The first is Magic Carpet for son Shane (see info here in my 3rd Quarter Finish-Along goals) and the second is for my DDIL Kim (who is married to my other son, Ryan).  

This will go quickly, because they will be machine appliquéd to the background, not hand appliquéd. And cutting out those orange peels gave me lots more red scraps, too.  :-)  There will be a quilt for my son Ryan, too, but I won’t start that until October.  And I hope to do another Christmas quilt and a Christmas tree skirt, but those are likely just pipe dreams for this year. As you can tell, I am banking on having a lot more sewing time once the garden and outdoor work are done and indoor weather returns.

I’m linking up today to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Why not hop over and check out some other great eye candy?


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