First Finish of the Year

How has your week been? Here in the Salt Lake Valley it’s been cold and wet. The sun made a brief appearance yesterday but is back in hiding today. We’ve had rain and snow (mostly rain) all week. Great sewing weather!

In my last post (if you didn’t see it) I listed out my goals for the first quarter of this year’s Finish-Along. I have a finish to show later on in this post (a Rainbow Scrap finish!), so let’s move on to Rainbow Scrap Challenge matters. This month is purple, and this week I focused on working with strips.

First up are my four 8.5” strip blocks. I’m still on the fence about adding the lighter colors, but there you have them. These are really the dregs of my scraps, as the best pieces went into the bookcase project.

The bookcase project, you ask? Yep, a rainbow bookcase. Here are my four purple 12” blocks for 80% of the “bottom shelf”. The last block will be made of dark neutrals (black/gray) when we get to those....

I’ve got more pictures, close up, to show you while I talk about this FUN project. You can click on the pictures to see them better. And all my imperfections. What a learning experience! My favorite part is picking out the book titles from my selvages.

The names of fabric lines make good titles for books (or songs, come to think of it). I just cut them out of the tightly-woven selvage and stitched around them with a tiny stitch. Do you see the book Fairy Frost? Dover Hill? Between Friends? And of course, Prince Charming!

As you can see , the books aren’t perfectly rectangular. I just eyeballed rather than measured everything (and with my vision issues, I should know better). But look at those titles...... Jazz (with music notes!) Anything Goes. Architextures (on the wood-grain print).

The small leaning books on top were problematic; from now on I’ll stick to the stacked books (like in the Anything Goes and Quilters Candy group).  My favorite? Helen’s Garden, on the right.  The names do not match the fabrics - I was more concerned about which titles fit. And I want to explore doing a book series (like the gold banded books above). I can do better.

Why not join us over at So Scrappy for some more purple Rainbow Scrap “reading”????

And this was my first finish of the year - my Rainbow Rails.  It was a 2016 Rainbow Scrap project made of vintage sheets in the Rail Fence pattern. It is now quilted, bound and ready to use. As it was always intended to be summer weight, the batting is merely flannel. It finished at 72”x81”.  This was #1 on my list of Q1 goals, which you can see here.

I’m not sure if you can see it, but the binding is scrappy and roughly matches the colors it borders (orange-green-pink-blue).

Right now I’m in the process of quilting another Rainbow Scrap quilt (blue-green Improv) and will have that for next time.

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In remodeling news, we had a great surprise. When the carpet was ripped up from the hallway and back bedroom/study, we found the original hardwood floors. They were in beautiful condition, although there was one tiny patch to be filled, then the whole thing was buffed. It is generally not recommended to lay hardwood on hardwood unless you run it in different directions, but why would we want to? So yeah, we have three different types of hardwood in the house now. The upstairs hardwood is everywhere (except the 2 bathrooms, which are tile) - three bedrooms and the hall. We left the master bedroom and the girly guest room carpeted for now.

So the hall (and closets) and study are now restored to their original lovely sixties-era hardwood. The new baseboards still need touching up and caulking, and the stair treads will go on today. In fact, it will all be done today and tomorrow. Then we can move everything back into the bedroom and hall closets. And the last of our furniture (couch and ottoman) are being delivered today. YAY!!  If the sun ever shines again, I should be able to finally get some pictures this week!

The remodel feels like it’s been going on forever - and indeed, we started the kitchen refresh in August. But the whole thing is within inches of being done. I love FINISHES of any kind!