Putting the RAINBOW in Rainbow Scrap Challenge

TGIA. Thank God it’s April!!  Although I usually love March (spring starts and it's my birthday month), this year it was hard. Regular readers know about DH’s latest medical issue, and  I`m pleased to say that on Tuesday the 4th he will have his final surgery to detach his right forearm from his abdomen (sounds weird, I know). Then he can finally heal and start physical therapy to regain the use he’s lost in his arm and hand over the last six weeks of operations. But he has his arm and full function! YAY!!! They will monitor him closely every couple months for signs of cancer recurrence. I mean really, who gets cancer in their FOREARM? We know there is a chance that some cancer may remain - and they’ll radiate the questionable area just in case. So it’s all good for now.

But let’s talk about fabric and quilting and sewing. This month, Angela who heads up our Rainbow Scrap Challenge and hosts the weekly linkup (join us HERE), has chosen RAINBOW (multicolor) for the April color. What that means is that we get to use all those fabric scraps we have that don’t fit into a specific color category; mixed fabrics that contain this and that and defy classification. I have a lot of those prints - florals, Asian-inspired fabrics, multi-colored chevron or plaid or stripes. Novelty fabrics. Whew. This is what my basketful looked like:

Starting the sort by value:

Since rainbow blocks don’t fit my usual ongoing 2017 projects, I decided to make a scrappy quilt (or 2 if there’s enough fabric) of these babies. But what to do? First I decided the quilt needed to meet a few criteria:

1.  No HSTs.  I do enough of those darn things in my regular blocks. I need a break!
2.  Must use all values; bright, dark, light, pastel
3.  Pattern must allow all fabrics to play together yet provide contrast and interest.

That was a tall order, but I keep a lot of quilt idea boards on my Pinterest, and found the perfect quilt that I had pinned from Wanda at Exuberant Color.  (March, 2013).

These are 10-inch blocks and each one uses four fabrics/values and flip triangles instead of HSTs, although there is no reason that it can’t use even more in a given block. I am so stoked!!!  So, I hope to have several blocks or a half quilt to show you next week!  And speaking of quilts to show, since last month was red and I had some old red and white fabric, I made a little donation baby quilt. I the flimsy last week, but here it is done and quilted in all its relative blandness (and pinned badly to my design board):

I fixed up the wonky border on the left after I took the picture, so it’s nice and neat now. It finished at 42x38”, and my friend Terri has a charity she donates baby quilts to, so she will take this one off my hands. Oh, the binding? Some old Christmas fabric (see below) because..... why not?

I’ve also been working on a couple other things. If you haven’t seen my finished Rainbow Dresdens, visit the last post (click “older post”, below, or visit my Quilt Gallery page, link above).  Once Rainbow Dresdens and the red baby quilt were done, it was back to working on Flower Market, where I am still trimming up HSTs for a border. These are the two possibilities - a chevron style or diamonds. Excuse their wonkiness; I’m still trimming...

Which one do you like better??

Have a great week!