Sewing More Sunshine

February is always short. But this month, with a trip to Arizona to visit family and seek out warmth and sunshine, it seemed even shorter than usual. I had to get my sewing game on and finish whipping my yellow scraps into shape this last week.

To that end, I sewed six 6.5” crumb blocks. Then I added them to the six from last year and made three Crumbcakes blocks for one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilts for this year. 

I only need 9 more small (6.5”) blocks in varying colors to finish up all the Crumbcakes large blocks. This one will probably finish out sometime mid-year.

And then I made some bitcoin blocks in yellow and in gold.  I’m keeping these only two columns wide because I’m thinking I may eventually use them for a rainbow border.  Then again, maybe not. Time will tell.

That completed my RSC scrap work for the month, YAY!! Here are all my yellow blocks.

6    9.5” strip blocks

4    selvage four-patch blocks

12  nine-patch variation blocks

1    row of yellow selvage tumblers (shown with the red row from last month)

7    Crackers blocks at 7.5”

8    Anvil blocks at 8.5”

3    Crumbcakes blocks 

4     Bitcoin blocks

My yellow scraps aren’t gone, but they are definitely decimated!! Come see what others have done with their yellow scraps at our weekly Rainbow Scrap Challenge linkup. 

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While on vacation, I sewed together some Happy Blocks with some elephant fabric I found on a steep clearance last summer. I thought I had 75 blocks, but it turns out there were only 65. So, I’m making two quilts with 30 blocks each and will use the leftover blocks on the back. I sewed up this top yesterday. The other one uses the same fabrics but will have a slightly different block placement. With the blocks measuring 10”, both quilts will finish at 50x60” and be for donation. I’d like to get them done next week so I can have a couple February finishes.

And speaking of vacation, my vacation post is HERE and includes a picture of Saguaro Sunset in the wild. It also includes lots of cool pictures of the house we stayed in courtesy of Bruce’s sister Annette and her husband Glenn (who we just found out yesterday lost their adult son a couple days ago. Don’t even know details yet). 

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The bulk of my work this week has been on assembling the Lattice Birds top. And after all the deliberation over color placement, I can see I accidentally switched a couple rows (rows 7 and 9 should be reversed) near the bottom and there are some unintended clusters of color. But oh well. Don’t they say that birds of a feather flock together?!?

Now I need to make some final decisions about borders. It will definitely have about a 4-5” dark blue floral border of the focus fabric (seen on a lot of the birds and the center patch of every Irish Chain block). But I think it may also need a stop border in white or bright green. Or one in green AND one in white before adding the wide blue border.

Since these are also 10” blocks, the top currently measures 70x90”. So it could tentatively end up at around 84x104”. I’ve got to get crackin’ on this because it’s my OMG (One Monthly Goal) to get the top finished up in February. That only leaves me a few days to make up my mind and finish sewing it (and press and snip loose threads yet again!).