Welcome Yellow February!

January is over for another year - yay!  February is one step closer to spring, and I’ve been happily celebrating with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of the month, yellow. We can generate the warmth and brightness of the sun right in our own studios! Come see what we’re all doing at our weekly Rainbow Scrap Saturday linkup.

I got a lot done with my yellow scraps in the last few days, primarily because we will be on vacation for a nice chunk of February. It seems I always tackle my selvages first, and once again it was so. First are the selvage 4-patches. The selvage patches are 4.5” unfinished. They’re paired with 4.5” patches of a low volume neutral to make 8.5” inch four-patch blocks. I made four blocks in yellow.

And I finished a row (14 blocks; 7 selvage tumblers, 7 colored fabric tumblers) for my selvage tumbler quilt. That’s not a very enticing name, but it’s just a working title for now.

I do plan to alternate the orientation of the tumblers every row, but yellow will be two rows away from red, so is cut the same way. As this will eventually be assembled in rainbow order, a row of orange tumblers (starting with an upside down orange fabric tumbler, then alternating) will go between these two rows. Come assembly time, I may have to make some additional tumblers or else trim the edges, not sure which yet. The row width as it is now measures about 43”. The height per row (after joining) will be 4”, so I’m figuring I’ll need about a dozen rows, and then a border to surround it all and get it to a good size for a donation quilt.

Next up were the Cracker blocks - seven of them.  My yellows are ranging from very pale to very gold, almost golden brown with some fabrics (which you’ll see when I post my string blocks later in the month). The Crackers are 7.75” unfinished.

And then the Anvil blocks. These are fun to chain piece and hence they whip up really fast! They will finish at 8” each, and I plan to mix all the colors merrily in the quilt.

If you only catch my blog on Rainbow Scrap Saturdays, you can use these links to check out two finishes I had during the week. Saguaro Sunset is HERE and the Pink Selvage Donation Quilt is HERE. Or you can click the 2019 QUILTS page tab above.

Next week won’t see much, if any, scrap sewing as we’ll be leaving for Arizona and I’m not taking my yellow scraps. I am taking Bob, however, my trusty back-up sewing machine. And I am taking scraps, but they’re multi-colored strings. I plan to get started on a long-planned string quilt inspired by this quilt. It’s called Diamond Frenzy, was sewn by Nancy Messier and it was pinned from Facebook. The best tutorial for these blocks (in my opinion) is from Molly Flanders’ blog, HERE.

Inspiration: Diamond Frenzy by Nancy Messier

Along with the Rainbow Scrap color of the month, I’m trying to get a donation quilt done every month (and more than one if I can) using that color. With yellow, I’ll be focusing on using up a lot of my stray gold fabric chunks (and other colors too) to frame this cute elephant fabric into Happy Blocks. I’ve cut out 50 center blocks of 6.5” blocks (yes, my hands are numb) and the strips. I'll plan to sew up two quilt tops from them.

I’m also bringing along the next Pineapple Quilt to start if there is time.  And if there isn’t, there is always the rest of February to work on it.

But needless to say, sewing will not be my highest priority on vacation, LOL!! This time Cousin Kim is not joining us, so Bruce and I will take two leisurely days to drive down to Tubac. This time, for the first time, we won’t be staying in the Bates Motel family trailer. Instead, we are staying in the second home of Bruce’s sister Annette and her husband Glenn.  We’ll have a whole, beautiful house to ourselves, and it’s up in the hills above the town. There are lots roads and trails for walking. The Tubac Arts Festival will be going on while we’re there, and that will be fun too.