Time to Update the Calendar

With the turning of the year, my old 2020 Outlander calendar is now outdated. If I were 14, I would save it and drool over the pictures of Jamie the costumes and such, but I’m way older than that. For 2021, the calendar here in my office will be elephants, courtesy of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. I fell in love with elephants and the SWT when I visited the elephant orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya in 2018. Bruce and I have supported their work by “adopting” (sponsoring) a couple elephants every year, first for our grandkids and then for ourselves. Our current babies are Larro, a female and Roho, a male. But I digress ... 

Ok, so the calendar is updated and I assume the Apple dropped in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The sun came up this morning although we have yucky damp and cold cloud cover so I’m just presuming there is a sun up there somewhere. Good fireplace weather. And excellent sewing weather!!

Our January color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink. Before starting in on the monthly blocks I’ll be doing, I decided to knock out a flimsy with the pink and gold (etc) scraps I showed last week. This is Unicorn Cats. The top is now sewn, as is the backing (no picture), all with the scrap/chunk bundle that came from Quilts for Kids. 

I used up most of the scraps - probably 95% - of this group of scraps, and it will even have a matching striped binding when finished. The only additions from my stash were the Kona Snow (inner sashings) and the Kona Flamingo for the stop border. 

Next week I’ll baste and quilt this little quilt along with 2 other QFK quilts (made by others - I just quilt and bind them). If I have time after those, I’ll get working on my Zipper quilt. 

Two fellow RSC friends, Cathy and Gayle, are doing this cute little 3.5” block this year and I just couldn’t resist. It’s made with three 2.5” squares - one in the color of the month and the other two from your background of choice. The two background squares are sliced diagonally then each resulting triangle is sewn to a side of the colored square. These two were just my initial prototypes, so expect to see many more of these later in the month.

Next I worked on waffle blocks (also influenced by two other RSC’ers, Nann and Kathy). It takes four 5.5” (unfinished) blocks to make one 10.5” block. I made three blocks. I love these because they use some of my smaller 1.5” scraps. 

This next block is one I’ve loved since I first did one for a Farm Girl Vintage sew-along a few years ago. Lori Holt calls it a Spring Star, but I’m not sure if that was her name for it or the traditional name for it. Does anyone know? I guess I’ll call it a Spring Star until I learn otherwise. I’m using Kona White as a background, Kona Black as the constant accent squares, and two shades of the Rainbow Scrap color of the month for the arms of the star. The block measures 12.5” unfinished, 12” finished. Making two of these each month for 10 months will give me a total of 20 blocks. That will yield a 48x60” quilt before adding any sashing or borders, so that’s a good range.

And then, since I was drowning in pink strings, I made 26 blocks (6.5”). Adding these to the 15 I made last year and still have on hand, that gives me 41 pink string blocks. My plan is to use these as filler blocks as I work on various Quilts for Kids scrap projects.

Also, I made an Executive Decision to work on QFK quilt projects that coordinate with the RSC color of the month. I had drawn the Unicorn Cats project (above) randomly for January, and loved that it matched the color of the month. It makes sense to pull out all the pink scraps at once, along with any other pink chunks or pink yardage pieces. To that end, I pulled out three more scrap pink fabrics waiting their turn: 

1. Pink Sock Monkeys (I have sock monkey fabric in other colors that will be tackled later), 

2. Pink Bears/Bunnies, and 

3. Pink Raggedy Ann and Andy. 

I started with the Pink Sock Monkeys and pieced this little top yesterday.  Well, it’s not totally pieced yet - it’s still in three sections that need to be sewn together. There is enough of that pink sock monkey fabric for the back too. This will go into the pile to be basted. 

I’m probably the only person in the world who does not like sock monkeys, so I tackled that one first to get it over with *cough* start somewhere.....  Anyway, you can see that I needed to stretch the fabric by using other bits and stripes, etc. I expect there will be a lot of this occurring as I make my way through these scraps and chunks this year. That’s the point - to use up their scraps and mine and turn them into useful quilts.

I can’t decide if this top is cute or Tres Fugly. But oh well. As I said, it will be useful!

Did you have a nice New Year’s Eve? We did. Just like any other - doing our best to stay up until midnight to kiss and then say goodnight. We made it. The only other difference this year  was that a bottle of champagne was killed in the process ...