End of the Yellow Scrap Road

It’s been a fun and busy month for sewing, but it’s time to wrap up the yellow scraps for February. I had hoped to get more personal sewing done (namely, finishing the Beachcomber Quilt), but that will have to be pushed to March. 

This week I got my first Covid vaccine, and it was a good experience. I had no reaction whatsoever - not even a sore arm. And while getting checked in at the site, I met a lovely young girl whose name was Naserian. I asked her where she was from and she said “Africa”. I laughed and said I knew that, but what country? She replied “Kenya”. My eyes opened wide and I told her I’d visited Kenya (mostly the Narok area) and LOVED it.  Well, she was born in Narok! “I am Maasai!” she exclaimed. We nearly hugged each other, then remembered where we were and just giggled instead. It turns out she knows my friends Marilyn S and OD (Samuel Ole Dere). We kept laughing about what a small world it is. Needless to say, she and I exchanged info and will be keeping in touch. It made a good day (vaccine) into a GREAT day!! Anyway, I go back in mid-March for my second dose.

This week I finished up the final two February yellow/gold kid quilts for the Salt Lake chapter of Quilts for Kids. This first one is Wild Thing. Remember these quilts are from scraps donated by various ladies (including my own scraps), and are the trimmings and cast-offs from other projects. That is why there is rarely much of any one fabric. I just do what I can to make some sort of semi-cohesive (and sometimes underwhelming) quilt out of them.

Wild Thing was quilted in a loopy design and finished at 39.5”x42”.  The last yellow quilt for the month I’m just calling Yellow Thang because - well, do donation quilts really need names?  It finished at 40.5x44.5” and was also quilted with loops.

Here’s a closeup of the front and part of the back.
 

All four of the yellow February QFK quilts can be seen at my 2021 Quilts page link, above under the header.

Here is a recap of the yellow Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks I sewed for February. Sewing those yellow 

Wishing Ring blocks (middle left, below) completes the blocks I need for the Wishing Ring Around the Roses quilt. Fingers crossed that I’ll have time in March to assemble it! 

When I started last month to sew along with the Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR), I thought of it as a harmless little squirrel - a small side project. Each round only took a little bit of planning and an hour (ish) to sew. Easy peasy. Well, just like kids, chicks, saplings and other things that grow, this little squirrel is now a MONSTER. This latest round took two afternoons of measuring, planning, cutting, sewing, cussing, ripping, recutting, rethinking, more cussing, more sewing - you get the picture.

But this round is done! This week’s hostess is Susan, and she called log cabins. I decided to add little 4” log cabins only to the top and bottom to make the quilt more rectangular. I dislike the navy print I used, but want so badly to use it up. You can see it also on the small plus signs from an earlier round. It’s also a rather visually “mushy” print. 

The bottom row IS straight, even though it is hanging wonky (wonkily?). The top currently measures 42.5” across and 56.5” long.  I’m linking up to Susan’s linky party for this week. Whatever block is called for next week’s final round will likely be done with the red and bolder green prints I have remaining. 

I decided it was high time to get working on my piece(s) for the February Table Scraps monthly challenge at Joy’s blog. I had been tossing around ideas and colors all month. One night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, some fabric popped into my head, and I knew what I wanted to do. The fabric? Some Mardi Gras fat quarters that my friend Angie had sent me a couple years ago. They have cute little masks and fleur de lis on them in purple, yellow/gold and green.

Cousin Kim and I cut the fabric in 4.5” squares and then surrounded them with a 1.5” frame. From the colored “solids” (the yellows weren’t exactly solid, but was what we had) we cut 6.5” squares. 

Our plan was to alternate the solid and framed blocks somehow, but nothing seemed to work quite right. We didn’t want single colored placemats, so this is what we ended up with. We just sandwiched the top and back right sides together and added the same size batting to the back. Then we stitched around, leaving a small hole for turning right sides out and stitched the opening closed as we topstitched the perimeter. Just the same way I make kennel quilts! Anyway, then we took 3.25 minutes to quilt them (hehe). They aren’t the most stylish placemats ever, but they really look nice with my yellow plates sitting on them! Do I have a picture of that? Of course not! That would’ve taken some forethought. 

My last picture is of a possible maybe might happen glacially slow idea that could be a project down the road. Possibly. Definitely not a Squirrel. 

It started when Cousin Kim was telling me that she had an old 2004 magazine that she was recently flipping through that had a pieced quilt project using good old-fashioned chenille  “like they used to make bedspreads out of. Too bad we can’t get chenille like that anymore.” Silly me piped up, “Oh! I have a whole tub of chenille bedspreads and fabric I need to use up! Probably enough for 2-3 quilts at least!” (You know where this is going, right?) 

So, we dropped everything, raided the bin, selected our colors and block size and started cutting. Within a half hour my studio looked like it had snowed. Fuzz everywhere. This is not going to be fast, or even necessarily fun. I predict all sorts of issues sewing thick layers. And quilting it? Oh, I don’t even want to think about it. But we’ll tackle another pile of cutting next week. And I’ll be doing a lot of vacuuming.