A Finish - Beachcomber !!

Welcome Spring! And to all of you visiting my blog. Oh my goodness, my joints are sure loving the sunshine and warmer weather. I’m still a creaky old broad, but it’s nice to get out and walk and not have everything hurt. Heck, it’s nice to just get out of bed and not have everything hurt! LOL

So, as the title mentions, I finally finished Beachcomber. This is a Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) quilt that I began in March 2019 and finished the blocks and flimsy in October 2020. I basted it earlier this month (finally) and got it quilted this week. I am so happy to have this off my plate.  

I quilted this tighter than I usually do with lots of close, medium-sized loops. I wanted to add a lot of texture since there is so much white area (more than I generally like). I don’t have pictures from after laundering it, but it is yummy and texture-ful. If that’s not a word, it should be.

Beachcomber finished at 55.5 x 66.5”.  It will go into my pile of Quilts to Gift (to family and friends). It’s a rare Not-Donation quilt.  I’d love to start a new RSC crumb project, but will probably wait until calendar 2022 when I won’t have so many scrappy quilts to sew (or will I?) for Quilts for Kids. Regardless, I can now turn my sights to finishing up another RSC quilt or two in the second quarter of the year. I’m thinking that my Twin Sisters blocks are next in line. 

Speaking of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I finished off the last of my green blocks for March. Here are my chips which were started awhile ago but only finished this week. There are 12 each of white and black with green centers. They measure 4.5” each, unfinished.

And then I did all my waffle blocks. Again, I don’t know whether there are twelve 5.5” blocks here or three 10.5” blocks. I’m sewing them into fours like this (not yet trimmed), so I’ll probably count them as three blocks. I do know that there are others sewing these waffle blocks who are planning a different setting (scattered colors) so they are counting each 5.5” block as one. The four-blocks-as-one style will be easier to assemble in the long run, and more mindless, so it’s more my style, hehe. Probably not as pretty as the rainbow settings will be, though. 

And I quilted Dancing Seahorses too. Not well, mind you, but it is quilted. I used a serpentine stitch and lost my bearings “in the ocean”. So the lines are not straight (straight serpentines? you know what I mean). Do I care? NO. (Should I care? Probably, but oh well. If some kid objects to the quilting, I’ll get back to you....)

I will say, however, that I did a da** good job of machine appliquéing the two seahorses down. Don’t want them floating off where they don’t belong. So, this little donation quilt finished at 39x45”.

Like last week’s seahorse quilt, this one is backed with that same yummy fabric given to me by Sally that has the perfect colors in it. (Cathy waves goodbye to it, dabbing her eyes....)

So after those finishes, it was time to dig into more green fabric chunks and scraps. The ballerina fabrics in the little quilt top below were sent to me last fall by Angie. You are seeing every inch of what was there, with the exception of a 2” strip I cut off one of the cream fabrics to even them out.  I had a cute green and pink backing fabric in my stash for the back, so this little gem will be basted and quilted in the coming week. It’s about as simple as it gets, but some little girl will love it, I’m sure.

All that was left at this point (and I say “all” with tongue in cheek, because my green scrap bin was still overflowing) was to use up scraps and bits to make a scrappy green quilt or two. 

I’m calling these my Outer Limits green donation quilt tops. Those of us who are of a certain age *cough* may remember the opening monologue of the sixties’ TV show, The Outer Limits:

 There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission.  We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the outer limits.

Outer Limits - Horizontal. Some of my scrappy strips called for a horizontal orientation because of the print or the words. So I grouped those together along with the 4,361 (or so) 2.5” green chevrons (fabric scraps of Riley Blake fabrics donated to Quilts for Kids) I cut out with my Accuquilt cutter. Some were made into seizure-inducing 16-patch blocks, or 4-patch blocks, or left as strips. There are 3 cute animal  strips left over from a jelly roll that I gave Cousin Kim last year - she didn’t use the green. 

Below is Outer Limits - Vertical. This is still a work in progress. The overall length will be 48” as determined by the eight 6” strip blocks. The columns, while sewn together by color, are not yet adjusted (trimmed or added to) for length. 

I’ll get it all finished up during the week for presentation next week (you have been warned!) Cousin Kim is coming over on Sunday for a Basting Fest. We’re going to baste (sandwich) one of her 4-year-old UFO’s - a Christmas quilt top that she sewed together last week. And then we’ll do my Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) quilt, and any green quilt tops (2 or 3) that are ready. My goal is to get my four quilts quilted before month-end, and Kim’s shortly thereafter.