Purple Has Left the Building

It’s not even the end of the month yet, and I’m totally done with my purple scraps. There are a few strips and bits left to use as “seeds” for accumulating more purple scraps for next year. In the meantime, I have two more quilt finishes to show you and a patriotic Squirrel! project in the form of a table runner.  

But before that, typing the preceding sentence (squirrel!) reminded me of a story from when I was a little girl, about age 4. My parents were both born in the US (New York) of immigrant parents - all from Hungary. While everyone spoke English, if the grandparents didn’t want us grandkids to know what they were saying, they’d speak in Hungarian. My mom and my aunt spoke basic Hungarian. My grandparents also spoke German, so if they didn’t want anyone to know what they were talking about, they spoke German. I loved languages. My little girlfriend Phyllis and I had our own made-up language we spoke (as if we really knew what we were saying....). But I digress... When I played with my dolls, I had them speak in different languages. One day I was playing with my dolls in my room and my mom came in and asked me to repeat something. I said the word “mo-kush”. She told me it was the Hungarian word for squirrel (mokus, with an accent mark over the ‘o’). So, “squirrel" was my first Hungarian word!  

Without further ado, here were the last of the purple scraps that I sewed this week.

14 four-patch blocks from 2.5” squares (above) and 9 crumb blocks, 6.5” unfinished size (below)

That brought my total purple blocks for June to 89. I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Early in the week I basted the two quilts I had finished tops for. These will go to Quilts for Kids, as usual. Once they were quilted and bound, I added them to the ever-growing pile of quilts to be delivered. First is this cute little pink and purple scrappy number that finished at 37x43.5”

The pictures don’t do justice to this sweet little quilt! I had the perfect backing (a 1-yard cut that my friend Angie sent me last year) and to that I added this leftover purple Twin Sisters block and some darker purple strips as they seemed a bit strong for the front.

The fabric is adorable!

Next up was the dark purple donation quilt that I could not bring myself to name (and why bother with a donation quilt after all?). There were sure some great suggestions in the reader comments last week, though! I just hope it doesn’t give any kid nightmares!

This one finished at 38.5x43.5”. The backing (a questionable choice, but I thought the gray was more purplish....) is a piece from Connecting Threads that I bought six yards of - enough for four quilts. So you’ll be seeing it again.

And it was about this time, Wednesday, that The Squirrel Struck!!  I have been separating patriotic scraps from my Quilts for Kids scraps, because they really try to avoid holidays and patriotic in their little quilts. I ended up with lots of strings and a few chunks and 8 navy and white HSTs.  I thought doing a few stars would be nice - and remembered the leftover red HSTs from this project (where I cut a block wrong) one. So from there it was easy to come up with three sawtooth star blocks with string centers.

I did make a mistake and use a non-Kona white in some pieces around the center red star and it bugs me. How did they get into my Kona White Scraps drawer, anyway? But oh well.  Another oops - I meant to alternate the direction of the star stripes, but that got all futzed up too. Leave it to Cathy! Anyway, there was a 2.5” navy strip of star fabric that was just enough for a border if I added cornerstones. So I did. And then it was finished off with the perfect red and white striped binding.

It’s not the best of pictures, but I wanted to take it upstairs and put it on our dining room table. Maybe I’ll get another picture later in situ. Anyway, my favorite part (besides the binding) is the cute fabric I’ve had a couple years to use as a backing. I consider this totally reversible!

I’ll be joining in with the monthly Table Scraps linkup with Joyful Quilter and company. 

I’ve been working on my latest iteration of the Zipper Quilt (so addictive!) - this one to use as a sample for a scrappy workshop this fall for our local Quilts for Kids chapter. The bottom four rows have been sewn, the last two are still pinned on top of one another on the design board. Usually I work bottom to top in order to keep my color order while growing a quilt. It’s easier to let sewn parts hang down below the board.... (does that make sense?)

 

I would love to finish this before the end of the month to give me 39 quilt finishes in the first half of the year. I was shooting for 40, but I won’t make that. 

Finally, I’ll be joining the linkup on Sunday with Bernie and Preeti for the Positivity Quilt Along progress link-up. Here are my first 24 blocks - exactly half of what I need. I wish these looked a little more orderly and more nicely pressed. But I love the gender-neutral blues, purples (not pink!) and turquoise. I’m not sure yet if I’ll be alternating the light-dark backgrounds or creating a dark frame like the picture below.  I have a few weeks and lots more sewing to do before I have to decide.

And with that, I’m off to order another small iron for my workshop. My current little iron died after only 9 months. I’ve tried just about every brand and none has lasted me more than a year and a half. I use my irons every day in my studio, so they need to be sturdy little workhorses. They sure don’t make ‘em like they used to.....