Same Old Same Old

I’ve got to start taking more pictures! If I did, I have more to document about our activities during the week. But I always seem to forget. So in 100 words or less, I’ll document our week’s highlights: 

Monday was our 18th wedding anniversary and to celebrate we went out to dinner. The company (each other) was better than the food, and I think we’re done with Olive Garden. We used up an old gift card though. And speaking of food, we harvested our first tomato and some blackberries from the garden. Things are finally beginning to take off!  ...  I bought a bolt of Kona White from Joann’s with a 50% off coupon...  On Tuesday I attended my weekly WW meeting and lost a pound. My friend Diane from WW brought me a full plastic bag of yardage from her group’s giveaway table. They’ll be great for backings for QFK. Thanks, Diane! 

And now you’re up to date, so let’s turn to the quilting, shall we?

Early in the week I basted then quilted the two quilt tops I’d sewn last week. This first one I’m calling Playtime. It’s just a mix of various width-of-fabric strips in blues and reds primarily, with some solid accent strips thrown in. It measures 40x46”.

The backing is the same kid print that’s in the two widest strips. Next up is Riverdance. Strange name for a quilt that has nothing to do with rivers or dancing or Riverdancing, but let me explain.

Riverdance was made from scraps cut into 6.5” squares and 3.5” squares that were then sewn into four-patches. If I’d just sewn them all together without some sort of spacing, it would’ve been chaos. So I added 1.5” strips (in Kona Snow) to make the patches dance. Now, it’s not a major shift in the columns, just a small one. But it helps the eye separate the columns and gives the quilt some movement. And it reminded me of Riverdance, where the focus is all in the fancy footwork. So that’s my convoluted thought process. 

Riverdance measures 40x49.5”. The backing is a great orange print I picked up on sale at Connecting Threads.

Then I turned my attention to dark blue, the July color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  As usual, I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday to share my dark blue scrappy sewing with the other Scrapettes. 

First I sewed some some “chips”. These blocks measure 4” finished. They’re not my favorites to sew, mainly because my black and white fabric scrap drawers are full but untidy a hot mess.  I did take the time to do some organizing in those drawers, but more importantly I decided to check my original plan for these blocks and my progress. It made sense to downsize the quilt these will eventually make into a youth size instead of a full lap size. That means I only had to sew 11 blocks this month instead of the usual 24. And that is where I personally did some riverdancing, LOL! 

Last week I mentioned that I’d sewn a bunch of dark blue string blocks. I thought I had 39, so I sewed one more for an even forty. Then I counted and had … 38. Ok, well… that’s just fine.

When I added in the 19 dark blue blocks I still had left over from last year, the total came to 57.

These won’t all be used together in one single (boring and dark) quilt, of course. Then I remembered I had some blocks that I made in light blue when that was the RSC color of the month. The lighter colored blocks don’t show up well when mixed in with the multi-colored string blocks, but they’d be perfect with the dark blue. This is what I came up with:

This layout will be sewn up in the coming week. Best of all, is uses up every light blue block in the Parts Department!

The last quilt to show you is the one that started out with these scraps. I ended up eliminating the bright blue and the red/navy plaid because they weren’t needed.

Here’s the flimsy (quilt top):

I absolutely loved it - until I added the border. I wanted to use up the last of the scraps and at the same time widen it a bit. But instead, it confused the pattern and took away from the quilt as a whole. A simple stop border would have been better. But I’m not ripping it out. And to top it off, when I was cleaning up my studio yesterday, I found MORE of the strips, so I ended up not using them all anyway! This top will be basted and quilted up in the coming week, just like the blue strings.  

But first I have my Positivity quilt top to put together. The blocks are all sewn and laid out, so that is today’s project. I’ll be joining the link-up on Sunday. Drop by if you’re in the neighborhood!