Starting Slowly

Well, we all made it to 2022. Bruce and I are just getting over (finally) our Christmas colds. Some days, naps just seemed like a good idea, even when there were plenty of things to do. Laundry and housework and errands had to wait. Even sewing was tabled for awhile. But eventually this week we got caught up and even got the Christmas decorations put away for another year. I finally feel as though I’ll be able to hit the ground running this weekend. 

Back in December I started playing with one of the fabrics I bought from Wanda at Exuberant Color in her pop-up shop last fall. I bought a lovely grouping of bright animal fabric remnants. Since most of these bright, bold remnants are about a half yard or less, I knew they’d need to be paired with other blocks. Naturally, my horde of string blocks came to mind. 

In hopes that maybe green would be called as the January RSC color, I started with a green fabric with aqua, orange and purple cats. The fabric was cut into 6.5” blocks to match the string blocks. First, I started with all greens. Before I got even half of them up on the design wall, I knew it was too overwhelmingly GREEN (and I love green....).  So I experimented with adding in some other colored string blocks to pick up the colors of the cats in the print. Much better. 

Here’s a close-up showing better detail of the fabric.

So anyway, this little flimsy is ready to be basted up for quilting. And obviously I was wrong in guessing January’s color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, which is red. So, once Angela announced it, I pulled out my red scraps.

Oh dear, I’m in trouble. I have So.Many.Red.Scraps. Just that pile of stacked squares under the scissors handle is enough to almost complete a full quilt. Then there are other squares of varying sizes, four-patches, orphan blocks, strips enough to circle the Earth and chunks and.... oy.  In addition, I have a couple projects for Quilts for Kids, more like self-made “kits” from similar scraps, that lean toward one certain color. Like last year, I’ll focus on finishing a couple of those as we visit each color. 

So the next thing I did was pull out a donated quilt kit, Sailing Sailing, that I had assigned to Red Month. The kit included the original instructions, and the donor’s fabric pull, plus one partially completed block. 

She had apparently decided to do away with the zig-zags under the boats, as she had a navy “ocean” print attached to her block. And the pinwheels had been scratched out too. Fine with me. I like fast and simple when it comes to kid quilts. This kit was originally for 12 blocks, but she had fabric enough for more, so I made 20.  Here is what I came up with.

Honestly, it’s just *looks* wonky hanging there, but I promise, it’s square!

The red vertical sashing and the checkered border were from my stash. See..... red! I’m calling it Sail Away, which is what I wish I could do. You know, warm weather, ocean breezes, umbrella’ed drinks while lounging on a beach..... *ahem*.  Back to the reality of snowy cold January in the Salt Lake Valley.

Sail Away is ready for basting, too, and I expect both these little quilts will be finished next week.  I’ll share all the details then. In the meantime, I was NOT enthusiastic about tackling that pile of red. I thought I had all my blocks planned out for RSC22, but I just wasn’t sure. And certainly there was going to be plenty more scraps to warrant an additional almost-all-red quilt or two. Or four. Ugh. But I’ll talk about those plans next week.

In the meantime, I was SURE that I was continuing with the elephant blocks (Stomping Ground by Wendy Shepard), so I pulled out large enough red chunks and got to work. The red floral elephant is my favorite so far.

The next two Ellies were pieced with some red scrap fabric that was part of the donation stuff. I loved it until I pressed the elephant blocks, and you can already see that it’s bleeding. (click to enlarge). These will be getting soaked with color catchers before and after being sewn into a quilt.

Four elephants down and more to go, depending on how many I feel like doing.  I could easily do another dozen, but I may save some of the larger chunks for other things. We’ll see how the month pans out. 

Some of my planned blocks for the RSC this year are Bear Paws in three sizes. This was my inspiration picture, from Wombat Quilts. Her quilt has four block sizes, but I'll probably omit the largest size.

And once Angela showed her bullseye setting for Courthouse Steps blocks, I knew that was the perfect solution to using many of the red strips (paired with low volume background strips) I have. I should get a quilts’-worth of blocks just from those. I’m taking a break from my usual 6.5” string blocks this year because I have hundreds to use up. And I will, dang it! But I may do a few Rectangle String blocks with a center contrast of black to see how I like those. I’ll try them in any color except red. 

I’ll also be doing Antique Tile blocks, framed four-patches (which may morph into Puss in the Corner blocks), crumb placemats, and tumblers. I have also set a goal to use the half-hexie blocks I made in 2020 (or was it earlier?) from selvages. Lots of those crumbs, tumblers, four-patches and half hexies may be incorporated into single-color quilts along the way. Again, it’s all rather up in the air. Sheesh, no wonder I feel overwhelmed. 

Where’s that Fairy Godmother when you need her?