First Finishes of 2024

Woo-hoo! I finished two quilts this week! I’ve had lots and lots of sewing time, thanks to the cold and snowy weather this past week. My friend Ruby and I had planned to have a salmon lunch and then spend a couple hours in her hot tub, but on that day (Thursday), it began snowing like crazy mid-morning - almost whiteout conditions. So we cancelled it for this week. Naturally, by early afternoon it had cleared and the sun was shining.  That’s OK, there’s always next week. And Bruce has been sick this week, so I feel better staying close to home. It’s just a nasty winter cold, but it has zapped all his energy. Yesterday was Day 4, so I expect he’ll be turning a corner this weekend.

Working on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color of Green (darks and brights) for January, I made some good dents in my green fabric scraps.

I loved these 16-Patch stars that Julie made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year. So, since I’m trying to stick to simple (but good-looking) blocks this year, this one fit the bill perfectly. They assemble quickly, eat up lots of scraps, and allow me more time to work on assembling RSC quilts from previous years’ blocks.

I’ll make a total of 20 of these blocks for a quilt that finishes 48x60”.

You’d think that after sewing 400+ string blocks last calendar quarter, I’d be so over sewing strings. But you’d be wrong. What’s a Rainbow Scrapper to do when she has loads of strings in the color of the month? For me, the answer was to make 28 string block with a contrasting center string while using other 6.5” solid and dark green prints to round out a green quilt top. 

The first three columns are webbed with 4 more to go. I selected the Kona Iced Frappe color (also just a scrap) from my solids bin. It matched the little bit of Tula Pink scrap print and was a nice contrast with the green strings. When I ran out of the Tula print, I added in the 9 plain dark green blocks to finish them off. I love it when there’s *just* enough fabric to use and match. Click on the picture to see the colors better. You can also see that I had to add some dark green slivers to round out several of the print blocks to 6.5” square. 

Well, that quilt top wasn’t in my plans, but I was more than happy to go where the scraps led me, and the result is far fewer green scraps. Win-win!  

But the next two quilts WERE on my radar, and this week I basted, quilted and bound them. They’re coming with me (and three other recent finishes) to the Quilts for Kids workshop this morning. 

First is Chevron Stars, which finished at 40x54”. It was quilted with a vertical serpentine stitch. Last week I said I didn’t have enough of the chevron pieces to make a four-sided border, but I was wrong. We will not discuss how far my quilt math was off…. (wink).

My second finish was this striped number….. 39x46”.

And the backing - 

One of the things I was going through last week (decluttering) was my tub of home decorator prints and trims. Back in the day I used to make and sell Boho Bags. Anyway, I found two pieces of fabric that matched and perfectly fit a small 12x18” pillow form I had. Thirty minutes later, I had a little cushion (that I said last week I would not be sewing). 

I will purchase the rest of the decorator cushions - stripes, textures, etc. to add some zing to our otherwise neutral living room. Color pops of greens and blues should add some interest when it comes to showing the house for sale. I also went through all our paint cans this week and separated the dried up paints (which we’ll take to the city public works building for safe disposal) and labeled all the viable remaining paints. Finally, I made a short list of colors I need to buy to touch up baseboards and a wall or two. 

But back to sewing… two quick things. Next week I will begin putting together the third quilt “kit” whose number I pulled for January. This is kit #19…. and it will likely need plenty of supplementation. I’m really looking forward to playing with this!

I would also like to finish about 8-10 more blocks for the Anne quilt I’ll be gifting (see this post, near the end). And finally, I have some secret sewing to do for a reveal in February, but all I can show you is my color pull and some of the cutting. Stay tuned!

A potential RSC Quilt?.

Have a great week! 

Linking to Scrappy Saturday.