Scrappy Blue Saturday; The Cat Edition

Welcome to Scrap Happy Saturday!  We are continuing with blue for the month of January for our 2016 Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Everyone links up over at Angela’s blog, So Scrappy.  We invite you to check out all the great blue eye candy!

First up: cats.  I adore Sally’s kitten pattern, so decided I had to make a litter.  But before they were all even born, they began mewing for a mom. So I drafted a Mama Cat pattern and sewed them up a mom. I didn’t like any of the patterns I found online because they either had weird ears or no tail or no paw or were just otherwise unsatisfactory.

To Sally’s kitten block I added a strip at the top so that the blocks came to an even 6.5 x 6.5” unfinished (6” finished).  Mama cat is 12” finished, so I decided that this setting (above) was perfect. All sewn together it measures 24.5 x 24.5”.  So, nine colors should make a nice 72x72” quilt.  That way I can skip a color if I don’t have enough scraps.

Here are my Mama Cat pieces cut and laid out on my mini design boards.  Yes, one of the boards has a cat fabric border. 

If you like the Mama Cat pattern and would like a copy, let me know. I’ve written it up in pdf format and can email you a copy. Feel free to share. 

I had enough large scraps to do three Dresdens, but they are not yet appliquéd to blocks. It took me forever, auditioning all sorts of background fabrics, to decide what I wanted to do. The point was to use my existing stash. Eventually I decided to stick with Plan A, which is to to use pink and yellow background squares. I’ll make as many Dresdens as each color’s scraps allow and alternate between putting them on pink or yellow backgrounds. I hope to have enough by the end or the year to make two quilts - one pink and one yellow (backgrounds). 

 

I saw a Dresden quilt on Pinterest where the maker had used old doilies for the centers, so I am going to borrow that idea (see below). 

Each doily will need to be backed first so the centers are solid. I have some white linen I may use for that. Altogether, there are about 18 or so doilies. I'll have to dig deeper to find more. There are bins of linens I need to go through - things that will eventually make it into my Etsy shop.  :-)

In addition to cats and Dresdens, I made 10 scrappy 16-patch blocks using my 2.5” squares. There are 12 squares of color in each, with for black and white patches in the center. I will continue making these and figure out a use for them later in the year.....

I also squared up and pressed over 160 blue and white HST’s for heaven-knows-what. But I will make HSTs every month and throw them in the box with those. 

And last but not least (well, they probably ARE the least) for this week are the miscellaneous blocks I either dredged up or sewed. The top tiny Dresden is a vintage piece I found in with my vintage blocks (more about that some other time). There are three strip blocks; 2- 8.5” blocks that I did straight instead of slanted (what was I thinking?), and one that is slanted strips @ 6.5”. The other two 6.5” blocks are left over from last year. I think I will just throw together miscellaneous 6.5” blocks as I near the end of the scraps every month. Eventually they will find a purpose.  

I’m still continuing with my blue scraps for next week. (Will this month ever end?)  I’ll play with the selvages and make a block or two with those.  And finally, I have the remaining bits and pieces and will make some blue crumb slabs.  So, I will have all that to show next week. Hopefully!

Finally, I did manage to sew something besides blue this week. I pieced a very large block quilt in red and gray for my brother-in-law. It’s his favorite color. Yeah, it’s pretty simple and pretty ugly. I’m calling it “Seeing Red” because I hated working on it. It will get basted tomorrow and quilted over the next couple weeks when I need a change from the blue.  And a spur-of-the-moment Valentine Quilt is waiting in the wings.  

Thanks for dropping by! Until next time,

2016 Finish-Along 1st Quarter Goals

The Finish-Along has grown by leaps and bounds with lots of us finding how good it is to set (flexible) goals and reach for them in quarterly segments.

I am linking up with Leanne at She Can Quilt (one of several international hostesses) to declare my goals and hopeful finishes for the first quarter of the year.

Without further ado, let’s get started!


1.   Layers of Charm Quilt or “Seeing Red"

I hate this quilt. It is a Fat Quarter Shop easy pattern, but since I didn’t have the precuts, I just used yardage. And I figured since there was so much waste in cutting the gray 5” squares in half, that I would just cut my own slightly larger and sew them on. What a time-consuming mess. I would have rather had the waste. So, I skipped half of the gray diamonds and called it good. Anyway, the quilt top is done and just needs to be pressed, squared, basted, quilted and bound. Maybe next week when I can stand to look at it again. I`ll be taking it on vacation next month to give to my BIL, who loves red.

2.  Valentine Quilt.

I`ll just use the Disappearing Nine Patch method to whip this one up real quick before the end of the month. Use my stash. Make a Valentine quilt. Win-win.

3.  Birds and Bees Quilt.

I LOVE this fabric line from Tamara Kate, and designed a simple quilt on Pattern Jam to use the yardage I own. That is one of the great things about Pattern Jam (there are lots of others, and it’s free - check it out!) When you design a quilt, it can print out the fabric calculations for you. So, now I know I will have enough without having to do quilty math.  This will be a simple piecing job that I will take along on vacation, because I am taking my sewing machine.  Ten days without sewing is HELL, not a vacation.

4.   Finish the Farm Girl Quilt

All the blocks are done. It is just time to suck it up and sew them together. I learned so much about piecing and corner square triangles, flying geese, following directions, etc, during this Stitch-Along. But my first blocks are not great, and I may have to square them up to a slightly smaller size. Not looking forward to sashing them, either. And cornerstones. Oy. Can you say, “headache”??

5.  Make 2 Farm Girl Pillow Shams.  All I have left to do is piece the tractor block (a large one) for hubby, then construct the cases.  I will probably have the pillow shams done long before the quilt.


6.   Hoffman Digital Cityscape Wall Hangings.

Once I decided not to use this as the backing to Rainbow Orbs (it seemed silly to piece all around a 36x44” print when I needed a 80x96” backing), these fell by the wayside.  There are two of them, and I plan to do one for us and one for my son Shane, who is an artist that paints cityscapes.  I will piece 8” blocks to go around the print to frame it, then quilt and bind. And since I am a crazy-piecer from way back, it should go quickly. Once I start.

7.  Aria (Benartex) Big Braid Quilt.

I have had and loved these fabrics for over a year. Time to use them. Maybe a bedspread; I can alter the pattern as needed. I have yards and yards of this fabric. Probably enough for a front and back. But I can’t think about the back yet.  :-)   I’m thinking I probably won’t get to this during the first quarter, but I better put it on here just in case.

And that is my list. Lots of quilts, which will be a nice change from the 4th quarter of last year when I sewed enough pillowcases and zippy pouches and the like to use up just short of 30 yards of fabric.

 Until next time!!

A Blue Kind of Week

Hi all! Here are my eight blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt. January is BLUE, and Angela at So Scrappy gave us this delightful pattern for the first column of the quilt. I have them pinned in a 2x4 layout for the picture, but have since sewn them together in a column.

To see more scrappy blue goodness, why not swing by and check out all the other blues?

Slightly closer up. Imperfections visible, but then I never claimed to sew with robotic precision!  :-)

This week I also made a couple Dresdens, but will show those next week because I may have more. And then I worked with my vintage sheet scraps and made 18 Rail Fence blocks, 9” each.  I’m showing them all together here, even though they will be spread out in a diagonal zig-zag in the final layout.

And I even found a place to store them close to my vintage sheet scraps (not to be confused with my bins of vintage sheets, LOL. I sell them in my Etsy shop). My studio is an absolute mess, and I have decided to begin cleaning up here and there.

This area below will get a refresh. This is the before picture; I did manage to get all the blues (and gray and blacks) on the bottom shelf sorted and wound on vertical cards. The second-to-bottom shelf shows a bunch of cards just hanging out, waiting to be re-used. Ahem.  The scraps are sorted by colors in the bins on the very right.

Today I go back to sewing with blues. I interrupted my progress on Thursday and Friday to whip up a quick red and gray quilt top for my brother-in-law who loves red. We will be going on vacation to Arizona next month and I’ll  take it to him then. Quilts are useful even in southern Arizona. Winter evenings can get quite cold, and 2 years ago in February it even snowed.

Thanks for dropping by!

Sugar Block Club, Submissions Wanted and Fabric Diet

This year I am participating in the Sugar Block Club 3.0 with Amy of Stitchery Dickory Dock. I actually participated a couple years ago, but after the second month it got into territory that my skills (at the time) would not allow me to follow. I just cannot “grock” paper piecing.  But I had completed two blocks (and in time since had created two more). So, I was thrilled this year when I learned they are not paper pieced and that the whole program is FREE.  Check it out here.

This is my block for this month, which is a variation on the classic Churn Dash Block.

The blocks this year will all be variations of classic blocks.  And this is my plan for completing this quilt. Since I had four blocks made and will need 20 (all at 12” finished) for a quilt, I plan to do two blocks per month for January - August (16), which will give me my 20. One will be the SBC block and the second will be another block of my choosing.  This month I already did my personal choice block, a Dutchman’s Puzzle block with Flying Geese. I needed the warm-up with the geese.

The fabric I am using is primarily (but not solely) Notting Hill by Joel Dewberry. I love hot pink and orange together. Always have, always will.  The background fabrics will range from white to cream to print-on-white - just a mix. I need to get more variation going there to make it look intentional (because it wasn’t originally!!).  Anyway, this is what the six blocks look like together pinned on my design board.  

The finished quilt will have sashing of some kind, and I am thinking of doing something outrageous, like a hot pink or orange sashing.  But I may end up just doing white. We will see come August......

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Pam Kellogg, Editor of Crazy Quilting Quarterly is calling for submissions for the SUMMER issue of CQQ.  You can find out about it HERE.  She is looking for crazy quilting work in summer themes like birds, birdhouses, butterflies, dragonflies, fruit (grapes, watermelon, cherries) cottages - anything that has a summer theme.  Pictures and tutorials welcome.  This is a picture of the February SPRING issue, which will be published on February 1. Don’t miss it!



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And on a note of unfinished business,  my “fabric diet” totals for December were not nearly as impressive as November's. But in my defense, I had planned  (and even announced) that I wanted to take advantage of year-end sales to stock up on solids. And I did! Total fabric IN was 25 yards, Total fabric out was 24 yards, for a net gain of 1 yard.

Out:
Used in 2 quilts, 14.25 (doesn’t include a vintage sheet backing)
Used in 3 pillow shams/covers, 2.5 (doesn’t include scraps)
Sold on Etsy: 6.25
Given to niece: 1 yd

IN:
4 yards were for a quilt I will be making my son Shane
4 yards were background fabric for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt,
2 yards were binding (striped) fabrics,
8 yards were colored solids,
4 yards were Christmas fabrics
3 yards were white/black prints and other “must-have”s. You know how THAT goes.

Until next time,

Revving up the Sewing Machine

Welcome to 2016! I hope you, like me, are ready to kick off another year of sewing, stitching, quilting and fun.

I am starting with the super-fun Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by Angela at So Scrappy. Today, like every Saturday, we all have a linky party to show our progress for using our color-of-the-month scraps. Now, Angela just announced January’s color yesterday. It’s blue, from icy shades to deepest navy. However, we are leaving out the green-blues because they will have their own month down the line.

Needless to say, I don’t have too much progress to report in one day, but I did piece my first block.  It is 9.5” unfinished, and sitting on a design board (it’s NOT framed, LOL). This year we are doing a column-along (optional), and each month will be a new block/color. For the size of quilt I am doing, I will make a total of 8 of these blocks. They will not be matching, but scrappy.  I thought it would be cute to use some of my blue Lori Holt Modern Minis leftover squares for the 3.5” center. Appropriately, I chose the “Just take one stitch at a time”  for the center of my first block.

After I finish those 8 blocks, I will sew some Dresden Plate blocks. Each flower will take 20 petals, and as the pieces are fairly large (for scraps), they are the next to be cut and assembled. I hope to get 2 Dresdens per month, and this will be an ongoing project until I decide I have enough for a quilt. All I know is that the background will be a pale pink cotton (vintage-y looking) that I’ve had sitting around for years. I must have 4-5 yards of it.

I also want to make some of Sally T’s kittens. Alfalfa and Darla are wary of this idea, but I think it will be fun.

This year two of my goals are to make a quilt from my vintage sheet, and a quilt or small wall-hanging from my selvages.  I also have a lot of waste triangles, and I need to begin clearing some of those out.

L-R:  Blue selvages, Blue waste triangles (some with white), Blue vintage sheet fabric

So here is the plan. Every month I will do a block or two from the selvage pieces in the color of the month. I eventually want to assemble each block to look like library shelves. See the quilt here; it’s my inspiration.

With the sheets, I will sew rail fence blocks and eventually assemble them in a zig-zag rainbow patterned quilt.

The waste triangles I will sew up into HSTs and trim, then throw in with the crumbs tiny scraps; I’ll come back to that in a minute.

I really miss working on the wonky log cabins I did last year with color plus black/white. So, any strips of fabric I have in the color of the month will be made into 9” strip blocks, pieced diagonally then with two white/black corner square triangles. Here is an example by Amy Smart, a local quilter that I really admire. I hope to have some in the next week or two to show you.

Finally, I’ll put any 2.5” squares into 16-patch blocks. Anything that is too small to use there will be thrown in with the waste HSTs and I will just improv my way through them, making odd blocks or “slabs”. I have no idea what those will become eventually.

So, is that too much??  Believe me, that is my pared-down list. But still, some thing(s) may have to go. I will give it a try this month and then revise plans accordingly.

Until next time,

Happy New Year 2016 and 2015 Recap

Happy New Year to you!  I want to extend my thanks and gratitude to my friends and readers for following me here or in our personal off-line lives. Staying connected is, to me, an important part of life, and the older I get the more I know and appreciate that. I wish you all a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous New Year 2016 from the bottom of my heart.

2015 was, for me, a good, happy and productive year.  Creatively speaking, I was primarily a crazy quilter (crazy quilting; the art form that arose in Victorian times whereby women pieced together fancy fabrics in random patchwork and then embellished it with stitching, beads, etc) for the last 15 years. Crazy quilting is very time consuming (but enjoyable!). It takes a lot of time just to do one block. And while I did do embroidery and crazy quilting this year, my main focus was on traditional quilting. It is refreshing to have finishes come along more often!  

So, here is a pictorial of my finishes this year with minimum commentary. 

Quilt for son Shane

Birch Trees Quilt for DGS Easton

Pow Wow Quilt for DH Bruce

2-layer skirt for DGD London

Here I must insert a picture of Lori Holt, the quilt world’s own Farm Girl herself. I was lucky enough to attend one of her retreats in June.

Lori Holt

2015 was the Year of the Farm Girl in the quilting world, and although my Farm Girl Quilt is not yet assembled, I do have 49 blocks (of 49) completed. I still need to do our pillow shams and then shuffle around and decide on placement. The Farmhouse block, below, represents that huge effort. Watch for my Farm Girl Quilt and matching pillow shams to be completed in the 1st quarter of 2016

Farmhouse block

What Cancer Cannot Do Quilt for Cal

Pink and Green Patchwork Quilt for Emma

Several times during the summer, my dear granddaughter Lauren came to spend the day and we sewed. I have shown pictures of tote bags, zip pouches, etc, that we made during those fun times. But the Piece de Resistance of our combined efforts was this lovely school backpack that Lauren completed just before school started. I am so proud of her!

Lauren and her backpack

The one crazy quilt I finally finished this year was started in 2012. There will be more about this quilt in February after it is published.  I list it here just for a minor reference.  :-)  I also have another CQ finish which is not shown, but will also be in that magazine. Again, more in February.

The Black Needlepoint Crazy Quilt

Farm Girl Cozy Cottage Pillow

Four scrappy pincushions for Christmas presents

Two sets of clothes and quilted play mats for granddaughters

20-21 zip pouches for Christmas gifts (only a few shown here)

17 pillowcases for gifts. Again, only some shown. 

Lighted Christmas Tree Wall Hanging

Rainbow Orbs Quilt, Shams and bedskirt

Rainbow Orbs is, by far, my favorite finish of 2015. Its bright, in-your-face colors bring me joy every time I look at it.  The cats approve, too.

I Spy Quilt

Helen’s Garden Quilt

That pretty much sums up my creative year. What fun it was! And today, New Year’s Day, I will begin straight away on 2016 projects.

Hugs,