Rainbow Scrap Saturday

Last week I didn’t recap my pink scrap progress for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge Saturday link-up because I wanted to work right up to the month end.  In the final few days I sewed together my small scraps and crumbs and made 5 blocks of 8.5” (unfinished) which will be saved for use in a future project.  So, now I am ready for my October pink scrappy recap.

The top row upper left is a quilt top I made of 6” vintage sheet squares. It will be finished for donation at a later date.  Then, the RSC pink blocks I made were: 24 Friendship Star variation blocks, 2 selvage columns, 3 bookcase blocks, 21 Plus blocks, 11 string blocks (on was from last year), 5 crumb blocks, 25 bowtie blocks (4.5”) and 3 Geese Migration blocks. My notes also say one miscellaneous block, but I can’t figure out what that is. But no matter, because I’m not counting the vintage sheet quilt top anyway. Total was 95 blocks. Remember, it was a long month!

I also finished two quilts:

READING RAINBOW

Pink Baby Donation Quilt

Then I made 2 doggie pillows for Best Friends Animal Society plus 14 kennel quilts for cats and small dogs. They will all be donated next week. Well, I am holding one back for Darla as she insists that she needs an “office” from which to supervise my work.

October was also good for me in my weight loss efforts. I lost 5.8 pounds, bringing my total to 26 pounds lost since mid-June. It’s slow, but then the weight didn’t appear overnight either. And this is a comfortable lifestyle change, so I am happy with my progress. I overdid it in the exercise department, though. Sheesh, you lose 20-something pounds and think you’ve lost the years along with it! Riding scooters and bikes, mountain hiking and pulling wagons full of kids and pumpkins are things I ought to work up to gradually. My back is taking longer to recover than I’d like, but it’s nothing some ibuprofen and a heating pad won’t fix.

And that brings me to November and our dark scraps. All I’ve managed to do with them so far is get them out and begin sorting. I will be making the final column for my Rainbow Selvages quilt, and maybe some string blocks. And then I’m going to have to find some use for these - maybe just piece something that could be used as a backing for a future donation quilt. We’ll see.

My brother and I scattered my mom’s ashes up in the Wasatch mountains near where we used to picnic when my kids were little. She loved it there. It was a cool but clear day, just beautiful. October 31 - the 11th anniversary of her death. It was also the day of one of my dear friend’s memorial service (in Nebraska). We had just vacationed with her and her husband in September in Colorado, so Colleen was on my mind and in my heart that day too.

Finally, for those of you who visit mostly on Saturdays for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I have a link for you HERE to a post I wrote earlier in the week about my process for collecting ideas and sorting through them and my scraps. I hope we all share a curiosity about where others get their ideas and how they select their projects. To say nothing of scrap storage. Anyway, I’d love to have you take a hop over to that post to read not only the post but the comments. And please leave your comments, too!

Have a great, scrappy week!  Is anyone else planning to participate in Bonnie Hunter’s Mystery Quilt this year? Are you going to stick with her color scheme or make changes?

Planning Quilt Projects for the New Year - The Method to My Madness

It may be true that 2018 is still a couple months off, but when it begins, I’ll be weather-bound indoors in my studio, and I want to hit the ground running with my quilting plans.

For me (and I bet for many of you in the northern hemisphere) the first four months of the year are the best time to churn out finished UFOs of the previous year, experiment with new ideas, embark on new plans, and set the tone for the entire creative year. Once the good weather arrives, our attention gets diverted to the garden, parties, vacations, holidays, etc. And before we know it school days, autumn and holidays are upon us once again.

IDEAS
Do you use Pinterest to save ideas? I’d be lost (and so would a few forests worth of wood and paper) without it. Throughout the year I use Pinterest to save pictures and ideas as I come across them. The ideas are not only for quilting (although I have a dozen or more quilting boards), but also decorating - it was indispensable when we remodeled the living room last year - needlework of many types, travel, recipes and other things that interest me. You can follow me on Pinterest HERE.

Sometimes I will pin two nearly identical quilts if they are in different colorways or have a different setting. The quilt police and Pinterest don’t care. I’m continually adding new ideas and even deleting some now and then (as in “what was I thinking?”)  I also have a locked board (meaning only I can see it) called Rainbow Scrap Challenge ideas. That’s where I pull ideas from all my other boards as future project possibilities. I highly recommend setting up your own boards, organize them how you like, and refer to them often. Another great source of quilty ideas is Pinterest user Dorte Rasmussen. She has thousands of pins organized into dozens scores of quilt boards. For antique quilts alone she has 4 boards with a total of over 2300 pins. A.MA.ZING. If you can’t find inspiration there, please check your pulse.

Sometimes as we’re visiting blogs or surfing online, we can't pin a picture to Pinterest. In that case I’ll try to bookmark the idea (like on Instagram, which has a function that will let you do that) or even on my iPad. Check your device to see if it has a bookmark or other function to save that picture to a file.

And don’t forget the hard (paper) resources - books and magazines. Naturally, those get physical bookmarks which I review at least a couple times a year. It’s nice to revisit their content and at the same time weed out things you no longer love.

Sometime in the fall I begin sorting through the pictures (paper and virtual) from all my sources with an eye toward getting them together in one place - the Rainbow Scrap Challenge folder that resides on my computer desktop. Some ideas have come close to being chosen several years (multi-colored spool blocks come to mind), but never make the final cut.

An idea gets double merit if it appears more than once or if it is a bucket list item that I can combine with another idea. Past bucket list goals that I’ve accomplished through the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) have been using vintage sheets, using selvages, and making a Dresden quilt. 

Often I defer items on my Bucket List because my skill set hasn’t grown to include it yet. The best example of this for me is the Storm at Sea pattern. It may be easier than I think, but for now I’m not comfortable tackling it. Maybe in 2019…..

So now you know where I get my ideas. What about you? Where do your ideas come from? Do you, like me, lust after 80% of what everyone else is doing in the RSC? I am ALWAYS pinning your ideas for consideration! Just this year I’ve seriously considered Scrap Jar Stars, Burgoyne Surrounded, Talking Turkey, HSTs with pinwheels, and Lady of the Lake. They will not be part of my 2018 plans, but they’re all still in my Pinterest files and on my Bucket List!

SCRAPS

Let’s talk about our scraps themselves, because they play an important role in what projects we take on. Do you sew your RSC projects with ONLY scraps? Or are you willing to cut into an old FQ or (gasp!) yardage to supplement your work? Kudos to those who have enough scraps to last them until the Second Coming, for their cups overfloweth. But for the rest of us, I bet we go to scraps first, but then are not above using other fabrics as needed. Nothing wrong with that! And what do we consider scraps to be, anyway? For me, scraps are anything less than a full FQ or maybe larger if it’s an odd-sized leftover from something.

Do you cut your scraps down into certain sizes? If so, how? Personally, I don’t cut scraps down into strips when they are first assigned scrap status, but I do get rid of unusable areas, selvages (saved separately), and thready edges. That way the scraps can be cut into strings, squares, triangles, etc. when and as needed. There is no right way or wrong way, just what works best for you.

A final question about scraps for you -  do you save other forms of fabric - shirts, vintage sheets, etc. How do you cut and store (and use)  them?

PUTTING IDEAS AND FABRIC TOGETHER

When planning Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, do you consider the SIZE of your scraps (as opposed to just the quantity)? This year I planned too many projects that required 2.5” scraps; Friendship Stars, Plus blocks, Geese Migration and Bowties. It wasn’t a mistake, per se, it’s just that I had to cut so much fabric down to that size. Too many projects were competing for the same size scraps. I had lots of strings and crumbs to use up in miscellaneous blocks (slabs) or to save for later. If I’d planned a project that used larger size pieces, (like my 2016 Dresdens or Cats) and fewer 2.5” projects, I could’ve cut those first and not had so much cutting. Live and learn.



Like this year, the first quarter of the next year will see me finishing up any of this year’s flimsies (Rainbow Selvages, The Plus Quilt and Friendship Stars) that haven’t been quilted and bound by the end of this year. And in 2018 I will be working to finish 3 ongoing RSC projects: Geese Migration, BowTies, and my Rainbow Strings and will need to factor those into my plans. Do you only have certain colors you need to fill in the blanks? I’ve made a special note to sew and cut those first when the 2018 RSC starts.

Ultimately, I will probably choose another 2-3 Rainbow Scrap projects. Also, I remember Angela mentioning that she and Mari of The Academic Quilter have an (optional) RSC Challenge quilt they’re planning for us. We may need to save room on our plates for that!  
The hardest part for me is always the CHOOSING what to work on. I like having a full pipeline of activity, from the planning stage to the binding stage. Luckily, I have a few more weeks before I have to make those hard final decisions!!

I hope that if you’ve read this far you will add your ideas and comments so that others in the RSC can read them. I will link to this post in our Saturday (Nov 4) link-up. Some final questions and/or Food for Thought: Have you begun to plan for 2018 projects, including the RSC? What do you do with your smallest scrap crumbs? Do you use a planner of some sort? How do you keep track of your RSC projects and WIPs?

Quilty Hugs,

Roll Up the Pink Carpet

Wait! Don’t really roll up the pink carpet - I’m not done playing with my pink scraps!

Do you ever set up unrealistic goals for yourself? Of course, we all have (or do) at one time or another. This week my goal was to finish up the quilting on a couple quilts (done), sew the last block for my autumn quilt and sash the quilt (block made) and finish up my pink scraps. HA! That last one gave me a bit of trouble, especially since I hurt my back last week and was forced to slow down, rest, use a heating pad and Ibuprofen to get through it. Which I did. Result? Lots to share, but more pink work over the next several days.....

First, I quilted and bound Reading Rainbow!! Back in June I finished my Crayon Quilt, which was my first Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt of 2017. But Reading Rainbow has been the most fun, most anticipated and the biggest achievement for me. And I love it!

Rather than go into all the details again, you can read about it HERE in a blog post I did earlier this week.

After Reading Rainbow, I finished quilting a pink baby quilt which will go into the charity pile. Here is that one, front and back.

This pink quilt with the fun polka dot sashing measures 37x50”.  It used up a lot of pink scraps, both front and back (below).  There’s that cute penguin fabric again from Diann at Little Penguin Quilts. I saved the lion’s share of it to pet and fondle for a future use.

And then I finally drafted a very basic 12” barn block and sewed that up. Here it is, in all its wonky barn-ness.

So that finishes up the Autumn Quilt blocks. Thank goodness. Over the coming week they will be sashed. Who knows, I may get even farther along, but the remaining pink gets priority under the needle. Remaining pink scraps? Yeah, there’s more. In fact, I cut the last of my pink and pastel vintage sheets into 6” blocks and pieced this charity-baby-quilt-to-be. It’s pinned on the design board OVER the autumn blocks, so if there are shadows from the back, that’s why....

This will be quilted and bound this week too. Hopefully. And then I have all my other bits and pieces of pink. Some of those will be made into slabs for kennel quilts (this week?), and others will be made into some small scrappy blocks for a future, undetermined project. No lack of work to do here..... So, I’m saving my pink scrappy recap until next week.

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I’ve been giving some thought to my 2018 Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects, as I bet many of you have. Later in the week I plan to do a post on how and where I save ideas and then sort through them to finally determine - and keep track of - my projects for the coming year.  I hope you’ll join me for that, because I’d love to hear how YOU do it. Maybe we can all glean some useful ideas, creative and organizational, from each other!

Linking up to:
Rainbow Scrap Challenge/Scrappy Saturday
Oh Scrap!

Reading Rainbow Quilt Finished!

I am so thrilled that I finished my Reading Rainbow quilt this weekend! It has been 10 months in the works - since we started with purple in January for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Every month I’ve added blocks of books in the color of the month according to a plan I drew out ahead of time.

The quilt was constructed with 5 12” blocks per row. Some rows, like green, orange, and yellow are all one color - because I had more of those scraps in my stash. Other rows combine colors like purple and black, red and pink, and teal and blues. And here and there I tried to add in little whimsical bits of interest; a mouse, a fishbowl, a globe, flowers, etc. All designs were pulled from my warped own imagination except that awesome Laurel Burch cat on the yellow row.

The “wood” shelves are 2” (finished) wide and the outer borders were cut at 3”. Even the back has the same Joel Dewberry woodgrain fabric, except where I had to supplement with a plain Kona gray. My husband Bruce was kind enough to haul a chair out to our colorful flowering pear tree in front. He graciously stood on the chair holding the quilt so I could snap pictures.

The finished quilt measures 66x86”. The batting is Warm & Plush cotton (my favorite), and I used a basic stipple quilting pattern. No surprise there, but there was a method to my madness. Let me show you.

The book titles were taken from fabric selvages. Most of the time, but not always, selvages are woven more tightly than the fabric itself in order to prevent fraying on the bolt. And that is one of the reasons we trim selvages - they will shrink (or not) at different rates than the main fabric. When I sewed on the selvages, I reduced my the stitches on my machine to a 1.0 length - very tiny. That doesn’t guarantee that there won’t be fraying; I fully expect that there will be fraying over the first couple washings to those seam lines.

So that’s where the stippling came in. It was another opportunity to go over the selvages with more stitches, as Alfie points out here...

And here....

And.....whoops!

It appears my Supervisor got a bit sidetracked with the camera strap ....

Now, where were we? Oh yes..... stippling. So, all in all, it seemed to make the most sense and give me the best maneuverability to get everything secured as best I could.

Reading Rainbow will be my own quilt to “read” and cuddle with this winter. It also represents a finish for the 4th Quarter 2017 Finish-Along. It is my goal #3. The link to my list is here. 

Thanks for dropping by! I will show another finish (a pink baby quilt) on my next post and catch you up with my other works in process.

Tickled Pink with Sewing!

My pink sewing priority for this week was to finish up my Friendship Star (variation) blocks. The scraps and I just cruised along for a day or two, and in the end there were 24 of these 6” blocks. I now have 162 blocks and only need 136 to finish the quilt. The leftovers will either go on the back or into the “Parts Department”.

My tentative layout calls for concentric rings of colors, but some rings will have combined colors (like red/orange). I have to see how it’s going to look all laid out before I make a final decision. And this won’t happen until November anyway. In the meantime, I’m linking up to Scrappy Saturday at Angela’s So Scrappy Blog. Come see the pink fun for this month - and why not consider joining us for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in 2018?
Also linking up to Oh Scrap! over on Cynthia’s blog.

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This week I also worked on my Autumn quilt, finishing up four of the final five 12” blocks.  First, there was the crow, a Lori Holt pattern.  Secondly was the turkey, of which I have no picture.

Next was the Schoolhouse, also a Lori Holt pattern (free on her blog, HERE).

And then there was the requisite SQUIRREL block, courtesy of Sally at The Objects of Design. Sally didn’t have a formal pattern written for her cute squirrel, but did have a line drawing here that she gave me permission to use.

I needed to convert it to a 12” block so decided to make the tail bushier. And I’ll be honest, I’m not half as talented as Sally in the design department - I don’t like my squirrel as much as hers. He still needs an eye sewn on, and his haunches/leg is rather unwieldy with the changes I had to make. I may “operate" on the back part of his leg to remove some of the obvious cellulite from eating too many acorns. .

The final block will be a barn block, then all 20 will be done and ready for sashing. The last time I showed some blocks with sashing, I used a brown grid fabric seen briefly here. Well, it just did absolutely nothing for the blocks, and I discarded that idea. So now I have switched to the 1.5” mustard strips that I originally cut (then rejected) for my Scrap X+plosion quilt here. I like this color with the bright autumn blocks much better.

I’m also auditioning fabrics for a border, because the 1” sashing only yields a quilt that is 53x66, too small for a lap quilt. The border size will depend on how much of the chosen border fabric I’ll have, but I’m hoping for a 4-5” border. Possibilities so far include the orange and yellow in the left of the above picture, and the leaf print shown below that I picked up in Colorado last month. I like the leaf one best, but I’m not sure if it is bright enough to hold its own as a border....

Chances are that once I have the blocks all sewn and sashed (a goal for the coming week), I will have several other possibilities to pick from and may be asking your opinion!

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And finally, I have basted with feline supervision Reading Rainbow.  I sewed a backing, then cleared the tables (a feat in itself) and got to work. Of course once this happens....

 then THIS is never far behind:

We’re here to supervise the basting, Mom!!

Alfie was pretty miffed at first when he discovered that I had put a mouse on the quilt. But he got over it once I agreed to his demand: an extra large safety pin right near the mouse’s butt.

And then Alfie began feeling frisky. See how his rear leg is up in the picture below? He kicks it in a frenzied manner whenever he gets excited. But the mouse wasn’t moving and he eventually lost interest. And I was able to finish basting the quilt.

Beginning today and over the next week I plan to quilt Reading Rainbow and the pink scrappy baby quilt I threw together last week. And then I’d like to sew the 12” barn block and assemble the autumn quilt top. After that - and thank goodness my calendar isn’t full like it was this week - there are lots of pink scraps left to sew into blocks or slabs for possible kennel quilts or ??? I may post mid-week if I have a finish or two to share.

Make it a great week!

PINK ! It's the new, um, ....pink

I have no idea why, but this month I'm enjoying the hell out of this month’s Rainbow Scrap color of pink. Yeah, enough to say hell instead of heck! Just picture this fluffy person in her new swivel chair at her sewing machine sewing and rocking away to the beat while my poor cat Darla rolls her eyes and tries to sleep nearby.  And she does roll her eyes!  Anyway, you can see all sorts of pink scrappy sewing and fun over at Angela’s Scrappy Saturday blog post. No eye rolling required!

First up this week was the Geese Migration blocks from the pattern by Cynthia Brunz. I did three of them, one more than I have done every other month so far, bringing my total to 17 of 25 needed. Next year I will add one more of each color when I presumably have more scraps and variety.

Then I worked on plus blocks. Not pictured are four orange plus blocks that I added to last month’s total (so there are now 8 orange pluses instead of just 4). And here are the 21 pink ones that I did. This gives me a total of 114 blocks, which is about 10 more than I need. So I can weed out the ones I don’t like as well and put them on the back or in a kennel quilt. I hope to start assembling the plus quilt before the end of the year.

Next are those sweet, easy, fun Bow Tie blocks. I made 25 of them, and they’ll finish at 4”. At this stage I have 202 of the 304 needed, so about 2/3 done. I am enjoying these blocks way too much.

Oh, and I have to point out two super cute blocks in this group. The first is the middle block in the bottom row of the bow ties above. Notice the pink penguin fabric? That is from my friend Diann, who also made a bow tie block with it. (In my last post, I showed the cute zippy pouch, pin cushion and fabric she sent me).

The second block was a rather serendipitous occurrence as I was chain piecing all these blocks.

Fabric Goddess! HA! How cute is that?

So then I had almost a whole jelly roll left of a pink (and some orange) fabric line called Palm Court.  I began sewing strips together adding a few other bits here and there, not quite sure what I wanted to do.....

It turns out I’m not that adventurous, because I didn’t stray very far from my original idea. But I do loooooove the white with black polka dot sashing!!  The picture below looks rather wonky because half is pinned and the bottom part just hangs.

Bruce came up with the suggestion of expanding my design board to the floor, which might happen some day. But then the cats would just go after the pins anyway (or worse - start climbing it! Sorry, Molly!) So just use your imagination to envision a straight quilt. Besides, I can assure you that the top and bottom widths are less than 1/4” difference (which is as good as it gets in my book).

In the coming week, I will baste both this pink quilt (a future donation quilt) and the Reading Rainbow quilt. And then start quilting Reading Rainbow. I also hope to finish all my pink Friendship Star blocks. There is more pink on the horizon beyond that (vintage sheets, bitty scraps and kennel quilts), but I need to think about those and possible new Rainbow Scrap blocks for awhile.

  

Owls, Gifts, Donations and a Finish. Whew!

You know that when I write a mid-week post, I have a lot going on to write about. Otherwise, if it’s daytime I would be sewing and if it’s nighttime I would be reading or watching Netflix. That’s my life in a nutshell. Not really, of course, but let’s pretend.

First, let’s get the business out of the way. I finally finished the details on the patriotic quilt pieces. This is goal/item #9 on my Quarter 4 Finish-Along list for this year. To recap, this was once a patriotic quilt made by my ex-husband’s grandmother, Georgianna Ryan Muir (“Annie”). She was my children’s great-grandmother.

The quilt came into my life in 1982 when my mother-in-law, Mary Muir Flox was widowed and my brother-in-law packed up her household in North Carolina and drove a full U-Haul truck of her belongings to our Idaho home. He used the quilts as dunnage to wrap the furniture with. When unpacking, he just threw the quilts in our trashcans. I rescued them; there were three.

One of them, in pink and white, I donated to the Sandy City (Utah) Museum in 1998 with the full provenance provided. The second one I still own. It’s mostly white with peach tulips and light blue leaves that have faded a lot. I added a wide eyelet ruffle around three sides and used it in our guest bedroom for a decade or more in the 1990’s. Some day I would like to reproduce it in fresh fabrics. The third quilt was holey and beyond salvation. These three stars were the only viable pieces I could salvage. So, I trimmed and bound them in varying blue Kona solids and  added hanging corners and a pocket to the back of each. They’re about 14” square. In the pocket is a printed copy of the story of the quilt from its maker to the present day. They will be little gifties (stocking stuffers at Christmas) for my three adult children, Ryan, Shane and Megan.

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A couple weeks ago I donated three quilts and 9 pillowcases to a local quilt shop, Thimbles and Threads, for the Hurricane Relief Effort (Harvey, Irma and Katia). They snapped my picture when I dropped them off, and I was surprised to see it turn up in their next newsletter and IG post.

So that’s what my hair looks like in real life. Miss Clairol and I parted ways last year....

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Owls. I love them, always have. I used to collect them back in the sixties and seventies (not real ones - just owl things). A few years ago I used to make and sell owl softies (among other things) at boutiques. I would take magazine pictures, online pix (not sure if Pinterest existed then) and combine bits from here and there to come up with my owls. I learned quickly that owl feet were problematic to attach to softies and could be skipped altogether.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I rediscovered some of my leftover owl parts in a plastic case. Most of the stuff went to Cousin Kim, but I kept one or two. And then I decided one would be cute appliquéd to a 12” block to include in my Autumn quilt. Here he is:

That just reminded me of something.... appropos to nothing..... when I was a kid we had a cat (one of many) that I got to name. I named him Oliver Wendell Livingston (initials O.W.L.). Ollie was a great cat........   but I digress....

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And I saved the best for last.  Today I got a great package in the mail from my friend Diann of Little Penguin Quilts.  We had planned to meet up (with other friends) on our Colorado trip last month, but plans fell through at the last moment. Anyway, I sent Diann a zippered pouch and some fabric and a couple little things. Well guess what? She sent me a zippered pouch and fabric AND a cute pincushion that she made! The pincushion is already in use, and I am here to tell you that one can never have enough zippered pouches. (Forget shoes - zippered pouches are where it’s at).

I loved Diann's little pink penguin fabric when she showed it on her blog, and can’t believe she was willing to part with some of it to send me! The spool fabric will go with some other sewing-themed fabric I have to make a sewing machine cover - a project for this winter sometimes. I hope. Anyway, thank you, Diann!! You rock!

That’s it for now. I’ll be back on Saturday with my Pink Scrappy Progress Report.