Pink Selvage Quilt Done

Yesterday I finished up the third and final selvage quilt from the selvage blocks I made during 2018 for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Like the other two quilts, this has been added to the pile of donation quilts.

This quilt used the 6.5” (unfinished size) selvage blocks in pale blue, pink, yellow and green. I also used up most of three pink fabric chunks for the sashing. There’s at least a yard left of the lightest pink, but the other two are residing as little scraps in the pink bin. The striped fabric was also used for the binding.

I quilted it in a small loopy design. When I quilt selvage quilts, I always do loops or a stipple so that I can be sure that the ample stitching secures the selvage edges extra well.

The quilt finished up at 48x56” (before laundering). For the backing, I used a piece of this cute Flower Market fabric by Lella Boutique that was left over from a quilt I made a couple years ago.

This selvage quilt was also a finish that ticked off Goal #6 on my Quarter 1 Finish-Along list, which you can see HERE, for 2019. It is my third finish this month. YAY!

And I just wanted to give a shout out to Cousin Kim. She has always wanted to try a Jelly Roll Race quilt, and after spending months and months on a gift quilt for her son (the lovely Hunter’s Star quilt that I never got a picture of), she wanted a quick project.  Kim made it from a jelly roll she picked up on sale last summer when we were out gallivanting around. The purple border was left over from a quilt she did 2-3 years ago.

And this is the fabric from (half of) the duvet cover that she used for the backing.

Again, it’s been too cold to snap pictures outside, so we’ve just been pinning these up on the design board, hence the wonkiness. Or maybe it’s just the way the lens bends things? Whatever; you get the idea, right?

Stay safe and warm during the horrendous Polar Vortex weather here in the Northern Hemisphere. As for us, we’ve got plenty of quilts, cats, heat, margaritas, and food to keep us warm and safe until we head south to Arizona next month......

OMG! Saguaro Sunset Finished!

Wow, I did it! I finished Saguaro Sunset on schedule and in time to join in the finish link-up for our January OMG (One Monthly Goal). Yes, I’m doing a happy dance here!

Saguaro Sunset is backed with a cactus print and some solid Kona that I picked up at JoAnn’s (no picture). The “batting” is just a piece of flannel, since this its recipients live in Arizona and don’t need heft or warmth. I quilted it with simple vertical wavy lines (maybe we could pretend it’s radiating heat?) It washed up beautifully and crinkly as you can see. The wonkiness is just due to the way we pinned it up on the design board. The finished dimensions are 58x70”. This is my second finish for January.  

You can see lots of other great January OMG finishes over at Elm Street Quilts, where we’re all linking up our finished goals for the month.

Saguaro Sunset was also Goal #3 on my 1st Quarter 2019 Finish-Along list, which is HERE.
Linking to Confessions of a Fabric Addict Whoop-Whoop Friday HERE.

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Bruce bought himself a new T-shirt this week......

Squirrels truly do run in our family......

The End of the Red

I say this every year in January, but hasn’t this month dragged on For.Ev.Er? Why is January so dang long, and spring just flits by in an instant? A question for the ages.

But we had a delightfully bright color, RED, to work with this January, and it has Sparked Joy for many of us. Yes, that is yet another reference to Marie Kondo. I think that her Joy Sparking will be the subject of punchlines in no time. Maybe even by the end of this never-ending month.  In the meantime, to spark your own Joy of the color red, why not hop on over to Angela’s blog and check out the Rainbow Scrap goodness??

Here is a recap of what I finished in the Red Department this month:

Top Rows, L-R:

10    Cracker blocks, 7.5” unfinished

12    Lover’s Knot 9-patch blocks, 6.5” unfinished

1      Row of Tumblers (plain and selvages) - about 8 selvage tumblers

5      Anvil blocks, 8.5”

Middle Row:

6      Strip blocks, 9.5” (plus one at 8.5” that ended up in the Parts Department)

1      Scottie Dog Quilt (or scottie god quail, right Louise?) made for donation

Bottom Row:

1      Bitcoin block, 4.5x12.5”

2      Crumb blocks 6.5” sewn, then added to last year’s to make 3 Crumbcakes blocks

4      Selvage 4-patches, 8.5” each

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This week I also finished two flimsies, as shown in my last post. They are Saguaro Sunset and the last of the selvage blocks (from last year’s RSC) that have been sewn into a pink-y flimsy. Both of them are now basted and ready to be quilted. Come hell or high water, I’m going to finish Saguaro Sunset by the end of the month to claim it as my finished January OMG (One Monthly Goal).  Oh look, here is Saguaro Sunset now, just shining away on the basting table, waiting its turn under the needle!

And just for fun, I want to show you part of Cousin Kim’s latest quilt. Lately she’s been finishing the quilt bindings at home, then gifts the the quilt and I never get a finished picture. But I wanted to show you her Jelly Roll Race quilt. When she finished sewing it together, we checked my stash for possible backings and found half of this amazing duvet cover I’d bought last year at a thrift store. It matched the colors perfectly.

The floral is the duvet cover, of course. Every color in the stripes (not all are shown) is represented in the floral print. It was meant to be. I quilted it for her in a simple stipple and snapped this picture before she took it away.

And finally, it’s time for some Gratuitous Cat Pictures. You’re welcome.

Alfalfa (Alfie)

As the picture above shows, Alfie is an alert and energetic cat. He has two speeds; ON and asleep. If he were a person, Bruce and I decided Alfie would be a cross between Robin Williams and Steve Martin. A wild and crazy Little Rascal!

Darla

And this is Miss Darla. She is sweet, shy cat with a squeaky voice. I haven’t quite figured out who she would be if she were a person. On one hand paw, she’s very girly and diva-ish and loves to cuddle. On the other, she is very athletic (jumping down 3 stairs in a single bound) and sneaky and can bop Alfie around when they tussle. Any ideas who she is? Do your pets have equatable human personalities?

A Couple Flimsies

I’ve got two quilt tops to show you today, both of which I hope to have finished into quilts by the end of the month. Saguaro Sunset is my priority of course, since it’s a gift with a deadline. But since I like to have more than one project going on at a time, and since my red scraps for January have been whipped into shape , I decided it was high time to finish the third and final selvage quilt from my 2018 Rainbow Scrap Challenge selvage blocks.

So, here is the selvage quilt top. Nothing too exciting. And as you can see, I had to sometimes turn the selvages sideways or upside down, but that’s just fine in my book. I’m the boss, not them.  :-)  For the top, I was able to use three different pink pieces for the sashing. One of them - the stripe - will also be the binding. I think I finished up all but the very lightest one. I love clearing things out.

I’ve got a Frankenbatt all ready to go, as well as a backing pieced from two other remnants. This will be basted today. Quilting won’t happen until after Saguaro Sunset is done.

And here is Saguaro Sunset. As much as I loved the deep royal purple border against these colors, I’m not sure the recipients would have appreciated the colors or the size. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to keep it small enough (it’s currently 58x72”) to manage basting it on my own with pins. It’s the dead of winter and way too cold to open the studio door for ventilation (if I use a spray baste).

I’m not crazy about the plain yellow at the bottom, as I’ve said before. But I ran out of the ombre fabric(s) and couldn’t get more. So, plain yellow it is. It’s not horrible, but it could’ve been better. Oh well, it’s still a pretty cool top. It’s certainly a technique I’d like to play with more!

So, that’s my progress in the quilt department so far this week. I’ve also found an old online friend I can gift a lot of my crazy quilting things (well, vintage linens and silk ribbon so far) to.  I’ve spent several days of going through boxes and bins and packing things up to mail to her. As well, I’ve been doing some serious deep cleaning and getting rid of Stuff. No, cleaning guru Marie Kondo has nothing to do with it. It might be just the time of year or even the time of my life, but owning accumulations and collections of Stuff doesn’t hold the appeal it did a couple decades ago. And I know that the more Stuff I get rid of now, the more my kids will appreciate it once I’m gone. What about you? Have you done any recent purging of Stuff?

In the Red ... Scraps

We are still playing with our red scraps for the January Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and today is the linky party over at Angela’s So Scrappy blog. Let me show you what I worked on this week.

First, I made three of these great blocks. Each block consists of 4 quadrants, each a 9-patch made of 2.5” (unfinished) squares. So, the finished block is 36 patches. At this stage, they measure 12.5” each. I have no idea what they’re called, but I first saw and fell in love with them on Jennifer C’s blog HERE.

I think these will offer some interesting setting possibilities down the road.

Last year in the RSC, I made 6.5” crumb blocks. This year I’m joining them together in fours, separated by a 1.5” black strip. I only needed to make two red crumb blocks this year to finish up these three 13.5” Crumbcake blocks.

There are a few crumbs left, but I left them to provide some variety for next year. However,  I did piece these little 1.5x2.5” bitcoins. I think everyone else probably did them 1.5x3.5”, but my scraps warranted this size. I have no idea what I’ll do with this 4.5x12.5” block yet, but as always, the scraps find a home.

Moving on, it was time for strings. I am overrun with strings, and so I'm resorting to a tried and true favorite, single-color string blocks. This time around, they measure 9.5” unfinished, and I had enough red strings to make six blocks.

In truth, I made seven of them, but I trimmed one wrong (8.5”), so it is now residing in the Parts Department.

I also finished quilting the red Scottie Dog donation quilt, which was a finished I talked about in my last post.  It’s made with red cracker blocks of scottie dog fabric. You can see it at the link there, or click in my newly-revised quilt pages above (just below the blog header). It’s my first finish of the year. BUT..... But Saguaro Sunset is hot on its heels!

So, this is where SS ended up as of yesterday afternoon. Two of the four cacti in the final row are pieced and sewn - they are on the bottom right.

The last two cacti (the bottom left two) are in various stages of piecing. I hope to finish these this weekend so I can finish up and layer the quilt in the next week. Besides the pieces pinned up on the board, this is all I have left to work with of the light yellow fabric (below). I’m having to use more of the plain yellow than I’d have wanted, but needs must. If I’ve got some pieces left over to fix some of those plain yellow areas, I’ll do it. Stay tuned.

And here are the strips that will be used for a final deep, bright contrasting border.

But before I get back to the cacti, I’ve got to finish quilting a Jelly Roll Race quilt for Cousin Kim. What surprised both Kim and me was that I had the PERFECT backing in my stash. It was a duvet cover that I’d bought at the thrift store last summer for $5. Being a duvet cover (2-sided), it yielded two huge floral backings - similar but slightly different. They are very bright and Monet-like, and the colors matched up with the jelly roll that Kim used like they’d been made for each other. Total serendipity! Pictures to come.

Have a great week, friends.

First Finish - A Donation Quilt

HA! When I was typing the title of this post, I typed “A Donation Quail”. Don’t ask me where my brain was, but it definitely wasn’t connected to my fingers. Anyway, I corrected it as you can see. So I have a QUILT, not a bird, to tell you about. It’s the Scottie Dog quilt (and here I keep typing God instead of Dog. We all know that cats are gods, not dogs, right? At least the cats think so). But I digress.

On Monday I sorted through all my batting scraps, which were piled high in the closet of the bedroom off my studio. I evened up the edges then either sewed or fused/ironed them together. The results were three Frankenpieced medium-sized quilt bats for donation quilts, neatly labeled with the size for future reference and 8 kennel quilt bats (less than 24” on all sides). And the remaining smaller pieces (less than 12” on a side) are saved for future zip pouches and smaller projects like that. I guess they could also be sewn together for more kennel quilts.

So, I pulled a Frankenbatt for the Scottie Dog quilt, layered it and quilted it up with a basic loop design. That was easy because it’s a small quilt. Then binding it was interesting. I used at least five different pieces of red and black binding, but that’s why we save the bits and bobs.

But the most challenging part was washing the darn thing. RED. I’ve never had reds bleed in the wash before, although I am always prepared when I wash any new quilt, fabric or clothing. It went in with 2 color catchers. They came out red, so I washed it again with 2 more color catchers, and they came out pink. Then I did a third wash and they just barely had some pink on them. I called it good. But it sure did shrink!  It went in at 44x52” and came out of the dryer rather scrunched up. I ironed it (who irons quilts?) and it measured 42x49”. But it’s soft and cuddly and ready for snuggling.

The backing was also a study in fabric variety - mostly the scottie dog fabric, but also large chunks of three other reds. It was a great use of lots of fabric pieces, binding, batting, etc.!

This donation quilt now goes into the pile. It’s my first finish of the year and is #4 on my Quarter 1 Finish-Along goals. You can see my list HERE.

Now it’s nose to the grindstone to finish up Saguaro Sunset by month-end. I have two more weeks to work on it, so I think I’m OK. Bruce and I went to JoAnn’s today where I got some flannel to use as batting. I do that for quilts that are going to family members in Arizona, because they don’t need the thick warm cotton batting. We had several other errands to run, then ended up having lunch at our favorite Japanese restaurant. I brought leftovers home, so there will be no cooking tonight. YAY!! That means more time to sew! (and do laundry...)

A Red January Saturday

The weather is bleak and gray, the nights are long, the politicians are all crazy ..... yep, it must be January. Thank goodness for friends, family (and that includes the furry members), and sewing. I’m doing my best to keep my sanity until we get to the Vernal Equinox (only 67 more days, if you’re counting) ... or vacation in Arizona, whichever comes first. And this month we are focusing on the color red in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. That’s a cheery color, so it’s fun to see my sewing room decked out like a bomb went off with red.

Last week I showed you samples of the cracker block and the classic anvil block that I intended to make. Well, here are their red little friends that got made this week.

10 Red Crackers (will finish at 7” each):

In addition to the blocks above, and in case you only drop by for Rainbow Scrap Saturday and didn’t see any interim posts, I made 42 more of these red cracker blocks out of some Scottie dog fabric I’ve had sitting around for awhile. This picture shows the blocks just pinned up on the design wall, but it is actually a completed flimsy now. I hope to have it completed by month-end into a gender neutral donation quilt for kids.

And then I sewed 5 red anvil blocks. Last week I called them “Little White Doves”, but that actually was the name of Jen Kingwell’s quilt that used this block in white. The blocks themselves are actually the classic Anvil block. And many thanks to Mari for pointing that out to me so now I can just call them anvils!  They are 8.5”, unfinished.

Much of the week was spent focusing on Saguaro Sunset. My goal for the week was to finish the 4 cacti in the second row, and I got it done. This is how the two rows look together so far.

Please excuse the blue painters tape. I had to get the first row up as high as I could to allow room on the design board to work the second row. The rows are not yet sewn together. Instead, after this picture was taken I pinned the second row up where the first row is so that I have room to work on the third and final row. That will consist of 4 more saguaros on a background that fades from light orange to golden yellow to light yellow. How it will look is anyone’s guess because I’m having to pull in whatever solids or ombre fabric I have left lying around. I hope to be able to squeak it out without having to go shopping for more fabric, which would be tragic (muahahahaha). Fingers crossed.

Next week’s goal on Saguaro Sunset is to get two more cacti done. The blocks take For.Ev.Er. when you are cutting pieces and playing with colors. But I am enjoying it.  :-)

I also sewed up eight “Fireball” blocks for the January Block Lotto. They are 6.5” each and I grouped them together for their glamour shot.

Darla had a dental appointment at the vet’s office this week and ended up having to have 2 teeth pulled. I told her she ought to brush better. She was NOT at all pleased to be caged in her carrier to and fro (the indignity!), but finally forgave me by the next day.

Alfie, on the other hand (paw?), was not in the least upset with Darla being gone, because he didn’t have to take turns in my lap.