Lots of prep work

Monday morning in the sewing room was mostly prep work on several projects that I want to see progress on this week.

The first month's task for the new Saturday Sampler is to make a pieced background for a large section of the quilt.  We'll make 8 blocks using 6 different backgrounds - or however many we want.  I have strips cut in these 8 pale colors, so that my blocks won't be exactly identical.  One block is done so far. 

There were 4 placemats all sandwiched on my ironing board.  They are now quilted and have binding cut. 

Vintage Spools are another Rainbow Scrap Challenge patterns on my 2026 list.  I actually began making these last fall in random colors.  But this month each of the 2 different blocks will have blue in them somewhere.  Lots of cutting has blocks prepped.  These are 6" finished, so I'll need a lot of them. 

Also for RSC I'm doing 12" Snail Trail blocks this year.  Up until now there were only 2 brown (from 2025) and 2 blue (2026) Snail Trail blocks finished.  My plan is to do 3-4 of each color. 

Two more of the brown and blue are cut out now and layed out on a design board.  The thing I really love about the design boards is that I can lay out the parts and pieces for a block or project in the right order or direction to be used.  It cuts down on sewing something wrong - doesn't eliminate it, but cuts down on it.  And I can just move the design board around from my cutting space to the ironing board or next to my sewing machine. 

I only sewed one more of the BH mystery blocks, but I do have the units all paired up so that the various fabrics don't end up repeated in the blocks. 

Having all of this prep work done ahead will make for some very quick sewing this week.  And hopefully getting some of these blocks done and off the design boards will make my sewing room a bit neater.