Design Wall Monday - April 10

What's on YOUR design wall this morning?

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/ 

Happy 10th birthday to our twin grandkids - Olivia & Jonah.  We celebrated with them on Saturday, along with an Easter supper with the whole family.  I love it when my daughters and sons-in-law do the main cooking, and I just brought side dishes.  Grandpa took all 5 kids to a park to fly their kites, since it was finally a warm spring day. 

Sunday afternoon was devoted to sewing time while I watched The Masters golf tournament on TV.  I’m going to FOCUS this week, with 2 primary goals in mind.  If I can meet those goals, then I’ll allow myself to work on something else.

Goal #1 is to get the outer border onto Humble Homes.  I chose a rich blue batik from my stash.  The strips are cut so it shouldn’t take much time to sew them together and then onto the quilt.  I want this quilt ready to go to the quilter this week.  This particular quilt has been on my UFO list for 3 or 4 years, so it's beyond time to get it done.

Goal #2 involves the Sewcialites 2 sew-along.  I have block #23 done in the 6” size, but still need to make the other 3 block versions.  This is Changeling Star by Andy Knowlton.   I really like this block, and look forward to getting the other color versions made this week too.  The final block - #24 - will be released at the end of this week.  I’ve decided on a layout for the 6” batik blocks, and got a good start on it.  A few of the blocks will probably get rearranged before sewing any more rows together, as I want a good balance of color. 

This butterfly layout was something that Pat Sloan showed online, and it’s going to work out just fine for the batik blocks I think.  I googled "alternate layouts" for Sewcialites, and found several interesting options.  The math was easy to figure out for the butterfly - 6.5” unfinished Sewcialites blocks, mixed in with squares, half-square triangles, and quarter-square triangles the same size to make the butterfly take shape.  The butterfly body uses some of the purple batiks that I've used in some of the blocks.

I’m adding narrow sashing and cornerstones as well, which I cut 1.25” wide.  The black “wings” and sashing are not a batik, but was in my stash.  It has a subtle black on black dot, so it gives a nice texture rather than stark flat black.  And there is still plenty of that black for an outer border.  The cornerstones are the same gold batik in the blocks.  

RSC Week #14 - more purple

 I played with purple a little bit this week, and played with a partial set of RSC blocks, and finished up assembling rows on a non-RSC quilt top.  Lots of variety.  

Six small hearts were added to the project box for this month.  They won't be added to the quilt until there is enough variety in the colors for another row.  

Three new Pyramid blocks - 2 purple and 1 red - were added to the stack. 

When I attempted to hang them in the closet on the skirt hanger, I realized that there were a LOT of these blocks, so I took them upstairs and layed them out on the floor.  There are 35 of them, but I do still need more to make a nice big quilt.  Guess I'll have to use 2 skirt hangers to old them all nicely. 

That was the end of purple for this week, but here is Humble Homes with 5 complete rows.  The pattern called for a 2.5" "stop" border using background fabric all around, and that is done.  It does give that whole center the illusion of floating.  I think I've made up my mind that the outer border will be plain and simple, rather than pieced and complicated.  As is, this is approximately 64 x 72, so with a wider outer border added it will be a fairly large quilt.

What fun things can be found in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge world today? I find new inspiration every single week from these other quilters.
https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Humble Homes - 4 rows

There are now 4 completed rows of houses and trees on the Humble Homes quilt, with one more to be finished.  That 5th row has the houses ironed on and I've begun the applique for the trees.  Guess it pays off to focus for a change.

There are 2 different backgrounds used, but they are so similar that it will be difficult to notice.  This final background strip had to be pieced, and hopefully that won't be noticeable either once it's all quilted.  The seam will be in the center.   

 

The pattern has a fancy braided border on all 4 sides, mixing blues and greens.  I have enough fabric to do that, but am not sure I actually want that fancy border.  A simple border might work out just fine, and would certainly be quicker.  

Progress on a couple of fronts

I promise that the applique project is now on my sewing table, and the ironing board area is cleaned up. So today the applique is what I'll be working on.

This is where I left off - last fall.  The background for the final 2 rows is cut, and the houses and trees are sorted for the appropriate row.  Row 4 is ready to do the measuring for location - today.

One of the reasons I keep procrastinating on this is because the kit (purchased some years ago) did NOT have fusible on the back of these laser cut trees.  The houses have fusible, plus the edges are all straight so they are easy.  But these floppy trees are a PAIN to keep in place, and to go around all these curved edges. 

Yesterday I focused on clearing up any partial projects laying around on my ironing board, which included these 2 pillowcases.  I kitted up 3 last week, but only sewed one - the tropical fish. These 2 are are now done as well. I'm keeping the chili pepper one myself but the other 2 are added to the small stack of pillowcases I will eventually donate. 

The big snow storm missed us.  We got rain and a little sleet yesterday, and today it's cold and windy but the sun is peeking through.  And we are expecting temps in the mid 60s by Saturday.  Yay!!  Maybe the rest of this snow will melt quickly and allow spring to arrive.   

A hexie experiment

 One project on Sunday afternoon (while watching the Iowa-LSU women's basketball game) was to go through the big stack of magazines that had piled up around here again.  Obviously we subscribe to way too many periodicals, including a couple of quilt magazines.  I had a stack set aside with projects marked that I thought I wanted to save.  Only 3 of those projects are now saved for future play.

I found this pattern in the October 2021 All People Quilt magazine, and tore it out as a possible "some day" project.  The pattern is for paper pieced hexie blocks done in sort of a pineapple block technique.  I didn't want to mess with the paper piecing, but after reading through this realized that I could just use 1" strips, and skip the paper foundation.  This would be a great project for all the Kim Diehl scraps I've collected over the years.  They repeated fabrics in each "round", but I went all random scrappy.  

I was nearly done with this block when I realized the colors didn't seem to be lining up quite right, especially around that center hexie.  What was I doing wrong?  Pulling out the instructions again I quickly figured out my mistake.  I was sewing in a "log cabin" process, going round and round.  Oops!  This one won't be thrown away however, because it could still make a cute mug rug for my desk. 

Needless to say, I started over again.  The correct process is to do the 3 neutrals on alternating sides of the hexie center, then trim those tails sticking out.  Next add the colors to the opposite alternating sides, and repeat the trimming.  This really would be easier if the same color strips were added to each round.  But I like the scrappy version too.

The end result (when following directions properly) is pretty cute.  This might become a mug rug by itself, or I might make a couple more for a bigger mug rug.  The magazine showed these blocks made into a good sized table runner.  

This was a just brief detour from that dreaded applique, but alas it's time to pull out that project I've been avoiding and make some progress.

Design Wall Monday - April 3

 What's on your design wall today?
https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

My design wall has just a little bit of purple on it for this new Rainbow Scrap Challenge month's color.  I started with a Rainbow Connection block all made from purple strips from the scrap bin.  There are now 20 of these blocks.  And after digging around in that bin I realized that keeping all the shades of blue and purple scraps in the same bin isn't the best plan, because I kept pulling out strips - only to see that it was blue instead of purple. 

More scrappy sewing happened - 2 more Irish Chain blocks.  It appears that I now have enough of these for a decent size quilt.  Not a full bed size, but still a good size. 

Once those blocks were finished, I pulled out the 3 pillowcase kits from last week.  The first one - with tropical fish - is finished.  And a second one is halfway done.  These will be my priority for this week, before tackling any other major things.

Am I procrastinating again about working on that Humble Homes applique?  Yes, probably that is true.  I played with one other small scrappy project on Sunday to avoid the applique.  More on both of those projects another day.  

Happy Monday!  This will definitely be a grocery shopping morning to stock up before the next winter storm hits us this week.  Guess I'll be snowed again by mid-week, which means plenty of sewing time.   

RSC Week #13

 I'm excited for a new color for April (purple), even though I'm certainly not completely done with green yet. The UFO project I'm working on right now has a LOT of green, as do some of this week's sew-along blocks. 

The 9" versions of the Sewcialites 2 blocks are all being made with various shades of green and cream, and I really like how block #22 turned out. This is Ohio Twist by Jessica Dayson.  The little 3" red and white version would have looked better with a smaller print in that center square. But it is staying the way it is - for now anyway.

The 6" version has a little green in it, but the other 3" block has no green whatsoever.  

The 20" sofa pillow has a new spring cover - and look, there is a little green here too.  

What excitement can be found in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge world today?
https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/