A little progress

 My plan for this week had been to assemble completed quilt tops for 2 sets of blocks. But then work and other things got in the way.  

The Saturday Sampler top is nearly complete, as I managed to get the final pieced border section sewn on Thursday morning.  Then I spent the afternoon trying to get the right set of data from the GIS department guys to add to the engineering docs - which was the end of my sewing time for the day.  

It is supposed to have a 10.5" wide outer border of that background fabric to finish it off, but I don't want this quilt to be that large, so I haven't cut that border yet.  It's 60 x 78 without it, so I'm thinking I may add either a 3" border or possibly a 6" border.  There's no rush, so I'm going to give it some thought before cutting into the remaining yardage. 

There are 14 pinwheel blocks (4" finished) made from the bonus triangles trimmed away from the border sections, and there are plenty of leftovers to make more if needed.  I just have to decide on how these will be used to make a secondary quilt because there was no way I was throwing away those extra triangles.  

The second quilt top will wait for next week.

And hopefully today will be a sewing day rather than a work day at my computer. 

Busy week

 I haven't set foot in my sewing room since Monday morning.  My intensions were good, but work ended up getting in the way. I've actually put in more work hours in the past 3 days than in the past month total and that really cuts into ME time. LOL

The one quilt-related activity this week?  

Last night 3 of us went to present quilts to 3 veterans at a nearby small town's American Legion annual community dinner meeting. I'm not in this photo as I'm behind the camera. 

Our QOV group will be very busy with presentations, and also busy finishing more quilts.  We have several more presentations coming up soon, and it's getting difficult to keep up by having enough quilts for all of those awards.  It's a good problem to have.

Making good use of complete block sets

For a couple of weeks now I've focused on using some of the complete block sets hanging in the closet to make quilt tops.  It's time to put those blocks to good use.  Some organizing - and counting - has resulted in a plan of attack. 

One of those block sets was the batik Floating Stars that I've been making for Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year.  Once I added 2 yellow blocks for August, there were enough to create a quilt top about 54 x 60.  I had already made the narrow gold spacers using quarter size stars earlier this summer.  When I layed these out on the floor on Sunday it was raining so the colors don't show up well. But I think this will be pretty.

The rows will be sewn together in between some of the Saturday Sampler project that is my priority project this week.  There is no rush on this one but it's nice to have another empty skirt hanger in that closet now - ready for some new block collection to come to life in the future.

The Churn Dash blocks using children's prints is also a complete set, unless I change the layout a little which is always a possibility.  The Happiness Is Scrappiness blocks are all complete as well.  I think each of these will get its turn this month.  

It's quite satisfying to push some of these projects to the next step toward completion.

Design Wall Monday - August 7

My design wall this morning is full of the pieces for the first border on the Saturday Sampler I've been working on, which is pieced like the sashing.  It will be followed by a solid border.  I'm plugging along on this border, and also with sewing those blocks into rows.

I need 24 of the 9.5" sections with coral triangles to make that pieced border. It will complete the secondary design of the pieced sashing. I'm using the triangles trimmed from those corners to make pinwheels.  Not sure what the pinwheels will become but those corners were too big to throw away.

You can see how the border will finish the secondary design (upper right), and leave the whole center floating.  The blocks themselves are now pinned into rows. 

What have I been doing with the trimmed triangles from the 48 flying geese in that sashing?  Well, they have become Hourglass blocks.  I'm using these, along with other batik Hourglass blocks from previous projects, to add to Bricks cut from a horse print I bought in New Mexico last winter.  I think once finished this will become a good donation quilt.  Like I said before, I just can't throw away those triangles when they are that large.  The Hourglass blocks are 3.5", and the Bricks are 3.5" by 6.5", so together they should make a decent child sized quilt. 

Also on my design wall/ironing board are binding strips, cut but not sewn together yet - for the Falling In Love quilt with all the hearts.  There are 3 more complete block sets pulled out of the closet to play with layouts ideas.   

One bigger priority is getting labels onto 3 Quilts of Valor that will be presented on Wednesday.  Actually that priority needs to be done TODAY!!

What's on YOUR design wall this morning?
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RSC23 - Week #31 - Yellow

 Each new month it's kind of fun to switch focus to a brand new color.  Mostly because of Quilts of Valor sewing in July I did a LOT of red sewing.  My yellow stash shares a drawer with purple and aqua. That meant I added some aqua to the mix for this month. 

The Brighten blocks  - 2 aqua and 2 yellow - are now hanging with the others. They finish at 9".

There are 16 of them so far, and I did a little playing with layout ideas.  On-point would be cute, with the square in between the white squares filled with something - another color possibly. Lining them up in straight lines would work too.  But this one will require a lot more blocks in order to make a good sized quilt top so this block will remain in my RSC plans going forward.

The Boxed Squares (6" finish) are beginning to add up. There were 7 yellow ones before and I added 5 more this week.  The little stack on the upper right has a sticky note clipped there to update the numbers of each color.  My plan is 12 of each color, but we'll see what I end up with. 

In the project box for Boxed Squares is a paper plate with a bunch of 2.5" colored squares just waiting to be used.  There were only 6 purple blocks clipped together, so 2 new ones have been added.  And the blue stack has both light blue and aqua centers, and I did add one with an aqua center this week.  Looks like I had more blue and purple planned at some point.  There is also a good collection of black and white prints in that project box to use for the frames. 

Hopefully you will see this one complete in the next couple of weeks.  The block pattern is called Falling In Love, and was an RSC set of blocks from 2022.  It's quilted, but needs binding.  I have enough of that light yellow for binding. 

Pole Star is not an RSC project this year BUT . . . there is plenty of yellow in this project (from the Alaskan cruise in June).  I finally finished the top this week.  Yay!  It's now in the hands of a quilter, and we picked out a really interesting quilting design and thread.  I'll be anxiously waiting . . .

Let's see what inspiration is coming from the RSC World this week:

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Pieced sashing progress

As I plodded along to finish that cruise project this past week, I also worked on the pieced sashing for this Saturday Sampler 2022 project.  The sashing was my reward each day if I worked on the cruise project for an hour.  I also sewed a few Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks with yellow, which you'll see tomorrow.  Rewarding myself has kept me on task lately. 

There are 12 blocks in this sampler, and now 9 of them have the coral batik/black and white sashing attached.  All of the blocks have bright batiks with a pale grey background.

The first 6 of them really show off that secondary design emerging. I'm excited!!

All of the pieces needed to sash the 12 blocks were cut at once, so it has been quick to grab a set of parts in between other projects.  This will now become my primary project until the top is done, and some other project becomes my Leader/Ender (or reward) project.  

It's exciting to realize that I had several block sets all complete, and ready to become a quilt top.  Almost immediate satisfaction, right?

The cruise project is a flimsy

It only took me a month and a half to finish up the last 18 blocks for the project we worked on during the Alaska cruise back in June.  There are 48 total blocks - ALL paper pieced and curved seams. 

Pole Star (by Heather Black) is 60 x 80.  In the bright sunlight on my lawn it doesn't look quite as drab (color) as it does in person. It's good to step outside of my comfort zone, so I've said several times that these are NOT colors I would have chosen.

That said - I am playing with a couple of different ideas for smaller projects using the block patterns with the paper-pieced arcs.  I do like those block designs.