Scrappy Blue Works in Progress

So, maybe it wasn't so crazy to put all those blue projects for the January rainbow scraps project up on the design wall.  They called to me to work on them and some progress has been made.

I did the math and figured out that if I make between 6 and 8 of the Briar Patch paper pieced blocks each month, I'll use all the foundations in the pattern by the end of the year.  Here are the 6 I made this week, along with the 4 blocks I made in the Judy Niemeyer workshop long long ago.  (I blogged more about the details of this paper-foundation pattern here).

I also spent some time cutting lots (and lots) of little blue triangles ... well, 250 of them anyway.  When I made the first set of blue broken dishes blocks two years ago, I cut them with a ruler and mat ... then used the project to justify buying a Go Baby.  With the die cutter, the experience is different, but still tedious.  But also worth it, because now I have all the scrappy blue broken dishes I need for my plan for them.  Yay!

I wondered if I would be able to see the differences between the fabrics from my scrap bin 2 years ago and those I used this week. I can see some subtle shifts in the fabrics I used, but they all play together nicely.

Another interesting thing happened as a result of hanging a project on the design wall.  I decided that the abstracted feather blocks don't need scrappy blue sashing ... something else would work better.  So I've taken them down and packed them away for now.

Linking with WIP Wednesday on Thursday on Freshly Pieced, Esther's WOW (Wips on Wednesday) and Angela's Scraphappy Saturday.

Scrappy Blue Design Wall

I knew if I put all this bits and pieces together on the wall,  I'd end up laughing at myself, thinking about all the ways I imagined I'd use blue scraps this month for the rainbow challenge and how my goals were crazy ambitious for me.  But I couldn't resist doing it anyway.

From the top (left):

Scrappy Oak Leaf - this is the scrappy version of one of last year's lotto blocks (pattern is on the Block Patterns page).  This block is 10 x 15 inches.  I plan to make one or two each month.

Mod-Mod QAL blocks - The blue double chevron blocks were made when I decided to make a scrappy rainbow version of the quilt using the rainbow scrap challenge color of the month.  The Double Chevron block pattern is also on the Block Patterns page).

I made the black and white abstracted feather blocks last summer–now you can see that my oak leaf block pattern for the starting point for those. My plan for this month is to make some pieced scrappy washings for these and make a pair of pillow covers.

The rest I've talked about before.  The letters are part of a quilt design (that I don't anticipate finishing this month); the broken dishes star blocks are part of an ongoing rainbow scraps project (I need 8 more blue ones); and the paper pieced blocks I'm making without a plan and will make as many as I can from the scraps I have.

This afternoon, I'll be cutting and sorting triangles for the broken dishes blocks and preparing some rework for stitching tonight during Downton Abbey.

Updated on Monday to add the link to Design Wall Monday.

Blue Scrappy Word Scramble

I've been using blue scraps to make pieced letters.  Can you guess what I'm going to say with these?

Each letter is pieced from strips and squares.  Once I decide how to make one of the letters, I make as  many more as I need using the same measurements.

1. How it starts, 2. completed letter e, 3. four e's

I'm linking up with Angela's Scrap Happy Saturday.

It was a dark and scrappy (Saturday) night

When I pulled out my scrap bins to make Double Dare, I thought about using blue, since it's the designated color for January in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but it just didn't want to be blue ...

So last night, I pulled out my blue scraps and one of my golden oldie projects and got started.   Along with making more of my scrappy broken dishes star blocks, I plan to make some of these this year. 

The pattern is a paper foundation piecing pattern from Judy Niemeyer called Briar Patch.

Eight or nine years ago, I  belonged to the Greater Ann Arbor (Michigan) Quilt Guild and did a half-day workshop with Judy as part of what they used to call Quilt University–their long weekend of workshops held on alternating years with their quilt show.  The pattern is designed for beginner foundation piecers.  I wasn't a beginner, but since I was mostly self-taught, I thought I could benefit from all the tips she promised to provide.  She delivered and I learned.

I thought it would be a good scrap/stash-busting project at the time and showed up with some red uglies and black and white prints from my stash. Everyone else in the workshop came with beautiful batiks like those Judy uses in her quilts.  I was definitely the one not like the others that day.   We worked our way through her process and made a couple blocks that day.  Here are the (very) old blocks alongside last night's effort.

I promptly tucked pattern, templates and some fabrics away and forgot it.  As part of reorganizing at the end of the year, I pulled it out and thought it would be a good match for the Rainbow scraps challenge.  The individual blocks are 6 inches.  The pattern contains enough printed foundations for 80 of them for a 66 by 78-inch quilt.

I'm joining Angela's link party for the First Scrap-Happy Saturday of 2014. 

Shifting from Blue to Red

As temperatures climb from the teens to the 50's today, it seems natural to shift from cool blue to red hot scraps, as part of the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

It seemed like a natural fit to pull a blue UFO out of the trunk and finish it in January and I am ALMOST finished.  I don't know what it is about this quilt, but Grace Hopper (one of my cats) LOVED it and whenever I pulled it out to work on it, she would fly across the room, jump up on my work table, spread out and claim it as her own.  Here, she is helping me mark the plume quilting design on the borders . . . and loudly protesting because I kept rotating it to mark the borders with her on the quilt.

You can see the whole quilt in my Flickr photostream here.  FYI, the quilting is now complete and I plan to bind it this weekend. It's not clear if it will hang on a wall or become Grace's personal kitty quilt.

My blue scraps mug rug is being put to good use in my boring beige office.  It fits perfectly next to my keyboard.

Yes, that is a very oversized cup and saucer--I found it in a thrift show and thought it would be great for soup . . . or a big cup of coffee with a girl scout cookie.

I liked the idea of working on color-coordinated UFOs and after I bind the blue quilt, I will choose a red one to work on this month.

In the meantime, I was excited to start work on some red projects . . . probably because I've been having so much fun with strings that I decided to start there.  I dipped into my big ziplock bag-o-strings and pulled out anything red.

It  doesn't look like many strings, does it?  But it was enough to make two pairs of string blocks, large and small.

I have a couple project design ideas in mind for these (more later). It feels good to have made a start on the red challenge and I haven't even yet used any fabric from my red scrap bin.

 

You can see what others are doing with their red scraps by following the links on today's Scrap Happy Saturday blog post.

Blue Monday

First, scrappy blue stars on the design wall:



After correcting my bad math and ideas about color, I'm now aiming at averaging 17 blocks each in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and tan/brown. Today I made more of the blue blocks, but stopped at 13 when I ran out of "light" blues in the scrap bin.

In other blue news, I quilted and bound the blue scrap mug rug . . .  and took it for a trial run this afternoon.



It's all set to go into the office and add a little color and whimsy to my very boring beige office.

I had a couple more blue projects (new and WIPs) in mind for the rainbow scraps challenge--with a week to go until the end of the month, I'm not sure how many will be completed before we move onto a new color for February.

Click over to Judy's Design Wall Monday blog post to see what other quilters have on their design walls. 

A scrappy blue update report

I wanted to make a clever connection between blue scraps to Elvis' Blue Suede shoes in honor of his birthday today, but I'm just not that clever ...

I pieced this 7-1/2 by 9 inch quilt-let  from my blue scraps in the evenings after work this week. I hope to quilt and bind it this weekend and take it into the office and put it to good use as a mug rug next week. Coincidentally, on her blog this week, Angela blogged about using blue strings to make star blocks. As you might guess from the heart block I featured in my little mug rug project (and the string heart in the Block Lotto Blog Button quilt), I enjoy using strings as fabric, too.

I also kept putting my triangle squares together and have completed eight 8-inch blocks.

I am liking them and know I will like them more when I start adding blocks in other colors. I'm already looking forward to finding out what the color for February will be.  I confess I am also seriously considering spending some extra salary (from some OT this week) on a GO Baby to make cutting all those triangles from scraps a little faster.

To see what other Rainbow Scraps challengers made from their blue scraps this week, check out the Mr. Linky links on Angela's  Saturday Check-in on her blog, soscrappy.

Quilting Tools & Gadgets

As I was cutting the 144 individual blue squares from my scraps yesterday (72 light, 36 medium and 36 dark), I started to think that maybe I could justify the purchase of a GO or other fabric cutter ... at least in the fantasy in my head, it would make all that cutting easier and more accurate.  As I repeat this exercise each month and work my way through my scraps for the larger project I have in mind for the Rainbow scrap challenge, it'll be interesting to see if I decide it IS worth it ;-)

In the meantime, after dinner tonight, I was quilting "old school,"using some of my tried and true quilting tools to square up and trim the 144 triangle squares. For me, I still like the design of Quilt-in-a-Day's half-square triangle specialty ruler. Since you are trimming the units BEFORE you open and press them, you only have to trim the squares on 2 sides. I don't know if they are still making Brooklyn Revolvers, but mine is still going strong and perfect for trimming smallish blocks. I still love my ergonomic rotary cutter, too. I was thinking tonight that I don't think I could ever go back.

Do you have a tried and tool quilting tool that has stood the test of time? I'd love to know about it--these days I really have to be convinced that the latest-greatest gadget, ruler or other product is really going to work for me before I buy . . .

After all 144 of the triangle squares were trimmed and pressed, I had to stay up a little be later (on a school night!). so I could make the first block. I may decide I cannot live with that one really badly matched seam, but otherwise, I like it. Over the weekend I envisioned a quilt made of 100 of these 8 inch blocks and was thinking I could make 9 of the 9 designated "colors" of the challenge ... except tonight I realized that nine times nine is not 99 which was the basis for yesterday's plan, so . . .  I'm working on a new plan, probably for a smaller quilt ;-)

FYI, here's one example of the scrap quilt design that inspired me.

This quilt, Charm Stars Quilt is from Leisure Art's book Quilt an Easy Scrap Quilts. It was made by Mary Carol Sternitzky of Garfield, Arkansas. 

This is a smaller quilt than I have planned (even with my new corrected math) made from larger (12") star blocks than my 8 -nchers.  My quilt won't be a charm quilt--I will use the same fabric more than once  if there's enough in my scrap bags to cut more than one 3-inch square. My borders will almost certainly be different ... but I hope all my scrappy triangles will tinkle like these ;-)

I'll press and trim them ... tomorrow

Here are 144 triangle squares, ready to be pressed and trimmed to 2 inches. I thought I'd have a design wall full of half-square triangles at the end of the night, but I decided to stop here.

They will be used for one of my projects for Soscrappy's Rainbow Scrap Challenge this month. Like Andra, I plan to make some monochromatic blocks each month in the designated color and put them all together for a colorful, scrappy quilt at the end of the year. Along the way, I hope to reduce my scraps ... a LOT.  Each month I will be taking my scraps out of the jumbo zip lock bags where they live now and pressing and folding them into new storage–I have been hanging onto those large lightweight plastic tubs that hold a pound of spinach or salad and thinking they might be repurposed into stackable storage for scraps and projects.

My lotto blocks for January are in a much more finished state--I finished them before earlier this afternoon ... before diving into my scraps:

  

 

The block pattern is my variation on the traditional Chinese Coins quilt pattern.  You can find the pattern here - Stacking (Quilt) Blocks.  I think these 10" blocks would make a fun (and quick) kid's quilt and I plan to make one for the Austin Guild's "baby bundle" charity effort.

The seem to be a hit with the sneak peekers (who earned an advance look a week ago). By the first of January, there were already 85 blocks made.  Here's a look at a "virtual quilt" made from 60 of them.

I think these blocks are a great way to use jelly rolls or noodles (or whatever you call 2-1/2 inch wide strips) or scraps and use big enough strips so you can SEE the fabrics. I like the whimsical look of imperfectly stacked "coins," too.