This Blog Post Brought to You by the Letter B

National Quilting Day isn't celebrated in Santa Fe, so my solo plan for the day is to spend the day in my sewing space and move some recent projects forward by tackling some of the B-tasks:

Adding BORDERS
Preparing BACKINGS and BINDINGS
and maybe even BASTING a quilt sandwich or two.

The borders on my little (24 inches square) Clover Blossom are complete and it's ready for it's backing and some scrappy purple binding to be made ready –that's my Scraphappy Saturday contribution this week.

The Subliminal Alphabet quilt has been assembled, backing cut and binding fabric identified ... so I've made some progress there, too. 

This one will get a dark teal binding.

Next up is one of the workshop projects from last fall and binding for the scrap bag challenge. I think that's everything that's been "hanging out" in my sewing room. Then maybe I'll organize the shelves and put away all the fabric that's out because I thought it might be used in one of these unfinished projects ... but first, I'm going to employ another B-word and take a BREAK for lunch.

The Slippery Scrappy Slope

Earlier this week, I posted about my compulsion attraction to those tiny bonus triangles that many throw away and the improv quilt with pinwheels I made from some of the ones I generated last weekend when I was making violet blocks.

But there were still more bonus triangles calling my name ...



In the way that one thing leads to another, I was playing with a setting idea for the Block Lotto this month and thought about the traditional block, Clover Blossom (also sometime known as English Ivy) and decided to make some of these.

For each 4 1/2-inch block, I used 9 tiny triangle squares (3/4 inch finished size) made from 9 different purple batiks and added a 10th purple batik to make the rest of the block.

Since the light half of the bonus triangles was also scrappy, I mixed up the fabrics in the background of the block.

I had enough of those bonus triangles to make these nine blocks.

I had thought to add plain fabric alternate blocks and setting triangles ... but I just couldn't do it. 

I thought these low-contrast 9-patch blocks would continue the mottled feeling of the background of the blocks.

Still, after I made these alternate blocks, I thought I could add plain fabric setting triangles ... but I was on the slippery slope of scrappiness and so I made a simply pieced triangle to audition the idea ...



But, it didn't feel scrappy enough, so I found myself making more of the 1 1/2-inch 4-patches.

I also made scrappy pieced corner triangles and here's the result.

This little quilt now measures 19 inches square.  I'm letting it rest on my design wall while I think about borders and quilting design. 

Also on my design wall is the block I designed for the current Modern Quilts Unlimited Magazine challenge, Everything Old is New Again.  Follow the link to see all the designs and note for your favorite.

The traditional inspiration is rail fence.

It's an unassuming block,  but I like it's simplicity–there are only two shapes in the pieced background.  Ad like those itty bitty bonus triangle squares, it has charmed me and I have some scrappy plans for it beyond the challenge ... come back tomorrow for more.

I'm joining Angela's party for ScrapHappy Saturday. Check out what everyone else is making from purple scraps this month. 

Little Bits of Improvisation

I played with purples and a little improvisation this weekend.  This morning, all trimmed square, here's what's on my design wall, this Monday.

(It's a cold, gray, Monday morning and so the colors in this photo are less than accurate)

Some of these may be used in one of the Cotton Robin quilts at my house which I plan to finish and send on it's way this week.

I am also joining the lists for the Rainbow Scraps Challenge and Monday Making.

Rainbow Scraps at the Quilt Retreat

I decided to work on some more scrappy paper foundation-pieced Briar Patch blocks during the guild retreat ... with the goal of making ALL of the rest of the blocks I need, in the colors that I need them.  The colors of the day for me yesterday were red, pink and PURPLE, putting me in sync with the Rainbow Scraps Challenge this weekend.

Here are three of the six purple blocks I made yesterday.

The end of the paper piecing phase of this quilt project is in sight. Yay! You're maybe as sick of seeing them on my blog as I am of piecing them ... next up is arranging and rearranging on the design wall, adding the plain squares and setting triangles and cutting fabrics for the pieced inner border of half-square triangles.

Before returning to the retreat this morning, I had to put them up on the design wall to double check the blocks/colors needed.  So now, the in-progress quilt looks like this:

That perfect backing fabric that I found on Massdrop has been shipped and is on the way.  I'm also thinking it will work for the outer border if there is enough. Who knows?  If I continue to push to get this top pulled together, perhaps I'll make enough progress to be ready for it when it arrives.

Updating this post to link to Angie's WIPS Be Gone list–now that all the blocks are pieced, the end is in sight.

Scrappy Purple Violet Blocks

The last purple gasp of projects for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge: Violets

When a friend mailed me a big box of fabrics culled from her stash, some of the purple strips seemed perfect for some violet blocks.

These are 5-inch blocks. Curiously it's not one of the six sizes included in the pattern I created for the Block Lotto a few years ago ... I see an updated pattern in my future.

I plan to use these for a sewing machine cover for my purple Bernina.

I'm playing a little catch-up after picking up a bug at the quilt retreat and will be late joining the parties for Scrap-Happy Weekend and Design Wall Monday.

You can find the pattern at the top of my Free Quilt Block Patterns page.

Scrappy Signs of Progress ...

Sometimes we can see signs of progress even before we sew one stitch.  Here's the evidence of my progress for the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

On the left, 450 scrappy purple triangles, in stacks of light (top two), medium and dark.  On the right, the scraps from die-cutting those triangles.  This is a few more than I'll need to make the 13 more purple broken dishes star blocks I need.

My plan for tonight's Friday Night Sew In is to turn these triangles into half-square triangle (HST) units and the triangle squares into blocks.

The Color Purple and Fabric Storage

I've always thought of purple as a generic term for colors made from a mixture of non-specific proportions of red and blue. But this morning, when I read that the designated color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge was purple, I wondered if I'd been walking around with a misconception and that it meant something more specific.

In the traditional Boutet color circle (1708) that I found on Wikipedia, purple is shown between crimson and violet.

Wikipedia also contains some interesting history and associations of the color purple and is the source of some interesting factoids about the color.

For example, the French call the color on this shield "pourpre" (purple).  French and German purple contains more red and less blue than American or British purple.

Who knew?  Purple is not only NOT a generic reference, but it can mean different colors in different parts of the world?

For my purposes, I decided to hold onto my misconception and regard it a a general reference to those colors between blue and red. At my house, my stash is stored, by color, in these no-longer-available, stackable bins from The Container Store.  Small scraps are also stored by color, in recycled plastic containers in which lettuce and spinach are sold. Here are my "purples," along with some pink scraps.

As you can see, sorting by color and folding to fit is as far as I go with my fabric organizations.  When you look in the bins, large or small, there's a mish-mash of color and print in no particular order.

Today, when I pulled out the purple bins, I wondered if maybe I shouldn't sort them a bit each month, as part of the RSC.  But instead I made a scrappy purple Oak Leaf block for April. Now, there are four.

I'm joining the first purple party for Scrap Happy Saturday and the Let's Blog About Fabric list on the Block Lotto and asking you ... how are your fabrics organized and how organized are your fabrics? 

Purple Progress

It seemed like this ball of leftovers from cutting purple triangles from my scraps would be all I would have to show for my progress with the purple portion of the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

. . . until I got inspired last night and sewed together 8 more blocks for my very scrappy quilt.

I kept seeing the star in this block and didn't realize–until I looked it up in Brackman's Encyclopedia this morning–that the block is Broken Dishes.  It was first published by Ruby McKim in One Hundred and One Patchwork Patterns in 1931 (and republished by Dover in 1962)

I am really liking this variation, where the placement of dark and medium triangles create the star.

I was chatting with a friend last night and mentioned that I have NEVER cut all the fabrics for a quilt before I begin sewing--she is making a quilt using a kit and did all her cutting up front.

The quilt I will make from these blocks is my best example of why not.  There will be more than THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED triangles in this thing when it's done . . . and there's no way I could ever have endured that much cutting, cutting, cutting.

Do you cut everything you need for a quilt before you begin? Am I a quilting odd-ball because I like to mix up the cutting and sewing (and leave myself options if I change my mind along the way?)

After I finished these purple blocks this morning, I couldn't resist combining them with some of the blue, red and green blocks.

I'm not sure if I will arrange them in an organized way, but am thinking that if I decide to do so, it would be a good idea to work on the layout so I know before I get there, how many of each color I'll need.

What do you think?  Trip Around the Broken Dishes?

Check out the links at the bottom of  this post to see what other quilters are sewing for their rainbow scrap challenge. 

Purple?

The color of the month for the Rainbow Scraps Challenge has not yet been posted ... but the background color of on the blog has recently been updated to a nice shade of purple, so I took a leap of faith, pulled out my purple scraps.

After making all those green and cream alternate blocks, I realized I was missing a couple of the lotto blocks we made in 2006. This one is from Quilter's Cache and is called That Thirties Thing.

For the lotto, we made these paper foundation pieced blocks in red, white and blue and I used the pattern to create a flickr photo tutorial of paper piecing.

I like it as a shaded monochrome ring, too.