A Scrappy Puzzle

I haven't yet jumped back into the Rainbow Scraps Challenge this year (and it's already March!), but since I did make some blocks from yellow scraps, I am considering myself officially back in the game.

Besides the yellow hexagon ring I shared on Sunday, I also made 4 of the foundation pieced Briar Patch blocks.

I've now made around 50 of these paper foundation pieced blocks.  It felt like time to figure out how they would be set and how many more of what colors I need.

I can't say why I have been in a "finishing" state of mind–it's so unlike me. Rather than making new rainbow scraps challenge blocks for new projects as I planned, my focus has been on finishing up the blocks and quilts from RSC projects from the past.   So, while I haven't been regularly checking in with something made form the designated color each week, I have been digging into my scraps to work toward some scrappy finishes.

And now, I find myself looking at the Briar Patch project to see what I need to take it to a finish. At this point, it feels like a bit of a scrappy puzzle to be solved.  I thought it was a good time to pull out the blocks and put them on the design wall in an approximation of the layout to see what I thought and where I am.

As you can see, I need to make quite a few more blocks in almost every color. If I decide to split the "purple" blocks into red-violet and blue-violet, as I have them on the design wall now, I'll need even more of those.  But even in this state, I can see that I'm going to like it.

A big chunk of time spent paper-piecing blocks is just what it needs to get the rest of the blocks done, which may make this project is a good candidate to take to the guild retreat next month.

I'm joining the lists for Scraptastic Tuesday and WIP Wednesday and (kind of late to the game), Scrap-Happy Saturday.

The Last Blast of Yellow Scraps

Here are the 21 blocks made from the 336 yellow HST units I cut and sewed a week ago.

I still have some yellow scrap projects yet to get around to this month, but getting these done feels good.

And here's how they look mixed in with some of the rest of the scrappy blocks made so far as part of the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

And this is my update for the HSTeria QAL and Angela's Farewell to Yellow (Rainbow scraps challenge) tomorrow. 

I cannot believe how many of these blocks I've made and how close I am to having enough.  And how, two years later, I still like the idea. 

Sunshine on My Design Wall

There's probably some wordplay on the John Denver song, Sunshine on my Shoulders, thats eluding me ... but the Sunshine on my Design Wall today is making me pretty happy, too.

I blogged about the big block–the first block of my Summer of Sunflowers project– yesterday.  It is joined by the first 10 Broken Dishes blocks made from scrappy yellow Half-Square Triangles.   Yes, I did iron all 340 of the HSTs I made Friday night and have started putting them together.  

I started by making just one, then photographed it, uploaded it and converted it to black and white to see how sound my value judgement was with all these yellow fabrics.  As soon as I saw it on the screen, I immediately saw my goof (lower right corner), so before I went any further, I had to fix that. 

    

(original block, converted to gray scale, and the same block, rotated, with the corner fixed) 

It's interesting how, in color, I see good contrast in some of those light + bright combinations; when converted to gray scale, in some squares, there is little/no contrast.

I'm adding my link to Design Wall Monday.

Quilting on Saturday

My Friday Night Sew-in was a success ... although the progress I made isn't exactly eye candy-worthy. 

I managed to find enough yellows in my scraps and stash to cut 680 triangles.

It doesn't look all that impressive in the photo, but there are 340 light yellows, 170 medium yellows and 170 dark yellows.

And ... I paired them up and chain-sewed into the night until I had 340 Half-Square Triangle units, a little more than I 'll need to make 21 blocks.

I didn't manage to push on and actually press them ... and so this effort ended looking like this–light+medium in one bin and light+dark in the other.

It's not pretty, but it is progress on a Scrap-Happy Saturday.   Check out the list to see some beautiful yellow scrap projects ...

I couldn't face the iron last night, but I did decide to play with some random liberated star blocks I made in February (from Pink scraps) and work on the North New Mexico Guild's charity effort this month: placemats for Kitchen Angels.

(The placemat has square corners, only the photo is skewed.) 

Each fall, around Thanksgiving, Kitchen Angels puts together Holiday baskets for each of their homebound clients including a new placemat, made by members of the guild. I hope someone will enjoy my little scrappy, wonky stars. Since I seemed to be having a little tension problem when I was free-motion-quilting the Cotton Robin quilts, I decided to try again and see what happened ... and, for whatever reason, this time, everything went well. Here are a couple detail photos of the quilting.

  

Since my placemat was made,  I didn't have to lug my machine and equipment to the meeting and stick around and sew ... which is probably a good thing since I was up, happily sewing at home last night, far too late and barely dragged myself out of bed in time to make it to the guild meeting.  I am glad I did because ... the raffle quilt has been finished and we got our first look. 

Clearly, I wasn't the only one snapping photos.

The pattern is Misty Mountain Pond by Judy Niemeyer ... you can find it here:

Misty Mountain Pond

I love the colors and the variety of fabrics the organizers chose.

Nicole Dunn's quilting design is exquisite and feels just right for this quilt.

I'll let you know when I have tickets to sell ...

The Color of the Weekend is YELLOW

Yellow is the color for June in the rainbow scraps challenge. The most challenging thing for me about working with yellow scraps is that, like others, I just don't have many of them.

I enjoyed making the small pink yo-yos last month (for a project that is not yet finished) so I thought I'd make some yellow flowers using the Clover tool–purchased at a quilt show a long, long time ago, but never used . . .  until now.

Here are my first efforts. 

I was thinking of black-eyed Susans when I added big black beads to the centers . . . even though these flowers really look nothing like them.

My idea was to chain them together and use them as a hatband for a wide brimmed straw hat that I'm cleaning up and re-working, but once they were in place, I didn't like it :-(

I'll wait for some new inspiration.

While I like the Clover tool, I don't think I'll be makng more flowers from quilting cotton.  I think it would be wonderful to use with a silk chiffon, a handkerchief linen or other lightweight fabric.   The flowers finish around 1 3/4 inch wide.  I also bought the smaller 1 1/4 flower tool.

On a more successful note, I removed the blocking wires and T-pins from my shawl (Grace helped) and I am quite happy with the result.

World Wide Knit in Public Day is being celebrated this week–I haven't heard of any public knitting events near me, but I'll be casting on a new project soon and being on the lookout for kindred knitters.

Pay No Attention to the COLOR in these Photos

The real news is that the extra ball of yarn arrived a couple days ago and it seems to be a close enough match, despite coming from a different dye lot.

I finished knitting last night and blocked the shawl this afternoon. The brightly colored modular interlocking rubber mats under the shawl really challenged my camera . . . but I still wanted to share my progress.

The biggest challenge of knitting this pattern in the Aran weight yarn was the P5 together that makes the "nubs" in the Lilies of the Valley pattern. Once I developed a technique for that stitch, it went very smoothly.

Here's a detail photo showing some of those lovely bobbly "nubs" and the final lace pattern.

 

I'm not sure if the knitting police would consider this "done," but I'm counting it as a finish ... and maybe, since the shawl was knit from some leftover skeins and the color for this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge is yellow, it can count as a challenge project, too ;-)