In Praise of the Making Scrap Quilts and the Rainbow Scraps Challenge

As often happens at this time of year, I have been looking back and looking forward and thinking about some of the scrappy projects I've made and those still in progress, as part of the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

When I joined the challenge in January, 2011, one of the first things that happened was some reorganization of my scraps and how I stored them.  Before, I stored them, by color, in large zip-lock bags. As part of the sorting, pressing and using them up or folding them nicely and putting them away, I also moved them into plastic bins, recycled produce containers.



That first month, I made the first of the broken dishes blocks, cutting squares with rotary cutter and ruler and trimming afterward ... and created a pile of trimmings.



This project would become my excuse reason to purchase a die cutting machine ... which was used to cut the rest of the 3,872 triangles I used to make the quilt I shared on Saturday. Next year, I'll be using it again, with a different die to begin a new project.

I didn't always participate in the Rainbow Scraps Challenge–in fact, I took a whole year off in 2012, but it was a great motivation to work on large projects in a small, one-month/color-at-a-time way and some small single-color projects.  Here are a few of my favorite small projects:

 




I still have a few on-going projects for large quilts that I either began this year or picked up and moved further along ... and I do have a few ideas for new projects I'd like to begin in 2015. Here's one.

These butterfly blocks are PIECED (from some very odd-shaped pieces, cut from templates) and I think they would be a great scrap project that would also provide some nice, on-going, hand-work for Slow Stitch Sundays.  This quilt was made c. 1935 by Nina Shrock, Harvard County Indiana.

This is the cover quilt for the book, The New England Quilt Museum QUILTS, still available from Amazon.

It is one of five of the heirloom quilts from the museum's collection for which there is a pattern.

I don't plan to use ONLY 30's fabrics in my butterfly blocks, but I think the feeling will be the same. I think making scrap quilts connects us to those depression era quilters. I found this description in the book of that time and this quilt:

The Great Depression of 1929 brought a national concern for thrift and frugality.  The Work Relief Program of the Works Progress Administration was created to revitalize home crafts and community projects.  The craft program, spear-headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, encouraged women in traditional American Handicrafts. Scrapbag quilts, which are made from tiny "scraps" of fabric, were well suited to the American New Deal.  In making such a quilt, a woman reinforced both her clever economy and her unique role as an American craftsperson.  This Butterfly pattern was published by one of the most popular designers of the era, Laura Wheeler. The design reflects art deco styles in it's curved arabesques and bold outline, and is one of the favorite quilts in the NEQM's collection.

Whether you join Angela's Rainbow Scraps Challenge to organize and/or use up your scraps or to play with ideas about color and value, I whole-heartedly recommend the exercise.  The eye candy you'll see along the way, in the many wonderful projects made by others, is so inspiring.

December's Lovely Finish

My goal for December was to make the 21 scrappy orange blocks I needed to sew 121 of the blocks together into a top ... and here it is–ready to be quilted:

I began making these blocks during the first month I discovered Angela's Rainbow scraps challenge, in January 2011. I took a year off after I really used up nearly all my scraps the first year, and let these blocks wait another year ... but I started this year really wanting to finish these blocks and make the quilt.

I started with blue scraps and some inspiration from a photo of Charm Stars Quilt by Mary Carol Sternitzky of Garfield, Arkansas which I found in the book, Quick and Easy Scrap Quilts.

My quilt is made from smaller blocks and won't have borders. The top measures 88 inches square.

It's interesting to see how the lack of white fabrics in my blocks results in a much more color-saturated design ... or perhaps it's because there is very little yellow and orange in Mary Carol's quilt.

I'm joining the Lovely December Finishes' party and the last Scrap Happy Saturday of 2014 for the Rainbow Scraps Challenge.

Merry Christmas

Symmetry or Asymmetry, that is the question

At some point after I started making the Broken Dishes Star blocks (as I think of them), I drew a symmetric, trip-around-the-work style layout and figured out how many blocks I'd need.  And finally, I've made them all.

But lately it feels that asymmetry is more my style and so I started putting them on the wall that way and promptly discovered that the numbers of each color weren't going to work out for me ... so this is just a little bit off-center.  Does it work or does it look like a mistake? 

The artificial lighting in the studio is not good, but I'm not going to be home during the daylight hours for a while, so I decided to take and post a photo anyway.  There are 121 of my monochromatic scrappy blocks (made for the Rainbow scraps challenge) on the design wall. I don't know if Judy plans to have a Design Wall Monday this week, but if she does, I'm ready. (She did and I updated this post to link to it.) 

The Weekend after the FNSI

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Orange.

Orange who?

Orange you going to blog about the results of your Friday Night Sew In?

On Friday, I finished cutting almost 800 orange triangles ... and I spent some time over the weekend sewing together triangle squares and making broken dishes blocks. It was a whole lot of chain sewing and pressing ...

These are twelve of the 21 blocks I'm making.

The real fun is coming ... when the orange blocks are done, I'll add them to the yellow, green, blue, purple and red ones and start playing on the design wall.

Approaching Normal

For those who wonder, I am still, surprisingly, hurting and am frustrated by the things that I still cannot do, but I continue to act as if things have returned to normal and make the effort.

Yesterday, I took advantage of the sale on holiday fabrics at Santa Fe Quilting and came home with these ... and an idea on how I want to use them.

I felt bad about leaving the store in a bit of a mess because I just couldn't push the bolts back in place on the shelf.

I have owned the Art to Heart Book, 12 Days of Christmas and the stand for the little quilts for a while and I love the idea of using these little quilts to count down to Christmas ... and perhaps, with these new fabrics in hand, I will be able to make it happen this year ... if I can get past the pain of applying pressure with a rotary cutter necessary to cut the fabrics.

I have also pulled out my orange scrap bin and the die cutter to make the blocks I need for one of my rainbow scraps challenge project (and goal for a lovely finish in December), but ... I am afraid the motions involved may not be possible for me to accomplish without pain ... yet.

I know that getting back to working with fabrics will be good for me, emotionally and creatively, though, so if I cannot work on these two December projects, I will find do-able others.

Although I missed the deadline for QuiltCon, I am still motivated to finish this quilt, from the Michael Miller challenge fabrics.

I had just finished arranging the randomly colored log cabin blocks and started sewing them together before the crazy life events of the last few weeks ... and left them on my design wall looking just like this for almost a month.  I am still excited about the quilt design I have in mind for this quilt and am motivated to finish.

Perhaps, the best choice for me would be some handwork ... I keep thinking about getting organized for some comfortable, restful, hand-quilting. I just have to get past the physicality of reaching, pulling, arranging involved in basting a quilt.   If I can make this last one happen, I am looking forward to a Slow Stitch Sunday evening of hand quilting and stress reduction.

It's Beginning to Look Like ...

Today was a cold and rainy day, but earlier this week, on a more pleasant day, I snapped some photos of the preparations for the holidays around the Santa Fe Plaza.

The dog sculptures outside the Pop Gallery were wearing new festive ribbons.

The decorations here are a mix of traditional, commercial and uniquely New Mexico style.

The rain falling here translates to snow in the mountains ... and a hint that we may have a frosting of the white stuff at lower elevations soon.

A Different Kind of WIP Wednesday

Over the past couple days, the old cracked boiler has been removed and a new one, which didn't work, installed in it's place. Electricians were called, circuit boards were replaced and late this afternoon, someone called the manufacturer's tech support line and troubleshot the problem--there was a tiny little missing jumper wire.

So, the work in progress around my studio looked like this:





Because it's a radiant heat system and the house has become very cold over the past week, it's going to take a while for things to warm up ... but this is progress in the right direction.

Finish This! My Goal for a Lovely Finish in December

Remember this one?



My goal for December is to make the missing scrappy orange blocks, decide upon an arrangement and sew the 121 blocks together into a quilt top.

For those curious about my personal saga, no, I still don't have heat at my house.  A replacement heating system was delivered and installed today, but ... it doesn't work. An electrical expert came and had no more luck and, at the end of a long day, I was told, "you have a broken boiler."  Which is exactly what I had before ... but different.

As a result of having the garage door at one of the studio open all afternoon and part of the evening as they ripped out the old (broken) system and installed the new (DOA) system is that the house is cooling down even faster ... I spent the day at the other end of the studio, huddled by an electric heater and my hands and feet are more like ice cubes than physical appendages now ... can I have some cheese with this wine?

An 11th Hour Finish for the 11th Month of A Year of Lovely Finishes

When I fled the house with cats, all their stuff, all my stuff, etc., friends suggested I be sure to take some hand work.

I'm sure I sounded like a whiny baby when I explained that I couldn't stand the physical pain of carrying one more bag or the process of putting together a project to bring to the hotel.

Yesterday, I did manage to trim a quilt, make binding, sew it on, and pack up everything I needed to stitch it down in the hotel last night.  The electric heater that the heating service guy loaned me made it possible ... until I turned on the iron and blew the circuit in the studio ...

I have a bit more stitching until I'm completely done (and I'll finish today for my Slow Stitch Sunday project).  Last night I noticed that the colors of the quilt worked well with the decor of my hotel room and couldn't resist spreading it out over the king-size bed for a photo.

The lighting isn't great, but ... good enough for me to share this Lovely Finish.

I'll have more details to share later, but I couldn't wait to share my November Finish (and the first EVER Block Lotto sampler quilt I've finished in the same year as we made the blocks that are in it.)

Update - here's the finished quilt hanging in my VERY COLD studio.

This one was also long arm quilted by Lynn Horpedahl. 

Why me?

You'd think that being run down by the cell phone menace would be enough to bear ...

I woke up genuinely feeling thankful to be alive and even though my plans for the holiday weekend were anything but normal, I was prepared to make the best and enjoy it ...  and even try to work on a couple projects I had hoped to finish at the end of the month.

I really just wanted (and needed!) a couple days of rest at home.

I planned to cook a couple of my personal Thanksgiving favorites for a simple meal at home, including a black and blue berry crumble using this recipe

I knew that my real desert at the end of the day today is going to be this Mochacino Smoothie ... that is likely going to taste anything but good, but is a necessary preparation for a CT Scan tomorrow. 

While others are scurrying about shopping Black Friday sales or happily avoiding the rush and staying home and quilting or enjoying other pursuits, I will be likely sitting in another waiting room for what seems like forever until  ultimately getting scanned to make sure everything is OK inside.  Because, unfortunately,  it really doesn't feel like everything is OK and when I went to urgent care on Monday, they were concerned about my spleen. 

Still, I was looking forward to a restful weekend and enjoying the prospect of waking up slowly this morning–I still wake up too early–whenever the pain meds wear off which is usually 2 or 3AM, but I stayed in bed a while and slowly faced the challenge of getting out of bed.  I made coffee and was enjoying it upstairs while reading email and blogs and then ...

Beep beep beep beep ... I heard an alarm that I hoped was one of the smoke detectors downstairs telling me it needed a new battery, but kind of knew was the Carbon Monoxide alarm in the studio.

It was a familiar sound because I'd heard it about a month ago and the owner of house called the company that services the heating and plumbing who, a couple days later came out, replaced some parts and supposedly FIXED it.

I contacted the owner of the house, turned down all the thermostats and opened all the doors and windows to air things out.  Now it's freezing.

My plans for a restful 4 days, with some healthy meals and a little time spent in the studio are dashed.  The owner of the house suggests I spend the next 4 days–or as long as it takes the Keystone Cops of plumbing and heating to show up–in a hotel.  Because of my allergies and sensitivity to chemicals, hotel stays are always hard for me. My plans–small as they were–are ruined, my hopes for a restful weekend are ruined and now I have to face the painful prospect of packing and collecting the cats (that I haven't even been able to pick up because of my injuries) and their paraphernalia and getting everyone settled into a hotel.  I don't know if I can do it.

I could scream ... but that would hurt too much.  (So, I suppose, I am whining on my blog instead :-)

Whatever the long weekend NOW holds in store for me, I AM thankful to be alive and thankful that there is a CO alarm ... to survive the cell phone menace and be killed by carbon monoxide would have just been too sad.

I hope your Thanksgiving is so much better than mine. 

When you can't quilt ... PLAN

Over the weekend, I was shocked to find that simply pushing a rotary cutter was painful and the up and down of working on blocks on a design wall and sewing and pressing seams wore me out.  I'm frustrated that a couple of projects I hoped to plan this month ... may not happen.

In the meantime, I'm PLANNING for the future.

Just about the last thing I did before getting hit by the cell phone menace early Tuesday morning was attend the guild meeting.  Myrna (on the left) shared a variation of the slice quilt that she will be organizing in 2015. Each person in a group of six, buys a poster, slices it into 6 pieces (in any way she wants) and hands them out to the other members. This is Myrna's quilt and the poster she used for her piece (held by guild president Cindy).

I have ALWAYS wanted to work on a slice quilt.  I signed up immediately and hope that enough other members who need to meet in the evening or on the weekend will join me. 

Julie has announced that she'll be leading the Cotton Robin one more time and I can't wait. This year, she is asking us to challenge ourselves with a color theme that's new to us and ... I have an idea.  Click over to the cotton robin to check out the dates for this year (and also look at all the quilts we made last year–it was big fun and I am ready for more of the same.) 

I may start my Cotton Robin quilt with a little hand appliqué ... I'm thinking I might be able to handle that while I'm mending. 

I took paper and colored pencils to the urgent care today and sketched an idea for a modern quilter's code ... as it turned out, I waited for more than 2 hours before I was seen and spent another 2 hours mostly waiting once I made it to the back of the house, so I was glad to have something with which to entertain myself. 

For those that are following my saga, the consensus continues to be that I'm bruised but not broken, which is good news, if a little unbelievable because everything still hurts so much ... 

Life Happens

Put a cup of coffee in that guy's hand and bundle him up in a winter coat and you have a visual of me, early Tuesday morning.

I got to work early, parked in the garage and decided to go pick up a breakfast burrito and a latté.  The coffee shop is across the street and around the corner from the office.  On my way back, even though there wasn't much traffic, I waited for the pedestrian signal to turn to WALK.  It didn't matter ... a young woman came zipping around the corner so fast that I didn't see her until just before her fender crashed into me. 

A man driving on the other side of the street stopped and helped me get up off the pavement–I was hurting so much, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to move.  I watched the driver who hit me start to leave the scene, then after the witness stopped to help me, decided to stop ... and plead with me not to call the police.  She said she was illegally in the country ... though later, I realized that probably isn't true, since she works for a large Santa Fe business. There's no doubt that she turned her big puppy dog eyes on the Santa Fe policeman who made the report and gave her a ticket for nothing more than something like, "distracted driving." 

As fate would happen, she works in the same office building as I do–for the company that manages the building.  I was too dazed and in pain to recognize her at first, but I see her every day. At work she is ALWAYS talking on her cell-phone. I really do mean ALWAYS.  When she is working (she cleans the public areas), she is ALWAYS loudly talking and laughing on her phone.  When she is supposed to be working, she is often sitting on the bench in the elevator lobby, still ALWAYS talking and laughing to someone on her cell phone–loud enough that you can hear her on the other side of the wall, behind closed doors. 

As the story of my accident spread through the office, I found she has had several near misses with others (in their cars) ... and she was ALWAYS ON HER CELLPHONE.  Even if I didn't see her face before she sent me flying, I have no doubt that it wasn't the sun in her eyes as she claimed, but that SHE WAS ON HER CELLPHONE when she didn't stop and turned on red and hit me.

I was not-exactly treated by EMTs on the scene--they said something submissive, like "if you have broken ribs, there's nothing that you can do about them, " stuck a piece of gauze on my now skinless knee (without even cleaning it!) and sent me on my way.  I wanted to believe they were right and I was only feeling muscle soreness, but my ribs are so tender now that I can feel every breath and I live in fear of a cough or a sneeze.  

Getting into and out of bed, a chair or the car is an excruciating experience ... I walk at a snail's pace, because it is as fast as I can go now. Everything from the neck down hurts ... and the cell-phone twit continues to happily laugh and talk on her cell phone, completely unaffected by the havoc she's caused in my life. 

Today I looked at the blocks on my design wall and realized that I cannot raise my arm high enough to take down the blocks in the top two rows, even if I thought I could sit down and sew them together.  On Monday, I brought home a quilt that has been long-arm quilted, but I haven't done anything with it, because I can't even pick it up and carry it into the studio.   I made some sample blocks for the December Block Lotto last weekend–the sneak peek should go out on Sunday–but I don't know if I can sit at the desk long enough to put together the block directions.   I had plans to go big with holiday decorations this year, but it seems unlikely that I will be able to make that happen. 

I am glad to be alive, but so frustrated by all the pain and all the limitations ... and the knowledge that the older I am the longer it takes to recover from any injury.

More Dice-y Log Cabin Blocks

I didn't know how large this quilt would become ... so I decided I would continue to throw the dice and make as many of the randomly colored Steps blocks as I could from the package of eight fat eighths of challenge fabric. I ended with 49 blocks for a 7 by 7 arrangement.

Now, they are living on my design wall, and I am considering and reconsidering and arranging and re-arranging before putting the blocks together and thinking about how to quilt it.

At some point in time on Sunday, it looked like this:

I am sharing my design wall with others over at Judy's Patchwork Times today.

Good Morning

My cat Johnny insists it's not yet too cold to go out on the roof deck and surveil the neighborhood while the sun rises.   After he woke me up to remind me it was time to go out this morning, I joined him.

If weather forecasts are right, tomorrow morning, the mountains in the distance will be covered with snow and we may have a few inches here, too ... maybe enough for Johnny to decide he doesn't need to go outside in the morning?