Summer Sampler 2019: One Monthly Goal for April

At the beginning of each month Patty at Elm Street Quilts holds a link up for projected goals, not necessarily finishes.
This month I'm going to try to assemble my Summer Sampler 2019.

I finished making all 21 blocks about a month ago, and as one finished smaller than the rest (how did I manage that?)  

it will get borders and become a cushion and the rest a 4x5 block quilt with narrow sashing and no borders. At least that's what I think now!

Come back here at the end of April to see how far I've got.

In the meantime visit Patty's blog:

to see what other crafters are aiming to do.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Finished March goal: Triangle Games

At the beginning of March I set my one goal for the month at Elm Street Quilts. Of course each month has several goals, but the OMG always has priority.

This month the priority is finishing my improv triangle quilt from the sew along hosted by Nicholas Ball (#quiltsfromtheattic) on Instagram  (#improvtrianglesewalong) .

 Progress quilting lines 0.5" apart on Friday morning.

For the first time I used the quilt tacking feature on my sewing machine when layering anything larger than a shopping bag, but not entirely successfully. This feature requires the fabric to be pulled through manually, the feed dogs being lowered, but I haven't mastered that fully it would seem, and the fabric bunched up a little. Not severely, so snipping the tacking thread here and there was enough to get the whole thing flat again.

Friday afternoon I finished quilting

and this time even remembered to attach a label before quilting:

There are no prizes for guessing the origin of the backing fabric!

Tuesday 24 March I finally finished sewing down the binding and the hanging sleeve.

Triangle Games

Measurements:  68 x 65 cm ( 26.5 x 25.5 in)

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to visit more goals achieved.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Green, Orange & Teal / Aqua

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is teal (and aqua). I was late deciding on a block, and have used the first three colours all in the same month.

My aim is to make four of these 8" square blocks in the colour of each month, except dark blue, brown and black, which won't show up well against the charcoal grey background. As it is, this month's dark and bright green is just about on the limit of contrast.
The coloured pieces are all from stash: the 2.5" squares from the scrap baskets, and the 4.5" squares mainly from fat quarters. The charcoal grey pieces are from 2.5" x WOF strips of yardage; one strip is exactly enough for two blocks.

I'm linking up to

Click on the button to see more rainbow progress.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Some teal and catching up with orange

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is teal, of which I have very little. I hope I'll get the chance to make more blocks later in the year.

For I have finally decided on a block for this year's challenge:

Beads

 These are 8" square and are very simple to make:

• background: 
• 2 strips  2.5" x 4.5"
• 2 strips  2.5" x 6.5" (All the background fabric for two blocks can be cut from one 2.5" WOF strip.)
• colour:
• 2 squares 2.5"
• 1 square 4.5"

If you want to make a whole bead quilt quickly, and not scrappy, Jordan Fabrics has a You-Tube video. The measurements are different and the method is phenomenally faster than mine - but mine is scrappy!

I also have some orange ones:

On Saturday I'll be linking to 

Click on the button to see other participants' teal pieces.

Happy sewing

Marly.

My goal for March

I'm goal setting each month over at Elm Street Quilts and each month I find myself wondering which of my many on-going projects can I designate as my goal this time. For me blocks of the month don't qualify because they come round every month regardless; I think my monthly goal should be something of a challenge, something that would otherwise become yet another UFO, but also achieving the goal should be feasible in a month.

This month's OMG has certainly been a challenge:

This is my result so far in the Improv triangle sew along hosted by Nick Ball on Instagram (@quiltsfromtheattic).

I'm not new to improv, but I'm finding putting this together really a task. The piece has got smaller  while I was sewing it together, so now I'm going to make a few more units to fill the awkward spaces and to make it more square.

Let's hope making this my goal will spur me to get to the finish.

I'm linking up to

Click on the button to see more goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Orange hour-glasses

After January's green, Angela gave orange as the colour for February. I like orange; it's such a happy sunny colour, and sunshine is what we could use here now!

I explained in January that I was combining several challenges so the hour-glasses for the AHIQ was combined with the RSC colour for January. And now February too!

Here are my improv hour-glass blocks:

The four on the left and right are 5.75" square, and the other four are 5.25" square. That will be an interesting jig saw! But that's improv! 😀

I really need to think about what I'm going to use as my RSC block this year. I don't intend making wonky hour-glass blocks next week, whether in red?, yellow?, pink? or ? ...

...OK, it's TEAL.

I shall be linking this in due time to:

 

click on the button above to see more orange happiness!

Happy sewing

Marly.

My last two Summer Sampler blocks finished

My goal for February was to make the two remaining blocks of the 2019 Summer Sampler and to remake my "disaster" block. 

Here are the last two blocks I made: numbers 7, "Sparkler", and 21, "Summertime Star".

Sparkler

The focus in Sparkler was on creating transparency, but with my chosen fabrics it was difficult to really create a transparent effect; the fabrics were chosen for contrast rather than blending. I deliberately left this block until last, until I knew what was left to potentially work with.

Summertime Star

The focus in Summertime Star was on Y-seams, which weren't a problem. However the problem here for me was getting all the points to come together in the middle. After unpicking the last seam three times I decided that right or wrong the fourth attempt would be the final one. Those bias edges were not getting any better. Finished is better than perfect.

And then block number 9, Oasis: it's still as it was at the beginning of the month.



I've decided not to remake it, but to square it down to remove the wavy edges and then add a border.

I didn't fully achieve my goal, but at least I opened the project box and took stock of the situation. Trimming Oasis down to make it square and adding a border shouldn't take too much time, but then I have to think how I'm going to use the blocks. The projected layouts would result in a quilt that is far too big for my purposes. So what next? Two lap quilts? cushions? table runners? shopping bags? - not a good idea.

I'm linking up to 

 

Click on the button to see other spectacular February finishes.

Happy sewing

Marly.