Saturday 28 October 2017

Modern Pink

Each month Angela at Soscrappy gives a colour and a lot of quilters focus on using their scraps in that colour: the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. October's colour is pink.
I've made two pink blocks this week for the "make a block a week challenge" for the Dutch Modern Quilt Guild.



The block patterns have all been submitted by guild members. Some are traditional but most, I believe, have been specially designed.

These are both foundation paper pieced, and far from using up scraps, generated them! I'm useless when it comes to foundation piecing! Enter Mr Murphy and his famous law: it can go wrong, and it does!! So for all the fabric you see in the photos there's an equal amount reclining in my lovely new pink basket!

I made some progress on my improv floating squares quilt this week too, until I ran out of navy solid. Not only did I run out, but the LQS had also run out! That's life! Fortunately they agreed to give me a call when it comes in, so I'll be spared another trip for nothing. No recent photo yet of the floating squares quilt which is approaching lap size.

I'm interested to see which colour is coming up for November. I've got way behind with my sewing this year, and I really need to catch up with the missed colours, so maybe I'll be concentrating on them.

I'm linking up to the RSC link-up where there are already a lot of pink beauties to admire.
 SoScrappy
Click on the button to join the party.

Happy sewing

Marly.


Saturday 14 October 2017

Starry pink

October's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink.


Cutting 2" squares to make this generated some more scraps for making the basket. As I still need to make a blue version of this block I also cut blue squares and started joining them in pairs as leaders and enders while I was assembling this one. I'm learning!

This week I also decided to cut a 2" strip and a 2.5" strip from every FQ I buy, as these are the strip sizes I use most. I'm not sure that this is a wise step; I don't want to find myself running out of fabric partway through a project! Only time will tell!

And here, finished this afternoon, is my pink basket:


I love seeing all the baskets lined up, and they are SO useful! How did I ever manage without a scrap saving system?! Finally I think I'm getting organised!

I'm linking to
 grab button for SoScrappy
Click on the button to see more pink delights. 

Happy sewing
Marly.

Saturday 7 October 2017

September was the orange month ...

... in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I have just caught up with two of the rainbow projects I started in January.

I showed the orange basket last week:


and this week I finished an orange 7x7 patch with wonky star.


I made a few at the beginning of the year but work got very busy in the spring leaving me very little time for sewing. I shall be picking up the projects in 2018 and hope to have more success.

I also made an orange wonky star for the Dutch Modern Quilt Guild block-a-week project. (I'm way behind with that too!)


In the meantime pink (October's colour) has now taken over my sewing room. I'm heading off there to start sewing my pairs of 2" pink squares together for the next 7x7 patch.

I'm linking up to 
grab button for SoScrappy
Click on the button to visit Angela where everyone else is in the pink!

Happy sewing

Marly.

Sunday 1 October 2017

Orange basket

 September in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge was coloured orange.
 Last week I showed my few orange scraps:


 I  started by joining the little pieces together:


This was the result, although one or two (for example bottom right) still needed to be straightened. It's definitely easier to join the larger  patches when they are all some sort of rectangle.


The next step was to sew the pieces to the wadding and batting, starting in the middle with a couple of "uglies" which won't be seen as they form the base of the basket. Then I went round log-cabin style adding strips of made fabric and strips from stash. On the left of this picture you can see all that was left of the pile of scraps in the first photo; these are the really smallest pieces, and now reside a polythene bag in the finished basket waiting to be used for appliqué.

basket fabric before cutting (two outdoor candles defying the wind and holding down the corners!)
Having cut out rectangles to form the base, joined the side seams and then the base seams, made and added the handles and added the binding, I had this:

Finished basket: pattern by Fiona at BubzRugz
This time I cut the binding at 2.75" which fitted more comfortably under the walking foot, especially when stitching across the handles where there is three times the normal thickness. I also reduced bulk by pressing the side seams open; just visible in this photo:


I'm linking up to
grab button for SoScrappy
so head over there and see what else has been made in orange this September.

Happy sewing

Marly.