Purple table scraps

The Joyful Quilter has a challenge, linked to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, to use scraps to make something for a table in the colour of the month. This month's colour is purple. I'm pairing purple with yellow, its complementary colour.

Not much purple in the purple scrap bowl. I planned on making a placemat, but maybe I'll have to settle for a mug rug.

I had more purple pieces than I thought. I started with the scrap bag, where most of the pieces were crumbs, and not nearly enough. My drawers of strips, sorted by width, proved to contain enough purple.

Following a tutorial on fine line piecing published last month by Debbie Jeske I set out to join the crumbs and other scraps. I cut the yellow strips at 0.5", although I had started with wider. I found that half an inch was wide enough if I sewed a scant quarter inch seam

Adding  a yellow strip with a scant quarter inch seam 

 

chain piecing the yellow strip

and the seam to join the second fabric one eighth of an inch from the first. This felt strange at first, like working back to front. The second fabric is hidden under the first, whereas I would normally position it on top.

Which all resulted in this:

 

fine line pieced, quilted, labelled and bound: one placemat.

I'm linking this to:

                 

   Click on the buttons to see more scrappy progress.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

"Good Fortune" bag

My one monthly goal for May was to look out my pieces of "Good Fortune", Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt of a few years ago. I looked them out and decided to make a bag using eight of the blocks. I wrote about that process here. Unfortunately I didn't manage to finish it in May.

Now, however, I've finished sewing it together and adding the carrying straps.

The aim was to make it large enough to carry a project and tools to a bee or workshop.

It's even big enough for a 12"x17" cutting mat:

Measurements: 18"x18"x 5"

Materials: 

• left over scrap blocks
• recycled jeans
• wadding scraps
• canvas: NEW!
• thread: all new
• piecing Mettler 50 wt
• quilting Aurifil 40 wt

I'm so happy to have made something new almost completely from scraps! It's going to be useful too, once we get back to normal group activities. 

I'm linking this to:

 

Click on the button to see more of this week's finishes.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

My Own Path

For the last month or so I've been working on "My Own Path", in the Quilt Along, "Follow Your Own Path", designed and organised by Sandra Walker of  @mmmquilts.

photo indoors with overcast skies and drizzle

Adding the binding, with a glimpse of the backing fabric: a purchased remnant of  unknown origin:

My version is smaller than the original, as I halved all the measurements of the baby quilt. This has resulted in a quilt of 20" by 18" with the same number of blocks as the original. 

Background fabric: Contempo's "color weave" in light grey.

arrows: from scraps

shadow arrows: Contempo's "color weave" in medium grey.

Two days ago, outside, in bright sunlight

Making this during the sixth month of our second Covid lockdown, inspired the layout: it could only get better: the only way from here was up! [That turned out to be true; most of the restrictions have now been lifted, and more will be from next weekend.]

The ghost arrows in the quilting represent my moments of indecision, and ideas not followed through; the points of potential deviation from my path.

I really enjoyed this deviation from my plan for this year. Thank you Sandra!

I'm linking this to:

           

                

  Click on the buttons to see more fun quilts.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy Sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal for June

June's goal for Patty's challenge at Elm Street Quilts is to finish this small version of "Follow your own path", the Quilt Along held recently at mmmquilts. 

All it needs is the quilting.

I started free motion quilting it with the stitch regulator on Friday, but the result was DREADFUL! (Sorry, no photo) It absolutely did not enhance the piecing. Yesterday morning I spent some time unpicking three lines of quilting. Maybe you can see a trace of them in the fourth row, between the yellow and green arrows. Unpicking quilting is normally something I just don't do. Unless the tension is so off that I have loops on the back (happened once!) I leave it be; the chances are that I'm the only one who'd notice. but now: regulated nothing! Some of the stitches were more than a quarter of an inch long, and others less than one sixteenth. 

I haven't used the stitch regulator for some time as I've been following Lori Kennedy's online course in FMQ, and chose to do the course using my darning foot. Now, with the darning foot my stitches are not always the same length either, but are much better than this was, and I feel more in control of the machine.

So my goal is to get this labelled, quilted an bound before the end of the month. Let's hope a trip to the dealer for a machine service doesn't throw a spanner in the works!

I'm linking this to:

Click on the button for links to more June goals.

Stay safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.