One Monthly goal in March

 

 .... was to finish some of the quilts on the "ready to quilt" pile. Well there is only one that is finished!

 

and that's about time too. This was the bee quilt of the blocks made by all the Bee members of the Do. Good Stitches Comfort Circle in March 2022! For some of the group members this was the first time they tried sewing crumbs, so they all did remarkably well. Now I have to find a destination for this Charity quilt.

I'm linking to

Click on the button to see more of March's success stories.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

March's goal ...

... is to make a dent in the pile of tops waiting to be quilted and bound.

There are quite a few:

Only the last one is just a top, the other three are partially quilted and need binding. I doubt if I will get them all finished because I have to tidy my sewing room first; at present I have no space on the table to lay out a quilt!

Wish me luck!

I'm linking up to

Click on the button to see more aspirations for March.

Happy sewing

Marly.

July: new month - old OMG

 

Unfortunately I didn't achieve my goal of finishing quilting the Do. good stitches quilt last month.  

 

So it has carried over into July; my goal this month is to move this quilt on further. 

I just haven't been able to settle to it. I have been finding recently that manoeuvring the quilt during FMQ puts strain on my hands so I can't do more than about 15 minutes in one stretch. The recent high humidity doesn't seem to help. My machine is due for servicing so I think I'll make an appointment with the dealer this week and give myself an enforced rest from FMQ!

So what did I do to this quilt in the last month? I finished the "wishbone" motif on the sashing and quilted a few hearts on the blue crumb squares. I've decided to do a simple motif in every square, giving squares of the same colour the same motif.

We'll have to see how far this project advances in the next month.

I'm linking to:

 

Click on the button above to see more patchwork and quilting aspirations.

Happy sewing 

Marly

June's monthly goal

Unfortunately I didn't make much progress with my goal in May. I started quilting but strained my right shoulder and have stopped again for the moment. My goal for this month is the same as for last - to quilt the Do Good Stitches quilt the Comfort Circle group made in March.

Proof of progress: 

assembled, layered, pinned and partly quilted.

I'm quilting the sashing with, supposedly, a wishbone motif but the loops are turning out too rounded when I'm moving the quilt away from or towards me. I only seem to get it right when sewing from right to left. Still, it looks quite pretty the way it is.

It's not perfect; I blame the shoulder! However, more practice wouldn't go amiss!

I'm linking up to Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal in June.

Happy sewing,

Marly.

One Monthly Goal in May

 

 

Last week I showed the finished top of the Comfort Circle's March quilt for DO. good stitches. 

My goal for May is to quilt it. 

I'm linking this to 

 

Click on the button to see more handwork aspirations.

Happy sewing

Marly.

DO. good stitches Comfort Circle March quilt

 

My one monthly goal for April was to assemble, and possibly quilt, the quilt my bee mates in the Comfort Circle contributed to in March. The last four crumb blocks arrived this Wednesday (there have been problems with postal deliveries from the UK recently) and I could add them to the rest that already had sashing added. I'm grateful to my friends in the Comfort Circle, most of whom I've never met, for making these crumb blocks. Some of them had never made them before, and one confessed to never saving her scraps! Well done all!

I won't get it quilted this month, that I know! I have finished the top, however. 

I spent some time contemplating these two layouts: ⬆dancing squares,

 

Dancing squares layout

or, ⬇ straight sashing.

Straight sashing layout

I'm not a great fan of sashing, but in this case the sashing provides the only "resting points" in the whole quilt. Dancing squares was my original idea, even before the blocks started arriving. It's not original in the sense of unique; I saw it first on Bonnie Hunter's Dancing Nine Patch free pattern, and I've used it several times. It was original in the sense of "my first idea", but when I tried with the first dozen or so blocks I found it rather chaotic and rearranged them in the more usual straight sashing formation.  

Once all the blocks were in, I finally decided on the dancing squares layout.

The borders are 2" wide which has brought the top up to 60" x 52"

Backing fabric has been chosen from my stash so next month's goal will be to add the label and to quilt and deliver this quilt.

I'm linking up to:

                               

Click on the buttons to see more happy handwork.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One monthly goal for April: Assemble Do Good Stitches March top

 

In March I was the Queen Bee for the Do Good Stitches' Comfort Circle. This is a European group with members in the UK and The Netherlands. My assignment for the group was to make four crumb squares with borders similar to this one

in the colours of their choice.

So far I have received blocks from five of the nine other members but I'm banking on the rest arriving in the next few days.

All the blocks so far

I expect to start adding sashing to the blocks I have now at the weekend and hope that by the 15th I have enough to lay them out satisfactorily and start sewing them together ready to donate. 

I'm linking to:

Elm Street Quilts for One Monthly Goal

Wendy's Quilts and More for Peacock Party

 Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts 

Click on the links above to see more works in progress.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Crumby Squares Tutorial

 

 

This month it's my turn as Queen Bee in the Do Good Stitches Comfort Circle.

Good morning friends. This month you have the chance to use up some of your small scraps in making four squares which will finish at 7" in the quilt. 

I’d like you to use your scraps to make a 5.5” crumb square in one colour and then surround the square with a 1.5” border of one fabric in the complementary colour. You can choose to make all four squares in the same colour, or make one each of four different colours; it's up to you.

 Preparation

• So pull scraps of the same colour – different fabrics, different shades, all shapes

• Make sure you have a 1.5” strip at least 27" long (see below) of the complementary colour (the one directly opposite your first colour on the colour wheel) for the border. I prefer to use a solid or near solid for the border, giving good contrast in tone without competing with the crumb square. (For reference I've added photos of the colour wheel and how to find the complementary colour):
  
  

  

  photos: © Joan Wolfrom "3 in 1 color tool
  

  "
  

   

   

   

   
  

  
  
  

• No black or white and also no navy blue for the border please.

various fabrics but all orange

Join two pieces

 

 

Method

• Use a 0.25" seam throughout.

• Sew the scraps together (starting with an irregularly shaped piece), pressing the seams open.  

add a third


• If you're new to crumb blocks check this tutorial by Darlene Michaud: “5 Ways to start Crumb Blocks” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMtLyM352Y4

• Don’t just use strips; we don’t want a rail fence block.

• If it’s starting to look like a rail fence, then cut across it at an angle and turn one of the pieces round or keep it apart and use it in another block.

  

  and trim
  

• Keep adding and trimming until your piece is larger than 5.5" square.
  

• Select your final square, check, and CUT!
  

• Attach the border: 2 strips 1.5" x 5.5" and 2 strips 1.5 x 7.5" 
  

 

Finally trim your block to 7.5" square (5" crumb square plus a 1.25" border on each side) which will be 7" square in the finished block.
 

Good luck

Happy sewing

 

Marly.

OMG for November

My one monthly goal for November is to quilt this table runner that I made in September.

I'll be using orange and navy blue thread, but haven't decided on a quilting design yet.

~~~~~~~~~~

Unfortunately it's been rather quiet in my sewing room during October. I didn't reach my goal to quilt the bead quilt, which had also been my goal for September (sigh!) I did make progress, sewing round the coloured squares in the ditch, and then quilted between the lines of squares with freehand wavy lines. 

 

All was going well (I'd finished half of them) and I thought I would get them all done last week, but continued too long on Monday, strained a tendon in my left thumb, and had to sit and nurse it for the rest of the week! More haste, less speed! I also thought it would be a good plan to quilt the "beads" by hand - a mammoth task - but will make a good handwork project for the winter evenings, I hope. In any case this won't be finished any time soon!

I'm linking to :

Click on the button to see more handwork goals for this month.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Crumby orange table runner

The RSC colour is orange this month. I emptied my orange scrap bag and made these eight 4.5" crumb blocks. Together with improv triangles from 3.5" orange strips and Bella solid yardage in navy blue they've become a table runner.

Measurements: 38"x 17.5" (0.97m x 0.45m)

Thank you to those who responded last week about the orientation of the triangles. I tried both directions but found them rather threatening pointing outwards; pointing inwards they resemble shark's teeth about to devour the crumb blocks, which is fine by me! 

Quilting will have to wait; at present I'm layering a large lap quilt.

I used to layer quilts on the living room floor, but nowadays I can get down on the floor OK, but getting up when I've finished ...!! I'm trying to layer on the table, but this lot keeps slipping off!

I'm linking this weekend to:

      

 Click on the buttons to see more (orange) scrappiness 

and this week's progress. 

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Marching through red

March's colour in the RSC was red, and I've been "seeing red" all month without getting angry!

These red nine-patches are from 2" strips, mostly left from Bonnie Hunter's 2015 mystery Aliatare augmented with a few more recent acquisitions. 

Next up are leader and ender hour-glass blocks, also made using 2" strips and cut with the companion angle triangle.

A couple of weeks ago I described the fun I was having making slab blocks using really tiny pieces. Well, here they are again with some larger pieces, layered and quilted ready to be trimmed and then transformed into a scrap basket. 

Not entirely red, but a quilted basket needs contrast, doesn't it? 

I followed a tutorial form Fiona at Bubz Rugz, but while she only took an hour to make hers, I've taken the best part of two weeks and I still haven't finished! Partly because while she appears to have used squares and rectangles, I started with odd shapes. In addition I don't think I've spent more than ten minutes each day at my sewing machine in the last three weeks.

Lastly the Jacob's Ladder blocks have not incresed in the last two weeks; they are as they were in my last post. Thanks to Chantal I now have the correct name though: Hovering Hawk. 

Hovering Hawk

Thank you Chantal! Thank you too to everyone who made a suggestion about the name; you were all pretty close, usually with just a slight difference in the orientation of the small triangles.

Saturday I'll be linking up to

 Click on the button to see more red fun.

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 17 Looking for red

Angela at Soscrappy has given red as the colour for this month's scraps. Time to look out red scraps.

I have a bucket under my cutting table for the bits I don't want on the table. This bucket

was full, that is piled up and overflowing, of pieces of assorted colours and sizes. I spent a couple of hours yesterday evening separating

strings

from crumbs

from larger pieces

but hardly made a difference to the bucket.

Unfortunately I didn't find any red strings, just a couple of strips from which I could cut 2" squares
However, I found a few red triangles, probably the cut off corners of stitch and flip blocks, and some extremely odd shapes from which I cut the jagged edges.

Now I'm off to make crumb blocks from this treasure trove!

That was yesterday, ... and here they are!

These crumb blocks are destined to go onto a QAYG  basket for red scraps, but more about that later.
My plan is to make a basket each month and put that bucket back to its original use: hand laundry!

Last week I showed my outsize Jacob's Ladder blocks and now I have made three from the "other" Jacob's Ladder pattern that I had drawn from a photo by Sharon Mck Mason at 24 Quilts and which originated in "Better Homes and Gardens" but I don't know when. Incidentally I don't think it bears much resemblance to the original Jacob's Ladder, except for the diagonal line of squares; if anyone knows this block by another name please let me know.

For size comparison here are the blocks together:

I'm linking this to 

      

 Click on the button to see more photos of scrappy patchwork.

Happy sewing

Marly.