Red 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 red, and my aim has been to use some of my red crumbs to make a place mat. Crumbs, by their nature are very small, and my chosen method is more labour intensive than I anticipated.

At 12" x 4" this is hardly a placemat!

 

I'm joining the pieces by a technique Debbie Jeske called "fine line piecing" in a blog post earlier this month.

My first attempts were not successful (fine lines not fine enough),

but narrowing the "sashing" and making a strip worked better and I managed to move it all along much more quickly. 

 

Unfortunately, not quickly enough to meet this deadline, but I shall probably get a top finished in the next few days. 

I'm linking this to:

      

Click on the buttons to see more scraps in use.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Closing Red for the RSC

Each month Angela gives a different colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This year September has been red.

I posted my red Scrap Snap blocks a few weeks ago, and here are my Bead blocks:

I'm not sure how many blocks I made in previous months, I think six, but this month I have made 7. I don't think they will be enough so I shall be making more of all the colours next year too.

This week I also made two red blocks for another project, the Hemisphere Quiltalong designed and hosted by Sheila Christensen, the Mystery Quilter: 

These blocks are regularly pieced; they're neither English paper pieced nor foundation pieced. All pieces are cut using a 60° ruler.They are still half hexagons here as they will only be joined when the quilt is assembled row by row. The quiltalong continues into December, so, if you're interested, there's plenty of time to join in.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button above to see 

more scrappy rainbow progress.

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly

 

Red Scrap Snap blocks

Angela at Soscrappy has chosen red as September's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Here are my red Scrap Snap blocks:

Until yesterday they were serving as leaders and enders, but in my current projects I can easily chain piece so only need leaders and enders at the beginning and end of the sewing session. At the rate I was going over the last 18 days I wouldn't be finished at the end of the month! Moreover these pieces were taking up too much space on my sewing table. I quickly finished the last five once I'd finished yesterday's project, giving more space for the next cutting round.

I'm linking to

Click on the button to see more reds in action. 

Keep safe and healthy.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Red September

September's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is red.

My red pieces for my Scrap Snap Quilts have been cut, but as yet none are sewn. 

I'll be sewing them as leaders and enders, but at the moment I'm sewing reverse appliqué that starts in the middle of a block, as part of the Bernina Sugaridoo QAL; no L&E required until I sew the row together. I hope that will be finished by the end of the coming week, so next week I should have more red to show.

I'm linking this post to:

            

Click on these buttons to see what others are making.

Stay healthy,

Happy Sewing,

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons is finished!

Overlapping Octagons is copied from a photograph of a quilt made around 1950 and featured in the book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American quilts under the radar", by Roderick Kiracofe. Making a replica of a quilt in this book was a challenge issued by Sujata Shah about a year ago.
Unlike the original maker I used the sewing machine throughout, although I now think I would have been faster sewing all those y-seams by hand. I chose to use red to meet the criteria of another challenge; about the same time the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters issued the challenge: "Red is the new Neutral"

The Y-seams are not only at the four corners of the red squares but also at the X joins of the string sections.
In this photo the octagons are maybe easier to identify.

Originally I tried using hourglass blocks as cornerstones in the string sashing. That didn't work as the hourglass blocks became too visible as hourglasses and didn't blend into the octagons. The seams also became very bulky as five fabrics came together at one point, as opposed to just three now. In the original the fabric in the "sashing" continues into the "cornerstone" so I went with that, as you can see in the picture above.

I used fabric scraps throughout. I started with red and blue 19th century reproduction fabrics - the ones that have been hanging around the longest - but soon used up that lot (hooray!!) and moved on to the more recent fabrics. Just two colours - red and blue - became very boring, so quite early in the process I introduced small pieces of other colours among the blue strings.

fabrics: scraps from stash
measurements: 38" x 44"
pieced with Aurifil 50 wt light grey
quilted with Aurifil 40 wt dark blue, dark red and bright red

 Although this was intended as a small lap quilt my DH has claimed it for the wall above his desk! 

Finishing this quilt was my goal of the month this month, (and last, and the one before!) but now it really is bound, labelled and all the threads are buried!
It is also the first item on my Q4 list for the 2019 Finish A-Long, hosted by Sandra at Studio sew of course.

I'm linking to: 

              

Click on the buttons to see more scrappy quilts and goals achieved. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal November

My October goal was to finish my "Overlapping Octagons". Hmm!

A few minutes ago, on Thursday 31 October, just as the sun was setting,

 I finished the quilting

but not the whole quilt! I still have hundreds of threads to bury, before I can even think of straightening up and binding. I failed to reach my goal! Boo!

The Octagons therefore are featuring in One Monthly Goal, yet again!

I am linking this to:

Click on the buttons to see more fun handwork.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Clam-Up Pouch

 

This is my second finish for the 2019 Q3 FAL, and the third on my list. My projected list of finishes can be found here.

I started the Clam-Up pouch at a workshop at Quilters Palet in The Hague. The pattern is by By Annie. I almost finished it at the workshop, did a little more when I got home, and then left it to mature for ten days before sewing down the bindings on the inside by hand - 15 minutes work at the most! I think it's a useful pouch, one that really opens wide.

It has a light fabric for the lining; I really dislike bags, of any size, that have dark linings: I can never find anything, and what you really need is always right at the bottom in the darkest cavern.

I shall be linking this to 

at the end of September.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons is a top!

In January I started making this following a suggestion by Sujata Shah. I've forgotten where I first read about it, but immediately found it intriguing. The U&UQAL uses the photos in Roderick Kiracofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts under the radar." This book is a history of lesser-known American quilts from the first half of the twentieth century; there are no patterns just excellent photographs. Every participant in the QAL chooses a quilt from the book to copy. The puzzle is to work out from the photo exactly how the quilt was constructed.

While we know from the notes that the original was pieced by hand I chose to piece using the machine. Not a fast task as only the strip sets could be pieced easily. Assembling the octagons requires y-seams everywhere. I did wonder near the beginning if piecing by hand might not be faster, but persevering with y-seams has paid off, and I got both faster and more accurate.

My plan was to use 19th Century reproduction fabrics in red and blue and finish that stash. Unfortunately the reds were largely almost brown and didn't contrast enough with the blue, so I introduced flashes of other colours from the scrap bags to liven things up! When I finished those blues I had to use other, modern fabrics, and added modern reds too.

I tried hourglass blocks in the small squares between the red centres, but wasn't happy with them: they detracted from the octagon effect, and they made for excessively bulky joins. Removing them made it possible to continue the last strip into the triangle which gives less bulk, and enhances the octagons. Hourglass blocks would have made quilt assembly more straightforward, but they were giving a sashing and cornerstone effect - emphasising the squares, and not the octagons. More photos of the process can be found in my posts to A Basket Full of Scraps

Now I have to decide on the quilting, and having pieced by machine I think I'll quilt by hand. I would like to try doing Baptist fans, spaced fairly widely, maybe as wide as 1". But first I have to reduce a few wobbles in the piecing:

The joins above and to the right of the dogs in this photo are just refusing to lie flat. I will try pressing them again so that they do lie flat, and then sew along those creases by machine. If that fails I'll try by hand, and otherwise rely on the quilting to fix it. Not very scientific!

Have a good weekend.

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Happy sewing

Marly.

QAL: The Unconventional and the Unexpected

My Overlapping Octagons, inspired by a quilt in "The Unconventional and Unexpected ..." and part of the Quilt along hosted by Sujata Shah, is progressing, but nowhere near completion. Here are the units I've made so far, randomly placed on the design wall.

Overlapping Octagons: Try-out on the design wall with 4.5" red (the new neutral) centres.

I thought I would use as many of my 19th century reproduction fabrics as possible to make space in my sewing room. Unfortunately most of the "reds" look more like brown, so I shall be adding brighter reds to the mix.There was not much blue, and that has nearly all been used now.

I'm enoying using my scraps in this way; really satisfying!

For more information go to Basket full of Scraps where there are more posts relating to this QAL.

I'm linking to

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

I'm linking this post to 

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune clue 1

Shall I? Shan't I? I thought when I read the introduction to Bonnie Hunter's mystery for this winter. I really don't have time for another quilt at the moment, but I can't resist a mystery!

The first clue was published on Friday inspired by China (the country, not the fine porcelain!) and features a lot of red. Yesterday afternoon the link up started and an amazing number of people had already made lots of units, and when I say lots I mean more, many more than these:

Fourteen 2.5" four-patches

So this morning I hastily fished in my red and neutral scrap buckets and and whittled some already small scraps down to 1.5" and came to a total of fourteen 4-patches. That's it for this week.

I've decided to follow the clues, making some units each week, and deciding after the reveal how many more I need for my project. I shan't be making a bed quilt - we don't use those here. I like to read Bonnie's clues - they're so informative and I learn a lot - and follow people's progress from week to week.

I'm linking to Quiltville

Click on the button to see thousands of mini 4-patches (mostly red!)

Happy sewing
Marly.

RSC Red in July

Each month Angela choses a colour and this year Mari is posting a block for the Squared Away sampler.
This month's colour is red and here are my two Round the Corner blocks:

I was in Friesland (one of the most northerly provinces of The Netherlands) last week, and stayed in Leeuwarden,  the provincial capital which has been chosen as Cultural Capital of Europe for 2018. To celebrate this honour the provincial governors decided to invite eleven sculptors to create a fountain for each of eleven towns in the province. A suitable cultural expression considering the importance of water in out lives.

 I photographed the fountains in Bolswaard:

De Vliermuis (the bat) by Johan Cretan

and in Leeuwarden:

Artist unknown to me: I couldn't find a plaque at the site, and no info on the Province's info online

Hold on - a fountain? There's no water!

This country, The Netherlands, is normally wet. In fact historically our greatest struggle has been managing the water. Just think of all those windmills pumping the water off the land from the network of drainage ditches into the rivers, and all those levees keeping the rivers within boundaries and keeping out the sea.

Uncharacteristically no rain has fallen in the last six weeks, leading to depleted water supplies. In some areas, including Friesland, a water shortage has officially been declared; fortunately there is no restriction yet for households, but farmers are no longer allowed to pump up ground water, and town councils have advised that fountains should be still, and garden hoses go unused. Any other year and Friesland's fountain project would have been spectacular. As it is the sculpture is interesting, beautiful, moving and in some cases controversial, but in some cities misses its crowning glory.
You can't plan everything!

I never thought I'd say this, but I wish it would rain! Just a little, and at night!

I'm linking to 

 

Click on the button to see more scrappy redness. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

From 9-patches to Wonky Stars

Each month Angela at soscrappy gives a colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and this month's colour could be the rainbow itself. It's multi-coloured scraps of fabric in this month's challenge. I've passed on this one, as I have very few multi-coloured fabrics, and they don't qualify as scraps.

Instead I've been trying to catch up on the previous months with purple:

and red:

wonky star blocks.

These started with the nine patches I made in February and March, to which I added more coloured squares and the white wonky stars. My plan is to continue using the colour of the month to make eight more 14" blocks this year. I hope to keep repetition of fabrics within the block to a minimum, but supplies are limited - 48 different fabrics in one colour is asking a lot!

Right after my last post I finished the red scrap basket, which now contains my red scraps.

Pattern from Fiona at Bubz Rugz.
Measurements:
height:  7.75"
base:     7"x 8"

Talking of scraps, which we do every Saturday in the RSC link-up, on 8 April I attended a lecture and a workshop by Jen Kingwell. Yes really, the Australian diva of scraps visited my home town in the little old Netherlands to intoduce a group of some 20 interested ladies from all over The Netherlands to her way of working, and especially to her pattern "Utah".

Most of Jen's quilts are sewn entirely by hand, and the Utah units are no exception: within the units all seams are curves which I've decided are easier done by hand, but I shall be joining the resulting 4" squares by machine!

Jen Kingwell pointing out the details of her quilt "Halo"

The lecture included a guided tour round her quilts which were on display in the exhibition area. Hearing first-hand what the inspiration was and how they all came together was truly inspiring. I am writing a post on the exhibition and my progress with the "Utah" blocks (of which this is an extract) and will publish it in a few days.

I'm linking to

   and  

so pop in there to see more delightful scraps.

Happy sewing

Marly.