Blue Scrappy Scrap Bag finished

This is my first finish for the Q1 finish along 2018. I posted my goals for the first quarter here.




Each month Angela  gives a colour and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge participants use their scraps in that colour to make something new. This month the colour is light and medium blue. I have made a scrap bag from scraps to join the bags I made last year, but this time stepped outside the RSC limits to use all blues, and aqua and teal. These are colours I don't use much so they don't need a bag each; they can share!

This was also my January goal for "One Monthly Goal".

Pattern from Fiona at BubzRugz

The bag finished at about 8"x7" but, before I cut the pieces out to form the base, it looked like this:

 a rectangle ±16"x22".

I had fun trying out the techniques I have learnt in Jacquie Gering's Craftsy course, "Quilting with the Walking Foot". Even putting on the binding was easier following her advice on using the walking foot.

I'm linking to 

at the end of the month

Click on the buttons to visit the linky parties.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

2018 FAL Q1 list

Once again the Finish-A-Long is open and sewers, knitters and crocheters have been invited to submit their lists of ongoing projects they hope to get finished in this first quarter of 2018.

I don't have any ongoing projects that will be finished within the next three months, but I do have a number of completed quilt tops. If I can finish one a month that will be good going, so here is my list of three tops plus a small item I haven't yet started sewing:

1. En Provence, Quiltville mystery 2016-17
2. Bears' Rainbow Square Dance, RSC 2016
3. The Sky at Night, RSC 2015, which is complete, there are no longer two missing blocks.
4. Blue/aqua scrappy basket from a pattern by Fiona at BubzRugz     

1.  En Provence, Quiltville mystery 2016-17

2. Bears' Rainbow Square Dance, RSC 2016

3. The Sky at Night, RSC 2015

4. Scrappy baskets: waiting for blue

It is really shameful that these have been lying around for up to two years. I hope I can get this lot out of the boxes and onto beds and laps and in use!

I'm linking to Leanne at "She Can Quilt" where there are already more than 90 participants with a finish list.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal January 2018

This month I intend to make a blue/aqua scrappy basket for holding my blue and aqua scraps following the tutorial by Fiona at BubzRugz. Last year I made quite a few including these five

but I still need a blue/aqua one, and a black/white one. Before shaping them into baskets they all measured 23x17" (60x43cm) - the size of my cutting mat! I'm making them by QAYG: the backing is a linen canvas, the wadding is cotton, and the outside is pieced scraps. They are rather floppy when empty, so keep those scraps coming is the motto! A stiffer wadding would have been preferable. Here are the blue scraps so far, for starters:

I still have to dig the aqua pieces out out of the Tupperware bucket they're now in, along with a whole lot of assorted small scraps.

I'm linking to 

Click on the button to view this month's goals of the other participants.

Happy sewing

Marly.

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

 

Click on the button to see more pink delights. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

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 

Click on the button to visit Angela where everyone else is in the pink!

Happy sewing

Marly.

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

so head over there and see what else has been made in orange this September.

Happy sewing

Marly.

September is orange ...

in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and see here, what a lot of orange I've used!

EPP hexagons with 1" sides

When Angela announced the colour for September I was on holiday, and although I had fabric with me for making hexagon flowers, I didn't have enough orange for even one flower! Now I'm back home I went through some sorted orange scraps in a small zip-lock bag and found these:

orange scraps, mostly the ends of 2" strips

They are not enough to make one of these:

unlined scrap basket - pattern from Fiona at BubzRugz

There are probably more lurking in project boxes, so I'll get searching over the weekend.

This is all I have to show for September on the sewing front. Let's hope October proves to be more productive, especially as in addition to orange I still have to make an aqua and a blue basket.

I'm linking up to

so head over there to see more (much more) orange delights.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Neutral storage

The colour for August in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Neutral. My scrappy project thie year is to use my scraps to make scrappy storage baskets and at the beginning of this week I was able to add another basket to the row.

All are in use, but have themselves depleted the scrap supply - what I wanted, of course - and are squishy and falling about. Maybe placing the quilting lines even closer together would have given more stability; maybe another type of wadding would have worked better. I have used what I had and the result tends to fall over somewhat when empty. Tough!

This basket has less "made fabric" than the others and more ends of strips and and long pieces from trimming backing. What all the baskets have in common though is that all are unlined. That's what drew me first to this pattern from Fiona at BubzRugz; it is quilt-as-you-go and then the sections are joined in the usual way for a bag with a flat base, with the backing serving as the lining. It's not as neat as it could be, but I'm not selling or even giving these away, they are solely for my own use and I'm not bothered about a lining; in fact I'd rather do without the hassle of turning the whole lot through a small hole in the lining.

I'm linking to

 

Click on the above button to pop over there and see more projects with scrappy neutrals.

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.