Table scraps challenge

Almost at the eleventh hour here is my yellow scrappy mug rug for the table scraps challenge.

 

I've been making a lot of pieced hexagons lately, but this is by far the simplest design, and in all senses scrappy. I made it in record time, and that shows! Nevertheless it will function very well as a mug rug. Surprisingly I had very few yellow scraps long enough to make this from.

In March I shall start thinking about the challenge sooner, and hopefully won't resort to a hasty mug rug.

I'm linking to the Table Scraps Challenge at The Joyful Quilter,

Patchwork & Quilts no. 41 at  Patchwork Quilting Appliqué

and

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge at Socrappy.

Stay safe and healthy.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Goodbye Yellow!

 Angela gave us yellow as October's colour of the month.

 Ten 6" Scrap Snap blocks made this month:

All but the last two seams were leaders and enders while I was sewing a Christmas table runner. Both blocks and table runner top were finished yesterday.

This pattern was presented as the "FaLaLa" SAL by Jacquelynne Steves, and is available on her website until the end of this month (or so). Or at least not for much longer, as the QAL has finished and the pattern will only be available from her shop in future.  

I am not adding more borders as suggested in the pattern; that would be too much for my table. The blocks came together really quickly once I'd finished the embroidery. I haven't embroidered much over the last forty years !! so progress was slow. The satin stitch holly berries gave me the most distress, but these are the best ever - by me - though they wouldn't win any prizes! In the pattern some of the centre pieces had text in them, but as not everyone here reads English I only embroidered pictures.

My goal for October, to quilt my shoo fly quilt, didn't happen. I'm toying with the idea of having a UFO-only year next year; I wonder if I'll be able to resist the temptation of starting something new.

I'm linking this post to:

  

 

 

 

 

Click on the buttons to visit these link-ups.

 

 

 

Keep safe and healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Two new blocks

Recently I joined Comfort Circle of Do Good Stitches. This group of quilters in The Netherlands and the UK (as far as I know - my apologies to anyone from elsewhere) work together via the Internet to make quilts for charity. The Queen Bee decides to which charity the quilt of her month will go.

This month's blocks are 12" Circle of Friends blocks and were requested by a member in the UK.

I sent my contribution to her in Liverpool yesterday.

Yesterday was the worst day ever for taking photographs: far too wet and windy to take them outside, and fearfully dark and gloomy indoors. The background is off-white low volume, and the colours are really vibrant. I think they will fit well with the other blocks now being made.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

OMG October goal: play mat

My goal is to finish the play-mat for my twin grandchildren expected in December. Since yesterday it looks like this:

These are all six inch squares; some plain fabric but also HSTs and hourglass blocks. I'm going to use a double layer of wadding and back it with a sturdy curtain fabric from Ikea. (Fingers crossed the fabrics all shrink at the same rate!)

I shall be keeping the quilting simple on this one: straight lines following a quarter of an inch away from the seams, and continuing the diagonal seams across the plain squares. When it's finished and handed over to the parents I'll show the whole thing! I hope before the end of October!

I'm linking up to

 

so pop in over there to see more October goals from around the world.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2018 halfway summary

Each month, for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, Angela chooses a colour and Mari chooses a block and gives the instructions for the Squared Away sampler. This month's block is Baton Rouge Square  in pink; I posted about my pink blocks here. As the RSC is running for 10 and not 12 months this year, May marks the half way point. It's time for a summary so here are my blocks so far.

 And here are my squares with wonky stars:

I just finished the yellow star, and the green one I made a couple of months ago. The others I made last year. These started as leaders and enders with 2" squares, and when I have enough of one colour I make them into a big square with the wonky star. Last year I had cut a lot of red squares apparently! Some months I just haven't accumulated enough 2" squares to make a square.

I'm liking up to:

Click on the button to view the display of RSC pinkness.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Yellow for April

Each month Angela at So Scrappy gives a colour and Mari at The Academic Quilter posts a block pattern for the Squared Away sampler. This month's colour is yellow.

I made the 10" 4X Star block twice:

4X Star blocks

There is also a yellow wonky-star block on the go, but I doubt it will be finished by next Saturday; my day job is rather busy at the moment.

 

I'm linking up with So Scrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Click on the button to join the party and see more sparkling loveliness.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Catching up with green and yellow

For the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) Angela at Soscrappy sets a different colour every month and for several years I've tried to make something in each month's colour. May's colour was green and June's was yellow. Here are my green and yellow scraps. Very late!

scrap baskets: pattern by Fiona at BubzRugz

When my laptop packed up in April this year salvaging what I could from it took a lot of time; time that otherwise would have been spent sewing. Instead of interesting sewing I was moving files to an extension drive or to the recycle bin. How boring! One thing that initially couldn't be salvaged was my camera software; officially it has to be reinstalled from the CD. An impossible task if your laptop doesn't have a CD drive! Fortunately my husband found a way of extracting the software from the old computer, but that was the last he did before wiping the laptop clean towards the end of July. So now I'm able to post my rainbow progress, such as it is.

Now I am no longer struggling with software and data I have time for sewing again and am now only two months behind with the RSC colours! I have no more Jacob's Ladder blocks to show, and no more wonky stars; to be honest I've been using scraps faster than generating them. I think those will have to wait until I've made more projects, but first I have more quilting to do

On Saturday I'm linking up to

and on Sunday to

Click on the buttons to visit there and see lots more beautiful scrappiness.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Star Light, Star Dark finished

This is my variation of Star Light, Star Dark from the QAL at Quilty Habit last summer.  The challenge was to use only three colours, six or seven fabrics in light tones and six or seven in dark.
I finished the piecing quite quickly, but when I got to that point I still hadn't decided on the quilting designs. The only thing I was clear about was that it needed doing in two halves to be joined later. (On 1 October last year I showed this in more detail)

I started with the dark half and tried to use a different quilting motif in each section. Each section has six or seven different fabrics and I wanted to use a different motif on each.

The centre star (yellow) was done with the walking foot, and having only half a quilt to turn the whole time was a Godsend.

square stippling in the big star; dot-to-dot from Angels Walters surrounding it; orange peel shapes in the centre of the friendship star; stippling surrounding it; baptist fan centre right; vine with leaves top left

The green section went OK too, though admittedly with a few wobbles. Then I tried doing feathers in the large dark purple star. What a disaster! I just can't backtrack, so there was such a build up of thread along the spine of the feathers I thought, "this bird would never get off the ground!"

Then I decided that there was only one thing for it - unpicking all the feathers - which took me every evening for a week. Then I tried swirls, after all I would only have to follow the motif of the print. No! What a mess! Fortunately this time I decided after just a couple of minutes that it had to go. Out it all came! Totally disheartened by my failures in the dark half of the quilt I moved onto the light section until I got distracted by Bonnie Hunter's Mystery quilt. That was in November! That was how it stayed for more than half a year.

Matrix rays from Leah Day in the big star; dot to dot from Angela Walters surrounding it; McTavishing top left

Until two weeks ago when I thought of Leah Day and all her online FMQ videos. That dark purple fabric wouldn't stand another unpicking session so I needed something simple and foolproof. I chose Matrix Rays, and the quilting was finished in no time. All that remained was to join the two halves and then a lot of hand sewing to cover the join on the back, and to sew down the binding.

Square Flower from Lori Kennedy in the centre of the dark purple friendship star

I was pleased with how this square flower turned out. I quilted square flowers in all three purple Friendship Stars, but this one turned out best. In the green F.Stars I quilted orange peels, and in the yellow spirals.

McTavishing in the big star; fantasy leaves surrounding it; more McTavishing in the freehand drawn heart (!!); string of beads bottom left (from Pinterest: origin unknown)

In the light purple block I used more McTavishing;  I used this quilting style three times in this quilt. So much for using a different motif on each fabric. I really found it hard to come up with enough quilting motifs.

Fabric: assorted fat quarters and scraps
Thread: Aurifil 40 wt. in matching colours
Wadding: cotton as supplied at my LQS
Size: 1.75m x 1.27m (69" x 50")

Finally one more photo to show why all the photos were taken indoors this afternoon.

I draped it artistically over the bench, took two steps back and took a photo just as the wind caught it. As I live on the ninth floor I didn't want the wind carrying it away altogether: I'd never catch up with it!

I'm linking up to

so go over there and see more of this week's finishes.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Autumn Sunshine

Angela at Soscrappy gave yellow as this month's colour.

Bear's paws basking in the sunshine

I had lots of 2" yellow strips left from last year's Quiltville mystery from Bonnie Hunter. But if  I needed confirmation that my guest bedroom/sewing room needed tidying I got it when I couldn't find them anywhere! Yesterday evening, having just finished sewing these, guess what ... I found the 2" yellow roll already set aside and ready to use!

A week or so ago I laid out all my bear's paws to date to see what I had and how I could mix the colours. 

I still have to make two red pairs and at least one more blue pair, and split the purple and pink combination (top right) as there's too little contrast. I'm certainly nowhere near being finished with this one! I don't even have enough for a lap quilt, but I hope to have some of these units joined into blocks before the end of the year. Next year will see the same quilt moving along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

I'm linking this post to

Pop over there and look at all the creative yellowness!

Happy Sewing

Marly.

RSC 16: September is pink with yellow

Each month Angela gives a colour to be used from the scrap bin, and this month the colour is pink with some yellow. We had already used pink earlier in the year, but I managed to find some pink (some the same fabric I used before) and some pink and yellow. I made half an extended bear paw block.

I think I'll still be making these next year!

The last few days I've been working on a present for a friend:

which also has a lot of pink and yellow. As she sometimes reads my blog I'm not publishing photos of  the whole thing until next weekend!

Now I'm also trying to quilt my Star Light, Star Dark quilt before the QAL deadline at Quilty Habit on Monday week. This is a view of the three blocks on the dark side:

and a close up of the quilting so far:

not much done yet!

As I'm quilting each half separately and then joining by QAYG technique I have a feeling I'm not going to make the deadline!

A short post this week, but now you know why! I'm now off to fit the supreme slider and the BSR and hit the FMQ big time!

I'm linking up to:

      

 so pop over there and see what others have been doing with their scraps this week.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Star Light, Star Dark QAL

Jessica at Quilty Habit is organising a quilt along in which the participants will be making a quilt of traditional blocks but in a modern layout. I liked the idea of this challenge as soon as I read about it, but it's taken me quite a while to pull enough fabrics together to meet the criteria: three colours, of which we need at least six or seven light fabrics and six or seven dark ones, while achieving enough contrast within the six colour-groups.

Here is my choice of fabric:

The three piles in the foreground are my ultimate choice and the two piles behind are the fabrics I rejected as being too yellow for the green group, and too red/pink for the purple group. The top of the purple pile is a difficult shade: here it looks blue, but with blue fabrics it definitely looks purple! As I'm not using blue I decided to leave it in for now and see how it goes. Not all the pieces here are full FQs I'm hoping that some of the smaller pieces will be large enough for the smaller stars.

I'm linking up to

so hop over there to see other participants' fabric choices.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Improv composition in red, (yellow and blue) in progress ...?!

Kaya and Ann are giving hints on improv patchwork on their sites as they host the Ad Hoc Improv Quilter's link up.

In January's linky party Monica enthused about the book "Cultural Fusion Quilts" by Sujata Shah which had been the inspiration for much of her own work. I agree, it's great to see haw Sujata has taken the patterns presented by everyday images and turned them into quilts.

Sujata Shah's work as well as that of Kaya and Ann is very inspiring and has given me lots of ideas, but last week I was quite suddenly hit by the work of Piet Mondriaan. Not really HIT you will understand, although I live within ten miles of the largest single collection of his work in the world, but such close proximity to a masterpiece would have got me arrested. Inspired by his famous Composition in Red Yellow and Blue (there are several of the same name) I added red, yellow and blue solids to my FQ collection (white I already had, but I forgot the black!) and got cutting. Hmm!

Using Sujata's method of stack and slash, but going for straight cuts, I cut white and red 8 x 4" rectangles diagonally. The result was disappointing really as I was going for arrows, so I cut the next two pairs of rectangle in half vertically to 8 x 2"

The narrow points won't do! (on the left) They curl outwards and when they are joined it's even worse (on the right): all that fabric coming together at the point, just wouldn't come together. Nor would it lie flat.

I haven't tried joining the wider ones, but expect that those bulky seam ends will be just the same.

Rather than go on with yellow and blue I tried some other arrangements:

I quite like this one; this afternoon, at least

and ended up with this:

which looks highly conventional!
Feeling somewhat disheartened I made some highly conventional HSTs (as opposed to HRTs) to get myself back in balance.

I haven't given up on this project, but don't want elongated pinwheels. So it's back to the drawing board for me and into a little zip-lock bag for  the fabric! It's still on the cutting table so not shelved yet, but I need to decide on what sort of triangles, and how to construct them. As this is my first improv attempt I'd welcome any ideas on how to go next. Perhaps I should have tried a wonky log cabin first!... to be continued ....

I wrote this post a month ago, but missed the link up by a week! (Wrong Tuesday - silly girl!) In the meantime I've done nothing with this project except think about it now and again.

The Quilty 365 project is proving an easy project for improvised piecing as the scraps in my scrap bucket are getting smaller and in March I pieced more circles (although one is not improv!)

And pieced more circles in April, although not so many:

Not to happy with the fabric repetition there, but they won't be together in the final layout.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button for the link to more amazing improvised patchwork.

Happy sewing

Marly.

RSC 15 week13: The final yellow

Each month Angela at Soscrappy gives a colour and some sampler patterns and lots of people round the world use that colour: some to make the sampler blocks, others to work on other projects. This month the colour has been yellow. On Saturdays we link up to show one another what we've been making in the last week

I sewed some 1.5 inch squares into nine patches; I don't know what for, but just because they were there. I was going to use nine patches in the border of the 2014 RSC quilt, changed my mind, but kept on making nine patches.

Last week I posted about this:

and asked you what the smallest size is you think worth saving. The answers ranged from:

• 0.5" square to 2" square, or
• 0.75"wide by 2.75" long, or "anything with a seam allowance"!

I'm amazed! I hadn't expected anything less than 1" wide.

I also asked what you do with really tiny scraps. Here is a summary of the answers I received:

• spread out on the garden as mulch
• donate to junior school / child care institution for craft projects
• save for appliqué
• use the tiniest pieces under tulle in appliqué

I don't have a garden any more, and I'm not sure if (excess) dye in fabric is good for plants, nor how quickly it rots away. If I still had some land I would try mulching the neighbour's hedge! Just testing, of course!

The other three ideas I found very encouraging. 

I've just put a bag of scraps (mostly from dressmaking) together for my granddaughter who, according to my daughter, is always cutting and gluing. 

The other small pieces I'm saving for appliqué.

Last week a no-reply blogger asked how I sewed the crumbs together. Now I don't know about everyone else, but I start with an irregular pentagon and just keep adding pieces round it. Just like a log cabin, a wonky log cabin that is. When I need a longer piece than I have in the bin, I just sew two or three together until I have a long enough piece. I don't use any foundation fabric or paper. I try to straighten up the sides by cutting off as little as possible, but if I need to cut off a large piece I make it really large and it can be the start of the next crumby block. So far it seems a lot like crazy quilting, except the pieces are much smaller, and there are no embellishments.

The other sewing this week was quilting my 2014 Rainbow quilt which came to a stop on Monday. Can you see what's missing?

A trip to the LQS on Wednesday remedied the situation and the last quarter is quilted and the quilt is being assembled. I'm putting it together by QAYG, I don't know yet how successful that will be, but quilting the smaller pieces (approximately 42" square) was much easier than holding a full-sized quilt under the needle of my machine,

I saw this afternoon that Angela has changed the background colour on her blog, so it looks like April's colour is purple. While I was pulling fabric for my granddaughter I kept all purple crumbs for myself and even found some purple blocks in there already made.

On Saturday I shall be linking to

so hop over there to look at more scrappy sunshine.

Happy sewing

Marly.

PS What's missing? I ran out of wadding! But you all saw that!!!