Mixing and matching

After shipping off a bunch of orphan blocks and making progress cutting up and stitching up my scraps, I feel like I'm on a roll!  I'm loving the way the Modified Rail Fence is looking (I need a name, maybe Barbed Wire Fence?)

And the making the little 4-patches in a square is eating through the 2" squares that I am cutting from my scraps.

And while clearing out some orphan blocks, I came across the extra border blocks I had from when I did Sew Many Strips.  I loved that border, and I've been cutting 1.5" strips, so I thought, "hey, maybe I can use this as a border for one of my current projects..."  I auditioned it with my 4-patches in a square, and I like it!

I mailed off the completed X-Pop quilt to the baby who was born just about a month ago.  Simple, straight-line quilting and a batik backing.  I'm sorry to see this one go...but I think I say that about all the baby quilts I make.  I hope the recipient family likes it and uses it.  

There are two more babies on the way this summer - what to make next???  Maybe something like these bright, fun, bear paw blocks I made for my April Bee Blocks?

Yours for the taking - Quilty Adoption Event

I've been participating in this event for years now.  What a great feeling to free up some of my creative space while giving someone else a head start on a new project!  Thanks, Cynthia, for hosting!

My offerings this time around are pretty small - plentiful, but small.  As in, if you don't like tiny piecing, these probably won't appeal to you.  And while they won't free up a whole lot of physical space for me, I will feel so much better if they get put to use somewhere.  The only restriction on who can win is that I will only ship to the US and Canada (sorry, friends across the pond and elsewhere!).  Leave a comment letting me know which entry(ies) you want and I will pull the names of winners on Sunday, March 22 with a random number generator if more than one person is interested in any given offering.

A. First off, we have the 52 extra 2.5" scrappy yellow and neutral 4 patches left over from my Good Fortune (2018 Bonnie Hunter Mystery) Quilt.  Eight of them have been sewn into 16-patches, but they can be disassembled...

B.  And then there are the 115 1.5" gray and scrappy bonus triangles that I cut off (and sewed) from a baby quilt I made in 2013.

C. You're going to see a theme here...more bonus triangles!  I really hate throwing anything away, and I love tiny piecing!  I just never seem to get around to using my bonus triangles!  Here are 42 1.5" patriotic HST in a blue with white stars and a flag fabric left over from a quilt that I had my students make in a summer camp quilting class sometime between 2013 and 2016 (hmmm...can't find a photo).

D. Surprise!  More bonus triangles!  These 118 scrappy red, white and blue HST trim down to 1.5", and come from a RWB star quilt that I never finished.  (which reminds me, I should pull that out and work on it!  I started it in 2015.)

E. In 2016 I had customers who came into my shop sew blocks for a community quilt, Arkansas Crossroads, which then was raffled off to raise money for a local charity.  These 146 white (Kona) and scrappy 1.5" HST are left over from that project.

F. And finally, some more bonus triangles, but these trim to a whopping 2"!  These 52 white and solids HST are left over from some Block Lotto blocks I made in 2012.  Time to let them go, right?

Won't you please give these little fellas a home?  Maybe there is a mini quilt or a doll quilt in your future.  Or maybe these can make a pieced border for something.  Or perhaps they can make pinwheels to form the center of other blocks.  Lots of possibilities here!

Check out other adoptees at Cynthia's blog.

Sunny Day Sewing

I love my sewing room, particularly when the sun is streaming in the windows, warming up the space and dancing with all the colors.  Monday was such a day, so I spent hour after hour down there, working on several different projects.  (As a shopkeeper, my "weekend" is Sunday and Monday.  Sunday is more of a family day, but Monday is all about ME since the kids are at school and I am off.)

First off, I pulled some neutral strips and starting sewing together some 4-patches.  I bet a good number of you can guess why.

Yep, I'm jumping on the Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt bandwagon!  I've made several of her quilts and have all of her books, but I've never done a Bonnie Hunter mystery.  When describing En Provence, she mentions being inspired by lavender fields.  That was enough for me - lavender and lilac are my two favorite flowers and anything inspired by either appeals to me!  I'm a week behind, but I'm sure I'll catch up.

I made a couple more PLUS blocks.  These are fun to make as I work my way through my scrap bins.  The idea is that once I pull a fabric out of the scrap bin, I use it up completely, either by putting it into a quilt block or cutting it down to one of my precut scrap sizes or both.

And I thought I had made all of the strippy four-patches that I needed for this quilt, but it turns out I'm missing one.  Only one set of 10 blocks has been sewn together so far.  I'm hoping that making the strip sets to go in between the 4-patch strips will use LOTS of scrap strips!

When I wasn't sewing, I was knitting.  The color in this cowl makes me happy, the way it pops out against the black.  The yarn is Bamboo Bloom Handprints, and the pattern is Interrupted Cowl.

All in all, one of the most productive weekends I've had in quite some time.  It feels GOOD!  I'm linking up to Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

Bored silly with my shadow quilt

I know that I really wanted to make a shadow quilt, but man! Working with just 3 fabrics is WAY out of my scrappy comfort zone.  Despite the fact that this quilt is small - just 33.75" x 48.5" - it took me much longer to finish it than it should because it just bored me.  Don't get me wrong, I like it, I just didn't like making it.

I put the seed packet panels in alphabetical order, or so I thought.  One is out of order, and I took it out and put it in wrong AGAIN!  Oh well, that's where it is meant to stay, I guess.

I imagine I'm not going to much enjoy quilting it either, so this will get done on the machine rather than by hand so I can get it done and move on to something else.

To keep me going while I finished this quilt off today, I started a new scrappy project.  When I peruse quilt images online during my lunch break at work, I keep finding myself drawn to this quilt:

Image credit

I've never made a strippy quilt before, so I thought, why not?  I pulled out 5" squares and made 4-patches, then cut some white 5" squares in half diagonally to make the setting squares.

You know the method of making 4-patches by sewing down two opposite sides of 2 RST squares, cutting in the middle, rotating RST, and sewing down two opposite sides again?  LOVE IT!  Especially the fact that it gives you TWO 4-patches!

This is much more my speed!  I hope to make significant progress on this quilt top this weekend.

Arkansas Crossroads Donation Quilt

I try to introduce service projects into the goings on at my shop.  This summer, I invited anyone who came in on a Saturday to piece scrappy 4-patches to go into a quilt we are making for a Silent Auction at a charity event in November to benefit Project Horizon, a local organization dedicated to ending domestic violence in our community.  I had volunteers as young as three years old,

families,

couples,

and unsuspecting solo shoppers that I talked into taking part.

 Some got a little carried away - couldn't make just one block!

Overall, I had more than 50 people make blocks.  They slapped their blocks up on the design wall, and it was fun to see the project grow and grow!

As happens with any group project, I've had to trim all the blocks to the same size, and even re-sew a couple, but the quilt is starting to come together. (rows are not yet sewn together)

We are making the Arkansas Crossroads pattern, using instructions I found online.  What a wonderful scrap project!  And I love being able to put all my precut scraps to use.