Rainbow Tornado

Here it is! My Rainbow Tornado, the RSC2022 scrap quilt! Yes, I'm a bit ahead of schedule with a finish now, but one shouldn't stop the creative process for the calendar!

So, just what is RSC2022? It's short for Rainbow Scrap Challenge, for this year, 2022. The event is hosted by SoScrappy.com, who posts a new color each month to work with. The design of the blocks and ultimately the quilt, are totally up to the quilter, using the suggested color of the month.

Due to a tendency toward fabric hoarding, I tend to keep larger, usable scraps with the yardage it came from, finding that those bigger scrap pieces come in handy with the yardage. That means my scraps tend to be on the small or odd shaped size, requiring a bit more effort to use.

But not to fear - I've become quite proficient at sewing those scraps into useable blocks using the Making Blocks from Crumbs technique. 

Gosh, I've made several quilts using this style of scrap block. There's Pinwheel Parade (free pattern BTW), Rainbow Celilo, and RSC2021 to name a few. I'd guess you'd say these scrap blocks from crumbs are part of my quilting style. And I'm ok with that!

For my Rainbow Tornado quilt, most of the blocks in it are leftovers from previous years. In July, realizing I was behind stitching up my scraps for the chosen colors, I decided to put them up on the design wall to determine how many more blocks I needed. With a vague layout idea, I got started, then couldn't stop, heading down the road with a more modern design than what I had originally planned.

In designing this, I tried to maintain the following block order: one large block with two of the same color small blocks placed on the top and bottom of the large block. See the ovals below.

If you look closely at the quilt layout, you'll see that there are some areas where I've broken the block order, either by 1) leaving out a small square, 2) leaving out two small squares, or 3) leaving out a small square plus a large one. Doing that kept a tighter tornado design, along with adding visual interest.

Now I could have gone full tornado, with blocks flying out to the edge, but I felt they didn't relate to the tornado and ended up a bit distracting. I prefer the tighter look, channeling a childhood favorite, the Tasmanian Devil. I guess you could say he was my inspiration! 

To keep with the scrappiness of this quilt, missing blocks were replaced with a variety of white-on-white prints. Since the small blocks were stitched together as a unit with sashing, I kept that same format substituting white where needed.

And how about that quilting? It's a pantograph called 'Twister", quilted in variegated thread. I love the motion it provides, along with the added variety of color. Both just work so well together!

To complete the tornado theme is the multi-colored confetti backing. I view it as what remains after a tornado has come through - pieces of wood everywhere. I'm fortunate enough not to live in tornado country to experience the horrific destruction, and my heart goes out to those that do.

With the Rainbow Tornado quilt, I've wrapped up my RSC project for 2022. I still have a ton of scraps left to stitch up, especially in purple, blue, aqua, and green. Maybe I'll do something with those for the remainder of 2022 as it seems to be my year for scrap quilts. Time to get stitching!

Happy Quilting!

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Midweek Makers 345

Welcome to Midweek Makers! Time for some summertime sharing!

For me, I'm ahead of schedule for the RSC2022 quilt. The quilting is finished, now it's just binding and photos. Here's a sneak peek, with more to come on Friday.

I also want to share an update about my image problem with Bloglovin. I put a message out to the Blogger Community regarding RSS and images, receiving a solution to try, which would start with this post. 

For those of you who receive a daily digest from Bloglovin, did the pretty Midweek Makers sunflower image or any image from today's post show up in your daily digest? And for those who get my posts via email from Follow.it, did the post come through, including images? I am determined to get this resolved and thank everyone so much for helping me out!!

Now onto those who are sharing lots of color too! First up is New2Quilting, with these two colorful baby quilts,

while Karen's Quilting has these colorful blocks that absolutely sparkle. I think I need to up my game!

And lastly, just a reminder - the National Dog Day Linky Party is coming next week, Friday, August 26. Get those dogs ready to share!

Now for what we're waiting for - the party! Come share what you're working on!

• please link directly to your post
• please link a quilt related item
• visit with the other guests and leave some comment love

Have fun!

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You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Unsolved Image Problem with Bloglovin

I have been a member of Bloglovin for years, looking forward to the daily digest of blog posts in my inbox each day. What a great way to quickly see what my favorite quilters were up too!

Because I'm a Bloglovin member, my blog also appeared in the daily digest. But a year or so ago, I noticed that occasionally the photos from my blog would not show up. Either the image area was blank (all white), or it was a grey box. How unexciting is that? I go to great lengths to have a terrific first photo, only to find out no one can see it.

Now, it would make me truly happy to know that this is just happening to the daily digest that I receive, and that the image really is showing up for everyone else. But something tells me that is not the case.

I will admit that my attention to my blog has declined over the last six months due to all the yardwork at our new house. With the ivy almost gone, I have more time to spend at home nurturing what I love to do - quilting! It also means I've paid more attention to my emails, including the Bloglovin daily digest.

So what have I discovered? My blog pictures are still NOT showing up in the daily digest, now for every post not just randomly anymore. And it's not just happening to me. Here's a screen shot of a daily digest, with my blog blurb first accompanied by a grey square image, and another blogger's blurb with no picture whatsoever. (Text blurred out for privacy).

How sad is that, not to have an eye-catching photo in the daily list. And when I look at my blog on the Bloglovin site itself, pictures have not shown up consistently since Nov 2021. Truly upsetting!

I've spent several hours researching this issue, with some possible insights as to what the problem could be, though I'm not sure how to fix them. The Bloglovin site itself says 'contact the person in charge of your site' - gee, thanks. They also recommend a rough picture size, though I'm well within the limits on that. I've trying contacting them over the year with no response, as the company was sold several times and it appears no one looks after it. Sadder still.

My first thought is maybe the demise of Feedburner in July 2021. Everything worked fine before that. Both Feedburner and Blogger are through Google, and both appear as examples of a services not getting little support and becoming outdated. Guess I should have switched to WordPress years ago, though I don't really know if that would have helped. I've seen both Blogger and WordPress blogs with this issue on the daily digest.

My other suspicion, after some more online digging, is that Google started hosting photos through blogger.googleusercontent.com instead of https://1.bp/blogspot.com/. Maybe Bloglovin is having trouble with the RSS feed having this new image hosting site. 

Or maybe it my load speed, as images or other coding can slow things down. Could be if that image takes too long, Bloglovin can't grab it. Who knows???

So, I need some help:

• if you've had this Bloglovin image issue, how did you solve it?                        
• what RSS feed service did you switch to after Feedburner shut down?            
• any other ideas on what to try to fix this problem?                                                
• lastly, do you follow blogs through Bloglovin or use some other reader service for a daily blog digest?

And for those of you who are also in the same boat as I am (no images), does it bother you too? Or is Bloglovin just so outdated, with people moving to other platforms for their daily dose of quilting that Bloglovin doesn't matter?

I'd appreciate any feedback you have!

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