January Blues

The Christmas decorations are gone, and the house is now filled with January snowflakes. For me, the color blue, frosty white snowflakes, and January just seem to go together! I definitely had a smile on my face as I placed these three blue and white snowflake inspired pieces out for daily viewing. Keep reading for a special offer!

There's my Frosty Lace wall hanging, accented with beautiful quilting,

the Snowflake runner full of heart themed snowflakes - definitely a favorite -

and Let It Snow, my little snowman trying to catch some flakes!

Here at my house in California, it may be raining outside but it sure is snowing inside!

Besides snowflakes, there's another reason January is a favorite month - it's my birthday today! As a gift to you, use coupon code 'JANUARYBLUES' at Etsy checkout to receive 20% off the three patterns above. Coupon is good today through midnight January 20, 2023. Just click on the pictures to go to each Etsy listing.

And thanks ahead of time for all the birthday wishes!

Happy Quilting!

Orange Bounty

I'm so happy fall is here! Having lived in New England as a kid, come October, fall colors were everywhere. I just had to look out my window to rolling hills of red, orange and yellow fall leaves - all that color is just so gorgeous! 

Though the picture above, near Rutland, VT where I lived, is not mine, you can see how the hills are full of color. Just looking at this puts me in a warm mood and makes me want to dive head first into my fall stash, especially orange - and dive I have! 

Given that I have a few fall projects to get a jump on, I first pulled out my orange scraps to make the September RSC2021 orange blocks.

Don't those look yummy? I think these are by far my favorite RSC blocks this year!

Then I started tackling the smaller orange scraps to make my project for Kelly Young's Scrappy Improv Quilting book hop. Here's some small scraps sewn into pairs, still rough and untrimmed.

Now they're trimmed and looking more respectable.

With more pieces added, they're now suitable for my Fall Foliage project. If you want to learn how to do this, check out my Making Blocks from Crumbs tutorial and video to use up your scraps.

These scrap blocks are around 4-6 inches in size and will be trimmed further to fit the project. The big reveal for Fall Foliage, which is finished, is October 6 and I can tell you it looks great!

Now, I could have kept playing with these scraps for at least another day, but alas, I had to put the scraps and leftover blocks away for awhile. At least now I have a few starts for bigger blocks when I come back to orange the next time.

My last orange project is for the Ghastly Ghouls blog hop, hosted by Just Let Me Quilt, October 18-22. After dreaming of an idea, I drew it up in EQ, then started cutting and stitching.

Looks pretty simple, huh? Right now it's at the decision stage of how big to make it. I have a couple appliques to add that will help determine that, because what get designed on the computer does not always translate well to reality - it's good to check in fabric. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait to see the finish on this one until my day, October 22.

And that's all for my orange projects right now. I'll definitely be sad when I have to put them away for another year, cause quite frankly, I don't love orange enough to work with it in the winter, spring, or summer. Can't help it if I'm a seasonal girl! 

Happy Quilting!

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Scrap Attack

Well, I've come down from my sugar high from last week. Thankfully is wasn't a real one, just one created by the Halloween Candy runner and the Penny Candy blocks. Just seeing those fun creations makes me happy. Now to get through the real candy of Halloween!

So, now that I'm back to reality, I'm sitting at my machine, seriously focused on attacking my scraps. My Rainbow version of Celilo is long overdue.

I started several months ago with the fewest colors: red, indigo, and violet. Indigo and violet were a bit of a challenge, especially determining what exactly indigo is and to find enough indigo in my stash. Thank goodness I didn't have to make a lot of those!

Now I've started in on yellow since those scraps were already out for the October RSC pinwheel block. Chain piecing bits and pieces together resulted in a mess, 

but after pressing and trimming, they're now bigger chunks.

Within an hour and half, I had all the yellow units done. Then I pulled out the orange scraps, and easily had those done. Probably because there weren't very many! 

Then I moved onto green. First, I attacked the leftover triangle bits from The Great Outdoors quilt, those on the left of the picture. 

Sewn together, they make pieces 1.5" x 4.5", on the right of the picture, and are now quite usable. It's wonderful to finally have those scraps off my cutting table! Paired with straight pieces, they blend together nicely for these blocks. Check out my video on Making Blocks from Crumbs if you too are over-run with small odd-shaped scraps.

I'm currently about 1/4 of the way through green, and still have blue to go. 

At this rate, with or without sugar, I'm hoping for a finish next week. I'll keep you posted.

For more about color, be sure to enter the Color Workbook giveaway to win a copy of a great book - contest ends tonight!

Good luck and Happy Quilting!

My Favorite Patterns

RSC2020 May Blocks

Seems I have lots of projects going currently, jumping around from small to large, scraps to yardage, brights to subdued. Never a dull moment that's for sure!

Today, I'm back to scraps, stitching up more pinwheel blocks for the May RSC2020 color of dark green and sage.

I'm proud of myself for sticking with this quilt-along, though after five blocks, I'm still not sure how I'll put them together. I could do the standard squares in a row,

though that looks quite boring. Maybe with some sashing it might come to life?

Or how about on point?

This looks more promising, don't you think? Now those pinwheels have movement! Maybe the blank areas could be filled in with the other squares I'm making?? Hmm, don't know right now, but will think about it in the fall as the months wind down and RSC2020 comes to a close.

What I know for sure is that I'm committed to finishing an RSC this year - gotta bust those scraps! How about you? Playing along?

Happy Quilting!

RSC 2020 February - Orange

I've been eagerly awaiting the new RSC color to make sure I made a scrappy pinwheel before the month was done, and I was so hoping the February color for RSC 2020 was going to be red. But no, the choice this month is orange. 

Hmm, not a fan? But just look at all those orange possibilities! It's a color I don't have problem with, yet I'd rather see it in the fall, paired with yellows and reds - oh make me swoon with that combo!

Believe it or not, my orange scraps are rather on the stingy side, filling only a quart size zip lock bag. I thought I would have more after making all those pumpkins and leaves over the last couple years. Maybe I was very efficient in my cutting and sewing?

Anyway, I managed to have enough for the 12 1/2" pinwheel block, which I love - it reminds me of orange sherbet -

and a couple 8.5" and 4" blocks. Still not sure what I'll do with these.

Now there's just a few scraps in the bag, which are sorta orange and don't belong anywhere else. But they weren't a good fit for this project, so back in they go, along with the few small pieces left from the blocks.

And I've fulfilled my commitment for the month, on my way to completing a full year of RSC - woohoo! Two down, ten to go. Are you playing along??

Happy Quilting!

Thanks for following!

RSC 2020 January's Green

The scrap bin is overflowing again, so time to join in on RSC 2020 along with my fellow bloggers, just in a nick of time. I'll admit, the last time I participated in the yearly RSC (Rainbow Scrap Project), hosted by SoScrappy, was 2017, I got as far as March. 

But this year, I'm going to try to do better, stitching each month to use up some scraps, and complete the year. January starts off with green, either lights or brights - yes, I've got some of that! 

My plan is to make 12 1/2" pinwheels of each color, with extra 8 1/2" color blocks to have as backups at the end of the year.

Since I have no layout plan, the extra's will come in handy to fill in the blanks. And if I don't use them with the pinwheels, then I'll have blocks for another quilt. Wow - that would be awesome to make two quilts from scraps!

Wish me luck - maybe you want to play along???
Happy Quilting!

Use It Up!

Finally, the Use It Up quilt from Accent on Angles (affiliate link) is a grand finish!

Not only do I love the color combo and the quilting thread choice, but the size - a really nice 48" x 65" lap size.

What started out as this fabric selection,

worked it's way to strip sets with angled sashing pieces,

then blocks, some of which were made in 95 degree heat requiring the assistance of a wooden iron,

and the painfully tedious making of 164 HST's.

The quilt picture in the book certainly doesn't look like it requires 164 HST's, 

and I probably would have thought twice about making this pattern had I read through it first. That could be my fault, but let's call this frustration 1.

Frustration 2 - this pattern needed serious editing. The beginning of the book, which goes over very thoroughly how to make the strip set/angled sashing blocks, is wonderful. 

This pattern however, had me cut too many strips for the strip sets, resulting in a lot of leftovers. Grrr. How did I discover this? Well, like Flower Joy, I thought I'd make up extra blocks for the back. 

Which turned out to be 30 blocks, enough for another top. Use It Up only used 22. Grrr. Maybe cutting that many strips would allow for lots of variety? Anyway, just too many.

Frustration 3 - I followed the cutting instructions for the border pieces that are in addition to the HST's. And then I looked at the quilt diagram, which was labelled as to where those additional border pieces go. Turns out, the two did not match up, requiring the piecing together of a leftovers to get the right size border pieces. Grrr.

Once I finally got through all of that, a backing was pieced together with leftovers but no blocks, 

and I was thrilled to finally get it on the frame.

Now for thread colors. I could have gone gold, but it just disappeared. Then I found a gold with a green cast called Cleopatra.

Not bad, though I kept searching, and found Split Pea, a correctly named color, and not one I would choose for just any quilt.

But Split Pea turned out to be the winner, really adding a beautiful sparkle to the Bluster pantograph on Use It Up.

With the extra 30 blocks, I plan to make one more quilt from the Accent on Angles book (affiliate link), though there are a couple other projects that need attention first. So, be patient, another quilt is coming soon!

Have a great weekend quilting!

Seafarer

Introducing a new lap/twin quilt, Seafarer, 

It's an ocean of string beauty!

The design for Seafarer, using the concept of strings to depict an ocean with a lone sailboat, was dreamed up at around 4 in the morning. Yes, I'm usually awake that early, either creating, or getting ready to go for a swim. 

Scraps and yardage were pulled from the stash, and a few string blocks made to see if my vision was going to work. Below is the sneak peek of the beginnings of Seafarer that I showed before.

Still undecided as to whether this would be a baby quilt, or a bigger lap/twin size, I continued making more blocks, and adding the sailboat to the design wall.

Then it hit me - the reality that my son was leaving within weeks for a 27 month tour with the Peace Corps. Since he had already asked to take a quilt with him, Seafarer would be perfect for him - a lap/twin size it would be!

Since Seafarer was still in the works, he got to choose the batting, a soft 80/20, and also the backing. For that, I happened to have 4-5 yards of an aqua/blue flannel purchased years ago, just waiting for a water themed project. Perfect!

Quilting was a fast and easy freehand wave design, done in around 2 hours.

We had fun tossing around names for this quilt - my favorite from him was "Damn it, does this ocean ever end???"  But that's quite long, so we chose the more simpler, Seafarer. It suits his adventurous spirit, and the unknown experiences yet to discover. 

Will I miss him? Yes, but he's a young man now, ready to set off on an adventure of life after college. Twenty-seven months may seem like a long time, but it will pass quickly, and I know that an awesome man will come back. And ya, I'll miss the quilt too.

If you're also in love with Seafarer, the multi-size pattern is available in my QuiltFabrication Etsy shop.

Happy String Quilting!

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My Favorite Patterns