Yard Work and One More Top

I’ve been working in my neglected yard recently and haven’t been sewing much.  I did finish sewing the blocks together and adding the borders to this little top with the baby animals.

I first showed the beginning of this top when I was auditioning the sashing to go with a scrappy quilt (see this post).  But the sashing looked much better with these fabrics from my stash than the other scrappy so I guess it was meant to be …

I am linking up to Oh Scrap! from Quilting is more fun than Housework so they can see the finished top.  Once again, the stack of tops is getting tall and I need to get to quilting them!

My yard is beginning to look much better with some much-needed mulch and some new annuals.  I’m trying out this Angelonia that promises to attract butterflies and can tolerate the heat and humidity in Florida:

 

Not in the ground yet - and this area needs to be mulched - always something more to do ...

All of the websites say these plants attract butterflies, but none tell you which type of butterflies.  Those “sticks” on the left and right in the photo are the stems of my milkweeds that the monarch caterpillars have been devouring the leaves and flowers of.  That’s what I plant the milkweed for, so go ahead and munch away little guys!

16-Patch Scrappy Grows

In my last post for Oh Scrap! I showed my 16-patch with a setting I really didn’t care for.  So I decided to test drive an alternate block that used up some more scraps:

I was liking the look of this one, so it grew:

And grew:

And then I noticed that I had inadvertently made two identical orange blocks – bummer!  I had intended to make one of those pink …

So one block will change but I think I like this look much better.

PS  That one tan/cream block is much happier in person!

Linking to Quilting is more fun than Housework’s Oh Scrap!  Check it out to see more ideas for scrap quilts.

And what’s happening in the garden?  Not much gardening but the monarch caterpillars and butterflies are back.  My niece and nephew work for Catepillar so I never know what the real spelling is – I’m just glad to see the little butterfly-makers back eating my milkweeds!

Oh Scrap! Progress

Recently I took out my small bin of 2.5 inch scraps and started making 16-patches.  I didn’t have a setting design in mind so I started experimenting:

 

The picture shows more contrast and less busy than in reality.  What looks like solid black is really white dots on black, so it really looks pretty cluttered.  I'm definitely going to change out the sashings and go with a light color instead; and maybe red stars. 

Decisions, decisions?!!  I’m going to have to take a look at google images because there are thousands of wonderful settings for 16-patches – I’ll find a good one.

This is what I might do with the sashings that are made now:

The little zoo babies are surrounded by surfing sayings - I sure wonder what the whole fabric line looked like!

Linking up to the Oh Scrap! party over at Quilting is more fun than Housework’s blog.

Another Try at Scrappy

I have never made crumb blocks, but I was sent some from a fellow member of the Sunshine On-line Quilt Guild ( a group that makes donation quilts for children).  My first try at working with these blocks was a strippy quilt described at this post and shown below:

 

Digging into the box she sent again, I had some more of two sizes of blocks to work with.  So I decided to use the rectangle arrangement like the Boston Commons look with the smaller blocks in the center and the larger ones to make up the outside border:

There were cute square-in-a-square blocks with chili peppers in the center that had a dark blue background, so I used a dark blue for the stop borders.  I like that contrast.  Sometimes I use black fabric to make colors pop, but I like the richness of the navy in this one.  I might add one more border with colorful fabric or I might not.

 

Linking up later today to Quilting is more fun than Housework’s Oh Scrap!

 

And speaking of colors that pop, my neighbor has two orchids in her backyard that are blooming – these photos were taken at dusk but aren’t these still gorgeous despite the low light?!!

 

My Genuine Scrappy

This one is an easy scrappy made completely from leftovers in my stash.  I decided to take all of the FQ or smaller pieces that were predominately orange to yellow from my drawer and assorted other hiding places,

and cut one 10x5 inch strip and two 5 inch squares from each fabric.

Then I started laying them out on my design floor and rearranging until I thought they looked ok together:

I sewed them into blocks (two squares to one large strip) then alternated the placement of the larger strips, one horizontal then one vertical.  Yes, I had to cut down the large strips by ½ inch when I sewed the blocks together but I had intentionally cut them at ten inches (just in case I needed more 5 inch squares) since I wasn’t really counting anything at that point and didn’t know how many of each size I would need to make a top.

After sewing the blocks all together, I added a small dark orange stop border and a six inch top and bottom border to make it approximately 40 x 60.  That size is good for Quilts Beyond Borders, which is where this quilt will go.

Don’t know how I’ll quilt it yet, but it was fun to make!  I still have orange and yellow pieces, but maybe I'll make another with yellow and blue ... the sky's the limit now!

Linking up to Quilting is more fun than Housework's Oh Scrap!

QOV National Sew Day Goes Scrappy

Yesterday was the National Sew Day sponsored by the Quilts of Valor Foundation.  My QOV group here in Tampa met and worked up a wonderfully scrappy Rail Fence top:

Some of the ladies at work

The rows weren't quite finished being sewn together in this photo and the quilt will have a small border all around when finished.  It will be very snuggly!

I also finished up a non-scrappy Disappearing 9-Patch top at the Sew Day.

I had started the blocks at home and took them with me to Sew Day to finish up the top.

 

We had lots of fun, enhanced by the pizza and brownies of course!  And we received back three quilts from our fabulous longarm quilter, Pat B.  Thank you so much, Pat!

Linda F made the two Big Star quilts from her leftovers from other QOVs.  Great use of leftovers, isn’t it?!

Linking up with http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com/ later today.  Cynthia is in Oregon and I am in Florida – I’ve already been up and out pulling weeds this morning.  The weather is beautiful, 73^◦ F (~22 C) and sunny.  Tomorrow we’re expecting rain, so those pesky weeds will be sure thrive and grow back – heavy sigh …

Good Times!

My husband was able to play golf in our nice weather here in FL on Friday, so I jogged on over to a quilt show in nearby Clearwater:

The Quilter’s Crossing Quilt Guild puts on a nice show every other year and this year was no exception.

I was able to get some excellent ideas for some scrappy quilts from these displays:

 

Corn and Beans - Barbara Kellard

Just Scraps - Jean Stephenson

Kathleen's Cats -  Evelyn Towns

Patches and Pinwheels - Collaborative Guild Fundraiser

Pineapple Pizazz - Carol Bernard

Poppy - Debbie Wallace

Red Hots - Pilar Allen

Scrappy Stars - Nat Wright

You Bug Me - Nancy Morrison

You Bug Me Detail (with Dragonfly quilting!)

I will be using these ideas as inspiration as I continue to dig into my stash!  Linking to Oh Scrap today.

Tomorrow I will be showing some of the other-than-scrappy quilts from the show … stay tuned.

Easing into Scrappy - Part 2

Yesterday I described my current stash and scrap system (such as it is).  I expect it will not change all that much, but I am devising some ways of actually seeing what I have and some ideas for how to move forward.  If you didn't read it, catch that post here.

I had received some wonderful 2.5 inch squares from several members of my Sunshine On-line Quilt Guild (thank you, thank you going out to Beth, Joann and Cathy L!).  Those will be my starting point.  I know I can work with these and find some sustainable ways to work with this size leftovers from my work.

 

just some of the squares next to my sewing machine

I don’t want to make her blush, but I have found Cynthia Brunz’ website Quilting is More Fun Than Housework to be so inspirational for how to use scraps/yardage and have the quilts come out looking beautifully pulled together.  I recently went to her page for the Scrap-a-Palooza Quilt Gallery where she shows the step-by-step progress of some scrap projects and found the Zig-Zag Quilt (May 2014).  Please follow the links above to her site if you are looking for some great ideas.

Since I wasn’t sure if I had enough squares to make Cynthia’s Zig-Zags right off the bat, I switched over to this pattern that has smaller centers:

 

Pattern called Field Day

It is from the book "Seemingly Scrappy" by Rebecca Silbaugh:

I will go back and make Cynthia’s pattern after I have cut all of my own leftover binding pieces and created a special place for 2.5 inch squares.  Then I know I’ll have enough and the colorful squares will look wonderful in her design!

And this is the work in progress while I was auditioning for the big squares:

 

the blue in the background wasn't right and the yellow was too washed out

but the black with multi-color was just right!

I still have to rearrange some blocks to distribute the logs that were slightly lighter (I used everything from my stash after all) – but, I’m in love with it!  And they look way better after quilting...

Linking up to Oh Scrap!  on Sunday.  Check out what ideas others are coming up with for using their scraps (see the button on my sidebar).

Continuing the Scrap Pursuit

I finished up the two tops that I was working on using scraps and fabrics from my stash today.  This is the top using bug fabrics (see this post for close-ups of the bug fabrics):

And I added the end borders and the corner pieces to finish up the monkeys top (posted about here):

These are now in the ever-growing and about to be over-whelming to-be-quilted pile.  I’m going to have to quilt next week for Project Linus (I try to do two a month for them), so I’ll get a few of these tops done then.

And this is the source for the next project on the drawing board (I think this issue was Jan/Feb 2013):

I often put post-it flags on pages of quilt magazines for projects that I want to work on in the future and literally have hundreds of pages marked.  Well, 2015 is the Year to get going on those!  So I selected this Quiltmaker magazine baby quilt – the ongoing series at the time was to take a block from a previously published quilt and enlarge it to make an easy Big Block Baby Quilt.

These are the fabrics I have pulled from my stash.  Cutting and sewing begins tomorrow … drum roll, please!

Linking up to Oh Scrap:  http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com/

Check out what others are doing with their scraps!