Auditioning for Multi-Color Madness

You may remember that I am sewing along with ScrapHappy’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  The colors have been Purple, Aqua, and Red for the first three months and the April color is Multi-Color!

This month will require me to undertake me a little auditioning from the old fabric stash.  Some of my previously made elephants have had a few extra colors, like this one:

 

But the background fabric makes this block *read* aqua.  My personal challenge is to find fabrics that don’t read a certain color, so the auditions begin:

The above were rejected because the first one definitely reads yellow and the second one reads green.  Out they go.

Now these are questionable:

 

They have lots of colors and the bugs are cute – that one might make the cut, but the rainbow beads might be hard to turn into elephants since the fabric is directional.

Now these are really getting on target.  This one will do nicely - looks like an elephant to me - lol:

And this one has lots of color and the black background is minimized – it’s a keeper:

This one is great!

But what to do with that directional fabric issue?  Might require some heavy brain work that I’m not up to right now.  It’s in the *let’s think about it* pile right now.

Look for some multi-color elephants later this week and see which fabric made the cut (oh, those sewing puns are endless – groan)!

And on a side note:  Can you believe I’ve had this box of fabrics for a few days and still haven’t opened it?!

It’s full of fabrics that will be used as backing for my children’s charity quilts.  The sale prices were good and I’m stocking up for when my quilting will be in demand after a retreat of the Sunshine On-line Quilt Guild in June.  We’re expecting to make over a hundred quilt tops – fun! 

And the Project Linus giant top is still on the frame - this is a photo before I loaded it up when I was trying to think up a quilting design.  I hope it gets finished soon - sigh.

Local Community Service Part 2

In yesterday’s post I told of how I had spent a great deal of time in March working on Quilts of Valor projects.  My Local Community Service also includes quilting for Project Linus.

I was given four tops to work up and two were giant-sized compared to the children’s tops that I usually receive – these were more adult lap-sized.   I had a terrible time with the first of those.  It had some kind of fabric for the borders and a part of the blocks that was not 100% cotton.

I’m not sure if it was silk, poly or a poly/cotton blend, but I could not work with it at all.  It took me three days to get 15 inches of horizontal quilting (12 inches tall).  That is not much!  The thread broke every 3 to 6 inches and no adjustment I made would fix it – and believe me, I tried everything.  They had given me a wonky backing that was cut from a wide back and there was not enough there for me to pull a thread or rip it to find the straight of grain.  The combo of the off-kilter grain and the odd fabric might have been pulling the needle just enough to continuously break the bobbin thread.  But to end this poor long story, I ripped out the quilting stitches and I’m giving the top back to the Project Linus group so they can give it to a more experienced quilter. 

I was able to get two smaller tops quilted up for them – I don’t usually make tops for them as my contribution is the quilting.  My piecing is usually dedicated to sewing and quilting for the Sunshine On-line Quilt Guild.  Here are the two Project Linus quilts:

Panto is Surf

Panto is Stars 'n Clouds

I have a third top from Project Linus that is still in progress.  It is a two-color top in a zig zag design and I’m not so sure I made a wise decision about the quilting panto.  We’ll see how it looks when it comes off of the frame … this one is too far along to get ripped out, so it will stay with what I picked out.  Sometimes I wish I could stop and practice some fancier quilting, but I guess I do OK with edge-to-edge pantos and I’m pretty happy to keep cranking out kid’s quilts!

Local Community Service Part 1

The weeks have flown by.  I had my Local Community Service Week early this month and my calendar has been jam-packed.

My Quilts of Valor (QOV) group was to have a medium-size presentation (11 quilts) and a planned large presentation (30 quilts) plus several individual presentations and we started the year with zero quilts on hand.  Everybody in our group was enthused to get busy.  I was given a lovely quilt top to quilt, but it had an issue:

Did you see the block facing the wrong way?  So, even though it had its borders on, I couldn’t leave it that way:

It wasn’t a hard fix and now its lines are all straight:

And onto the frame it went to be quilted with a panto called Stardust:

Then it got returned to the group to get its binding sewn on and a label put on by hand (I don’t do any hand sewing, but some members of my group are delighted to do that part, thank heavens!).

And, of course, I had to finish up my QOVFoundation Mystery Quilt for 2017.  This quilt was designed by Sandy Berg of Raspberry Bramble Designs who coordinated the mystery.  It was fun to sew.  The pattern is available here:  http://2017qovmystery.weebly.com/

This is a little of my progress as I waited in between receiving clues:

See those little post-it notes on the computer?  I highly recommend you label your pieces as you go as Sandy suggests ... The result is grand!

It went off to another quilter since I have only done edge-to-edge pantos so far and it is more likely to get some special quilting with another quilter.

More on my Local Community Service Week activities in tomorrow’s post.

National Quilting Day 2017

Since today has been designated as National Quilting Day by the National Quilt Association, I thought you’d like to read the 10 Historical Facts About Quilting at the AGF (Art Gallery Fabrics) blog:

  http://www.agfblog.com/2016/06/10-historical-facts-about-quilting.html

Fascinating facts – especially #5 about the earliest known surviving American quilt from 1704.  Imagine something you made lasting 300 years and still admired!  Awesome …

There are also some wonderful free patterns on their site – check out their gallery at:

http://liveartgalleryfabrics.com/free-quilting-patterns/

And, since it’s Sewing Day, I’m working on a Disappearing 9-Patch.  Here’s what I’ve done so far:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hope you find your pot of gold!

The Old Weir Bridge

Killarney, Ireland

Image courtesy VintageHolidayCrafts.com

Happy Pi Day

Once again, it is Pi Day.

Yep, 3.14 almost rolled right past without me acknowledging it properly.

You, too, can get your T-Shirt at the ilovescience store.

No quilty news today, just dreaming of pie (oops, I mean Pi).

Check out the Nine Kinds of Pie at Philip Nels Blog.

http://www.philnel.com/2014/03/14/9kindsofpie/

Sneak Peek Sunday

It’s that time of year again – when I rant about Daylight Savings Time.  The original purpose of DST was to add an hour to standard time to make better use of daylight and conserve energy.

Germany was the first country of the modern era to use DST in 1916 (during WWI) to minimize artificial lighting to save fuel for the war effort.  In the US, President Wilson continued the worldwide trend by signing DST into the law; again, to support the war effort.

The Water Clock inside The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

But the history and usage of the idea goes back centuries.  Ancient civilizations adjusted their daily schedules to the movements of the Sun.  The Romans used water clocks with different scales for different months of the year.  Now that’s an idea I can get behind – gradual changes per month would be easier for me to adjust to rather than this twice a year disruption!

So now that I have the rant behind me, here’s a sneak peak of the two quilts that I have finished quilting recently:

I have four new pantos from Urban Elementz that I have been auditioning.  The two for today are both designed by Sarah Ann Myers and digitized by Patricia Ritter.  The one on the brown quilt is called Alfalfa.  I like that one a lot.  And the one on the red/green quilt is called Retrographics 2.  I like the design, but I will adjust that one to make it more compact the next time I use it.  I wanted a more open design so my children’s quilts wouldn’t be so stiff, but I think the way I did this one is too open.  It does look good, but there will be another time!  More photos when these get bound …

Tuesday Ramblings

Started out this morning doing a load of laundry then dusted furniture all over the house.  Thought about vacuuming but went to sit down until that silly thought passed!  Decided to go upstairs and finish binding this little cutie for Quilts Beyond Borders:

I wanted to try some custom quilting, but have been holding on to this for far too long and decided to go with the meandering just to get it finished and into the hands of a child that needs some comfort.  Done!

Then opened the box of tops from Tammy in TX and paired them up with some potential backings:

These are now wrapped up together and in a stack to be quilted and the brown/gold one on the left is on the frame.  Progress!

Rainbow Scrappy Day!

And now that we've moved into March, it's time for another color challenge over at SOSCRAPPY and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  The color for March is RED!  Here are my red elephants:

Left side of the line

Right side of the line

And here are the Jan and Feb elephants with their new friends:

Did that elephant on the right look a little suspicious to you?  Do you think that maybe the sea green/teal/aqua elephant was messing around with the red elephant?  Or is that too personal to ask?!!

And did those purple dogs from the bottom elephant jump up and walk all over the red elephant in the middle and leave paw prints?  Maybe a surveillance camera in the sewing room is required - LOL ...

Another Box to Wrap-a-Smile

Finally!  The box is leaving the building.  Finished the bindings on all of the quilts that are going to Wrap-a-Smile.

Moved on to making more colorful Elephants, but photos of that will wait until tomorrow.  Here are the quilts in the box:

Feathers ...

Square Dancing in Space?

Fish, fish and more fish

Musical notes and treble clefs

Got this one at a quilt show for a really low price - sadly, quilters don't often get a return on the value of their labor.  But it makes a welcome addition to the donation box ...