Hand-Pieced QAL Progress and an Idea for the Scraps

Progress has been happening on my hand-pieced project this week!  All nine blocks were finished last week, and it was time to stitch the blocks into rows with sashing.  The sashing fabric I chose is a sandy beach with shells and footprints - I love leaving my footprints on a sandy beach!

I also cut a few squares of the dark turquoise solid for cornerstones, and then I laid everything out on the design wall to see if it would work.  The sashing is 1.5 inches wide.

I stitched sashing to blocks and cornerstones, a block, and then a row at a time.

By Thursday, the center of the quilt was finished!

Considering that I'm a newbie to hand-piecing, I have to say I'm pretty happy with my stitches!

My slow-stitching job today is to finish up the outside borders and figure out how to piece a backing for this top, so that I can get it layered and begin quilting.

There is quite a bit of fabric leftover from the bundle of ocean-themed fat quarters that I started with, so I decided I would start cutting 4.5 inch squares from the scraps, border them with a variety of colorful solids, and make enough for a baby boy donation quilt!

Info about the Hand-Pieced QAL can be found at both Elm Street Quilts and at Simple Handmade Everyday.

Sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!

and at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Strings and Things

The green strings came out to play in my sewing room this week.  First up were these four green string blocks.

I'm making these on rectangular phonebook pages, and trimming them to 9.5 x 6.5 when the sewing is done.  There are four sets so far.

Or maybe I will orient them this way?

I decided it was time to pull off the paper backing and sew the four blocks together into the large rectangle.  I also stay stitched around the outside edge.  This big block measures 12.5 x 18.5.

Some tiny strings made a tiny umbrella!

Aren't these fun?!

And I finished up a Tiny Rails block in Christmas scraps, too!

I'm up to 18 of these 10.5 inch blocks now - not sure where I will stop.  I definitely need at least 20 of them!

March was the perfect month for sewing with green - and now the world outside is greening up, too!  Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.

I Like Thursday #127 -

Good morning, friends!  Spring comes to life slowly in our neck of the woods, but it's starting!  Here's how my daffodils look so far.

I have buds!

This week brought my group's first golf game of the year.  It's not green yet - still what you might call winter golf conditions - but the weather was nice and the company was fun!  (I won't tell you about my golf game just yet...:)

This was what my cellphone camera saw - my eyes saw golf carts across the way and mountains in the distance.  Lots of geese were hanging out on this pond, too.

I liked this view of my design wall Monday morning.

On the left are my hand-pieced blocks with sashing and cornerstones being auditioned.  On the right is a small quilt I'm putting together for the Hands to Help quilt drive.  The blocks are made from Cluck, Cluck Sew's Easy Stack, Cut, and Sew tutorial.

I enjoyed hanging up some of the mini quilts I've made over the last few years in this corner of my sewing room.  It makes it a much more fun corner of the room!

I'm continuing to enjoy hand-piecing!  Along with sewing the QAL blocks into a mini quilt this week, I've been working on another Dresden sunflower.

Here are the pieces and parts, partially sewn together.

I loved this cute display at our local Ace Hardware store, so I had to snap a picture of it!

Hope you're having a great week!  Be sure to visit all the "I Like Thursday" posts over at Not Afraid of Color!

Tiny and Purple

My sewing week continued as it began - flitting around from one project to another - a little bit on this one - a little bit on that one.

And then Friday I had a DrEAMi (Drop Everything and Make It) moment - and it had to be purple.

Why purple?  Most likely because I was inspired by other quilt bloggers' purple projects after reading about them this week.  (I'm easily distracted inspired!)

I decided my project needed to be something tiny, so it could be finished quickly.  So after finding a 5 inch square of batting...

And sewing on some bits of purple in a "quilt as you go" way...

(And how about some cats on purple for a backing?)

I made a tiny, purple pincushion!

Because you really can't have too many pincushions, right?!  :)

Sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap and

at mmmquilts for the DrEAMi link-up next weekend!

A Tiny Owl and a Sprouting Garden

I loved making this week's Tiny Tuesday block!  You start with a mess...

and end up with an adorable owl!  Thanks go to Sally at The Objects of Design for this fun block!

His head appears a bit wonky, and I think that's because I cut one eye a smidge too big.  But he is his own unique self, right?!

Fun with green scraps!

I also got my Scrappy Sprouts blocks sewn into columns and connected with the Grass Green Kona.

Oh, I am loving this!

Right now, this section of the quilt measures about 30.5 tall  x 63 wide.  Since I want the finished top to be a tall rectangle, I'll need at least 33 more inches for the sky and sunflower section.  I might add a green border to the very bottom to get more depth there.  I definitely have plenty of fabric to do that with!

Happy Saturday to everyone!  I'm linking up with Soscrappy for Scraphappy Saturday! 

Hand-Pieced QAL - Block 9

I just now finished up the last block of our QAL - Emmeline!

She turned out pretty good, but getting all those seams to behave on the back was quite a feat...

Here are my nine blocks all together on the design wall.

Time for me to think about sashing fabric and how to set these blocks for the finish!  

Sharing at Elm Street Quilts for the Hand-Pieced QAL weekly link-up.

I Like Thursday #126 - Spring!

Happy Spring, friends!  I'm ready for some warmer weather, blooming flowers, and more time outside.  How about you?

Those of you who commented on my grammar police photo from last week's I Like post will be pleased to see that someone told the business about their sign mistake, and it was fixed!  I definitely liked that!

Zoom in if you need to - the photo got blurry when I tried to crop it in too close!

The last few days, I've been enjoying flitting about between several different projects in the sewing room!  I haven't been able to settle on just one thing - some weeks are just like that.

Pieces and parts for block 9 of the Hand-Pieced QAL - Emmeline

Next week, we'll be working on sashing and borders!

A couple of patchwork panels that will become a new tote bag after I finish quilting them onto some Soft and Stable batting.

Some 4 patches for the Scrap Dance Minuet Mystery over at From My Carolina Home.

I even sewed a couple more hexies onto my long term hexie project.  I haven't shared this in awhile, but I'm getting closer to finishing this round!

We've continued to enjoy the shows offered by Acorn TV, which we can get through our library.   Martin Clunes is one of my favorite British actors, and this show, "Manhunt" is an interesting one, based on an actual murder in London in the early 2000s.

We are really liking "800 Words," which is set in New Zealand.  Thank you, LeeAnna, for recommending it!

This week I've been reading A Man Called Ove.  Have you read it?  It's been around for awhile, but I just got to it!

Ove is a pretty quirky character, and not very likeable at first, but as you get to know him, you begin to see why he is the way he is.  

I liked this meme I saw today - 

Hope these first days of Spring are treating you well!  Join us over at Not Afraid of Color for "I Like Thursday!"

Finally Finished!

This week I was determined to finish my wild and wacky Batik Star, and I did!

It measures about 28 x 28.

It's made from scraps of an Island Batik line called North Woods that I won in a giveaway awhile back, and I had waffled back and forth over what to do with them, finally deciding just to play with this star design.

After making the star, I divided up the rest of the strips into darks and lights and used the lights for a border and the darks for the binding.

I used some of the leftover bits on the back, too.

I enjoyed playing with the quilting on this project.  The center is a square spiral, a bit wonky, but kind of fun!  I used my spool of Aurifil Jade for the quilting.

After outlining the star points, I decided to try some gentle curves in the corners and borders.

I'm so pleased with those pretty stitches, courtesy of my new machine! :)

I decided to hang this in my sewing room for awhile - just because!

I'm definitely happy to have Batik Star finished, and with almost all of the fabric used up in the making of it, too.

Hope you're having a great weekend!  I'll be sharing at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! 

Back to the Green

After traveling for the first 10 or so days of March, I've had some catching up to do with my green scraps.

I decided that first up would be the first two Tiny Tuesday blocks.

Both were fun to make!  Thank you, Jo and Angela, for the block designs!

How about a tiny penguin peeking out at you?  :)

I hadn't had these on the design wall for awhile, so I stuck them up there just for fun.

I like the green additions to the collection!

A lot of my green scraps seem to be Christmas greens, so just like I did with red, I'm going to make a Tiny Rails block with Christmas greens.  These are mostly dark greens with red accents.

And this is the perfect color to help me move my Scrappy Sprouts along.  I've bought some Kona Grass Green to put between the rows of sprouts blocks, and hope to get going on that this week.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.