Scrappy Happenings

Since I was finished with all my green sewing for January, and Angela hinted that February's color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge would be orange, I played with some orange scraps this week.  I don't have a lot of orange in my stash, so I'm going to have to be creative with how I use it this month!

Here are some orange trees for the Rainbow Jungle -

I'm going to keep using the inspiration fabric in the trees until I use it up, so it will be spread throughout the quilt!

And all the trees so far !

Sharing these at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!

Meanwhile, I messed around with my crumb blocks some more and decided to enlarge them to 7 x 10.5, and add a 4 x 10.5 strip on one side for a 10 inch finished block.  If you can believe it, I still have some of the gray Grunge left to use up!  This project is going to be the last of it, I swear!

These blocks could go together like this - 

Or like this - 

Thank you to Cynthia Brunz at Quilting is More fun than Housework for the inspiration for these.  Click on the link to her blog to see the quilt that gave me my idea!

My plan is to make enough of these 10 inch blocks for a small donation quilt!  Sharing at Oh Scrap!

And finally, the binding is machine stitched on to Tiny Tuesday, so hand stitching it down will be my slow stitching project all weekend!

Sharing at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

I Like Thursday #171 - Whoop whoop!

I always enjoy reading the Friday post, "Can I get a whoop whoop!" at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  I rarely have a perfectly timed Friday finish to share, but it's fun and inspiring to read about lots of others!

But I'm whooping today because I finally finished machine quilting my Tiny Tuesday quilt top.  Whoop whoop!  My To-Do Tuesday friends will know this is a big deal because it's been on my list every week for this whole month.  Now to make the binding and get it sewn on for hand-stitching.  Hopefully this afternoon!

Gray thread on a gray background means you can't even tell it is quilted,

but I assure you it is!  :)

I also have two of the four embroidery blocks finished for my blue and white quilt.  I love how this is looking!

I have always loved collecting shells, stones, and sea glass when we visit the beach, and I have all kinds of bowls and containers full of my treasures scattered around our house.   So, it was fun to come across this book at our library the other day, and I'm enjoying reading it.

It's about several artisans who live on the islands along  the coast of Maine who make all kinds of jewelry and art with the sea glass they collect.

I loved this photo of the family with handfuls of sea glass!

Here is my tiny collection!  :)

Small, but treasured!

This week, I'm also enjoying this book, and I keep recommending it to everyone!

Something I love about historical fiction is that you learn a lot about the setting and time period of the story as you read, and with this book I'm learning a lot because I knew very little about Cuba before I started it.

Hope you're having a great week!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color for "I Like Thursday!"

To-Do Tuesday #22

This has been a week of sewing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, so I accomplished some things on my To-Do list, and not others.

I did continue quilting on Tiny Tuesday, and it's almost done.  I find I only want to quilt for about 20 minutes a day, and spend the rest of my time sewing on other projects.  That, of course, makes it a slow process!

I did pick up this pretty red Grunge for the binding!

I finished up January's trees for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I'm making 8 every month - February's color is orange!

What I didn't get to was working on the center circles for the sunflowers to go on Scrappy Sprouts.  They'll go back on this week's list!

So for this week's To-Do list:

1.  Finish up that quilting on Tiny Tuesday, trim it, make the binding, and sew it on for the hand-stitching part.  I'm getting close to a finish, I just know it! :)

2.  Keep up with my RSC blocks - I'll need to hunt around for just the tight orange fabrics!

3.  It's time to get the design traced and colored for the February National Embroidery Month stitch along, sponsored by Crabapple Hill Studios.

This should be some fun stitching to work on!

4.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to those center circles for the sunflowers, too!

  

Sharing at Home Sewn by Us for To-Do Tuesday.  Thanks, Roseanne, for helping me stay organized!  

January Color Challenge Block

After seeing so many pretty and colorful blocks made during the 2019 Color Challenge sponsored by Jen at Patterns by Jen, I decided to join in this year!  Reading that her inspiration for this year's challenge is birds just sealed the deal, as my husband and I love birdwatching and feeding the birds that visit our backyard.

January's block is all in yellow, inspired by the American Goldfinch, one of our favorite birds to see!  I wanted to go with a scrappy look, so chose a few different yellow fabrics for my 4 patches and Kona Butter for the background.  In real life, the Kona Butter is much lighter than this photo shows, but you know how that goes when you're trying to get a quick photo!

More info about the 2020 Color Challenge can be found here.

Linking up with the January Color Challenge over at Patterns by Jen.

Slow Stitching on a Sunday

Or any day, really!

I've been working along on my Blue and White project every day this week, and have almost finished surrounding the second of four embroidered blocks with their HST sashing.

Meanwhile I also finished up something I started awhile back - this sweet little embroidered quilter who's telling us, "When life gives you scraps, make quilts!"  I found this free PDF pattern at a blog called The Painted Quilt. 

After the embroidery was finished, I used some colored pencils to 

fill in spots like her hair and her quilts that felt like they needed more color.

This was the perfect little project (Just 12.5 x 14.5) to use up some batting scraps - I fused them together with scraps of fusible interfacing!

A charm pack of Garden Variety by Lella Boutique seemed perfect for a border around the outside.  I cut some of the squares into 2.5 inch pieces for the border, and used others for the backing. 

After a little bit of simple quilting to hold the layers together, I bound it with a scrap of the dark blue floral from Garden Variety that is leftover from my Squared Away RSC 2018 sampler quilt.

And, ta-da!

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

Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Sewing the Greens

This week I added four more trees to the Rainbow Jungle -

Here are all the January trees.

I think the trees need lots of contrast for the best effect, so I've been using both dark and light greens, plus a bit of yellow snuck its way in there, too!

Stitched up a few more green Northern Lights blocks for my "Mellow" quilt - scrappy light greens, plus blues, and grays.

And a crumb block in light and bright green bits - 

This one joins the others in my crumb block bin - there are 12 blocks in it right now that measure about 10 x 7 inches.  I could probably make these forever...

Meanwhile, still quilting - and getting closer to the end!

For more green inspiration be sure to check out ScrapHappy Saturday at SoScrappy!

I Like Thursday #170 - lots of stitching!

Happy Thursday!  I'm joining in with LeeAnna at Not Afraid of Color and the rest of the "I Like Thursday" bloggers to share the good things of the past week.

On Sunday I shared my idea for combining some blue and white hand-pieced blocks and some blue embroidery I've been doing, and yesterday I finished the first embroidery block.  I'm really liking how this is turning out - I think it's going to work!

Embroidery block with HST border:

And here's how the row would look when three blocks are sewn together!

I also finished all of the machine quilting going in one direction across my Tiny Tuesday quilt and started quilting in the other direction to create the curved cross-hatch design, and I like it!  You can see the design starting to emerge in this photo -

I really appreciate and enjoy when designers share patterns and quilt alongs with us for free online!  I've decided to join in with the National Embroidery Month stitch along at Crabapple Hill Studios.  I printed the design and directions yesterday.  (I can't seem to find the link to this project at Crabapple Hill, but take a look at this post from Barbara at Cat Patches - scroll down a little and you'll see she has the link and also shows what she made last year during the month of February.)

It might require learning some new stitches, but I'll enjoy that!

When I'm not sewing, I've been enjoying this book:

It's a Depression-era historical fiction novel about some kids who have travel through Minnesota on their own.   Although there are parts that are tough to read, I really like William Kent Krueger's writing, so it has been one I can't put down.

And I also really liked this quote from Martin Luther King that I saw this week!

I liked these ideas a lot!

Hope you're having a great week!  

To-Do Tuesday #21

Every Monday I go back and take a look at last week's to-do list to see how I did and figure out what needs to be done this coming week.  I had to laugh when I saw that last week's Tuesday post had a #1 and a #3, but no #2!  And you, my friends, never said a word!  No "Diann, where is #2 on your list?"  Nothing!  You are way too nice to me!  :)

So, what did I do all week long?

• Quilted on my Tiny Tuesday quilt - yes, and it's about half finished!
• Sorted scraps - yes, but that will be an ongoing process - isn't it always?

And you know the problem with scrap sorting - it leads to ideas, which lead to the sewing machine, which leads to...

Four patch hearts and a few more tiny bowties!  Just for fun!

I also replaced my ironing board cover (long overdue!) - 

No "before" photo - too embarrassing!

And I was a good girl and cleaned out underneath the bobbin plate of my sewing machine.   After reading this post from Kitchen Table Quilting, I realized it was long past time that I do this job!

I still don't remember what #2 was supposed to be last week, though! 

So, for this week's list:

1.  Keep quilting Tiny Tuesday - I should be able to finish it this week.  I'll need to decide what I'm doing for the binding.

2.  Work on a few more green blocks for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge January blocks.  I'm definitely planning to make more wonky trees in green.

3.  I'd also like to move forward with another WiP - my Scrappy Sprouts quilt top.  These sunflowers need their circle centers made and stitched on.

And then get the flowers appliqued to the "sky," too.   

This one will be next up in the quilting queue. 

Hope your week's getting off to a good start!  

I'm linking up with Roseanne at Home Sewn by Us for To-Do Tuesday.

Still stitching...

While my scrappy hearts and nine patches are marinating on the design wall -

I pulled out a project I started last year after participating in the Hand-Pieced QAL.  I started stitching these 6.5 inch blue and white blocks last May.

I decided to combine every four of those blocks into a 12.5 inch block that forms a star, and now there are 5 of those!

Meanwhile, I began doing some Gail Pan embroidery, and enjoyed the very first design of hers that I did in variegated blue floss so much that I kept going with those, and now there are four of them!

So then, what to do with these various blue and white projects?  How about this?

I trimmed the embroidered pieces so they are the same size as the center stars in the blue and white hand-pieced blocks, 8.5 inches.

That does mean the embroidered blocks will need a sashing/border to bring them up to 12.5 inches, so I'm thinking about bordering them with the same design as the outside edges of the blue and white blocks - squares and HSTs.

I'll be working on the HST borders for the embroidery blocks as my slow-stitching today, and probably all week!

This whole project started as a way to use up some larger pieces of the dark blue and the blue and white floral that were leftover from other quilts.  And here's what's left now - 

Hopefully, just enough!

A big thank you to my friend, Karen, of Karen Quilts, etc, for giving me the idea to put these two sets of blocks together!  I think the whole thing will make a pretty wall-hanging.  

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

Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Moving Along

I've been moving along slowly on the quilting of my Tiny Tuesday quilt this week.

I'm working on a curved crosshatch, a la Jacquie Gering, from her book, Walk.   I've used this to quilt smaller projects and always wanted to try it on a bigger quilt.  I like anything that goes edge to edge, and this design works really well for that purpose.

Along the way, I enjoy seeing favorite blocks as they go by.

More little penguins peeking out!

Meanwhile, I finished up that last block for the Tiny Rails quilt.

Loving this!  

These blocks are waiting their turn at the sewing machine.

Sharing at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday!