A Little More with Orange

Well, I'm not sure where this week went, but it has gone by, and without very much sewing around here.  It doesn't help that I was gone for 3 out of the last 7 days either.  Not that I didn't enjoy what I was doing on those days - a quick visit to see my son to celebrate his birthday, and a trip down to Denver for a Colorado Rockies baseball game.  All good fun!

I did manage to make one more orange Scrap Jar Star to add to the pile.  This one has some black incorporated into it to pull it into the Monarch Butterfly idea.  I also used some of that cute candy corn fabric that I showed last week.  I definitely want these stars to have scraps of all of my favorite fabrics in them!

I do love how these stars are starting to come together and create something when I look at them all together!

The rainbow is forming!

There's lots on my to-do list for the next week - finish a gift for a friend, work on some more blocks for my RSC projects, experiment some more with flying geese blocks, who knows?!  In fact, I'm going to go sew right now!

Linking up with Angela over at SoScrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday to see what my scrap happy friends have been up to this week!

Flying with Geese

A month ago or so, a friend in my quilt group brought a big tub of her leftover 30s fabrics to share with everyone.  She had fnished up a couple of projects with them, and was ready to pass them on.  I've never had any in my stash, and have never really been drawn to them, but, hey, scraps!  So, I ended up with this pretty pile.

I've used a few bits and pieces for my RSC and Quilty 365 blocks, but had been thinking about what else I might do with them.  One block I haven't ever made much, but wanted to get some practice on, is Flying Geese.  I knew there were multiple ways to make them, so decided to research the method where you can make four at a time with no waste.  I imagine there are tutorials everywhere online for this method, but I used this one from Connecting Threads.

I had some solids in my stash that seemed to coordinate pretty well with the 30s florals, so I added them in to the mix.  This method has you cut a 5 3/4 inch square for the main fabric, and 4 - 3 1/8 inch squares for the coordinating color.  (The tutorial includes how to do the math in order to get different sizes.)  Place two of the smaller squares at opposite corners of the larger square, draw a line, and sew on either side of the line.

Cut on the drawn line to make two new pieces.

Then add the two remaining small squares as shown below, draw a line through the center, sew on either side of the line, and cut apart again.

After pressing, you end up with four flying geese!  If your piecing and stitching is precise, they will be 4 1/2 inches finished.  Mine were pretty close, but I did have to do a little trimming!

So far, I've made four sets of flying geese.  I laid them out one way, with all the same colors together.

And another way, just to see what they would look like if I mixed them up a little bit.  

Kind of fun to play with!  Who knows what they will become...  There is certainly still a lot of fabric left to make more flying geese and end up with something bigger!  

Linking up with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! today.  Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

All the Oranges

It has happened the same way each month this year.  Angela announces the color of the month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and I go on a treasure hunt.  What fabric have I got that I can make my blocks out of?  Is it orange or too red?  Is this one really orange or more yellow?  Look at those adorable orange buttons! Decisions, decisions!

                            

And then I google "shades of orange" and find this...

Who knew there were so many oranges!  So, I can use them all!  And with such fun results.

I love how my first Scrap Jar Star turned out - it reminds me of orange creamsicles or Cuties, the tasty little oranges that I eat all winter.

And in my stash, I found the perfect low volume fabric to go with an orange 16 patch - candy corn!  (And we all thought brown with pink was so yummy!)  I'll be using this one again!

So it has been a fun first week of orange, and I still have more blocks to make!  Better get back to work.  I'll be linking up with Angela over at SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.  See you there!

Quilty 365

It's been awhile since I wrote a post about my orange peel blocks for Quilty 365, but I have been keeping up with them.  By my count I should be up to 118 of them, starting last December 1st and getting almost all the way through March except for this past week!  (I'll get caught up this afternoon.:)  They are overflowing the tin in which I originally kept them!

Here are the last 36 I've made, so a little bit of February and most of March, in no particular order.

Some of mine celebrate special days, places, or events, but many are a scrap I pulled out that I liked for that day.  

You might see...

purple and yellow pieced together for March's RSC colors.  Or...

an orange peel showing that my husband and I went wine tasting that day.   Or...

I might have gotten together with friends for coffee. 

In early March, I visited my mom in Arizona and the fabric on the left reminds me of all of the cactus down there.  One night, as Mom and I were going for a walk, we heard owls hooting somewhere in the neighborhood!  You've seen that owl fabric before - I'm glad I could use some for this quilt!

My husband and I are avid birdwatchers, and this fabric was just perfect to show that!

Almost two weeks ago now, we had a gray and snowy day, followed by a day of beautiful Colorado sunshine.  You just never know what you're going to get in the spring around here!

And this last one is perfect for showing that I have been tutoring kids in math every Monday afternoon this year.

I admit that I don't make one of these blocks every day, but as I go through each week, I usually pick scraps to go with the days, and then make a bunch on Sunday afternoon.  It works for me!  It's going to be quite the collection of blocks when I get to the end of November.  Deciding how they will go together could be challenging!

If you want to see other ways that people have been using scraps in their quilting, go visit Oh Scrap! At Quilting is More Fun than Housework.  One of my favorite places to visit on Sunday afternoons!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2016 - April!

Goodbye, March...

Hello, April!

I knew there must have been a reason I pulled these out last night -

Meanwhile, this week, while waiting to find out April's color, I worked on several miscellaneous projects. Among them - some grown-up eye spy blocks for Kat's March block drive.

It was fun to hunt through my scraps and stash and find things to fussy cut.

And a few more Monkeys - now I have two in each RSC color.  I see that a little orange snuck its way into one of them!

And, finally, because I just needed something to sew on last night which required very little brainpower - a couple of purple and yellow mug rugs.  Small, simple, and useful!

Now, I think I can go make something with my orange scraps!  Happy April, everyone!  Looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been up to, tomorrow at SoScrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday.

Itsy Bitsy!

This week I've been working on a birthday present for a special friend.  I can't post about it just yet because she reads my blog once in awhile, but here is a bit of a hint.

I purchased four fat quarters of this beautiful fabric during my New York trip last fall.  After reading the one selvage that was included, and doing a little detective work, it looks like they are from a line of fabric called Woodlands, by Jo Morton for Andover Fabrics.

The pattern I'm making required a bunch of HSTs and I always make them bigger than I need, and then trim them down.  I ended up with a pile of little bits and pieces that looked like this.

Among them were a bunch of bonus HSTs which I decided not to throw away like I usually do!  :)  They were about 1 1/8 inches square!

Then this happened.  A crazy Colorado, spring snowstorm.  If you can't read that yard stick, it says 14 inches!  I was snowed in for the day.  What's a quilter to do?!

Well, make crazy, tiny quilt blocks, of course!

Here is my finished block, at 2 3/8 inches square.

I don't work with fiddly, little pieces that size very much, and ended up deciding four of them was enough!

I put them together into a mini that is now 6 x 6.  Although the blocks above appear to be square, they are not in the finished mini! Fortunately, wonky is "in" these days!  It was quite a challenge to keep everything square, and I didn't really achieve that.  But it is cute as can be, anyway!

Fun to challenge myself with, but I'm happy to get back to bigger projects now!  I'll be linking this project up with Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is More Fun than Housework today.  Looking forward to seeing what everyone else has been up to this week! 

I couldn't help myself...

I still have my pile of purple and yellow scraps out, and have been looking for some new inspiration for them.

So...after weeks of enjoying Gayle's blog, mangofeet, and looking closely at her monkey blocks, I realized I wanted to make some!  I commented on her recent post where she had made a few and asked for a tutorial. Gayle kindly pointed me to Bonnie Hunter's tutorial for Monkey Wrench blocks, found here, and away I went!  I made one in each of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge monthly color combos, and it turns out that they ARE cute and fun!

You're right,  Gayle - these blocks could be addicting!  They were also good for some fussy cutting...

I'm adding these to my March collection of blocks and definitely planning to make more!

If you're looking for some Rainbow Scrappy goodness, check out all of the links at So Scrappy on Saturday!