Sue

A new month & I dug into my orange scraps. First off, I got the top done for the Mini Brightly Pumpkin table topper by Cluck Cluck Sew. This is totally a scrap buster as I made it from the leftovers of my daughter-in-law’s Hocus Pocus quilt & this will be a birthday present for her next month after I quilt it.

I got the large orange Scrappy Hearts by Quilty Love done, plus the Two-Step blocks from Lissa Alexander’s book “Scrap School”, made with 2.5″ squares. Over on the right are 2 of the 6 orange blocks I need for my RSC2022 project from the Tula Pink 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book. I am attempting to slowly finish up that year’s RSC projects that have blocks made until I had my fall in August of that year. Orange are all I have left for Tula, then I can start putting it together, so I’m happy about that.

The blue & green are the Bonnie Hunter’s 2024 Leader & Ender Challenge: County Clare that I got done this week. The pumpkins rather made their own L&E’s so I didn’t need too many County Clare.

The last of the RSC2022 Catching Rainbows blocks did NOT go in the orphan block box as I said last week. Instead, I decided to power through & figure out something to do with them so they would be out of here. I made these B&W string blocks, added sashing, & another small baby donation is ready for my quilting partner to quilt up. So those RSC blocks ended up making 3 quilts!

And finally, a finish! I started this Summer Block Party quilt (on a whim) on 20 June, the first day of summer, & put the final stitch into the binding last night, 9 August. Unusually for me, this quilt went from start to finish in 7 weeks, with me keeping up with the designers dropping the patterns each week. It was a total squirrel project that I will probably keep for me, as it will be fun summer decor.

A little bit of aqua in my quilt group blocks this week, but the rest of my time has been spent in finishing up the RSC2022 Catching Rainbows project.

I put together most of the other color blocks last week into a lap quilt & was left with 7 red blocks. I made 2 more to get a nice center, then added sashing, leftover HST trims from my Cherry Crunch quilt & some strips to lengthen it out a bit. Then I made string blocks to mostly utilize Bonnie’s original border idea & voila! a small lap quilt for donation is born. And another old WIP is off the books. There are a couple Catching Rainbows blocks left but they will go in the orphan block box for another day.

And now that it’s really August: let the orange scraps come out to play!

Look at what happened in my quilt group this week: some scrap aqua & light blocks. So I managed to stick with y’all on the color theme this month, if you disregard the green.

This is Hope #3, my third Breast Cancer Awareness quilt & I finished the hand-sewing on the binding this week. I’ve made one each Sept in honor of my friend, Traci, who passed away after her third battle in Sept 2021. The first was a way to process my grief, with the idea that I would gift it to someone dealing with breast cancer. I’ve given away the first two, so now there’s one ready for another gifting. Which hopefully won’t happen because I don’t want friends or family to deal with this. With all that’s happened in my life, it’s taken a while to get this one finished, so it will be time for the next one to start in a couple months, but I have the fabric ready to go. This was made with the free pattern, No Point Stars from Cluck Cluck Sew. It’s an easy pattern, but very striking in any color combo.

I want to get some WIP’s off the shelf so I pulled out my blocks for Catching Rainbows by Bonnie Hunter. This was an RSC2022 project. I have several of these still around because of the accident, move, surgery, blah, blah, blah. My accident was in August 2022 so I got many blocks done for each project, but some are still sitting in the boxes. When I pulled these out, there weren’t any orange & purple as those are the months I was recovering. I started laying it out & decided that even though I was making a smaller quilt than Bonnie’s, it was still bigger than I wanted. So out came the red & a couple others. This is the result with a few more string blocks made to fill in the border. It’s a sort of pastel rainbow. LOL I like it & it’s a good lap size that is in the queue for quilting.

This is what I’ve been working on all week: the new Runway pattern by A Bright Corner. I used up 2 half jelly rolls I got on sale, some background fabric in my stash, & I have a donation top. I taped together some batting, cut a blue clearance 100% cotton sheet from IKEA into a backing, & it’s ready to go to my friend for quilting. I made enough blocks for the throw size but decided it was too big, so did the lap size & will make the leftovers into a donation baby quilt. This will be a nice teen boy quilt.

And here’s my progress on Bonnie Hunter’s 2024 Leader & Ender Challenge: County Clare. The first row was made last week, & the parts for the second row were made this week. I need to dig into my neutral bin for a little more variety there next week.

Keep cool in your sewing room & make cute stuff!

I made a tabletopper, Brightly Holidays by Cluck Cluck Sew, & it’s rectangular on the pattern & wanted it square. I saved out the last row, added some leftover squares between the blocks, used pieces from the backing to make a border, & voila! A little matching bonus runner for our sideboard, all quilted & bound for the rest of summer.

Some long sewing afternoons this week got the Summer Block Party to flimsy stage. Not sure when it’s going in for quilting, but it’s all done! It’s a free sew-along & you can still sign-up through July, & get the patterns if you just can’t resist. That was my situation & so this squirrel project is done & it’s back to my regularly scheduled sewing. LOL

That included getting “Wild Blue Yonder” done for the Festival of Trees auction benefitting Primary Children’s Medical Center. I make a quilt every year for my pilot brother-in-law who died in a plane malfunction. He was an Air Force pilot. His widow & daughter pick the theme & add books & puzzles to the display for auction. We hadn’t done planes for a few years, so decided it was time. This needs to go to the quilter next week & get done so it’s ready for December, which feels like it’s right around the corner now!

I spent a bunch of time cutting & prepping for projects this week. One of them included Bonnie Hunter’s 2024 Leader & Ender Challenge: County Clare. I copy down the patterns every year but have never joined in, so this is the year. I bought the green grunge to have one part be consistent throughout, then the rest is all scrappy from my stash. I sew using an L&E method anyway, making 2 or 3 quilts at once, but since I love Irish Chains, this was too hard to pass up. So there’s a tray full of little squares & rectangles by my machine & this is how many have gone through so far. I decided to sew them together as I go & let the scraps fall where they may to make the sashing go easier. I hate sewing sashings, but love her layout with the sashings, so here we go!