Quilting

I recently was given 2 boxes of fabric from a friend who was tasked with finding a good home for it. She received it from an older woman who was moving to assisted living & couldn’t use it anymore. It included these “sand” fabrics, so I included some random “sea” charm squares from my stash to make 11 charity blocks for the Covered in Love May/June block drive. I’ve been wanting to participate in these block drives but just haven’t gotten around to it, so this donation gave me the motivation & now they have been sent.

These are the 12 purple blocks needed for the King-size Irish Chain quilt using the tutorial from Melissa Corry. This is a Christmas gift so I tackled these first this month. With the orange blocks left to make, then all the sashing & sewing the rows together, I may not be able to wait until orange becomes the color of the month. Rainbow scrap quilts have needs!

These friendship star blocks are low-stress & with all the other things going on this week, they were easy to do & feel like I’d accomplished a goal. Thanks to Deb A. for the inspiration, & more purple in the coming week.

I have a finish to begin this post. Got the binding sewn last night for this wedding quilt for next month. I got a kit on sale a while ago from Maker Valley & have been saving it for the perfect occasion. The kit was nice because she has wilder low volumes than I do in my stash, so it made for more interest. I made another of these for a wedding last year with a blue heart. They are fun to sew & turn out so cute.

Each month I’m making 4 of these resized Cozy Stars from the Pat Sloan QAL called Cozy Things. Then at the end of the year, I’ll decide how to put them together. After digging through my reds and not finding as many lights as I anticipated, one of these didn’t end up with as much contrast as I would have liked. But it’s only one in a whole quilt, so it will be fine. Still loving these little pinwheels.

Ta-da! The red row for the super fun zig-zag quilt from Diann at Little Penguin Quilts. I smile each month when I finish this row. I want to start sewing rows together, but am holding back until I have them all done & lay them out because I’m not convinced I’m going to do them in spectrum order.

I’m still working on the checkerboard blocks I started last year and needed 5 more reds. I’m using the Scrap Mixology pattern called Chaser by Cynthia Brunz. With last year’s work & this year’s “fill-in to finish” blocks, I’ve only got a few more in two colors left to have a whole quilt. Yay!

“Hip to be Square” needs 6 red blocks & only 1 half block for the edges. The pattern comes from “Splash of Color” by Jackie Kunkel. I cut out the entire quilt in January & made kits of each color; my project box only has orange & purple left. Hopefully those colors are coming soon or I may need to sew ahead!

I don’t have any reds in my kit for the Nearly LeMoyne blocks so this finishes up all my RSC2021 projects in red. With several days left in the month, I can tackle lots of other projects.

“Stained Glass” is finally done. It’s been a long journey! Made from four orphan blocks from another quilt that sat around wanting to become something of their own. I sashed them & they waited. I added a stop border, they waited. I added another border, they waited. Border 3, wait; quilted it myself, wait; added binding, waited a long time. Finally hand-sewed the binding & it’s a baby quilt suitable for gifting someday. Some quilts come together in a rush-some are a process!

These are the 8 red blocks needed for the King-size Irish Chain quilt using the tutorial from Melissa Corry. Now there’s purple & orange blocks left to make, then all the sashing & sewing the rows together. I need to get this to the quilter by August to have it done for Christmas gifting, so I feel like I’m still in good shape.

These are 2 columns for the Brickyard quilt inspired by Julie of Me and My Quilts. Think vertical. I left them sideways so they didn’t take up so much room in the post. As the year progresses, this project is getting more interesting.

Red plus blocks. These are for the partial top I’ve been ripping apart to re-envision. They are all weird sized because I left some gray around some of them when possible while ripping because I now have an idea of how I want to lay them out & I need “sashing”. A couple were new, but most were ripped & then had the ends re-sewn or a red square added to finish the plus.

2 more friendship star blocks in the box, with thanks to Deb A. for the inspiration. These are so happy & cheerful. Getting excited to put this together. Later.

I got the binding sewed onto Rainbow Stairsteps which was a project from RSC2020. I was inspired by blocks from a layout by Julie and this quilt was a ton of fun to make. It involves a lot of little pieces, but used up many strings & came out as a very striking quilt.

A close-up of this month’s aqua to show the quilting. 🙂

Here they are. My final blocks for my monthly projects, so I managed to get something done on all 9 of my RSC projects. Which is a ridiculous amount, I know. I got 11 of my plus blocks done. These are for the partial top I’ve been ripping apart to re-envision. There were no aqua or light blue in the top yet, so these are all new blocks. I needed one aqua checkerboard block so got that done, also. Then the aqua row for the super fun zig-zag quilt from Diann at Little Penguin Quilts. It’s fun to dig through my scraps each month & find pieces to cut for 5″ squares. Using up odd pieces!

I made 4 of the resized Cozy Stars from the Pat Sloan QAL called Cozy Things . The secret to these blocks is making the dark pinwheel pop out of the light middles, so it’s fun to pick the fabrics out of my scraps & try to make them look cool. I get excited about this future quilt each month when I make these blocks!

In January I did all the cutting for this quilt called “Hip to be Square”, from the book “Splash of Color” by Jackie Kunkel. All the block pieces are pinned together & sorted by colors, which are primary & secondary. I decided to go ahead & do the blue blocks, even though they are probably more appropriate for the next blue month. But I wanted to sew them. The light on my design wall yellows these up, but they are B&W backgrounds. Not so many blues in the pattern: 5 full blocks & 4 half blocks for the edges.

This is a column for the Brickyard quilt inspired by Julie of Me and My Quilts. I don’t have a ton of variety in my aqua pile, so I’m only making one column in this color, then more blue later in the year. Simple but cute!