First Scrap Happy Saturday of 2014

January is for the Blues--fabric that is!

I decided to start with 5" charm squares of blue and add some strips of black & gray.  It made the piece too dark and all the blocks disappeared.  So, I took all the dark strips away and replaced them with white.  It is much better.  Now I may be running low on white but I haven't looked in one more bin.  Since this is to use up scraps of blue and scraps of white, I will not be buying any more white fabric for this piece. The purpose is to stretch my creativity and imagination and try new possibilities.  So here is what I have so far.

Happy New Year 2014

Twelve more baskets have been completed.  As I go through each basket of fabric, I pull out all the smaller odd pieces and cut them up into usable squares (5", 4.5", 4", 3.5", 3" and 2.5") and the rest of the odd fabric into strips.  It would not be so overwhelming if I had cut the odd scraps as I completed a project but I'm always in a hurry to get started on my next project.  The next project always seems to have a looming deadline with not enough time.  

I'm especially excited about joining the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 with Soscrappy.  January is "Blue Scraps" month and we all have plenty of those.  I seem to have acquired two huge bins of blue.  I wanted to pick just the right pattern to begin this challenge but have decided to work with my blue 5" charm squares and add a small piece of  gray & black to blend them together.  Just white or just cream doesn't seem to go with all my blue fabrics.

Judy Laquidara of Patchwork Times.com continues to challenge me each year, so I plan to join her Scrappy Challenge 2014.  While I was sorting this week, I discovered 40 HST which will finish at 4", so I plan to use those in January's block challenge.  I made these HST over 7 yrs. ago for a Mystery quilt.  I only completed one block, so what to do with all those HST.  Save them, of course.

January Scrappy Challenge 2014

  

Get It Done in December

Get It DoneThe items I accomplished in December were not even on "The List".  An attempt was made towards my goals. 
Goal #1 was to clean up my sewing room.  If I dared to take a picture of the entire mess; you would know I have a long ways to go.  But I have begun the process.  I am going through every single wire bin, sorting and cutting up all the little bits and pieces of fabric into usable squares and rectangles.  It took several days to work through the Christmas scraps.  I only have 55 more bins to sort through.  Every bin generates more scraps that need to be cut.  Yikes.  I could just dump the scraps into the Red & Green Plastic Bin but that has only created an overwhelming.....problem with nothing fun to sew.

Organized Fabric Bins

Goal #2 was to add borders and quilt the "Over the Rainbow" quilt top, and at the moment, I'm not sure where it is.


Goal #3 was to quilt the Santa and His Reindeer Table Topper Quilt.  I discovered it needed a border, so it has been sitting on my dining room table during the month of December.

Thank you to all the quilters and their Blogs, who have inspired me through-out 2013 with their comments, accomplishments, and their photos. 

Many thanks go to Judy Laquidara of Patchwork Times.com
Check out what others have done and plan to do in 2014.   Get It Done

Design Wall Monday

As I was attempting to sort through some fabric bins, I came across a tiny little label describing a "Mini Quilt" that I had created with fabric scraps from my Labor Day Madness Quilt.  The block ideas came from Temecula Quilt Co. over a year ago since the label states September 2012.  Now where did I put the quilt?  After 15 minutes or so, I found the quilt top, which measures 30" square.  Of course, the goal is to get it quilted before the end of 2013.

 

Panel to a Quilt Top

Back in November, when I attended our local Project Linus Day, there were many bins of donated fabric for us to choose from to make future Linus Blankets aka tied quilts.  Since I love the piecing part, my friend, Lenore chose quite a few panels for me.  Here is the first one that I designed with other fabrics she chose.

FROM THIS:

TO THIS:

Is it December already?

Farm Quilt  (54" square) before quilting & binding

The days are flying by.  At the end of November, I thought of something fun to make for a Christmas gift.
A Charm Quilt with 144 (5" squares) all from different fabrics.  It took a day to cut, a day to piece, a day to piece the back and a day to quilt and a day to sew on the binding.  The only problem is, it needs to be shipped to California.  The good news is, the quilt is complete except for a label.  To add to the challenge, I decided to make a book through Ancestry.com, which entailed going through all of my "old pictures" to find my relatives.  I found a couple of pictures from the 1860's but most of the old ones were from the early 1900's.  All the pictures I chose for the book needed to be scanned and saved, which I did yesterday.  In my mind, I thought it would be a quick morning project.  Wrong!  I took 2 quick breaks for lunch & dinner.
Thankfully, I was able to place my book order at 11:00 this evening.  Something tells me, the gifts may be late this year....   Anyone reading this, please don't tell  my relatives what they are getting for Christmas.

Both projects were "eye openers".  It let me know how disorganized my sewing room really is. 
The pictures are in worse shape.  Most of the people who can determine who are in the pictures have passed on.  Anyone out there that is interested in their ancestry, please ask your grandparents to look at the pictures and write down on the back who is who and the approximate date the picture was taken.   
  

Mystery Quilt Top Complete

Flowers made instead of Yo-yos

Picture of the fabrics used

Delighted to report that I have completed the Mystery Quilt top and I'm quite happy with the results.  As I was making the flowers, I had to laugh because I didn't want to spend the time making 40 yo-yos but what I made to replace the yo-yos probably took longer but it was something different to try.  I had just enough fabric to make all 3 borders.  My quilt top turned out to be 63" square.  I have no idea how I will quilt it.  I am just thrilled I can show a complete top in mid December at my Quilt Guild meeting.

Mystery Quilt Top completed  12-03-2013