Bordered

The very scrappy quilt top in different size squares now has a border - a bit of hand-dyed fabric which was difficult to use.  I'm not sure it works - perhaps a small solid border between the very scrappy centre and the border would have set it off a bit better...

ATC Round Robins

Well, I haven't posted any finished round robins in a while, so I thought it was time to do so again.  Once again, the finished item (after 2 more people worked on my starter) is followed by the starter itself. 

None of these starters were very minimal, so it was interesting to see what people found space for...

Cross Stitch Update

Got about halfway through the branch across the top of the stitchery and ran out of the colour (Maple Syrup).  While I ordered and waited for some, I decided to move down to the words, as it was a little odd to try to place the leaves without the branch - much easier to count once the branch is in place!  These are all the words in this colour, except the "The" at the start of the first line, but as it's quite a bit left of the word "winds" I decided to wait on it until I'd stitched the other words in - again, easier to count that way...  Back to the pink bird piece next week.

More fabric in - but it's OK!

Although I complain about being given more fabric when I've been trying to get rid of mine (especially scraps), I don't really mean it, much - the main issue with the fabric the other day was all those scraps to cut in the previously empty scrap basket...  Sometimes, when I am given fabric, it's in a much more user-friendly format - such as this lovely piece of fabric from Angela, who is de-stashing things she'll never use - this is perfectly suited to being the background or neutral fabric in the kind of scrappy top I make all the time - and it's about a 60" piece, so I'm sure I'll get lots of use from it. Thanks, Ange!

Fairy Pink

Among the other fabric found when I went through the kids' stash of fabric was this fairy fabric (from Ikea, I think) - I hadn't planned to do anything else pink for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but these fairies seemed, once fussy-cut, ideal as centres for some quick pink and purple blocks, so I changed my mind. There was enough fabric for 12 of them, some in 6 inch blocks (before adding any other fabric), some 6x8 - easy enough to even them all out once I started adding rounds. 

Of course, I chose a variation of my go-to block, the Log Cabin. This is more of a courthouse steps blocks as I have chosen to make opposite sides match, rather than adjacent sides. Although there are only 9 blocks shown, I did make 12, so it will be a nice small quilt for Project Linus or something similar, once I put the blocks together. 

Oh no, not more fabric!!

Remember my lovely, empty scrap basket? Well, no more!  This is because in with the general clearing out that we did this half term (partly spring cleaning, partly getting ready for various work on the house) my children all decided that they didn't really need their own stashes of fabric any more.  Some of what they all had came from me originally, I think, some was purchased at quilt shows, etc.  

Here was Sarah's

and Alex's

and Olivia's - lots of fabric, as you can tell. And loads of stuff of the sort I don't have much of - girly pinks, novelty prints, sparkly stuff. I'm sure the girls purchased some scrap bags at various points as well, which means even more scraps. 

I sorted out all the larger pieces and pressed, folded and "filed" them into my storage boxes - which are now pretty full, once again (except the red, which I never seem to have enough of). Any obvious strips went straight into the strip bag. 

And of course, all the scraps went into my scrap basket , shown at the top.  It will take me a while to make a dent on that one!

More things found

Neither of these sets of blocks were lost, precisely, but they were put away because they were part of ongoing swaps - both swaps have pretty much stalled, which is fine as I have 9 or 10 of the Lady of the Lake blocks, which will make a decent size small quilt (I think they are 12" blocks) and 20 of the 12" African blocks, and a handful of small ones - again -plenty for a quilt...  So much for my basket with blocks sets in it, which was nearly empty!

Found - part 2

Look what else I found - yikes! A basket which I had thought empty on a high shelf actually contained all these 2" squares - I wouldn't want to guess how many, but I'm sure each stack had well over 100 in it, so...  Many of them are hand-dyes, I think they were the sample squares from when I used to do (and swap) dye runs. 

So I started sewing them together in long chains, which I will clip apart later.  Each pair has a solid and a non-solid fabric in it, which will help make things less busy when they are joined together into blocks. I did make a few into blocks straight away, as I wanted to use some of them with the 3" blocks I mentioned yesterday

...and with some blocks made from 2.5" squares, which had been my leader & ender project recently.

I think this mixed-size square scrappy quilt is kinda fun - and of course, it will get a border on it, as well, which will help. 

There are still, at this point, a lot of those 2" squares left, though!

Found!

We finally have set a date to have some work done in the house, which will eventually necessitate my moving from my little sewing room. This means I am going through some of my stuff with an eye to getting rid of it/re-housing it/using it up.  In a drawer, I found this stack of pieced 3" squares - I think I was going to make some placemats with them to practice FMQ at one point (in fact, I think I did make half a dozen or so and then quit).  Anyway, I decided that they'd make a quick and easy quilt top, which I could then border with something recently acquired for that purpose, so I quick stitched some of them together (the others, I have other plans for - watch this space!)

Cross stitch update

Made some progress on the penultimate section of this piece - there's another leaf to do and some words, I think, and then the final section in the bottom right corner. Won't be long now!

Bluebird

I realised when I was tidying up my sewing room today that I neglected to blog this piece last weekend when I finished it - it's a small, simple piece, but I like it. Love the small touches of red...  Stay tuned tomorrow for your usual Wednesday cross-stitch update!

State of the Scrapbasket

Had a look in my scrap basket today and decided it was getting a bit out of control. It may not look full, but it's a big basket - you don't want to see how much fits in it when it's full.... Anyway, as I had the day off and intended to spend a large part of it sewing or doing other sewing type things, I decided it was time to trim scraps. 

These little boxes (which fit in little frame things) hold my scrap squares - 5" is the largest size (the boxes are essentially 5" square anyway) and they go down in half inches, until the last one, which is "smaller than 2" square).  But not much smaller - I don't keep the teeny tiny stuff. 

Here's what a few of them looked like before I started cutting - not too bad.

Here they are again, when I'd finished, 

here's the scrap basket

and here's the pile of strips I added to my bag of scrap strips

which is looking a little full.   Guess what's next on my to-do list!

All together now

Here's one of the pink tops for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, assembled and ready to be stacked in a pile to giveaway.  I won't border this one, I think - it looks fine the way it is.

Another exercise in clearing stash

Today I decided to do something that wasn't pink - I've done a few pink things already, so it's not that badly out of control. I have a drawer of batik fabrics, and I wanted to clear it out a bit - get rid of some of the smaller pieces and then put the remaining pieces in a box in line with my storage for most of my smaller pieces (i.e. larger than a "scrap" and smaller than a 1/2 m). So I dug through my larger pieces of fabric and found the perfect thing - a neutral batiky fabric. I used it for the squares that cross the batik pieces and used the coloured batiks in the background squares. Each block is different, and I appear to have 33 of them. (That was the number I could make with the neutral batik I had). Not quite sure how I will use 33, but most likely a few will find their way into my Bag of Orphans. For the moment, though, I've put the blocks into my basket of blocks which need to be stitched together (it was nearly empty the other day; it's getting fuller now with all this pink stuff and the lotto blocks, and now these...)

Winner!

Once again, I have been lucky enough to win blocks by playing the Block Lotto (if only my lottery syndicate at work was this lucky!) - these are the January double chevron blocks in grey, purple and brown tonal fabrics - here's just a selection of them - more are on the way, hurrah!

A few round robins...

Sometimes, when making a card background for a round robin, you can have a reasonably good idea where it will go.  This one, for instance, is not all that unexpected - I like it, don't get me wrong, but it leads on naturally from the background, I think. 

Sometimes, however, cards go to quite a different place than you might expect - for instance, this card was more gentle and flowing than I would have predicted from something quite stripy - and despite the blue and red and stars, the card didn't end up at all in the patriotic camp, which I wondered if it might (not a huge fan of patriotic themes, so that was ok with me). 

And this one, while I didn't have any ideas where it was going to go, it certainly wasn't here - though again, I really like how it came out. Once again, justification for doing round robins with others!

Cross Stitch Update

A bit of progress, though not a lot. Perhaps this next week will be more productive!

Given away...

Thanks to those of you who expressed an interest in the quilt tops I had to give away - all of them have been sent out to their new homes as of today, except one, where I've not yet received the address to send it to (Greta). Hopefully, they will arrive safely soon and make nice quilts for your various causes.

Watch this space for similar giveaways in future!