Bordering the Rail Fences: Blue

I took half of the modified rail fence blocks shown the other day, and added some sides to them - Courthouse Steps style, with pairs of the same fabric opposite. These are all blue, as I have lots of blue fabric. Don't we all!

Cross Stitch Update

So, this week I did actually do a reasonable amount of stitching - started another Little Sheep Virtue (this one is Kindness) - no "before" picture because it was just a blank piece of canvas before...  But it shouldn't take long to stitch, as it's quite small. Unless, of course, I get distracted by something else!

Modified Scrappy Rail Fence

An impromptu project to use up a load of 2" squares (or maybe they were 2.5" - can't remember off the top of my head now). Three together, and then joined with short strips either from the strip bag or from cutting a large square in half. A modified scrappy rail fence... For which I have plans!

A bit dotty

Some of the small QST blocks I made earlier and a jellyroll of polka dot fabrics turned into these nice half log cabins for the block basket.

Here's the dots before...

...and the blocks about halfway through, as I laid out the second round of dots, to avoid repeating combos.

Scrap generation

Someone (I think perhaps it was my friend Sharon) commented a while back about where all the scraps come from, which I end up using to make blocks and then quilt tops - I know it seems to me as well that I end up with lots of scraps without having made lots of things to generate the scraps, so I thought it would be amusing to document some of the scraps going into the scrap basket. These are from a project I can't show anyway (a round of the Cotton Robin, a round robin swap I am taking part in). And the pink strips will go into my strip bag, but the small pile of other scraps will head for the scrap basket. Not a lot of scraps, but as I was only working on one large block/small quilt, you wouldn't expect a lot!

Block Lotto Stars (sort of)

It's been a few months since I've played in the Block Lotto, for various reasons. Yesterday, I finally had some time and energy to make up some made-fabric-centre stars for this month's draw, and very carefully went through my scraps to find the white pieces I needed for the star point backgrounds.  Got all those made up, along with the pieced centres and realised I totally forgot to account for the white squares in the corners of the blocks - and of course I didn't have anything to match, which means the corners don't match the star point backgrounds (I had to use other white fabric there).  Sigh.  The blocks still look cute, and I'm sure will be useful for something, but of course, they don't meet the requirements for the lotto.

It's not a problem - I keep a bag of orphan blocks, which I take along to my Linus lady who sees they get rehomed into nice scrappy quilts, so I'm sure they'll find a home in time. As it happens,   I was going to donate my chances in the draw anyway, so it's not a major issue, I'm just annoyed at myself for not thinking it through!

Good block for using scraps, though - one to keep in mind for future - perhaps I might make it even simpler to make by doing the star points freeform...

Pick-a-theme swap

These ATCs were all made for a Pick-A-Theme (PAT) swap, which means that instead of making 3 or 4 cards to a central theme (spring, flowers, Pulp Fiction, night, etc) each player nominates their own theme, and in your individual group (usually 5 people) you make one card for each of the other four players.  A little more thought and effort than a general swap as you have to come up with multiple ideas, but it's fun - plus you get 4 cards to your own theme, too, of course!

The first theme here was lemons - I found the right page in an old dictionary to use as a background, and that inspired me to use dictionary pages for all the other cards as well - luckily, I had the right pages for each theme!

Theme for this one was Vintage Chocolate (or Tea) ads - the scan is blurry because the vine is a bit 3D so the card didn't lay flat in the scanner.

A theme of owls.

And a theme of trees. This one was a little harder to do because right next to the word tree on the page was a illustration of the previous word in the dictionary (trebuchet), so I needed to do something which covered that up!

And finally, a card for the hostess as a thank you - not required in swaps, but always welcome. I chose things from her profile page, which she listed as liking - in this case, the colours orange and pink together and the Avengers (especially Hawkeye). Poor Hawkeye probably doesn't know what to make of his orange and pink background...

An envelope of envelopes...

Recently I took part in an ATC swap using the insides of security envelopes on the cards - I mentioned in the thread that other people seemed to be able to find a wider variety of interesting insides than I did (including red and green ones) and someone from the swap kindly sent me an envelope of different envelope insides - great collection, isn't it!  Even a small bit of green (she said she rarely sees green herself, and never red). Aren't people nice?  I'll have to make some cards with envelope insides, to take advantage of this giftie!

Cross stitch update

This is actually more work than it appears, as the lettering is outlined with gold thread, which is a pain to work with (and backstitching always takes a lot of time anyway). But it's not as much as I might have accomplished in a week - I just haven't been very inspired to cross stitch lately. Which is fine - we all go through stages...  Might switch to something different next week, just to try to inspire myself a bit more.

Purple!

This one actually photographed very similar to the actual colour, unlike many purples - perhaps it's because it's that pale blue mauve (in the UK sense of the colour mauve) purple, not the darker/more red ones. The border is actually a Civil War Repro print, and works pretty well, I think.

Something a little different

This one's a little different as the border is paler than the dark centre, which doesn't always work. But I think it looks ok with these blocks and the border is a Lonni Rossi fabric which I liked, bought on sale, and then found very hard to use, so it's nice to see it doing something. I think this would make a nice quilt for the Teen Cancer Trust (my Project Linus lady passes some quilts there if they are more suitable for older kids).

Teal and Taupe Top (say that three times quickly!)

Another predominantly blue piece, though this time more teal in colour. Cute border print - I think I have some more of this, so it will no doubt make another appearance at some point.

A very blue top

The border is actually a little bit more purple than it appears, but on the whole it's very blue. Hopefully some little person who likes blue will put it to good use.

ATC Friday

Here are a couple of finished ATCs, which have returned to me - in each case, the bottom photo is how they started out - I made the starters in both cases, and two other people have added to them.

Something a little different...

Here are some black and neutral rail fence blocks with a flowery border around it. Another for the pile!

Cross Stitch Update

A bit more progress than last week, though still not huge amounts - the main issue of course is that the centre part is very dense, so it doesn't look like a lot of progress, even when it is. That and the fact that quite a few evenings, I haven't really felt like stitching...

And a bit more of the same...but green

And that's the end of those wonky 4 patch blocks. Though of course all three of these centres will get some sort of border around them, probably...

More of the same, but different

Along the same lines as yesterday's offering - this time I have pulled out the orange, brown and reddish hand-dyes to put together into a top. I think it will work quite well with the right border. It may take a while to find the right border fabric, of course, as my stash of suitable border prints is running low...

Putting the blocks together

Of course, once I've made blocks, the task becomes putting them together (and eventually adding a border) - here are 12 of yesterday's blocks sewn into a small top - as you can see, I pulled out a group of blocks with pinkish hand-dyes, so there's an overarching colour theme going on here. Makes a very scrappy look a little less scrappy, which is fun sometimes.

Wonky Double Four Patches

These pairs of wonky four patches I made a while back are now a bit bigger - I used each pair with some "solid" hand-dyed fabric to make a double four-patch. One step closer to using things up!

Here's the box of hand-dyed "solids" before - and below, after.  In fact, I'm no longer keeping them in a dedicated box, just filing them with other small pieces of the appropriate colour...

ATC Friday

These were made for a swap with a Recycled Security Envelope theme - we had to use some of the inside paper from a security envelope (or three) - I managed to find at least half a dozen different patterns in my recycling box, though they were all blue and grey - some of the other swappers seem to find green and red - perhaps this is mainly in the US - or perhaps I just need to look harder!  anyway, I used mine as backgrounds, and tore them into strips (sort of) - you can see there are 5 different strips, and them I've used some letters, a stamp, some stickers, etc to finish the cards off.

Scrappy Tumblers, bordered

I really like these scrappy tumblers - definitely will have to do another quilt at some point with tumblers - cutting the pieces is a little more effort, but the stitching together is very simple and the effect is great.

Cross Stitch Update

A very little progress - mostly due to being tired in the evening due to being out in the day time (and a few times, out in the evening). 

Another border on

If I were feeling energetic, I might go back and find all the component parts of this one - the blocks, made quite a long time back, then the top assembled into a centre, and finally this one, with the border, but it's a lot of effort. Perhaps in future I will organise my photos better so I can easily find them all - it's certainly too much to hope that I will ever work in a straightforward way - blocks made, blocks assembled, blocks bordered...

The other green one

As mentioned yesterday, the other similar green "floating rectangle" blocks - this one is shaped a bit differently, but I'm sure it will work just as well as a quilt for a child...

Another border on

Working my way through the pile - this small top with the green "floating rectangle" blocks now has a border.  There's another one very similar, which will get a different border - probably show that one tomorrow...

Meet the Jetsons!

Another centre which now has a border on it - I still have a bunch left from the time I paired them all up (and of course, there were some which didn't really have a suitable border fabric readily available). This was some fabric I bought in the sale section when I was last in the US - couldn't resist it, for nostalgia reasons...

Postage Stamp ATCs

I recently signed up to a swap with a postage stamp theme, and these are the cards I've made for it - the stamps I used are a set of 4 Kuwaiti stamps I've had knocking about for  quite a while - I don't have a lot of sets of duplicate stamps from unusual places, so these were well suited to this swap...

Blue Log Cabins

Yes, I am once again accumulating sets of blocks. These were made using some of the QST (Quarter-Square-Triangle) units I made previously, and a lot of smallish pieces of blue fabric - the idea being a light(ish) fabric on one side of the block and a dark(ish) fabric on the other side. 

Cross Stitch Update

A little progress made - haven't been stitching much lately for whatever reason, so there's not a huge amount of progress - Still, it's better than nothing.