Given away in 2013

Stuck at home today with a bad back - I can sit for short periods of time, but it's hard getting up and down and twisting is right out - didn't want to take the chance of doing it more injury at school.... I keep feeling like I'm cheating somehow, until I try to move and it hurts again...

Anyway, doing a bit of updating and maintenance on my blog, and realised I hadn't updated the Project Linus page in a few months - so I'll change it over to 2014, but just to remind myself, here's a roundup of quilt tops I made and gave to Linus or another charity in 2013.  Some of these are still sitting in my house waiting for my Linus contact to want them, mind you - but only about 6 or 7 of them.

There may be a few doubles, though I've tried to be careful. And I think one or two of the early ones may have had borders added and then are shown again. Still, as roundups go, it works ok!


November & December

October

September

July

(example of some blocks given away to a friend's Quilt Ministry)

June

May

(given away as blocks to a friend's Quilt Ministry)

April

March

February

January

A little progress...

Gradually working my way through all those 2 inch squares - I am just joing them together in twos (which will then graduate to fours, and so on). There are going to be a lot of them!

Bye-bye hand-dyes

Ok, not really. I have a large box of hand-dyes. It's smaller than it used to be, and doesn't include very large pieces, or fabrics that are just essentially solids (but in a hand-dyed way), which are in another box.

But it was still totally packed - you can see that the box sides are bulging.  So I made some blocks (see top photo) - there are a lot more of them than in the photo, about 40 (42?), and they are 10" square. Each one uses a different hand-dyed or painted fabric. I tried to use smaller pieces, which wouldn't be useful for much else. Did I make a dent in the box? 

Well, it still looks pretty full, but I think you can see a difference!

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!