Broken Dishes

Another top from my attempt to put together lots of blocks which were hanging around waiting to be put together (not sure the blocks really care, but I do!)... Tomorrow, a picture of it with a border on!

Wonky...

Step two - in which I trim the red quarter square triangle units to lean left and right. You can begin to see the pattern which will be created when I stitch them together.  The two darker reds are the same in all the blocks, but the lighter reds are compose of 4 diffeerent fabrics, so it will be interesting to see how they come out, when I have a chance to stitch them together.

A red beginning

The beginnings of some more blocks from the wonky one block book - these are only the starting units - the haven't been trimmed in a wonky way, yet.  As it's red month for the rainbow scrap challenge, I chose some small red pieces to work with. And neutrals with red in. Should be a cheerful set of blocks when finished... [Project for this summer - turn block sets into quilt tops!]

Red and White Spokes Blocks

And inspired by the monochromatic lotto blocks, which were fun to make (and easy), I decided to make some red blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, using up small pieces of red. These, probably sashed with WOW, which is what was used for the strips, will make a cute small quilt. Of course, for the moment, they've just been added to my Big Pile O' Blocks...

Mellow yellow

June's actual colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is yellow (not the neutral I thought it was on June 1st, when I just had a quick peek at the background colour on the blog). I don't have an excessive amount of yellow, but still, I could do something with it, so I pulled out a piece of focus fabric which contained yellow, and some other things to go with it (and of course, some yellow!).

Here's what I chose to use...

and here's what was left to go back to stash after I cut out all the pieces needed for the double four patches.  Not a lot to stash, and some pieces to the scrap basket and strippy bag.

A bit more green

These were actually done during the Rainbow Scrap Challenges official green month, but didn't get a chance to blog them until now...  Some broken dishes blocks in green, using a piece of pale green fabric from my 1/2 metre collection for the backgroun and using a selection of my pre-cut squares in different greens for the other part of these broken dishes blocks. I haven't sewed them together yet; that's a project for another day.

I did, however, stitch together these African green blocks. So, I guess May was fairly green...

Teal Courthouse Steps

As the colour of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is teal or aqua blue, the other day I dug out some blues which fit into this category (most of my blues don't, but there were a handful) and made some courthouse steps blocks with them, and some neutrals (another thing I have a lot of, but in small pieces, which means their usefulness is limited to certain types of quilts). Of course, I haven't sewn them together yet, they are just lurking, as blocks, in my basket of sets of blocks. 

As a quilter, I seem to work cyclically - I will make and accumulate lots of sets of blocks, then work my way through those blocks, stitching them into tops, then either finish (ha!), set aside or giveaway the tops and then start again. At the moment, I'm in the accumulating blocks stage.  Perhaps April will be the month of putting blocks into tops (we do have 2 weeks of holiday at Easter, so I foresee lots of sewing time, even allowing for going places, if the weather is decent).

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.

And now for something...not very different

Yep, another set of log cabin blocks (well, courthouse steps, perhaps, which is a LC variation) - these in pink - the colour of the moment in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - with a little black thrown in for good measure.  There is something very satisfying about sewing log cabin blocks, and watching them grow and grow with each round. These aren't stitched together yet, but they will be before too long. And then I'll have to decide whether to border them or not. Decisions, decisions.

Strippy quilt with birdhouses

This blue strip top, made for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in January, works perfectly with this birdhouse border fabric I picked up for a song at the Farnham Maltings Sale. 

...and a pink Sunday, too...

In addition to working on something I can't actually show, I also pulled out some more pink (and other) fabrics to carrying on with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. These brown and blue fabrics are part of the same range - they have writing on them and pools of water (I think). I had half a metre (or perhaps yard) of each of them, more or less, but they have proved to be slightly awkward to work with, so I thought they'd go well with all this pink. This might not be the final arrangement, as I might try to get some of the blocks with the same pinks moved a bit further away from one another, but it gives the general idea.

Pink Saturday

February's colour in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Pink, so away with the blue scraps and on to the pink.  These blocks aren't strictly made from scraps, but as my actual scraps are fairly well under control, I am mining my boxes of small pieces (i.e. smaller than 1/2 metre - most of them are a FQ or less) for bits which can be used. Always happy to make log cabin blocks, so here are 16 of them (10" finished size) with pinks on one side and neutrals on the other. 

Blue strips

As part of the January colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I decided to see if I had enough blue strips in my strip bag to make an entirely blue strip quilt - not surprisingly, I did. (What is it about blue, anyway?)  Now all it needs is a border, and it can join the pile of charity tops awaiting a kind soul to quilt and finish...

More blue stuff

Here's another blue thing I made this month (technically, this is a photo of the blocks, but I have since sewn them together, just haven't taken a photo yet) to use up blue scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. These pieces weren't strictly scraps, as they were from my box of small blue pieces, but none of them were large (except the lighter one, which is the same throughout).  I used to have 2 storage boxes of blue fabric (I use CD storage boxes from Ikea for all my different small pieces of fabric, organised by (mostly) colour) - one for darker and one for lighter and aqua fabric - it's now down to 1 box. It's crammed full, but it's all in one box.  We're getting there! (I'm not trying to get rid of all my stash, just trying to make it more sensible and manageable.)

Bordered blue

The little blue scrap quilt for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge now has a border. The border isn't strictly blue, but I think it works well, and you'll notice that I even took the time to mitre the borders as I thought it would work well with this print. The black gaps in the shirt fabric make it look like there are even more rows of border, which is fun.  One to stick in the drawer to (eventually) go to Project Linus.   I have a lot of surplus tops waiting to go to good charitable homes - be on the lookout later in the week for a post giving some of them away!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

January's colour is blue, so I've decided to make a small piece in various blues. Soon, I will border this, I think with some of the Hawaiian shirt print I've used as a border before - it's got a black background (not blue) but will work well, I think.  Perhaps tomorrow!

Green scrappy top

This is a little green scrappy quilt for Project Linus - the colour this month on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is green, so although my green scraps are a lot more manageable than they were at this time last year, I knew I'd have enough for another top. 

The block is just a half-log-cabin block -  a starting square with two round of logs, but only around two sides. Very quick to make and good for using scraps. I then decided to set it on point with some green setting triangles. Hey presto!  Frankly, the thing that took longest was making sure I had the stripey setting triangles all the same way around...

Scrappy with black and white

The colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for September is black - I dug out some black (and black and white) scraps and used them along with some green and purple to make this simple top - another charity donation. I have also cut up 144 2.5" squares in black, BOB and black and white fabrics to use for another project - more on that tomorrow...

White strings...

To continue with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for August (the colour being white), I decided to tackle my (not very large) pile of white strings - obviously I can't use these to make string hearts as I have been doing in other months as there's not enough contrast between the different whites and they won't work on the white/cream/COW backgrounds I've been doing the other heart blocks on. So, I decided to make a few blocks with random white strings in them - using Hawaiian shirt fabric leftover from my dad's shirts. I had forgotten that I still had a ton of fabric left, even after making a number of quilts from the shirts. I found the box with all the fabric in it when I was clearing out last weekend, so I decided to make the little scrappy one above (which is pieced onto a foundation) and then do some blocks with strips across them, like these:

I have nearly used all my white (and lighter coloured cream) strips now!

I will probably give the top one away, but keep the bottom blocks for myself, at least for a while, until some need or other arises. Unfortunately, I still have LOADS of Hawaiian shirt fabric. I will have to think of something else to do with it which uses up greater amounts (maybe some pieced backs...)