Block Lotto, part 2

...and here they are - the finished blocks. These are long strip shaped blocks, which when put together with other scrappy blocks from other folks, will make a great scrap quilt. I might even make some more like this for myself to use for something. But not in the next few days - though I do have a few weeks off over Christmas and might even get a little sewing done. I won't hold my breath.  I'm running out of things to blog as I've caught up with a lot of my past stuff and haven't had time to stitch much of anything new lately!

Rail fence variations

Here are the blocks which resulted from the prep the other day - a good selection of them, at 6.5" (to finish at 6) - whether I use them just by themselves, or perhaps alternate with 6.5" square, who knows - probably the latter, as it will make the resulting top less busy and perhaps be a good way to use a larger print.  I should check out what awkward larger prints I might have to use up...  But not today!

Another bit of block prep

So, once again, another preparation for some basic block sewing - this time I'm going to use my 3.5" squares (cut to 2.5x3.5) to make groups of three, with a crossbar at the top, in a kind of rail fence variation. The fabrics in the top photo are the ones I'm going to use as the crossbars. Probably.  There aren't that many 3.5" squares, so I might need some of the 4" ones as well.

Bordered wonky fours

...and here's the resulting blocks - the centres are various, but mostly in keeping with the colours of the bordering blocks. There are 20 of them - 6 of each of the lighter colours and 8 of the green ones. However, they are quite small (6.5"), so I might need something to go with them!

Wonky prep

Needing to do a little bit of block making in my very busy life, so I pulled out a few larger pieces of fabric to use as bordering prints for some wonky 4 patches. I'm going to use my stash of 5" squares as the blocks for the wonky four patches. Not sure which fabrics, but whatever seems to go with the chose outer fabrics...

Scrappy double four patch centre

Another set of scrappy blocks, together and ready for a border. Moving it from the block basket to the border basket is not quite as satisfying as moving it to the "waiting to go to Linus" basket, but it's a start.

Strippy floral

Another top centre, which has now had a border added. This is another of the group of quilts for Project Linus, which use fabric which I've had from the Linus stash, for the border. I think the scraps in the strippy centre are probably all from my stash, though there may be a few bits and pieces left over from previous Linus borders. Hard to remember!

Last mermaid top

...and here's the third of the little mermaid tops. These aren't my favourite scrappy tops ever, but I'm sure some little girl will enjoy the mermaids. I hope so, at any rate.

Another mermaid top

Here's another scrappy top with a little mermaid panel, which is bordered and ready to go to my Project Linus Coordinator, who I'm going to meet up with in the half-term week. 

Leftover strings

After making the string blocks the other day, here's what's left in the bag. There's still some stuff there, but it's a lot less. I didn't use any of the rolled strips I've made previously for sewing together bigger strip quilts, and there were some misc. strips left as well.  But it's a lot less full in that bag than it was. Of course, now my scrap basket is getting full - it never ends!

String Squares

As the string bag was getting a bit full, it was time to make some more string squares - I love these kinds of blocks, and they always seem to work well together. Excellent for getting rid of strings and strips of any width, and most lengths, and amazingly, all the fabrics seem to go together quite well, regardless of pattern, colour, etc. Sometimes, you can put a single colour in the middle strip, to unify it a bit, but this time I didn't. Maybe next time.  The main thing here is that they are stitched on a foundation fabric, and I'm running out of suitable fabrics to use as foundations - must pick up something cheap and ugly to use as foundations for future blocks...

Mermaid with border

Having said I had a stack of top centres which needed bordering, it's only fitting that I actually got around to doing some of those; here's the first - a mermaid panel with scrappy strips, then a teal floral border. A little odd, perhaps, but functional.

Charming

This little top (which will no doubt get a border) is simply made from charm squares, stitched together. I'm sure at some point I'll get around to doing something with the top, but until then, my motto will have to be "at least it's a set of blocks out of my block set basket"...

Getting a bit full...

Okay, there's still a little room in the top, but on the whole,  a bit full. So that's one thing I'll be doing at the weekend, trying to reduce this a little. Also, putting some block sets together into tops or at least top centres... Maybe I'll go all out and try to get some borders on other top centres while I'm at it!

Brown reduction

And yes, all that brown work has reduced the brown stash a bit - it now fits in one rather full CD box, rather than two partly full ones. Progress!  I'm happy to have a stash, but not a stash which has a silly amount of fabric I won't ever use...

And some scraps were generated - strips and small bits. I wonder if it's time to have a look in the strip bag again to see how full it's becoming...

Scrappy Double Four Patches

Some more fairly easy scrappy blocks - these are double four patches, so they use up two different sizes of squares - bonus!

Here they are in progress...

The two boxes of squares before...

...and after. Not bad!

Some simple four patch blocks

A quick exercise, to reduce some of the squares in my scrap boxes - with only a little time to sew, something straightforward, like making four patch blocks from already cut squares, really hits the spot.

The brown crosses

...in all their glory. Most of them work well, though there's still that one combo which really doesn't do it. They might end up as orphans; we'll see. They aren't evenly balanced - I just made them as they came to hand - but there are 130 of them!  At 4.5" square, that doesn't cover quite as much space as you might think, but still...  I will probably add something to at least some of them, though I might take out the red ones and do something different with them. We'll see. 

Can you tell what it is yet?

This is what I've been making with the browns - some have better contrast than others, I've just noticed from the bottom right combo (though it's better in person). I'm not done yet, though - there will be more!

Brown in progress

Here's a glimpse at some of the brown project in process - a bit hard to tell what it is, but I'll show some of the completed blocks when there are a few more of them...