Wonderful World of Colour Blog Hop

 This hop is hosted by Joan at MooseStash Quilting, the challenge was to make something inspired by the world of colour. 

Scraps lend themselves to the use of many colours and when tamed into an eye-pleasing design they become the star of the quilt.

taming of the scraps into crumb blocks

I did a little sorting of some (there are too many to do them all) of my scraps. The job didn't get finished before, way before. Okay if I'm being honest I never did finish sorting them, the sewing machine was calling my name. And off I went full steam ahead just sewing scraps together into crumb blocks. This type of sewing is a no think just grab a scrap and sew it to the previous pieces. Sometimes all we need is mindless sewing. 

a few of the crumb blocks

I trimmed the crumb blocks into 6 1/2'' squares, added a neutral 6 1/2'' scrap, and made 5 1/2'' HST's. 

I used two crumbs blocks for each star

I debated with me, myself and I, we had quite the conversation, as to whether the centres of the friendship stars were going to be white or a solid colour. The white won out, this time. 

a pieced flimsy

The next decision border, yes or no. A pieced scrappy border, a solid border. Please let me know what you think.

Unfortunately, this is as far as I got, which is a first for me. I always have a finished project for these blog hops, but I ran out of time to complete it.  Oh and that border decision didn't help any.

Now let's see what wonderful colour projects my fellow blog members have come up with today.

Tuesday April 19

Just Let Me Quilt

BeaQuilter

Songbird Designs

Elizabeth Coughlin Designs

Purring Cottage 

Stitchin at Home

Time4Stitchn

July + Garden of Scraps

 July seems to have flown by, maybe because I was a little busier than normal. I had a dreami moment that took up a whole bunch of time, plus vacationed at my son's place.

This is a photo-heavy post.

I have been trying to use up some of my scraps, a little bit of truth tea here. I don't think I'll ever use them up. They multiply like crazy! I'm still working on the 2'' squares. If you want to read about my plus quilt using the 2'' squares go here.

scrappy 4 patch 

more scrappy 4 patches

I tried to control the scrappiness of the 4 patches, keeping the colours close yet not identical. 

a little bit of Canadian pride included.

Now to put those 4 patch units into a top.

there were a number of layout possibilites

layout option #2

option #3

I wanted to add a border or two. This is where I flew by the seat of my pants as I had no concrete idea of what I wanted just a few thoughts whirling around in my mind. That can be dangerous, to say the least.   

auditioning border ideas

I went up north to visit my son and his family. The peace and quiet of the lake while I kayaked daily, helps calm and settle one's mind. This has been a trying year at best. 

I love this photo of the sun reflected on Tyson lake

My oldest grandson(13) and my youngest granddaughter(4). we normally catch and release unless the fish is injured too much. I did catch the first and biggest bass

After a hard morning of fishing, a nap was required. I made this quilt for my grandson when he was two, it has been well-loved and travels with him

    After getting back from up north, I had a week to finish the top and get the quilt all done that included free motion quilting on my domestic machine. This quilt is 80'' x 71'' a little bigger to quilt on my machine. I used my favourite thread Aurifil in the following colours #2123 a light yellow for the quilting the 4 patches and strips, it blended in well. I also used #2024 in the white border and #1148 for the turquoise borders.

feathers and straight lines in the borders. Ribbon candy in the turquoise border.

the best overall photo I could get 

I will be linking this dreami up at Sandra at mmmquilts.

Also linking to:

My Quilt Infatuation

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Fairy Tale Blog Hop

Joan of MooseStash Quilting was in charge of this hop. The theme of this hop is fairy tales. My Fairy Tale started out innocently enough.

You all know the tale of 3 pigs, a big bad wolf, and the three houses, brick, wood, and straw. I made the brick house first as it was the strongest.

strong brick house with the little pig looking out the window for the big bad wolf

I was going to make book pages with the houses, pigs, and wolf. I printed out a part of the tale on an EQ printable sheet, cut it apart, and added part to the first page I made.

open book page

This is where my tale took a turn, I wasn't getting the fairy tale feel. So let's start again. 

As all good fairy tales begin: Once upon a time there were some scraps looking on sadly as they were not being used. While the creator of the pig tale was trying to come up with an idea that worked better. As she was looking at us, she suddenly had a gleam in her eye, and not skipping a stitch she brought us out to play. We squealed with delight as we joined the three little pigs, in a quilt sure to be loved by a child. 

I keep small HSTs made from cutoff triangles in a container, they made quick work in making some 4 1/2'' churn dash blocks.

auditioning spacer strips

In order for my pieced border of churn dash blocks to fit. I first needed to add spacer strips to do this I measured the centre, top to bottom of the piece. Time for some simple math. In my case the piece was 16 1/4'' long, add a seam allowance of 1/2''. So, I cut my pieces 1 3/4'' by 16 1/4''. Do the same to determine the strips that go on the top and bottom in my case 15 1/2'' x 2 1/4''. Sew the left and right spacer strips and then the top and bottom. Now I was ready to add my borders, which fit perfectly. 

the borders looked wavy, I just tossed and snapped the photo, this caused the quilt to look wavy

my new quilter holder upper is my grandson, he can be quite the character. As you can see the borders are not wavy.

I quilted straight lines in the green borders, in the print border I quilted pig and wolf outlines with loops. 

And that my gentle readers is the story of how the three little pigs and the scraps lived happily ever after together. 

The END!

For more Fairy Tales be sure to check out the rest of today's bloggers:

Tuesday, June 22

Quilted Delights

Stitchin at Home you are here

Karrins Crazy World

 Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!

Sewing Up My Fabric

Selina Quilts

Scrap Pluses H2H

 For my second H2H quilt I used 2'' squares, I had an overabundance of them. Even after making the quilt I still have lots left.

sorting out the 2'' squares, these were not the only ones I had

The pluses for the top used 648 squares, 24 across and 27 down.

auditioning borders

For the red and black border, I used 2'' squares. I used up different values of black from my black scraps, the red squares were cut from a 1/2 yard piece that I've had for a while. I think it was a Jinny Beyer piece.

I see some pluses should have been moved around for better colour placement

I bound the quilt with the same red I used in the border. For the quilting in the body of the quilt, I did loops and hearts. In the border, I did some straightish lines, and in black squares, between the red, I did elongated figure 8's.

border quilting

This quilt will also be going to Ronald MacDonald House in London, Ontario.  It finishes at 43'' x 47''. I used Hobbs 80/20 batting, my favourite batting, and Superior So Fine #50 403 Putty for the body of the quilt and 411 Black in the borders. 

I will be linking up to Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Sailing Along H2H Quilt

 While sorting fabric in my quest to use up more of my stash I came across a bag of scraps that someone had given me. I think they have been percolating for at least 5 years or more. 

these were the scraps and as you can see they were not all straight cuts

The challenge was on! Could I make a quilt top using just these scraps?

16 1/2'' x 16 1/2'' centre 

Time to start adding borders.

three borders added

After adding three borders it was getting there, but I still wanted it bigger. It was only 33'' x 33'' and I was running out of scraps, but that didn't stop me.  I added a couple more to each end bringing the size up to a 33'' x 42'', a small baby quilt. Perfect for Ronald MacDonald House, my charity of choice.

Some simple curls and swirls for the quilting to keep the quilt soft

One less bag of scraps, and the real plus they are going to a worthy cause.

Inventory Quilt Project

Have you heard of the Inventory Quilt Project being hosted by Just Wanna Quilt? The idea is to use one piece of each fabric in your stash to make a quilt to show your stash all in one quilt. You can use fabrics in one colour, for example or maybe the more the merrier version. I'm the more the merrier kind a gal with my project.

 I am one of the featured designers and my turn to showcase my project and pattern is today March 4th.

The pattern I'm using is called 'Flipping Out'. I know strange name right. Here's how it came about I was in a stare down competition with my bonus HSTs and wondering what in the world was I going to do with all of them. Well I can tell you I didn't win the stare down as they seemed to multiply right before my very eyes. I was ready to flip out. Enough already I needed to deal with them and NOW. And that is how a new pattern began.

I have a substantial amount of green and also pink. 5 granddaughters account for all the pink.

If you want to use Flipping Out for your inventory quilt, pick up the PDF pattern in my Etsy store. It is on the introductory sale price of $8 CDN. Pick it up today and join me as I continue to work on mine.
Thank you to Robin Sue for testing this pattern and the editing.

Flipping out uses FQ's or scraps or yardage

If you want to take part in the Inventory Quilt project sew along, there's a Facebook group you can join and you can also use the hashtag #inventoryquilt on Instgram.

Will you be sewing along? If so, will you use every single fabric in your stash, or every fabric in a single colour, or some other variation?

And just for fun let's have a giveaway of one of my patterns for all those who participate using 'Flipping Out'.

Now to get back to playing with my stash let the fun begin!

A Month Goes By

I know how long it's been since my last post and I am not to going to apologize for the lack thereof I had too much fun. Family comes first and I want to spend as much time enjoying my family as possible. Life is too short not to.

That's not to say I didn't touch my sewing machine just the opposite is true. 

a small amount of the fmqing

I have two, both lap size. Yes that's two quilts quilted all on my domestic machines. I will show the BOM for my guild next week, they get first view. The second is a magazine deadline so no pictures just yet. 

If you've ever quilted a quilt on your domestic machine you know firsthand how long it can take. But the results are worth it. No edge to edge for me I have tried but the quilt screams NO so what's a quilter to do but listen.

There was also a lot of laughs and fun in my sewing room so much so I forgot to snap pictures as we went.

One of my granddaughters wanted to sew. I was more than happy to oblige. We had to decide on a project she wanted a real project not just learning to sew seams, she choose a placemat. I thought that was a good idea. We got out my box of strips and she picked what colours she liked.

I taught her rotrary cutter safety and she trimmed the strips to 12 1/2'' by 2 1/2'' with a watchful eye from grandma. 

She made a quilt as you go carefully placing the strips one at a time.

one very proud little quilter

I am so proud of this girl! But the best was listening to her explain how she made it to her non-sewing mom. There may be hope for her mom yet... wait for it. She went out and bought a pink Splash, a cutting mat and a ruler. 

I hope you have had time to see the pleasure and joy in a young face seeing their first project take shape and proudly displaying it to everyone.

Scraps plus a Finish

I'm still playing trying to use as many of my strings as I can. Up first is my finish for the Hands2Help  quilt, you can read more about it here. I went with wavy line quilting kinda. You would think that someone who can do free motion quilting would be able to make wavy lines. Seems like an easy enough thing to do, but getting the lines to flow and wave took a lot more effort than I thought.

back shows the kinda sorta wavy line quilting

I pieced the back as I didn't quite have enough of the fabric I choose for the backing.

scrappy flange binding

Keeping with the scrap theme I used leftover flange bindings. I keep all my leftover bindings in a plastic container that was overflowing.

ready for a child to snuggle in, this quilt is going to Ronald MacDonald house

They were a lot of strings left even after making the string quilt. Now what to do with them? I grabbed a few 1 1/2'' odds and ends and sewed them together in pairs. Trimmed them to 5 1/2'' just because they were the shortest size pieces. I then added a 1 1/2'' by 5 1/2'' white piece between two strip sets. The blocks are 5 1/2'' square. I threw some of them up on my design wall. 

one possible layout

Then I moved on to the bits and pieces of the 2 1/2'' strips and cut them into 2 1/2'' squares. I am making these into 16 patch blocks using them as leader and enders. 

16 patch blocks

There you have my scrap story. Are my strings all gone. NO!!! I don't believe they will ever be all gone but they are more manageable now.