Sue

I made these gray Two-Step blocks from Lissa Alexander’s book “Scrap School”, using 2.5″ squares. I got out the year’s worth of colors & laid them out on the design wall to see where I’m at with this quilt. By putting together about 20 more in previous month’s colors I had a good size lap quilt, so the columns are all clipped together & ready for webbing in the next month or so.

I also got out the Patchwork Hearts by Quilty Love to make the gray hearts & laid them out to find out I’d messed up on the blue month & made an extra, so when laying it out, I decided to make another purple & not have any gray. It’s been on the wall for several days because I don’t have time to sew it together right now & I just stop & gasp at the cuteness every time I walk in the studio, so for now it’s eye candy!

You may remember seeing this tabletopper flimsy done last month. Well, I quilted it & did the binding this week so it’s a finish. And it was gifted to my daughter-in-law for her birthday to match her quilt from last birthday. She was very surprised!

And this week I pieced, quilted, & bound this tabletopper for my November decorating, thus continuing my goal of getting square toppers made for my new square dining table. It’s from a free Moda Countdown to Christmas block giveaway a few years ago. This is called Snowfall by Lisa Jo Girodat at Neverlandstitches.com. So nice to actually use free block patterns I have saved. LOL

This is what I’m working on now: my fourth Breast Cancer Awareness quilt. I make one annually in Sept since my friend passed away in Sept 2021. I bought this kit on sale last Sept & have saved it all year to make now. I got it all cut out & was feeling good about myself.

Then I just got busy making 120 HSTs. Good! Then I started on the hearts. Then I put a couple blocks together. So I’m well on my way now.

Since this month is black, plus Cynthia announced the charity block drive for this quarter & it has black squares, I decided to just spend the week sewing as many as I could get done. It turned into 57! I thought it would use up these color chunks I have hanging around, but all those 5″ squares didn’t finish them off! Scraps forever! LOL

If you want to make some Jewel Box blocks, all the info is here: Block Drive-Jewel Box blocks.

Design wall mania! I’m all done with orange so this week was dedicated to working on a WIP: River Log Cabin by Amy Ellis. I got about half the blocks made from all the cut pieces that have been languishing in a box for more than a year. Also showing off is my progress on the blue & green 2024 Leader & Ender Challenge: County Clare blocks from Bonnie Hunter. In true L&E fashion, I’m just putting them together as I go & if the same blue ends up side by side, I’m not fussed. Since I hate sewing sashing & especially long rows of it, I’m sashing the blocks as I go, then sewing a row to the whole. Very satisfying.

I dug into my previously cut pile of 2.5″ squares to produce 4 rail fence blocks. These are fun sewing & I’m thinking about a quilt layout. Rainbow order or mixed up? Sew the 4 of each color into a block with sashing surrounding? Hmmm.

And the design wall at the end of the day Friday shows 8 wonky FPP Lori Holt hearts on the right in 2 shades of orange, with some blue & green 2024 Leader & Ender Challenge: County Clare blocks from Bonnie Hunter. On the left are Patchwork Hearts by Quilty Love. I made a plan at the beginning of the year of how I wanted the rainbow to flow down the quilt, so there are 3 coral, 2 peach, & 4 orange hearts this month, thus running the gamut of orange. The scrappy block on the far left is a test block of Ocean Waves from The Little Mushroom Cap using leftover HST’s trimmed into 2″ squares. I watched her class at the recent Scrap Summit & thought it would be a great way to slowly use up my piles of cut-off HST’s. I like it & think it will stick around. Look for a quilt in a couple years!

Tula Pink 100 Modern Quilt Blocks-Sliding Scale got to the flimsy stage this week & to the quilter, so I’m very, very happy to have another RSC2022 project almost done.

My orange scraps yielded four Split Nine Patches made of 2.5″ squares. I love the look of these & still haven’t decided how I’m going to lay out the quilt.

I finished the orange blocks for Sliding Scale & sewed all the blocks into rows. I need to cut & sew the grunge sashing to go between all the rows, but I’ve been enjoying looking at it on the design wall so haven’t been in a big hurry. And yes, my homemade design wall is too small, so painter’s tape is holding up the ends.

I got another RSC2022 project done this week! Shine is done & I’m very happy with it. Any quilt with the metallic ombre & an Irish Chain variation is a win!