Sue

Last week was crazy with medical stuff for both of us, so all I really got done was Week 6 for the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. No oranges so I didn’t link up. But these are cute & I’m proud of myself for keeping up.

And here is Week 7. This is the last of the blocks. Next week is the final week & we have to assemble the top, so I’ll have a flimsy done. So excited to lay it out & see if my weekly scrappy choices add up to a good visual combination.

So excited for these! The orange full & half blocks are the final ones for “Hip to be Square” from “Splash of Color” by Jackie Kunkel. I’ve made the blocks each applicable month this year so next month I’ll start working on sashing them together. I’ve had this book for a long time & want to make all the patterns in it, so I’m happy to be finally making one!

These are my tall nine patch blocks for the Sept-Oct Covered in Love block drive. She has a tutorial & wants them in this saturated fall palette. Most of the fabric came from the chunks donated by my friend’s retired quilter friend. So again, it’s going to good use in her honor. They look a little wild, so I hope they’re OK!

I just cut a bunch & sewed them & ended up with 16, so that’s a good chunk of a quilt for CIL.

I’m calling this “Tumbling Strings” & it was an RSC2020 project. I saw Cathy working on a quilt like this in a previous year using selvages for the strings. I loved the look of it, & decided it was going to be a project for last year. So I added a row each month using my strings & pillaging my I Spy stash. I got all my RSC tops done last year but am slowly getting them quilted & binding on as there have been so many gift quilts to do. But it’s kind of fun to have these RSC projects sneak in.

I got Week 5 done for the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. I’m so proud of myself for keeping up with a QAL! First time ever. Maybe another one in my future? LOL. Three more weeks to go & I’ll have a top done. Wow! So I’m looking at my scrappy fabric choices & it’s amazing how that one on the left looks like a completely different block with the star in less contrast to the background. Since it’s a sampler quilt I guess it will look fine.

Also done this week is the cutting for my new L&E project. This is actually Jelly Belly Bars from FQShop (free pattern), but Patty at elm street quilts was asked to participate with FQS for their release & she personalized it by adding flying geese to the plain centers. I love FG, so immediately printed her tutorial & set aside some fabric. That was at the beginning of 2020 & lately it’s been calling my name from the pile of “ready to go” boxes or kits stored under my cutting table. So now it’s cut up & ready for some L&E action.

My virtual quilting partner & I are closing in on the end of Walk in the Park by Vanessa Christenson. We’ve been working on these blocks off & on for a couple of years using V & Co. confetti ombre & woven gray background. We sewed the blocks into rows this week & in a couple weeks when we get together via FaceTime, we’ll sew the rows & have a top. I got the new V & Co. confetti wide backing in gray & made the teal binding yesterday, so I’m ready to be done & get it quilted!

You may remember this as one of my 2020 RSC projects & now the binding is sewed & it’s ready to give away for a wedding in October. I really love this quilt!

I sewed this top last year & it’s been waiting to get quilted & finished. Finally happened. The pattern is “Color in the Lines” from Melissa Corry’s book, “Charming Baby Quilts”. I want to make one of all of the quilts in the book because they are all so cute. LOL Here’s the first! I made it with a really old set of charm packs that were hanging around wanting to be used & that gold background was also an old stash piece.

These are the blocks for Week 4 of the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. This is the last week my aqua will match the color of the month, but I’m going to keep up with this QAL!

And I started a new project: Rockabilly Swing by Bonnie Hunter. She released it in July but I’ve been watching her make the blocks for a year & wanting to make it, so as soon as the pattern released, I got a copy. I started last week & it took me a bit to remember all the paper piecing tricks & get back in the “swing”. Haha! So the first 4 are done, & I’m busy working on more. I need to make 148 for the smaller size I’m making. That seems like a lot!

I finished “I Love California” this week. It has an aqua ocean, backing & binding, so I’m in the monthly color. The pattern has the state done in scrappy yellows, but I printed a Google Earth image of the state & pieced how it looks from space, with the forest moving into the desert areas. It is for my daughter-in-law’s birthday next month, with a heart on LA, where she grew up.

These are the blocks for Week 3 of the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. The middle one uses some ombre fabric which gives it an interesting vibe. Hope it looks OK in the finished quilt. They are in the color of the month, so yay for that!

These are my final blocks for the July-August Covered in Love block drive. I made 19 & I’m going to send them off. The Friendship Star is from the Fabric Stash Blocks in Oct/Nov QUILT Magazine, Issue #93 but I can’t get the website to load & get a link. (eye roll) The red & white star-in-star is from Week 2 of the Clear Sky QAL. I thought it was a cute block & would work great for the charity drive. The lower left is another from Pat Sloan’s A Flower Bouquet free sew along. This one is Block #8-Geraniums. (Apparently Pat recycles her blocks because I just realized while looking at them all together, that the first block I made last month for this drive is the same block but from a different sew along! LOL) The red 4-patch center comes from MaryQuilts.com.

I got this bound & finished this week for Christmas gifting. I’m calling it “Around the Neighborhood”. The pattern is from “Miss Rosie’s Farmhouse Favorites” & I varied it a bit. There are supposed to be 5 houses on each side of the courthouse steps center with sawtooth stars in the corners. But I swapped some houses for stars & did my borders & star points in grays rather than reds like the pattern. The top was made all from my stash so I’m happy about that scrappy accomplishment.

This flimsy happened this week. All the members of my (now virtual) quilt group bought this pattern when it first came out & we intended to do it as a group project. The other two members bought the Fig Tree Quilts fabric featured on the pattern at the same time but I said I would make it from my stash. Because I have stuff here. (wink) They were anxious & separately just made theirs on their own. I kept putting it off because I was trying to imagine it with my bright oranges. It never made me happy. Last week I had to run into my local quilt store for some backing & they had kits for this pattern with some of the Fig Tree fabrics & similar that matched. I just totally splurged, grabbed one, came home & got going. It’s going to the quilter this weekend & I’ll get it bound for me for this fall. So happy to make something for me!!

I’ve only tried one QAL & had to drop out because life got in the way, although I did eventually finish the quilt. So I’m giving it another go with the Clear Sky Quilt Along with Andy Knowlton of A Bright Corner. I love her patterns & figured this was a great way to make one & use an old Lori Holt print that has four “fat quarters” printed on a yard. I have 3 yards of the same aqua & brown print that I got on clearance when my local store went out of business, so will still have a bunch leftover with the other stash fabric I’m adding in. But it’s a start. These are the Week 1 blocks.

And these are the Week 2 blocks. So cute! But they are not that dark IRL.

And this week’s July-August Covered in Love block drive blocks include Block #2-Bulbs from Pat Sloan’s A Flower Bouquet free sew along. I’m finding stars wherever I see them in my patterns. Even though it’s a bit of a pinwheel, I think it still works as a star shape.

These are Split Star blocks from the free tutorial at blue feather quilt studio. That makes 15-12.5″ blocks I’ve made so far. Wow! I’ve been having so much fun making stars that I think I’ll see if I can get a couple more made next week, then ship them off.