Minis and Organization

I wanted to hang some mini quilts near my octagonal thread shelf. Kurt saved some extra wood trim that I used to stabilize the backs. I just sewed a folded square of fabric into the binding on the back of the two top corners and then used the small wood scrap to perch the quilts across a couple of thumb tacks. They are very small quilts, so they didn't need much support. 

I don't seem to be able to throw away bonus half square triangles. After going crazy with the new loc block ruler, I have plenty of tiny little blocks for mini quilts, coasters or mug rugs. These little guys are 5 inches each. They are so cute that I almost hate to use them. I added some hand quilting which I thought finished them off nicely.  

My project totes are all nicely organized for the new year. I have them numbered and try not to start a new project until I have emptied a tote by finishing off an old project. Most are ongoing projects, but some are collections of subunits. Typically I try to have one tote for each size of subunits, so one each for crumbs, strings, 2.5, 2 and 1.5 inch squares or strips. I don't have a 1.5 inch project right now since I finished the log cabin quilt for the cabin. I might cycle a new project back in when something else gets done. There isn't space for any more totes, so I have reached the limit of my capacity. I think that 12 projects is plenty for me to keep track of. 

1. Show Me the Receipts - crumb paper piecing strips (I am thinking of re naming this one Cash Register Confetti) 
2. New Moon - String block circles
3. Salt Water Taffy - Churn Dashes and Chains in Aqua 
4. Tiny Tuesday - 3 inch miniature blocks
5. Christmas Wedding - red and green double wedding ring
6. Sweet Irene - 2.5 inch 16 patch blocks
7. 2 inch nine patches
8. Large Bricks - 2.5 by 4.5 inch
9. Little Loggies - Paper pieced mini log cabin blocks
10. Small Bricks - 2 by 3.5 inch
11. Triangles - Bonus half square triangle blocks
12. 10.5 inch squares for quilt backings

Right now I am working on Salt Water Taffy, but I just saw a new idea that I want to try out for the 2 inch nine patches. And so the cycle continues...

 

ScrapHappy Saturday - 2026 Edition

After focusing on finishing projects before the end of December, a new year is always a great time to think about fresh starts. I finished 9 quilts this year, and made one rustic quilt ladder from a cherry plum tree that was struck by lightning. There should be links to each finished project on the "My Quilts" tab. 

This year I will focusing on making blocks from my strip bins. I keep 1.5, 2 and 2.5 inch strips in drawers under my handiquilter and pull from them on a regular basis for new projects.

These blocks came from the 2 inch bin and used up strips that were at least 12 inches. Each block needs to 5 inch strips and 2 squares.  I pulled a contrasting square  and then stacked up the block kits to use as leaders and enders.

Here are my blue blocks so far. 

What are your plans for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year? Think about what kind of scraps you have and then come up with a block that will put them to good use. It doesn't have to be fancy (though it can!). It just has to use up some scraps. January is blue this month. Pick a block and jump in! There will be a new color each month, and by the end of the year you will have enough blocks to make a quilt or two. There will be a linky party here each Saturday so that you can visit other people making beautiful rainbow scraps blocks. Be careful though, sometimes it is hard to resist the temptation to make just one more set of scrap blocks. I put a few more details on the RSC26 tab, along with updated tracking sheets if you would like to make a plan. There is also a grab my button widget in the left hand margin if you would like to add my button to your own blog. If you add it in an HTML widget to your own blog, then you should be able to use it as a direct link to come back on Saturdays to see what scraps others are using up!

A Brand New Year

 

Welcome to 2026! Last year was a bit much. Here is hoping to a bit more calm in the new year. January is going to be blue for the #Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I try to start out with a big color when every one is feeling fresh and energized with new year resolve. 

I am using these dot blocks as leaders and enders. I have quite a few done already. It feels like a weekend, but I still have a few more days to sew before school starts again. 

I will spend some time organizing my thoughts today. First up is updating my "My Quilts" page to include my finishes for 2026. I usually make a collage of the finishes for the year. That will happen after I remember what got done. I usually make a collage for each year. It is a nice way to remember. 

I started the day today by pulling out a UFO that was supposed to be a quilt for the daybed in the guest bedroom. That is where Ryan is currently living, so no rush on this one. It was going to be a monochromatic mini churn dash and chains. I quickly got bored with just aqua and started adding in other colors. I have decided to call it Saltwater Taffy and include pink, orange and lime along with the turquoise. The blocks are 5 inches each, so it will take quite a few of them. It is a bit chaotic right now, so maybe a bit more aqua will tone it down and tie it together? 

One of my friends from work had a little get together this afternoon, and tonight we are taking Sydney's new boyfriend out to dinner. This is the first time we are meeting him!  

Last ScrapHappy Saturday of 2025

There is a new button for Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2026. The AI version got the majority of votes, which makes me sad, but it is objectively better than the version that I devised. In the upper left margin, there is a button image with some HTML code in the box below. Just copy that code, and then paste it into an HTML widget on the menu of your own blog. Feel free to use the image in other ways if you do not blog. 

2025 is ready to draw to a close. I hope that means that everyone is ready for the first ScrapHappy Saturday of 2026 next weekend! It is officially time to dig into your blue scraps and settle on a project or two for the year. 

I am off to a late start today as we are celebrating our delayed family Christmas. 

We spent the morning doing Christmas crafts to make t-shirts of the cabin crew complete with Bill the groundhog that Anna designed on her cricket. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - 2 More Saturdays in 2025

And sew the countdown begins! Just two more Saturdays left this year. I will be back tomorrow with a new logo, rollout directions for 2026 and the color for January! Next week, please come back with an end of year wrap up. It is time to celebrate all the great rainbow scraps that you have turned into blocks, projects or quilts during 2025. Misterlinky will expire in 30 hours, so I will get that all straightened out and work on finalizing my plans for the new year. For now, we have had a change in plans and I will work on finishing up a few more projects and tidying things up around here. I dug a little deeper into my project bins and found one more block collection that was nearly complete. These Irish chain leader and ender blocks needed just 5 more blocks to be enough for a small top. Kurt is asking for more smallish cuddly quilts to use at the cabin. I pulled out all the 2 inch strips in brown and sewed them together like binding to make a couple of borders. I always think of brown and green for things at the cabin. 

Then I cut up a stack of flannel shirts that Sydney and I have been collecting from the Goodwill store. They had to be super soft and have the tag color that means they are half off this week. Size large or extra large is preferable. The green and red plaid was a set of XL men's PJs that were half off of 5.99. That is a lot of fabric for $3! It seemed like 14 inches was the largest width that I could consistently cut from sleeves and such, so I just made rectangles that were 14 inches by the longest size I get get. I have a pillowcase full of smaller bits that I can still use for other things. 

Then I cleared out the very last of the extra batting to sew together this collection of random softness. Karen Brown from Just Get it Done quilts calls is Frankenbatting. That is an appropriate name for what turned out to be a perfectly serviceable quit filling. I do have an entire roll of brand new batting, but I didn't want to open it up until all the odds and ends have been used up. The quilt is loaded on the frame and I got a few rows of fans quilted before Kurt made it home from the airport yesterday. 

Kurt had not planned to fly anywhere this week, but he got an emergency call from his dad on Wednesday morning that said, "Come, NOW".  Christine is his dad's wife. They were both widowed and then got married about seven years ago. You might remember that she got sick at Thanksgiving. Unfortunately she never really got better and passed away while Kurt was on the way. He stayed with the next few days with his brother to get arrangements started and we will all drive up together on Monday to bury the ashes. We are still playing things by ear based on when the arrangements come together. Kurt's brother and wife both stayed there and we will try to stagger out support so that he doesn't have to be alone right away. There will be a celebration of life at the end of next month. They had both planned to move into a continuous care facility next month, and the boys are both helping to work out those plans. They were both incredibly organized and pragmatic about planning, but it still seems to be complicated to get everything done following a death. 

I will spend the weekend here getting a few things cleaned and organized. Our washing machine broke last weekend and we got a new one delivered on Tuesday. It is both a washer AND dryer in one and it has been getting quite a workout to catch up and get everyone ready to pack and travel to colder climates. The laundry room needs reorganization as well which will keep Kurt occupied for a few days. 

So, if you have made it this far, let me recap. Come back next week with an end of year wrap up and then be ready with new plans for #rainbowscrapchallenge 2026. I feel ready for a new start and hope that you do to. 

ScrapHappy Saturday - End of Year Frenzy

     

It has been so relaxing to have time off from taking classes to have mental space to sew. I quilted 2 ongoing projects last weekend and then kept digging to find one more set of almost complete blocks. I decided that 8 more blocks would be enough for a seven by 10 setting. And then cut out lattice and cornerstone bits. This one is ready to sew together. I ended up going with a consistent rainbow print for the cornerstones and then stacked everything up next to the machine. I think three of the seven rows are together so far, I will keep working on this one today. First, we need to finish some Christmas shopping and I am supposed to make cookies for work on Monday. So much holiday cheer! I hope that you are finding some time to slow down this holiday season. Being merry can be a bit exhausting!

Sunday Slowdown

It is a beautiful Sunday and I don't have a care in the world. I have no school work, have just finished pulling TWO quilts off the frame and am ready to go and see Wicked 2 with Sydney. 

Here is the 16 patch leader and ender project that had been sitting on the frame forever. I got the binding machine sewn down and thought about sitting down to do the hand sewing. Instead, I think that I will save it for a long car trip. I need to think of something to call this one. Kate at Last Homely House calls it Louis 16, which is cute. It also screams pixels to me. I will have to let that all simmer. I will make sure that it has a name before the binding is done and it makes its way onto one of the bunkbeds at the cabin. If the size is right, then I have plenty  of blocks for another quilt. 

Then, while I was on a roll and the frame was ready to load, I quilted up my official RSC25 quilt which is called Starburst. I don't have any binding for that one yet, but that shouldn't take long at all. 

With a few minutes before we need to leave for the movie, I started to play with logos for next year. 

Here is the one that Microsoft copilot came up with

Here is one that I started working on from that idea. I tried to make the blocks more rainbowish, but I also lost the justification of the text which isn't as nice. Maybe I will keep working on it. I thought having a simple monochromatic quilt design in each block would be nice, but that might be too busy. I hope that you are enjoying your Sunday. Christmas is right around the corner and then it will be time to start thinking about next year. I love thinking about next year!

December Squirrels

 

I got a bunch of hexie blocks sewn in the car on the way to and fro for Thanksgiving. I will try to even up the rows a bit on the next long car trip. And then a squirrel came by and I lost all focus. 

December is the month for finishing up. I have Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2025 quilt ready for the frame, but a random scrap quilt that I forgot about has been sitting loaded on the frame for so long that I don't remember what it looks like anymore. So quilting that up would have been a smart plan. But the backing wasn't quite big enough and so I ignored it for a while. I'm not the only one who hits a small roadblock and then just heads off in another direction, am I?

So I ordered myself a new ruler, it is a tiny Loc Bloc. They are so expensive! And also a rotating cutting mat which is also expensive, but I got a small one that will fit right next to my machine. But I have so many tiny HST triangle units leftover from binding, or from flip and sew triangles. I thought it would be fun to trim those down. I had a head cold on Monday and Tuesday and came home early from work, so trimming down tiny triangles required just the right focus and energy level. 

That led to a few test blocks when I was feeling better again on Wednesday. You know that rush of euphoria you get when you remember how it is to not feel sick? So there are some Shoo-fly blocks from units that are 1 1/8 unfinished. The broken dishes blocks are 1 3/8 HST units. Finally, the Churn Dash blocks use hulking 1.5 inch HST. Somehow in all the sorting out, I also found some pinned units from the house quilt that I made during Covid lockdown. 

I still had a bunch of random triangles though, so I did a few foundation pieced economy blocks. Those are 3 inches unfinished. 

And then yesterday Anna mentioned that she didn't have any ornaments for her Christmas tree. That sent me into another tangent of Yo-Yo blocks which put a big dent in the green and red scrap bins. How are your projects starting to wrap up this month? Have you been starting to think about projects for next year? I know that I have! Just two more weeks of school before the next break, and with no graduate school classes until the new year, I should have some time to sew. 

Giving Thanks

I was so thankful to have a full week off of work. What a nice change it was to spend hours playing with fabric and sorting through scraps! I finished up my last few assignments for graduate school this term, which means that I have a break until the second week of January. I plan to enjoy every single minute!

I played some more with some crumb strips to use as lattice strips. These would be fun to do with receipts. The crumbs are all in little color segregated baggies, so they are easy to play with in small doses. 

I have been sewing a lot with squares lately, and I thought it would be fun to use my strip bins for something different. So here are some 2 inch strip polka dot blocks. I sewed a few for fun ad then kitted up a bunch until drawer had some satisfying open space. Each block needs to strips that are 6.5 by 2 with two matching squares. Then a contrasting square comes out of the square drawer and they are ready to sew. 

Then I worked on the 2.5 inch strip drawers which were quite stuffed. I didn't have a pattern in mind yet when I decided to cut lots and lots of bricks which are 2.5 by 4.5. There were some vintage fabric strips buried in there, it was good to use them up. 

Then I slept on it and decided on simple stair step blocks which can be arranged like log cabin blocks. That led to some 2 inch bricks which are 2 by 3.5 which I tried out in a whirly gig layout. 

Then I set a few 1.5 inch postage stamps by the machine to use as leaders and enders. I just hate to end a seam without something sitting under the presser foot to hold the threads in place. 

That left just enough time to throw the hexie zipper case into the car and head out for Thanksgiving in North Carolina with Kurt's family. It didn't go quite as planned due to some unexpected health issues with Kurt's fathers wife, but she should be feeling better soon I hope. I am scheduling this to post early on Saturday, by then we should be on the road and headed home again! It was an unusually long drive up on Wednesday, but hopefully we will have better luck on the way back. There should be some time to put the prepped hexies together into blocks. After that I will take a turn to drive. Kurt and his brother had to drive his father and sister back home on Thursday, so they are a little bit done right now. It will be great to see home again. It was great to catch up with family, but being home is also nice. I hope you all had a lovely holiday.  Did you find some time to sew?

Thanksgiving!

I have been on a bit of an organizing binge lately. It started because the blue bin was overflowing. So now there is one bin for light blue and one for dark blue. If I had known ahead of time I was going to have two dark bins, the first one would have been darker, but now they are not overflowing. I still need black/grey and brown. 

I also pulled out strings, crumbs and triangles for their own sections. For fun, I started sewing these 2.5 inch strips out of crumbs. I might cut them down and use them around smaller squares. These were WOW layer cake squares that I got when Joann's was going out of business. They are too white and large, but I will still keep sewing some more crumb squares. They are small and simple to make a batch on a week night. 

In graduate school news for the week, my dissertation topic has been approved.  That means I am officially a doctoral candidate. I just need to wait for my committee members to be assigned. Now one of my two classes for this term is over. If I can power through a couple of assignments this weekend then I will have a nice long break for the holidays. 

I definitely have some plans to sew some more today. I have an entire week of for Thanksgiving! It hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I am looking forward to it. I have a few flimsies ready to quilt. That would be a fun way to spend a holiday.