Around The World Blog Hop

Andee at Modern Diary has invited me to participate in a blog hop.  Amy and Ros are also up today, so be sure to check them out as well.  The idea of the blog hop is to talk a little about your quilting process and then invite three other bloggers to post the following week.  I'm opening my invitation up to the first three readers who would like to post next week about your progress.  Just leave a comment on this post asking to join in the fun and I will add a link to your blog at the bottom of the post.

For anyone who doesn't usually follow along, I'll take a few minutes to introduce myself.  Hi, I'm Angela, and I have a quilting problem.  I started with a baby quilt for each of my three children, now teenagers, but before I knew it, quilts had started to take over!  I had fabric and blocks and thread everywhere.
For the last few years I've been hosting the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  The ideas is simple, rather than letting your scraps overwhelm you, use them up  -- one color at a time.  Each month I choose a color and invite anyone who wants to join in to use their own scraps to sew something.  The projects are as varied as the quilters who share them and it is a never ending source of inspiration and encouragement.
This year I was lucky enough to have a sponsor.  Fancy, right?  Vicki Welsh has been kind enough to provide some of her lovely hand dyed fabrics for giving away to to RSC participants.  We've already been working together to plan for next year and I'm even more excited for what we have to look forward to in 2015.  I've designed a special quilt with her fabrics as the focus and will have tutorials each month for anyone who wants to join in.

I've always got WAY too many project going on at the same time.

Right now my big project is a Rainbow Scrap Challenge Dear Jane.  All the center blocks are done.  I'm working up some energy for those side triangles!

 My first foray into hosting a quilt along has been a sampler quilt of 6 inch rainbow blocks.  I've been posting tutorials for blocks to go along with the color of the month all year long.  Some of the blocks are traditional and some are a little more modern.  Variety is the fun part of samplers. I've been letting some setting ideas simmer and I'm starting to get excited about putting all of my blocks together.  I think it will have a modern twist in the end.

 I love anything with scraps, the tinier the better.  Lately I've done quite a bit with postage stamps.  These little blocks are 36 patches.  They were "extra" bits from another project.

This is the block that started it all. 

  As  side effect of using ALL of my scraps, I've started working with tiny blocks lately.  The nine patches in are made from 1 inch strips.  I'd love to do more with miniatures in the future, but it takes a long time to use up scraps that way.

I even, occasionally, make quilts that are not rainbow themed using patterns by someone else.  This Hawaii Sunset quilt was inspired originally by Jo, and when Andee, and Amy and Andra all joined in, I knew I was doomed.  Even though it is a reproduction pattern, I still seem to gravitate to the bright and happy colors.  

  Every so often I go on a binge of finishing, usually during summer vacation, when I have some time off from school.  The advantage of having so many projects in the pipeline is that it is always easy to pick something in the "almost done" stage to finish off when motivation is running hot.  

 My design process usually starts with an idea or pattern that I find while enjoying all of the great quilt blogs that are out there.  I love to pin inspiration quilts on Pinterest.  Rarely do I try to duplicate a quilt exactly, instead I love to combine my favorite parts of different quilts to end up with something unique to me.  This batik star quilt for my Aunt Brenda started with a simple star block, but was designed to use two colors of background fabric based on a sampler quilt that I had seen along the way.

Though I do have quilt design software, I love to sit with graph paper and colored pencils to plan out my quilts.  Sketching out quilt blocks is a great way to stay occupied while sitting through a faculty meeting of waiting to pick up one of the kids.
Want to play along with the blog hop?  Be one of the first three to respond to this post and I will tag you to join in next Monday.