Scrappy Happy Sunday

 

I set up the quilting frame yesterday, which took most of the morning.   When Sydney is off to college in the fall it can live in her room on a permanent basis, but until then it gets temporary real estate in the family room as needed.  With a long weekend to enjoy and another one coming up for President's day, I should be able to finish a few quilts.   I chose this one because it had backing and binding ready to go.  If I can get the top trimmed and machine stitching done on that then I will have something to do during family time for pizza night.  I suspect we will watch some Olympics together.  

Next, I pulled everything out of the closet to decide which is next.  There are only 4 with fabric for backings together with the finished flimsy.  I guess I will have to keep my eyes open for more backing fabrics!  I've been burning through stash much faster than I have acquired new fabric during COVID, so I don't feel bad about a little shopping.   

So instead of grabbing something ready to go, I started puzzling together 10.5" squares to make pieced backings for two more quilts.  These are solids to use as the backing for #FullStop.  I would like to get this one finished up to bring to a faculty and staff art show that we are having at school.   I'll have to play with the color placement and do a bit of pressing, but I was able to find enough solid scraps to cover the quilt.   

Then I started working on this random collection of floral prints that I had set aside for Garden Trellis.  It is a really ugly collection so far, but I will see what I can do to make it more cohesive.   I was thinking of adding a border or two to this quilt as it is set on the diagonal with bias edges.   

For now though, the sewing space needs a bit of organization. It looks like a fabric bomb exploded in there will all the digging for fabric and quilt frame pieces.   Happy Sunday! I hope you are all up to something scrappy as well.  I am linking to Oh Scrap.   

A Much Needed Break

Today is a school holiday.   I can't remember looking forward to a day off quite this much in a very long time.  As much as things have settled down since a disastrous start of the year, things are still far from normal.   We had the news yesterday that Thanksgiving vacation has been extended by two days to give us the entire week off.   That was a nice surprise!   Two more days to sew and bake and spend time with the family.   My plan for today was to start to put together #FullStop.   It didn't quite come to a full stop, but it certainly has been delayed due to the unusual year so far.   So step one was to pull all the blocks together and start to puzzle them into rows.  Rather than making each block its own row, I decided to combine several of the shorter rows together.   At that point I decided that I would need two more question mark blocks.   The aqua month was a bit of a rush with Covid and tutoring.   

Putting together the blocks from my own tutorial was a bit of fun!  Always nice to make sure that everything is clearly written.  The two extra blocks came together quite quickly.   

After that, I had to make a decision as to how wide the quilt would be.  I chose the quotations to be the longest row.  After carefully pressing, I measured it at 47.5 and decided that all the rows would be pieced to that target.   

So far all of the full rows are pressed, trimmed and measure at a perfect 47.5 inches.   In general, I've just been adding a skinny strip to one end and then a longer strip to the other and marking it to trim to the desired width.   I've just now run out of grey background fabric and will have to let the rest wait until Tuesday at the earliest.  Monday is our grand championship match for academic team.  That will be our last match and I have volunteered NOT to coach the state team this year which means that I will have my Mondays back again.   Now if I can only offload some of my tutoring jobs I will begin to have some free time again.  Speaking of which, I have a Zoom session starting in 7 minutes and should get set up for that.  

I hope that everyone is looking forward to the coming holiday season.   As busy as it has been, it will be nice to have a bit of down time at home.   

 

#Fullstop August Block - Question Mark

Start with a 2 inch strip of teal and of background.   Cut the following pieces:

Teal:

5 inches (1)

3.5 inches (2)

2 inches (1)

Background: 

5 inches (2)

2 inches (4)

Next, from a 1.75 inch strip, cut 4 squares

The 1.75 inch squares are for sew and flip corners.   Place one on either end of the top 5 inch rectangle and use a pencil or erasable marker to draw a sewing line from corner to corner of the square (look at the picture to see how they are arranged).   Each of the 3.5 inch teal strips will get a single flip and sew triangle as well.   

Sew on each of the drawn lines and then flip open the triangles, press and check the alignment before trimming away the waste triangles behind.   You may double sew these if you like for tiny little HST units.   

You should also sew the three two inch squares together to form the bottom row.  Press toward the teal square.   

Arrange your subunits as shown, three vertical strips form the center, with one horizontal strip above and two below.   

Sew the three vertical strips together and press toward the left to reduce the bulk of the seams.   Sew the two horizontal bottom strips together as well.  Press away from the pieced unit toward the solid strip.   

Now you just have three section to sew together.   Press away from the center section.   

Unfinished, this block is 5 by 9.5.  It should finish as 4.5 by 9 in the final row.  Separate each block with a strip of fabric 2 by 9.5.  Make four to six blocks, depending on how many colors of teal you have to work with.