Saturday Sewing

 Not a lot of scraphappiness quite yet, but it is definitely next on the list.  I did finish Sydney's valance though and spend the morning with a girl friend planning out a t-shirt son for her son to take to college with him next month. She had already chosen the blocks and ironed on the interfacing, so all the tedious work was done.  We just squared the blocks up and finalized the layout.  I will probably sew the blocks together when we get back from vacation.  Sierra is in the picture (Hi Sierra!), her brother Kyle is the one headed off to college.  After that we took the kids all out to breakfast. 

 Here is Sydney's valance refinished and hung up again.  It was hard to get a good photo with all the sun, but I am happy to have it up again.  The closet curtain is next.  We gave up on those silly bi-fold closet doors years ago when Sydney was in her hanging on things phase, but somehow the curtain never quite got made.  It will be zebra with teal trim, I just have to figure out the logistics.  When we moved in I made shower curtains for two of the bathrooms, I'm guessing it will all come back as soon as I start. 

FIrst Blue Saturday

While organizing the blue scraps I found this little stack of blue nine patches and a bunch of partially complete crumb blocks.  I need to finish up Sydney's valance first, but then I think I'll dig into the blue.  How about you?  Any blue UFOs hanging out?  What are your plans for taming the bin of blue?   Use Mr.  Linky below to share your thoughts and schemes.

Cleaning out the Oldies

I love having my happy color sorted scrap jars.  Making monochromatic scrap projects seems so much less daunting than digging into a big bag of everything.  There was still a drawer of partial blocks, and leftovers and extras that didn't fit into any of the jars though.  I started sewing those together randomly and using the 5 inch GO die to square them all up. I have no goal in mind except to empty the drawer, having a quilt at the end is just an added bonus. 

Slowly

I was sure I'd just whip the pieces of Sydney's room together today.  Somehow more time was spent running around and  cleaning though, so barely a dent was made.  There was a valance over Sydney's window which has been there since we moved in 9 years ago.  I am using the same pattern this time, just with her new fabric choices.  I'll try to get this finished up and then start working on the curtain that will cover her closet.  It will basically be a shower curtain, I am thinking of adding some cute grommets at the top, but other than that it will be pretty simple.  With all that fun waiting, some nice quiet hand stitching of binding might still win out for the evening.  Sometimes an excuse to sit and vegetate is nice to have. 

Happy 4th

It's the 4th of July everywhere, but for those of us in the US it is Independence Day.  After finishing the paint on Sydney's room, I am settled on the couch trying to finish the binding on Goose in the Puddle so that we can use it to sit on during the fireworks tonight. 

Almost Done

 Sydney didn't like her fairy tail mermaid room anymore.  She chose a lovely shade of teal blue that would be right at home in a spa.  To go with it she chose zebra stripes.  She wanted the zebra stripes painted right on the wall, but I think we have convinced her that lots of cool zebra striped accessories would be much better and also easier to change out when she changes her mind in a few years.  (Lessons hard learned)

At the end of the first gallon I was this close to being done.  I scraped the bottom of the gallon and tried to make it stretch, but it just was not to be.  I have a second gallon, but it will save until morning.  There will need to be some touching up and second coating where the decorative paint used to be.

Tiny Tuesday - Endless Chain

 This is Midget Block number 67 and it is called Endless Chain.  It was paper pieced in 16 subsections which were sewn together as a simple sixteen patch.  Each section has 5 pieces which brings the total for this block to 80 pieces.  No wonder it took so long!

 I modified the directions slightly.  Instead of being trimmed to squares, each piece was supposed to but cut as a pie shaped wedge.  The pie shapes were then supposed to have little triangles sewn in between as inset pieces.  I am not overly fond of trying to hand sew inset seams to anything foundation pieced.  Instead I added another corner of background to each section and then trimmed it to a simple square.  It definitely added bulk to an already seem heavy block, but I'm not sure I could have done it the other way with any success. 

So here is Endless chain, with all its tiny little angles.  This one really would be pretty as a full sized quilt, with bigger blocks of course.  It makes a nice star shaped section when all the blocks come together. 

Christmas in July

Whipping up 8 more log cabin blocks didn't take long, by lunchtime I was ready to web all the blocks together.  I think this one needs a red border, followed by a green border --  somewhat wide to tone down all the wonkiness.  The blocks are 8 inches finished, so far that makes this guy about 48 by 64.  Not exactly huge, but with borders it will be big enough to snuggle under. 

Best of all -- another empty project tub.  There are still a few leftovers of the leftovers to deal with, but this tub is toast. 

Design Wall Monday July 2, 2012

I am on a quest to clear out all the moldy oldies.  Experiments in bags, block collections in corners, PIGs, WIPs, UFOs and otherwise.  These wonky log cabins started as a bin of scraps gifted to me by a neighbor who was moving away.  I had planned on turning it into a quilt top and giving it to them before they left, but here they are, several years later, still waiting to be finished.  I sewed up all that were in progress, and though I have no idea what I was thinking when I made them, it looks like I need four more of each color to call it a quilt. 

Handwork on Sunday

Kathy has started posting a linky on Sundays for handwork.  When I saw it earlier today I was inspired to settle in and enjoy a little hand sewing.  Like Kathy, I still do all my bindings by hand.  As there are now 7 quilts in the stack needing finished binding work, I thought I should get started.  I got some easy thread needles while I was out on Friday and wanted to try using them to finish off the joins where bobbins run out or threads break during machine quilting.  While doing the binding I like to inspect the quilt, get rid of all the little loose threads and generally admire the quilt a little.  Hand sewing binding is a long patient process, so it allows plenty of time for all of that.  While I had handwork in mind, I went ahead and printed out some 4.5 inch blocks that might work with my Midgets.  I think I've just about finished everything that isn't paper pieced and so searched for a few correctly sized blocks to work into the mix.  There were some block of the months from 2010 on the Dear Jane sight that I thought might work nicely.