ScrapHappy Saturday - Wrapping up and Winding Down

For those in the US, I hope that you are all enjoying your extended Thanksgiving Holiday.  We've been driving quite a bit and handwork has been tops on my agenda.  Misterlinky is below, please share with us all.

Stringing Along

These string blocks have been hanging around in the background for ages and ages.  Every so often it is fun to pull out and sew mindlessly.  Someday they may turn into a quilt!  It looks like I need some more orange.  I think there is some laundry to be folder first.  Ah Sunday.  The girls want to make cookies and we are out of butter.  Ryan wants to go to the library.  Somewhere in there though, there are plenty of strings waiting to be sewn into more blocks.  

ScrapHappy Saturday - The Begining of the End

And so it begins.  November is the time for filling in loose ends and rounding our your rainbow.  Missed a month along the way?  Now is the time to fill in the blanks.  Let us all know how you are doing.  Misterllinky is below

ScrapHappy Saturday - Veteran's Day Weekend

For those of us in the US, Friday was Veteran's Day.  For the kids that meant a day off of school.  We all went to Universal Studios as a family.  We have annual passes and usually go first thing in the morning and leave when it starts to get crowded.  Yesterday that was just after lunch.  Even after just half a day of theme park fun, the kids were all fast asleep on the way home.  It's been a busy week!  I think staying up late to watch the election results did us all in.

Hopefully you will be able to spend some of your extra time off in your sewing space.  Misterlinky is below, share your projects with us all.

Slowdown on Sunday with Circles

At some point this year, my sewing slowed down to the point that it stopped.

 I had a bunch prepped and ready for long car trips, but there weren't as many of them this year.  Still, January and February are done.  March seems to be mostly done.

After that, it gets a little bit sparse.  June seems to be well represented, but there is plenty of sewing still to come.  I've got the stack sitting next to my spot.  I can get a few more in before it is time to take Sydney to lacrosse.
First though, I'll head over to Kathy's Quilts for slow stitching Sunday.

ScrapHappy Saturday -- November Already?

Feeling a bit behind?  November is just for you!  This is your chance to fill in the gaps, start the process of finishing, and generally get your ducks back into their rows.  No new colors are in store, but you are most welcome to add your own to fill in the gaps or use up the scraps.  That's what its all about here at RSC, using it all up.

ScrapHappy Saturday -- Halloween Edition

I hope you are all having a great fall.  For the US, Monday is Halloween.  Though our kids are getting too old to trick or treat, they are still looking forward to the festivities. Before that though, it is the weekend of the all school musical.  Just a few weeks delayed due to the hurricane.  Ryan is in the chorus and Anna is on the tech crew.  

ScrapHappy Saturday

Row By Row - October

 This month we will be making a 9 inch block.  Huge, right!?  It is made from 4 HST units along with a wide (2.5) inch sashing strip in two directions.  I'll be using an easy angle ruler to make the HST units, but you can use the favorite method of your choice.  Each HST is 4 inches unfinished.  Therefore if you are making them from squares cut in half or sewn on either side of a drawn line, then the squares should be cut 4 and 3/8 inches.  Honestly, I would probably use 4.5 inch squares and trim them us a tiny bit at the end, but there are so many ways to make HST units.  Choose your favorite.

 Using the easy angle ruler method, I cut 4 inch strips of fabric in light orange and background along with 2.5 inch strips of dark orange for the sashing strips.

 The sashing strips then need to be cut again into 2 4 inch strips and one 9.5 inch strip per block.

 Stack the background and light orange fabric right sides together and use the easy angle ruler to cut 4 HST units.

 Here are all the pieces ready to go:
4 HST units
2 rectangles 2.5 by 4 inches
1 rectangle 2.5 inches by 9.5 inches

 Sew the HST units along the hypotenuse, trim dog ears and press with the seams going toward the orange.

 The HST units will form the corners of the block.  Arrange them so that the orange corners face the center of the block.  Use the photo for reference.  Use the darker sashing strips to separate the corner blocks.

Sew one HST to either side of each short sashing strip.  Press toward the darker fabric.  Finally, one of these pieced subunits onto either side of the long sashing strip.  Normally I would press toward the dark again, but for ease of assembly of the final blocks into a row, you should press away from the dark and toward the pieced subunits.
For the large quilt you should make 8 of these blocks, and for the smaller version you should make 6.  This is the last block of the sampler.  Next step -- assembly of the rows!

Stepping Back

I've been procrastinating.  Part of it is that I'm not in much a quilting mode lately.  But part of it is that I just wasn't sure that I liked where this quilt was headed.  When I planned it last year, the goal was to minimize the use of background fabric and focus on color.  There are three blocks though, that have a significant amount of background fabric, and they seem to all be clustered together.  I think that spreading them out by rearranging the rows might help things out.  I also think that the original block that I had planned needs to have more background pattern.

This was my original block plan.  I'm thinking now though, that it is too busy.  I'm working on a simpler version though, one that has some background fabric.  If I spread out the four rows with predominant background fabric, I think that will balance things better.  

Here's my fabric, and my original plan.

This is the new block I'm going to use instead.  It is a variation of a hopscotch block, or a variation of a shoofly.  I'm not sure if it has a name.  I'll work on the tutorial as soon as LAX is over (DH out of town again).  For now though, the corner units are 4 inch half square triangles, and the cross units are from  2.5 inch strips.  More to come.