Four Top Roundup

 Back on February 6 I blogged about some Little Cowhand fabric I found on sale that I wanted to use for backings. I also mentioned I had a large flat rate box of cowhand themed fabrics, pieces and parts I could use to make the tops.   Four tops have been made, the backings are ready and the cowhand fabrics are almost gone. 

 #1 top is 42 x 56. 

I had a bunch of 6.5 inch squares already fussy cut and ready to use but needed to cut a few more for this quilt. Then I made six inch Hourglass blocks in red and blue fabrics to use as an alternate block. I was inspired by Julie's post in January to make this top. 

 I cut pieces for my Hourglass blocks from 3.5 inch strips of fabric using the Companion Angle ruler.  You will see later that I cut my fabric exactly the same way to use for Flying Geese Star points.   I didn't want the beginning of the strips to go to waste so I started off cutting HSTs with the Easy Angle ruler. Then I cut several Hourglass/Flying Geese points and then I ended the strip by cutting more HSTs with the Easy Angle ruler. 

That left me with a pile of HST parts I also used up in these four tops. 

 Back to the top...I found this a quick and easy make and I really like it as way to use some big print novelties.  

 I'll be making more of this style of quilt.

And now it is paired up with the backing. 

 #2 top is 40 x 56.  

I had some odd scraps of different sizes of red gingham I used for the star points.  The sashing and some background came from a piece of leftover wide backing. The rest of the backgrounds are bandana prints from that large flat rate box of cowhand fabrics.  

 For the Star centers I used a couple of Little Cowhand fabrics I bought as remnants long ago. It's a different Little Cowhand fabric from that backing fabric I recently purchased. 

 At the top and bottom I added rows of HSTs. I cut some HSTs from red gingham scraps and paired them up with those HSTs I had leftover from cutting the background Flying Geese bodies. 

And here is the top paired up with the backing fabric. 

 #3 top is a 40 x 60 Happy Block top.  I already had 18 of these Happy Blocks in my large flat rate box. They were from a long ago swap.  So I only had to make six more blocks and assemble. 

 So this has basically been a UFO for a long time. 

I didn't have enough of that Little Cowhand fabric for a backing for this one but I did have this nice horse print in my stash - a gift from a quilty friend. 

 #4 is 42 x 45 and made use of leftovers. 

 I had two different Little Cowhand fabrics 12.5 inches x 42 inches in that large flat rate box. One has little cowboys and the other little cowgirls.  I didn't want to cut them up so made a type of Strippie quilt with them.  I used a bandana print and more of that leftover wide with star backing for the alternate strips.

And at top  and bottom I used more of those leftover HSTs and combined them with a red bandana print. 

And for the backing of this one I've pieced together the last piece of Little Cowhand backing fabric and on top and bottom I've added more of that red bandana print. 

Four tops and four backs are ready for some quilting but they are now at the bottom of a big pile of other flimsies waiting to be quilted. 

 And the leftover scraps???...well, I cut up some into a variety of different sizes of squares and are now in the Squares scrap bin.  I had some 3.5 and 6.5 inch pieces that are less than a square so those will get sewn into a strip and combined with other strips someday for a Chinese Coins quilt or two. 

 I had some longer strips I put into different bins I keep by width size. Those usually get made into Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.  These are 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3.5. 

 The remaining HST parts got made into HSTs and then into Broken Dishes blocks. I've been making Broken Dishes blocks from 3.5 inch scraps as one of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects and have quite a pile of them now. 

 This is all that is left in that large flat rate box of Cowhand fabrics. Well, actually the box is empty now. These fabrics are now in the miscellaneous kid's novelties box. 

 While I was out taking photos I thought they might be filming a remake of The Birds around here somewhere. The noise from thousands of grackles was almost deafening. At times the sky was black with them. 

They would sit in the trees for awhile and squawk away. I felt like they were eyeing me as a food source.  Then suddenly there would be a big swooping noise as they all took off at once and flew into trees in the front yard. Back and forth they went for awhile and then they were gone only to be back another day.  Creepy!