Pastel Streak of Lightning

It's a top!

Streak of Lightning

in pastels.

36 x 45

At the beginning of the year I decided to use scraps to make three different types of "Streak of Lightning" quilts. I had a little box of pastel scraps I intended to use to make a baby quilt. For this quilt I decided to use the instructions at the Root Connection blog to make 9 inch finished blocks. 

Back in January I made 4 "A" blocks and 3 "B" blocks using light blues and grays and neutrals found in my 3.5 inch width scrap box. 

So this month when the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) "color" of the month is pastels I decided to finish up blocks and assemble the top for this little quilt. 

And sew on...

RSC ScrapHappy Saturday

 

Red Scraps

Courthouse Steps

8 inch

Made with 2 inch width scraps

Streak of Lightning

9 inch blocks

Made with 2 inch squares and 2 x 3.5 rectangles

A and B blocks

Top Row - A different Streak of Lightning

6 inch

Made with 2 inch squares. "Streak" in black on white fabrics.

Bottom Row - Puss in the Corner Variation

6 inch

Made with 2 inch squares and 2 x 3.5 rectangles.

Buckeye Beauty

6 inch

Made with 2 inch squares and 3.5 inch HSTs.

Red is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) color for March.

This week I mostly worked with the red scraps in the 2 inch width bin. The Buckeye Beauty blocks that needed some red HSTs took me into the 3.5 inch width scrap bin for red scraps. So now I will work on reducing the 3.5 inch width red scraps. Stay tuned...

And sew on...

RSC ScrapHappy Saturday

 

More Green Scraps

NOT Disappearing Four Patch

9 inches

Made with solid and shirting scraps

I like the look of Disappearing Four Patch (D4P) blocks but I don't like to make a Four Patch, cut it apart, rearrange pieces and then sew pieces back together again So I just cut pieces and make the end result. 

This is the last day for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) color green. I am anxious to see what new color of scraps I will be sewing with in March.

Uneven Shoofly

10 inch

Made with floral and shirting scraps.

(Just like grandma used to make!)

Streak of Lightning

6 inches

Made with 2 inch squares.

Streaks will be black/white fabrics.

Another Streak of Lightning

9 inch blocks

Made with 2 x 3.5 rectangles

This one takes an A and B block.

Wonky Log Cabin Duckworth Style

6 inch

One color blocks made from scraps will have centers in a complementary color.

New start because this month the theme in my sewing space to move UFOs forward has been "log cabins and variations".  I have a lot more green scraps to sew into Wonky Log blocks but this is all I have managed to make so far.

And sew on...

RSC ScrapHappy Saturday

***

Finished a book! When the World Fell Silent by Donna Jones Alward. "Historical fiction novel set during the 1917 Halifax Explosion, exploring loss, resilience and hope through the lives of two women."  I had never heard of the Halifax Explosion so I found it interesting at the end of the book to read the author's notes about some facts of the Halifax Explosion.  I liked the book because I like books about bravery and survival and I like historical fiction. I did find the book rather slow moving.

***

Happy 17th birthday to my grandson Jacob! I witnessed his birth and can't believe 17 years have passed already. 

***

February weather here in Iowa has been weird. We have 60 degree temps one day and below freezing the next. And the ground is very dry so we could use some precipitation but I sure don't want that four feet of snow they have out East. 

From the 3.5 Inch Width Scraps

 

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NOT Disappearing Four Patches

9 inch

I like the look of Disappearing Four Patch blocks but don't like to make blocks and cut them apart to make another. So I just went straight to making the end result.  I will be making these from 3 inch width scraps of solids and thrift store shirts/plaids.

Streak of Lightning

9 inch blocks

I have quite a few pastel 3.5 inch strips in my bin so decided to make these blocks - a third version of blocks called "Streak of Lightning" that I am making this year.  This SOL needs an A and B block.

Last week I was also working with scraps from the 3.5 inch width scrap box that I hope to empty by year end.  From the remaining blues I cut bricks 3.5 x 6.5. Then I cut squares and rectangles 2 x 3.5 and 1.5 x 3.5.   After that I pulled out the small pieces in the box no matter the color and cut squares and rectangles. My goal was 120 -1.5 x 3.5 pieces for the next round of Pie Birds.

And now maybe I will go dig into my 2.5 inch width scrap bin to see what blue treasures I have in there to work with. 

And sew on...

Rainbow Scrap Challenge ScrapHappy Saturday

From The 3.5 Inch Width Scrap Box

 

The other day I posted about digging into my 2 inch scrap bin with a plan to empty it by year end. I left off with four patches for Buckeye Beauty blocks. So, now I am continuing on into the 3.5 inch width scrap bin. I have pulled out the blues and used pieces long enough to cut and make HSTs to finish up Buckeye Beauty blocks. I have been making them from scraps since last year.

Then I dug into the blue 3.5 inch squares. Sets of four went into uneven 9 Patches with the center strips pulled out of the 1.5 inch width scrap bin. This is a new start. I will just make them all year and put them into comfort quilts at year end.

Sets of two squares went into Four Patches. This is a new start and I have no plan for them right now. At year end I will decide what to do with them. Quite possibly they may be used as an alternate block.

I made Hollow Nine Patches with novelty squares. This is another new start and will make a cute comfort quilt for a child.

Then I made Nine Patch Snowball blocks. I started making these back in 2023 According yo my UFO list; however, I did not get very far and only have nine blocks not counting these. I think I ran out of 3.5 inch width scraps and squares and have not worked on them since 2023. My goal is 48 blocks for a quilt like the one I made back in 2018. I think I will make goal this year!

Oh, and one other thing...I made a few more Streak of Lightning blocks from 2 inch width scraps. In my blog post the other day I mentioned I needed to make A and B blocks in order for my diagonal streak to appear. So I made B blocks...

...So now with A and B blocks I am streaking! 😉

I have a lot of longer blue 3.5 inch width scraps so will be working with those for awhile.

And sew on...

Rainbow Scrap Challenge ScrapHappy Saturday

From The Two Inch Width Scrap Bin

 

It's a top!

Courthouse Steps

40.5 x 54

Whenever I am blessed with a box of scraps I go through them with my little ruler in hand and measure the width. Scraps less than 6 inches in width get sorted by scrap width. Any scrap greater than a six inch square gets sorted by color and I call those scrap chunks. 

I was looking at my overflowing 2 inch width scrap bin and decided to make a plan to try to empty it.

The first thing I did was pull out all the longest strips. Most of those were greens and browns. I used the greens and some of the other colors of scraps to make 14 inch unfinished Courthouse Steps blocks. 

12 blocks made a nice sized child's comfort quilt. 

I started some 11 inch unfinished Courthouse Steps blocks with brown and cream scraps. 

I have made the first round on 35 blocks. 

Right now they measure 5 inches. I think I pulled enough brown scraps out of the bin to finish the blocks. If not I will cut 2 inch width strips from brown scrap chunks. 

When I saw the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) color for January is blue I pulled out all of the blue 2 inch width scraps. I decided to make 8 inch unfinished Courthouse Steps in blue and light neutral scraps. I will make as many blocks as I can each month in the RSC color. 

Before the RSC color was called I played around with some gray scraps. I have seen two different blocks called Streak Of Lightning. One uses squares and 2x 3.5 rectangles and finishes st 9 inches. The other uses 2 inch squares and finishes at 6 inches. I decided they would make good use of some smaller scraps on the bins do added them to my list of RSC projects.

So...with the blue scraps and white and black squares for the "streak" I made 6 blocks.

This is the scrap with my scribbled instructions for the other Streak of Lightning block I saw several places online.

I made four blocks. When I put them up to take a photo I quickly realized a streak was not going to form. I think I need A and B blocks. B needs to be the same configuration but with darks in the light position and vice versa. 

I made a few Easy Breezy blocks. This is an RSC project from last year. I only need a few more blocks to meet my goal. 

I also made some Four Patches with the blue scraps and black. That is in prep for Buckeye Beauty blocks. I need to make some HSTs from blue 3.5 inch scraps so maybe that is the scrap box I will tackle next. The Buckeye Beauty blocks were a RSC project started last year and I think I am only half way to my goal so I will continue to make these from scraps in 2026.

Oh...one last thing with blue 2 inch scraps..I put some aside to make 25 patch blocks. A few months ago when I was working with orphan blocks I noticed I had thirty 25 patch blocks in the red,white and blue orphanage. I made those blocks several times when I had blue scraps leftover from making patriotic quilts. I decided to pull those out and make more blocks and add sashings for a comfort quilt. 

And sew on...

****

I have been feeling dizzy the last few days do I have been taking it easy and napping a lot. I finally feel a little better today. Not sure what that was all about!

Streak of Lightning

It's a finish!

Streak of Lightning

52.5 x 73.5

It is mostly made of 14 quarts of warm scraps that came into my possession a couple of years ago.

  I finished the top way back in May 2021. 

Finally this quilt made it to the top of the quilting pile. 

I had a sort of woven look red and yellow piece of fabric to use for the binding. 

I quilted it on my DSM with a variegated thread in colors of a sunset. I only quilted in the dark streaks of lightning. I don't know what you call that quilting -- scribbly lines? 

I added the last of the popcorn fabric I've had forever to the yellow mix of fabrics. Wonder if anyone will notice there is popcorn here and there throughout the quilt. 

It was starting to rain the other day when I was taking the clothesline photos so I snapped them in a hurry. This morning when I went to post about this finish I noticed I didn't take a photo of the backing so just had to do that this morning. Someone gave me that fabric for the backing and I just had to show how perfectly it matched with the front full of scraps that came from someone else. And now the quilt can move forward to yet another person to enjoy. 

And sew on...

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

 

Tales From The Scrap Yard: 14 Quarts of Warm

Streak of Lightning

It's a flimsy!

52.5 x 73.5

This is quilt top #6 made mostly from scraps that came to the Scrap Yard back on March 24.

This top consists of lots of 3.5 inch (finished) HSTs made with warm colored scraps.

I used the Easy Angle ruler to cut the HSTs from 4 inch width scraps. I sewed together 9 HSTs into a block of the same configuration (10.5 inch finished) and then turned alternate blocks upside down to get the streak of lightning effect. 

I had to add some of my own red, yellow and orange scraps to the gifted scraps to make Streak of Lightning. 

Back on March 24 I received several bags of scraps and I decided to document all the donation quilts that I am able to make from those bags of scraps in Tales from the Scrap Yard. 

 I sorted all of the scraps into various categories and one of the sorts was a bin of warm colors - "14 quarts of warm". (Why do they use quarts as a bin volume measure? Why not call it a 3.5 gallon bin?)

The "14 quarts of warm" consisted of several chunks. I pulled out the largest chunk - the lollipop flowers- to use in a pieced quilt back. Most of the rest of the chunks went into Streak of Lightning. 

Now I am left with some strips of different lengths I sorted into little bundles by width. 

 I will now probably make blocks to add to WIPs. Most of those WIPs are Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects. 

And also in "14 quarts of warm" there is a big bag of pieces for crumb blocks. What I consider as crumbs are small odd shaped pieces. I'll deal with all the different bags of crumbs that came to the Scrap Yard at the end of the process. I've got a lot of my own crumbs to use and I have been thinking of a few different crumb blocks to make. 

I've been blogging about all that I make from the March 24 gifted scraps (aka Candra scraps) in Tales of the Scrap Yard.

As seen previously on Tales from the Scrap Yard: 

The Bag of Green

• Backstory and Quilt Tops #1-#3 
• Quilt Top #4 
• Quilt Top #5 and Farewell to Green

 Finished or Not Finished Friday at Alycia Quilts

Peacock Party at Wendy's Quilts and More