What Was In The Box?

Back at the end of May I blogged about a box of patriotic print scraps.  At that point I was wondering what I could make with all those scraps.  Well, so far I have made this top that measures 60 x 72. It was inspired by a quilt I saw at Petite Quilts. 

It's full of lots of different scraps...

...six inch Anvil blocks, six inch HSTs...

...2 X 4 Flying Geese...

...and there's Pinwheels in the corners. 

So. Did I use up the entire box of patriotic print scraps? 

No!

And actually it looks like there's more in there than when I started. 

Now what? Hmmm....

And sew on...

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

 

Blue Scraps Part III

Square in Square

3 inch blocks.

The centers are 2.5 inch squares. The sides are two 2.5 inch squares cut on the diagonal.  I think I forgot I was using white on black for the background and not black on white when I made this batch.  But it's all good.  (I'm also making a larger version of these blocks and those use the black and white backgrounds.)

These 8 patches are made with 2.5 x 3.5 rectangles.  So if a 2.5 or 3.5 width scrap is large enough for four rectangles it gets made into these blocks. And these blocks will get made into donation quilts at the end of the year.  That little coin strip off on the right side was made from any scraps left over that was less than a 3.5 inch square. 

Some of the 3.5 inch squares were made into Snowballs with light corners.  I have a lot of little 3 inch (finished) Nine Patches that will alternate with little Snowballs. 

If I had enough of a 3.5 inch scrap (6 inches) to cut four 1.5 inch pieces then I made some Switch Plate blocks. 

Bear Paws

6 inch finished.

With 2.5 inch scraps I make four HSTs (cut with Easy Angle ruler). I usually go to my squares box and pull out 4.5 inch squares to make the rest of the Paw. Looks like one Bear Paw needs surgery. These too will get made into donation quilts at year end. 

Windmills

8 inch blocks

The windmills can be made with 2.5 or 4.5 inch width scraps. There just needs to be enough of the scraps for four 2.5 x 4.5 inch rectangles. 

Rainbow Scrap Challenge ScrapHappy Saturday

 

It's A Finish! Jack and Jill

Jack and Jill

72 x 84

It's a finish! 

Tutorial at Klein Meisje Quilts

I think I cleaned out my 2.5 inch width scrap bin AND I wiped out most of the 2.5 inch squares I had in the squares box last year when I made the top.   That's a good thing! 

I also used up a bunch of different dark blue scraps.  That's another good thing! 

This is my favorite type of quilt - scrappy and with lots of fun things in those scraps. 

I quilted it on my DSM with a bright blue thread. I was not really sure what color to use. I never am. Since I had plenty of bright blue thread on hand that's what I used.  I had a bright blue fabric to use for the binding. I thought I had enough but was about six inches short so found a similar blue scrap to fill in. 

The backing is a light blue with little rabbits on it. I've had that fabric around for a long time and thought there was only a couple of yards of it for a small quilt backing. Imagine my surprise when I found it was 2.5 yards of 108 inch wide fabric! 

And sew it goes...

Finished Or Not Finished Friday at Alycia Quilts

 

Life Is Just A Bowl of Strawberries (and Weeds)

This time of year I'm so busy gardening -- getting everything planted, keeping everything weeded and harvesting.  With this heat wave I work outside in the morning from about 6 a.m. until 9 a.m. so I don't suffer any heat related illness.  And I always wish I could do just one more thing.  Instead I come in and take a cool shower and settle down with a big glass of Gatorade to cool off a bit. Our old farm house does not have air conditioning. 

The good thing is that I have been able to pick a couple of quarts of strawberries almost every other day. Then we enjoy them with ice cream in the afternoon. Maybe I'll dig out a strawberry jam recipe. Or maybe I will freeze some strawberries and make the jam when it is cooler. 

And so it grows...

 

I Haven't Forgotten

 

Back in May I challenged myself to use two of my least favorite colors - orange and lime green -- to make a quilt I like. I chose to make an 8 inch Anvil block. I'm not sure about the layout yet but I do know I'm probably going to alternate lime and orange centers. 

I keep pieces for a few blocks cut and ready for whenever I feel like working on them. Slowly but surely the blocks are piling up. Unless I decide to put them on point I am aiming for 80 blocks. I haven't figured out how many I would need for the on point setting. 

Right now I think I have 24 blocks. 

It's A Flimsy! Hole in the Barn Door

Hole In The Barn Door

40 x 60

It's a top!

Blue is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) color of the month. At the beginning of the month I dug into my blue scraps and found a junior jelly roll (20 - 2.5 inch lengths) of icy blues someone had given me.  I decided to dig into my winter/Christmas fabrics and scraps to add more strips to that junior jelly roll. Most of the fabrics I chose were blues with snowflakes.  With those I made a really cool top. 

After that I decided that those chunks of blue with snowflakes were too small to put back into the winter/Christmas fabric box.  I figured I should just add them to my box of blue scraps instead. Or making something with them. But what?  And then the Stasbusters group  came up with the idea to have a Churn Dash Challenge in memory of a group member who has passed away. Churn Dash was her favorite block.   So....how about Churn Dash blocks.   But which Churn Dash pattern? How big of a quilt can I make?  Then I remembered seeing some snowmen fabrics along with the snowflakes in the Christmas/winter box. So, I found enough snowmen on white backgrounds and a few other scraps with winter scenes someone gave me. So...

I found a few white on white (WOW) fabrics with circles (snowballs), snowflakes, etc. 

So...It's snowing. There's lots of blue barns out there. And I see snowmen and snow scenes through the Hole(s) in the Barn Door(s). 

I made 12 inch (finished) blocks - 6.5 inch centers, 3.5 inch HSTs and 2 x 6.5 inch sides. 

This is usually more white than I use in a donation quilt for kids but so it goes. Kids play in dirty snow too.  I usually make kid's quilts 40 x 60 so I made 15 blocks. Columns of 5 blocks made my 60 inch length. I added two 2.5 inch strips between columns to get to my 40 inch width. I didn't have any WOW left for the strips but I did have a gray and white kind of sparkly fabric that looked kind of like hoarfrost ( a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor formed in clear still weather on vegetation, fences, etc) so that was used for the strips. Voila! 

Hole in the Barn Door

And sew it goes...

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

 

Blue Scraps Part II

Six inch (finished) Buekeye Beauty blocks.

I've been making these for a couple of years and this month I finally met my goal of 120 blocks for a 10 x 12 block layout and a quilt 60 x 72. 

I've been using shirts I picked up from the thrift store over 5 years ago as well as scraps in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) color of the month as well as dark multicolor scraps.  This is one of many blocks I picked out several years ago that uses 3.5 and 2 inch pieces. 

I then cleaned most of the 3.5 inch scraps left over from making Buckeye Beauty blocks for years and some blue 3.5 inch scraps and made these 8 Patch blocks.  I have a big pile of them and at year end they will go into making donation quilts.   I like this block because it uses 3.5 or 2.5 inch width scraps and if I have lengths of those widths left over from making a quilt I can easily cut and make a few of these blocks when cleaning up leftovers. 

I also started a new block this week that uses 3.5 and 2 inch scraps. I made these to use up more of those Buckeye Beauty scraps as well as a few blue scraps I had in both 3.5 and 2 inch width scraps.  Not sure of the name of it but I have added it now to my list of RSC blocks and will be combining the RSC color of the month with a solid to make these blocks. 

The block is from an issue of Quiltmania (Issue 68, 2008, #4).  I'm  not making the block per the instructions and my block size is 6 inches. I guess I like looking at pictures. 

Overlapping Nine Patch

(7.5 inch finished)

And still cleaning up all those Buckeye Beauty scraps (3.5 plus 2 inch pieces) plus some blues, I made these blocks. Lynn at Klein Meisje Quilts recently posted instructions for making these blocks.  Might as well make them along with the Quiltmania blocks while I have the solids out. 

And since I use the Easy Angle and Easy Angle Companion ruler to cut pieces for that Quiltmania block I had some extra pieces to make into HSTs. I'll decide what to do with those later but I think I see some cute little Broken Dishes might be in the cards for those 2 inch HSTs. 

And back to some of the remaining Buckey Beauty 2 inch scraps that needed to be cleaned up...I added a few 3 inch (finished) Bow Ties to my collection. 

Rainbow Scrap Challenge ScrapHappy Saturday