Into The Green

The title for this post popped into my head early this morning when I was sitting on the floor, playing in the green bins of scraps/small stash. It's also the title of an excellent book, one of my favourites of his, Into the Green by Charles de Lint, an excellent Canadian fantasy author.

Bella loves it when I sit on the floor, and was especially ectstatic to help dig through, and get into, the green

With just over a week to go in May, it's high time I work on my two RSC 2016 scrap projects.  This is the first one, my Whirling Star block.  You can find the tutorial here or click the Tutorials tab up top, and it's on the list.  Angela said think of the greens in a forest, with a bit of brown.

That was my view first thing this am, rich green forest getting fuller each day

Started pulling.

One reason why I don't trim the selvages off when I buy fabric is that I like to know whose fabric it is. These two pieces are pretty old; I'd hazard a guess that that is the, or one of the first lines of Nancy Halvorsen's.

The Benartex fabric (goes back quite a few years) is such a rich, full of depth piece.  I have it in ivory as well, known today as low volume.  Anyhow, I knew that green would evoke thoughts of the forest.  There are also brown tones in it.  The Berry Patch is a scrap from a scrap, LOL.  My aunt's quilt has some scraps in it, and this was left over after cutting the pieces.


Back to the Whirling Star.  Can you spot the FQ bundle of Benartex fabric on the left? (These gifts--yup I got two, one is Nancy Halvorsen's newest! and no, I did not plan to link all this when I set out to write this post!--are not blogged about yet).

Three of the four whirling strips fabric have trees on them, the fourth has grass :-)

On some of the blocks, I had the strip-pieced units with the dark in the centre, radiating to light, on others the light has been in the centre.  Set them both up; got MacGyver's opinion after I knew which way I liked it best.  We agreed!

Confession:  the adorable line drawn cat faces is not scrap, just stash but it happened to be catch my eye.  The French text fabric is not exactly quilting fabric, being a slightly heavier weave.  It's what I recovered my hope chest with but I knew it would work with the cats!

Intriguing point to note: somehow, somewhere in the Internet vortex today, think it was while doing a little 'Pinterest-ing', I came across this post on the blog, Use the Loot, from 2011:
Scroll down to the fourth photo!!!  So okay, that block is my block's centre, not set inside the star as I have done.  I designed this block quite by accident (it's explained in the tutorial) and I certainly had never seen that post from Use the Loot until today.  The whirl even goes in the same direction, and there are 4 rails to the 'fence'!  (It is possible to have it whirl in the opposite direction.)  I recently heard on CBC Radio 2 a host's thoughts on original art. Basically it was that all art is inspired from something, whether a melody, or a painting, or a piece of writing, etc.  I was just so surprised to see 'my' block centre in a nearly 5-year-old post from a blog I've never heard of. 

Here are 5 months of colours (note, I have two of each block; they aren't shown here, and I hadn't finished constructing the second green block):

Yikes!  I somehow have my watermark twice, once sideways! LOL  Ah well, that photo will be worth a bunch of money some day, right?!  Anyhow, took this for one of the Missing Market posts on Instagram, showing your favourite thing to do with scraps, and this is my current favourite.  Do you see the small scrappy rectangle about mid-centre?!  That is scraps from the green Whirling Star and scraps from my aunt's quilt!  It grew...

I nearly trimmed off the Nancy Halvorsen on the selvage, and then had a brainwave...cool, huh?!  All of these except for the scroll ivory fabric are scraps from the current two projects, the star blocks and my aunt's quilt!  This slab will go into my Scrap Vortex, which is a leader/ender project for the most part.

The third Benartex item in this post, and a note about Market in SLC, Utah, are you participating in any of the ongoings in Instagram or elsewhere?  If you follow Sew In Love With Fabric's blog, are you doing the Find that Fabric challenge?  I am!

Linking up with soscrappy.

Remember to check out my post for Lara's new book (see the sidebar) Crafted Appliqué.  There are two giveaway prizes on that post, a signed copy of her book, and the pattern for the project I made. You can get a peek of the pattern in that same photo with all the star blocks and Benartex FQ bundle.  I will be drawing two winners tomorrow night and announcing it on Monday.  And!  If you want a great deal on a Craftsy class, click that sidebar button or the link before midnight tonight when the sale ends.  I am an affiliate, so if you make a purchase I will get a commission on it.