Rainbow Connection: RSC 2023 and 2024 Progress

This is my original Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt of 2023. I had three ongoing projects, and just have one left to get into a flimsy and quilted up for a donation quilt. This one will be donated somewhere too.

The original dark blue blocks were in this post. It is a quilt from Quick & Easy Quilts August/September 2022. Mine is a scrappy version of the Saskatchewan designer's quilt.

I posted on Instagram the back building I was doing a couple of weeks ago. I've long been a builder of quilt backs, though they may not be as pretty as Kelly's!

The beautiful shimmery (photo doesn't do it justice) bright yellow fabric that is brighter IRL was supplemented with some scrap chunks of golds and browns.

Because there was a fair amount of black in the quilt, I decided to use leftover chunks of Hobbs black cotton/polyester 80/20 batting. The biggest chunk was left over from Rainbow Neighbourhood, which Hobbs had kindly sent me. That left only a third of the quilt to Franken-batt...

I used a pretty celery green Exquisite polyester thread that quilted up beautifully.

It's really a great batting, and as you can see, doesn't affect the brightness of the bright colours, or the bright yellow on the back. That largest gorgeous yellow cotton by Schwartz Liebman Inc (I've never heard of them) is a hunk my aunt gave me a few years ago when she was doing a little downsizing of her very large dressmaking and home décor stash. Sadly, she doesn't even know what has happened to it all now; two of her three kids have commandeered her life, cutting out the eldest daughter as well as one of my sisters and even myself, because I spoke up for her, despite she and I sharing so much in common with our love of sewing. I have a rage quilt about elder abuse that wants to be made...one day.

These constant grey skies do not make for true colours; the yellows and golds are much much brighter.

I pulled almost every last bit of leftover binding chunks from the bag where I store them. I've been so good at using these up that I didn't have enough for this quilt, so I cut another couple of strips from a black and white fat quarter as well as a strip from a .2 metre piece of Northcott floral stripe that worked surprisingly well as a binding! I have just 5" left so I plan to turn it into two strips of binding to be used somewhere. I am feeling really great about how much is getting used up!

Speaking of using up, I almost finished off my red strips making my blocks for my Lego quilt RSC Project #1 and a placemat for Meals on Wheels. Because I mostly do the RSC blocks as leader/ender projects I’m already done my red blocks for February!

Since my dark green strips are still so plentiful, I made a placemat with them too, even using some for the binding.

The backs are the same. Yes, I used up almost all of this ancient chunk of fabric in my 1/3 yard and less Sterilite drawers.

Just how old is ancient? Well I had to think where I had used this, and it was bought for the back of my first paper-piecing mini, which, you can see from the Micron Pigma pen notation, was made in February 1997!

Before I forget, my actual leader/ender project is the bindings leftovers quilt. Here are eight 6.5” blocks with red 2.5” squares.

January was a very productive month for finishes and progress. I plan to keep this up, (SAHRR work is on tomorrow's agenda) though I am going to be working hard on my Spring QAL in February.

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Designed by Judy McCrosky of Saskatoon, SK

Size: 50.5” square
Fabric: scraps and stash

Batting: Hobbs Heirloom 80/20 black

Backing: Stash and scraps

Quilted: on Avril 29 632 stitches

Threads: pieced with various cottons; quilted on Avril my Avanté with Exquisite polyester, Bottom Line in the bobbin

Xena update:

Her surgery went well with no issues. They are keeping her for a couple of nights, monitoring her temperature and incision. After getting her cone off almost immediately following waking up post-surgery, she kept it on the first night and today they said she was doing well. We may be able to bring her home tomorrow. This is different from Rocco because we brought him home shortly after he'd woken up. Seeing his swollen badly bruised, (purple and black), poor leg nearly had me fainting, so I'm hoping that some of that will be gone for Xena by the time we bring her home. Here she is on Monday, the day before her knee surgery:

Meanwhile Rufus is loving life, getting to have his toys all day long. Toys started suddenly terrifying Xena for some unknown reason, the cow especially, which Rufus adores. Sigh. He’ll be able to be outside on the deck now with them for short periods. Xena is happiest when he’s by her so we won’t keep them apart for too long at a time.

Linking up

My Quilt Infatuation

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Alycia Quilts

From Bolt to Beauty

Songbird Designs

so scrappy