Dell and June Quilt

I mentioned when I showed the first several blocks I'd made of the 16-patch Scrap-a-Palooza quilt from Quilting is More Fun Than Housework, that it might go to an uncle of mine, or to a senior at the old folks' home across the street from our Ontario home.  Well, I'm happy to say it's going to my Uncle Bob, a senior himself.  In a phone conversation last week, he'd told me how cold he gets in his room when it's bitter outside because the windows aren't very good. He lives in an extended care residence in Alberta where January is quite often extremely bitter.  I've since found out he likes to sit at his window and look out (who wouldn't?) which is when he experiences the cold.  I was hoping he liked blue once I'd thought the quilt might go to him.  And he does.

He was a farmer all his life, so blue and green, Nature's main palette, are perfect.  He has gorgeous blue eyes too!  This was made entirely from scraps, many of them from my Scraps of Calm and Fleurs amassed scraps (can you have scraps from scrap quilts?  Hell, ya!)

I find it quite interesting to let my eye run over all the variety in shades and tones and value of blues and greens!  There is one fabric I used as a light in one block and as a dark in another!  I also love the pops of lime in a couple of the blocks, scraps from Brady's M&M pajamas I made him last year.  I fussy-cut those squares so I got as little M&M colours as possible.

My scrap resources in the green family were pretty limited, the majority of them being up North.  This is mainly why I only did an 6 X 6 block size quilt.  Still, it's 48.5" square, and a nice lap/snuggle size.  I am going to hopefully find some flannel down here, on sale, for a quilt back.  If not, it's off to Fat Quarter Shop or Hawthorne Threads, my two favourite online stores!

Like Cynthia, I like to start putting my blocks up on my design wall once I get a few.  I didn't move too many around in the end, just tried not to have the same fabric touching each other or in the same row or column.

Bella helped with the construction, as per usual:

I loved Cynthia's construction method:

Four 10" strips sewn together

Then sliced apart:

Rotated and sewn back together for a checkerboard effect

I used my Book It! method to assemble the quilt top.  It keeps everything so nicely organized.

Column 1 chain-pieced together and set up for pressing seams in opposing directions

A shot of the design wall.  Column 1 is chained and pressed in pairs; column 2 has just been "booked" as in the right block has been placed right sides together on top of the left block in the column prior to being picked off the wall and stacked carefully, in order, to be taken to the machine for chain-piecing.  Column 3 has as yet to have anything done to it.

One last fun outside shot.

Okay, what's with Dell and June in the title?  If you are a member of my family, you'll know those are Uncle Bob's beloved team of Percherons he had for many many years.  The other meaning is a dell is green and June is a blue-skied month!

I am linking up with Cynthia's new linky party, Oh Scrap! at Quilting is More Fun Than Housework.  I also might just have to make another one of these and take part in the Quilt Along over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and donate it to the seniors' lodge as I had originally thought of.

Grey, yellow and white star quilt

I got the top sewed this afternoon for the quilt for our guild's Boutique fundraiser this Fall at our quilt show:

I'm really happy with it.  It won't take long to quilt; just have to find an appropriate backing in my stash.  It's from Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.  She had posted a few days ago some inspiration for charity quilts.  I can see myself making another of these....or two!  I already drew out another one with a different shape in it other than the star.

I cut the squares 4 1/2", so to make the half-square triangles for the star block I cut a 4 7/8" square, drew a line down the diagonal, sewed 1/4" on either side of the drawn line and then cut on the drawn line to yield two half-square triangle squares.

I used my Book It! method.  You can find it under the Tutorials tab up top.  Here is how it looked for a part of this quilt's assembly:

It's such a cool method, and all the seams butt up so nicely.

On another note, I'm munching as I type on SUCH a terrific salad!!  Soooo healthy, too.

Green Goddess Detox Salad

I saw a picture of this on Pinterest, and pinned it here.  I bought all the ingredients this weekend and made it tonight.  Well I didn't get all the ingredients. . . I didn't read the ingredients properly from Pinterest; hence pea sprouts became sugar peas, and scallions became green onions, and I'd never heard of agave nectar, so I substituted a tsp of honey!!  However, it turned out FANTASTIC!  It is from Lindsay of Pinch of Yum.  Think I'll be visiting her more often, as there is a plethora of great recipes!

Off to finish the salad and then go teach yoga!

Christmas Scrap Quilt Top Still In Progress

And I love, love LOVE it!

This is my third in Cynthia's Scrap-a-Palooza series, and they are all such fun.  This one was rather serendipitous.

I knew I wanted to do it in Christmas scraps, and I'd kind of thought at first of not having any colour pattern, just throwing them in rounds willy-nilly.

But upon sorting through my scraps, and seeing definite predominantly green,  or red, or blue, and a few multi-coloured, I thought, hmm, maybe I could do a round of each colour. . .  However, I didn't have very many predominantly blue scraps, so thought never mind, maybe alternate rounds of red and green, and end with one multi-coloured, like Cynthia's:

Over the hours of cutting, letting my mind wander, (it's very therapeutic, isn't it? a kind of meditation) and remember I was also cutting for the scrap quilt using 3" squares that I have in my head, as well as Cynthia's 5th scrap-a-palooza quilt, that I realized I did have enough blue to at least do the centre.  Then Cynthia posted a few pics of various quilts others have done in her series, and I saw one that had double rows of 4.5" squares... well, the quilt just made itself in my head right then and there.

Musing:  hmm, maybe that is the kind of thing that happens to authors who say the characters just "do" and "say" things in their heads, that they really have no control of their characters.

Regardless,  here is the quilt in construction, with a few tips thrown in as to keeping it all organized.  Apologies for the lighting at times.

Organized Chaos again:

In the above picture you see the blue centre.  I used my "Book It!" method, chain-piecing the first two blocks of each column, and then adding the third, still chain piecing so the entire column stays perfectly in order as it was on the design wall.  Yep, there's my snowmen!!  And yep, there's a 4-patch in there too!  And I even worked in (found them after I'd cut enough other blues) scraps from my Snowman Placemats!!  Yippee!

Piecing each row of 3

Look, ma, no pins!  With pressing each row in opposing directions, the seams butt up against each other wonderfully.  I'm still not cutting apart the rows either.  If the entire column is long enough, I will join the two bottom rows, then the top two, and alternate, so I can continuously feed them.  I LOVE chain-piecing.  Saves time and thread.

Terrific thread for piecing

I try to pick up the 3000 metre cones of Gutermann thread on sale or at JoAnn's (online only) with a 50% off coupon.  I also love and use Aurifil, but I've never had issues with Gutermann, and this is a good buy.  I picked up the dark green which I'm using for this quilt at Fat Quarter Shop half price!  They have notions and thread as well as fabulous fabric.

For the double rows at the top and bottom of each round, I took the squares off the design wall, laying them on my sewing table in order.  With many similar fabrics, as you can see above, and doing the chain-piecing method, AND with my menopausal brain, it is SO easy to confuse the row I was piecing... uh, does the next square go on the top or the bottom?

HOWEVER, with this little trick, I never screw up:  leave the tail of threads on the first two squares you piece.  Do you see it there just below the two squares at the top, waiting to be joined?  That is my first row.  Because I laid out my rows of squares as they were on the design wall, I know the top ones go with the top row (the one that has the tail of thread) and the bottom ones with the bottom row.  Ya, note the huge distance between the top and the bottom rows of squares, all to keep it obvious for me in this annoying neverending interesting stage of my life!

Dogwood Revisited

Ha ha, as I typed that title, which was supposed to be "Dogwood Two", but this one popped from my head to my fingers in a blink, I thought of "Brideshead Revisited", and THAT dates me...not that I was old enough to watch it.  I'm grabbing at straws here, I know.

Update:  The no-reply blogger issue is still at the frustrating-I'm-so-tired-of-it-eating-this-much-of-my-sewing-time-UGH level.

Carole from "From My Carolina Home" sent me this link:  (Thanks, Carole!)
http://www.sewsnbows.com/why-im-a-no-reply-blogger/
and this one
http://piecemealquilts.com/2011/09/08/no-reply-no-kidding/

I emailed "Blogger", which went to Google(!) regarding this issue.  I've started typing my email into the body of my comment if it's to a new blog.  However, to avoid spam, Carole said type  "at" gmail "dot" com.  Which I failed to do...sigh.

Onwards.

On January 6, I wrote a tutorial about my "Book It!" method I use to assemble a lot of my quilt tops.  I thought I'd revisit it here so you can see it in action on a regular-sized quilt.  I use this method a LOT.

Bella was NOT amused last night that I was playing with scraps rather than with her