Jingle Bell Square {Blocks Are Done!}

I have finished up all of my Jingle Bell Square blocks! I needed to make 6 additional green blocks and 4 additional red blocks to bring me to the 49 total blocks that I needed for the quilt.

My next task is getting fabric to sash the blocks. I had bought some fabric on clearance online when I was ordering other fabric and unfortunately it is NOT going to work -- it is too large scale of a print and takes away from the blocks. I will definitely need something smaller in scale and with less color contrast.

So for now, this project is back on the shelf, but ready to go whenever I get sashing fabric. I have all or nearly all of the QSTs for the pieced borders made (they are the same as the QSTs in the center of each block!) so that won't be a delay in finishing the quilt top. 

I'm also thinking about replacing one of the skinny scrappy borders with a single fabric border since I have some larger pieces of Christmas fabrics left over from some quilt backs that might be big enough to use for some of the borders and binding on this quilt. 

Have you started on any holiday sewing? Or are you like me and have random Christmas projects going all the time?

On The Road Again {Scrappy Sewing Progress}

When I last posted about my new scrappy project, my block units looked like this:

And now I have blocks that look like this!

{block pics}

I currently have 22 star blocks and 22 chain blocks. I still have six sets of finished flying geese units for another six star blocks, and then I'll make another batch of six chain blocks. Since I last posted about this project, I did cut up some additional 2.5" squares for my four patches and the corners of the chain blocks to add some additional color variety. 

That would put me at 56 total blocks, able to be alternated in a 7x8 grid, for a quilt (pre-borders) that would be approximately 56" x 64", which would be a nice sized throw. But, I think if I can find another blue/aqua fabric or two to cut into more flying geese units, I'd like to see the quilt grow closer to twin sized, since I still have a lot of this fabric line left. I might skip the green fabrics all together just for the sake of contrast, but that's still to be determined.

What are you sewing this week?

What I've Been Sewing Lately {WIP Wednesday}

Despite the fact that I have been working from home for four months as of tomorrow, that has not translated at all into extra sewing time. It's mostly translated into sleeping more and loading and unloading the dishwasher more. And we may or may not have made it through the entire Marvel movie series in that time. 

The goals in my sewing room have been two-fold since the beginning of the year: finish up WIPs and clear out scraps. The finishing up WIPs part has been wholly unsuccessful. The clearing out scraps part has actually gone relatively well. I haven't made any lately, but early on in quarantine, I made oodles of my Rainbow Snippet blocks. 

I haven't really posted about it but I have actually been making masks. I've made four "batches" -- the first batch was for us, a few of my husband's coworkers, and some friends, the second was a batch for our church when they reopened for socially distanced services, and the third and fourth batches have been for my work. I've used the Sarah Maker tutorial with ties for all of them, but usually I make my ties slightly shorter.

This has been a great medium-to-large scrap buster. I've pulled the majority of my fabrics from my "larger cuts" scrap bin and just tried to maximize what I can get out of the scraps.

I also started a new scrappy project using some Island Batik fabrics and my Accuquilt cutter. I still had most of the scraps left from my Hip to Be Square quilts from the Little Sir, Little Miss line (other than the pink and purples I pulled out to make my Hattie's Choice quilt a few months ago) and combined that with the black solid Island Batik fabric I had on hand for the background. The inspiration for my quilt is this pattern that is featured in the Accuquilt book that came with my starter set last year:

I'm not sure if I will do the borders as the pattern shows, but for now, I cut all of my blue and teal scraps into pieces and parts for flying geese for the star points and the rest of the colors (other than the green, which I am reserving for now) into squares for the four patches. The other change is that the pattern is actually for the 6" Qube set and I have an 8" Qube set so I am not really going off yardage, I'm just starting with this general idea for a a two block quilt.

I have all but four of my flying geese sets complete (at least of what I have cut thus far):

I've also made quite a few four patches that will become the centers of my star blocks:

The four patches will also be part of the secondary block for this quilt, which I have seen called by many names, including a "Frayed Four Patch". To me it's kind of like a mini Irish Chain block or a really small Courthouse Steps block. Some of my small squares will be used for the corners of these blocks so I can't just mindlessly turn all of them into four patches! I also realized that I need to cut some black small squares for the corners of my star blocks, so that will be my next task.

Now that I am finally in a better mind for sewing, it figures that I am going back to work on site (part time) starting next week! I still need to decide on my project for this month's Island Batik assignment, but I have a few good ideas! I'll be using the same fabrics that I used for my May project (I think) to make a wall hanging (I think).

Rainbow Snippet Blocks {Scrap Busting Tutorial}

Today I am making good on the promise I made last week to share an easy tutorial on how I make my Rainbow Snippet Blocks. These are relatively free-wheeling, choose-your-own-adventure type blocks that can be adapted to any sized finished block.

What you need:

Scraps -- Separated into "strings" and "snippets" (see notes below)
Paper foundation -- I have an old phone book

What are my definitions of "strings" and "snippets"?

For me (and for making these blocks), a "string" is any scrap at least an inch wide and at least 7" long. Since I am trimming my blocks down to 6.5" unfinished, I like to have a little overhang on each side of the block. A "snippet" is anything smaller than 7" -- ie, too short to use as a complete string on its own -- however, the bulk of my snippets are smaller than 3" on both sides.

I'm working with a kind of small local phone book, so my block size was determined by the size of the paper.

To start, you'll sew together your snippets into a row at least 7" long. I have found that for a 6.5." block, I use between 3-5 snippets per pieced snippet row, so I usually start sewing pairs together, and then gauging how many additional snippets are necessary to reach a 7" length. I make two snippet rows per block, so I often start with 8 snippet pieces, sew those into two rows of 4 snippets each, and then see if either row needs an extra piece.

Once sewn and pressed, I trim the edges straight -- as perpendicular as possible to the snippet seams, but not overly worried about a little wonky piecing in the blocks. (Note: if you want wonk, go for it!) I simply trim the row as wide as I can based on 1/8th inch measurements.

My blocks typically have 5 rows -- two snippet rows and three string rows. For the first seam, I align one of my snippet rows on my paper and layer a string scrap on top, right sides together. I sew these together -- snippet row, string scrap, and paper -- using a quarter inch seam and press towards the string scrap. I repeat this process until I have alternating string and snippet rows.

Here are the strips atop my foundation with the first snippet/snip pair sewn to the foundation:

Here's my finished sewn piece prior to trimming:

An aside: "What if my block doesn't end up being long enough?!?"

I've had this happen once or twice. I just add another string scrap to one end. Or use two string scraps in the middle of a block if I have particularly skinny strings.

Once your sewing is finished, use your rulers to trim the block to 6.5" square (or the size of your choosing). Again, I try to keep the seams relatively parallel across the block, but if you'd like your blocks to be more wonky, you can trim the block askew in addition to using wonky strips.

Until I use the blocks, I will leave the paper on. Before sewing blocks together, I will remove the phone book paper.

I hope that this tutorial is helpful to you! This has helped me use up a lot of scraps in the last month and hopefully I will have enough blocks for a quilt before too long!

Scrappy Sewing {Flannel Burp Cloths}

As I mentioned in some of my recent posts, one of my sewing goals for The Great Stay Home Marathon is reorganizing my sewing room. I use flannel for backing baby quilts, but I often end up with flannel scraps that I don't know what to do with a lot of the time. However, there is another impending baby boom in my circle of friends (four babies between June and November!) I decided to pull out the flannel scraps and make some really simple burp cloths.

There are a lot of different burp cloth tutorials out there and I reviewed quite a few before starting. I ended up making mine slightly smaller to be able to cut more rectangles out of the fabric -- 9.5" x 14" is the final measurement I used.

I did not get overly fancy with contrasting fabric and made each one with the same fabric on both sides. I sewed the rectangles right sides together on three sides, turned it inside out and then top stitched the entire thing to close the final seam.

Out of the first batch of fabric, I made four girly ones and four gender neutral ones. I have a bit more of another grey flannel print to make a few more before all of these babies start showing up.

Happy Tuesday! What are you sewing this week? Are you working on sewing room organization like me?

Our Etsy shop still has plenty of solid fabric in stock if your local quilt store is closed! We are shipping out packages on a regular basis!

Quarantine Project {Scrap Busting Blocks}

I have been in a "purge, purge, purge" mood since we painted my sewing room in January. It's been good to finish things up, use up scraps, and try to be more organized. Now, at this exact moment, my sewing room looks like a bomb went off, but I am kind of in the middle of pulling things out and putting things away more organized, so it will get better shortly.

In an effort to use up scraps, especially my snippet scraps, I did allow myself to start one Quarantine Project -- but just one! I have too many other things that need to be finished and too many Island Batik projects for the rest of this year to start too many new things!

I started making these 6.5" scrappy blocks out of my snippets and strings about two weeks ago -- and have already managed to make a pile of blocks! They alternate (mostly) between a string row, a snippet row, a string row, a snippet row, and then a final string row.

I have six purple blocks...

...three green blocks and one aqua block...

...two yellow, one orange, and one pink...

and finally, three brown blocks.

I don't have any sort of plan for these blocks just yet. I have piles of blue, teal/aqua, and green scraps ready to go for my next sets of blocks. I have been sewing the snippet rows as leaders-and-enders sometimes when I have been working on other projects.

I will also put together a tutorial for next week on making these blocks. They can be adapted to any size and it's not necessary to use a paper foundation, but I find it does help me some.

Happy Dance {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

Today I am doing a happy dance -- I have finally finished the last six blocks for my Frolic mystery quilt top!

As I have mentioned in some of my recent posts, working from home has not been a boon for sewing time for me. I still am working full time -- just at my kitchen table. I have managed to sneak in sewing time here and there (and quite a bit this past weekend!) and the first thing on the list was to finish up these six blocks.

As I mentioned in my last post, I did have to make about 20 additional four patch units to finish up these blocks, which was quick and easy because I still had a couple strips in those colors that I didn't use when I did the cutting for the step originally.

Now comes the big, large, huge undertaking of the pieced sashings and putting the rows together. I know I will need to make more sashing parts along the way, but I might modify the original directions so that I can strip piece them.

Happy Wednesday! I hope the sun is shining where ever you might be!

Frolic Friday {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

Just a quick post with a teeny tiny update on my Frolic mystery quilt.

Since last I posted, I finished two blocks. For these dark teal blocks, I have been doing them in smaller batches broken up by which fabric they feature for the aqua secondary background. These two blocks used some leftover Bonnie and Camille April Showers fabric.

I also have all of the block parts ready to go for the next five blocks.

These should zip together relatively quickly when and if I find time at my sewing machine this week or weekend.

I hope that you are all making the most of your mandatory staycations! I really thought I would have more time given that I don't have my daily work commute, but really, I am just sleeping more.

At A Snail's Pace {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

I am still slowly (so slowly) but surely making little bits of progress on my Frolic mystery quilt.

Last year I finished the top of my Good Fortune quilt top on (or about) February 13th. Now, I did do a half-ished sized quilt last year and I am doing the full quilt this year in addition to this being a much more complicated quilt and not feeling my normal motivation in December and January.

However, I have completed all of my navy blocks!

This includes the stray block that I shared last time in the lower right hand corner. And once again I found a block that I need to fix -- can you find it? It should be very easy to fix.

So, if I wanted to make the quilt as directed, I would stop here and then use the rest of my sets to make the half and quarter blocks. But because I'm a certified overachiever and over-complicater of projects, I am going to make 16 more full blocks out of the block sets that I have left. I don't plan to make half blocks for my setting triangles at all.

I will be stepping back to make more units for blocks -- flying geese and half square triangles -- with my dark teal fabrics. My plan is to work on units and blocks in small batches so I don't get overwhelmed with a lot of trimming at once (which happened a lot in this mystery quilt!).

The parts for the "ring" of dark teal are done, and the parts for the "star" in coral and dark teal will be what I am making next. All of the dark teal blocks will have the same yellow dot fabric used throughout.

Happy Wednesday -- what works in progress are you working on today?

Sharing at Needle and Thread Thursday!

Block Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

I am so excited today to show some real, tangible progress on my blocks for Frolic!

To refresh, I am planning to make all of the block sets into full blocks to make a bigger quilt and not make the half blocks. I have all of the units made for over half of the full blocks (these are featuring my navy fabrics) but I will need to go back and make flying geese and HSTs for my dark teal fabric blocks.

I now have 9 blocks completed! And of course, now that I am posting this picture, I am realizing that one of my corner units is turned 180 degrees -- oops! I will have some time with the seam ripper tonight!

I have been making my block parts in batches before making my blocks -- sewing together the flying geese as well as sewing together the four patch corner units for a set of blocks.

I've been using the coral and navy pinhweels as my leaders-and-enders. Since these are the same for all of my navy blocks, this seemed like the best choice.

I have only been making one block at a time to make sure that I am keeping all of my parts straight. This is slightly slower than working on multiple blocks at a time, but I haven't had to rip anything out yet (knock on wood).

I also realize that my plan to enlarge my quilt will require a LOT more sashings. I will have to do some math and figure out if I have enough coral fabric to cover a slightly larger quilt. I should have enough, but I want to make sure before I go boldly into this plan.

Happy Friday! Today I am teaching a class on foundation paper piecing! I am so excited!

Blue Moon {Winter Blues Blog Hop}

Today I am participating in the Winter Blues blog hop hosted by Carla at Creatin' in the Sticks...

...and I am sharing a scrappy project for my Island Batik Ambassador project for January!

As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics, Aurifil thread, Accuquilt products, and Hobbs Batting to use and share with you!

For my project, I decided to play with the scraps I had left over from the Starburst wall hanging I made for my August Island Batik Ambassador project. I had a quite a few of the 2.5" strips left over from the Sand Bar strip set and focused on using these for my project.

For a while, I have needed to make a new set of placemats -- one set that had six placemats instead of my usual four. Four is usually an easy number to make because you can use a single yard of fabric to back all four placemats and usually I don't need more than four. However, now that we are living in a house instead of an apartment (and I very much enjoy being the hostess with the mostest) I need at least one set of 6 placemats.

I used a modified version of the "jelly roll race" technique to make the base of my placemats. All together, I used about 20 strips. To begin, I sewed all but two of my 2.5" strips together on the diagonal (like you'd join binding strips) and pressed those seams open. I sewed my strip set in half three times so that my strip set was eight fabric strips wide and about 80"-85" long and then added one more 2.5" fabric strip so that my strip set was nine fabric strips wide. From there, I subcut my strip set in to six rectangles, 18.5" wide and 12.5" long.

Some of my subcut rectangles have more color changes than others, but this was much faster than trying to piece each one individually!

Next, I quilted each placemat -- I used two different fabrics for the backings, the navy/teal feather batik and the light blue cheerio print. I used the same teal variegated Aurifil thread as the top thread for all six placemats, however, I used a bunch of different colors in my bobbins to use up bobbin scraps! I used navy, emerald green, light teal, and even a bit of purple!

These pictures show the placemats before trimming -- I roughly cut the backing and the batting for each placemat before I quilted it. And in the effort of using scraps, I also used scraps of Hobbs batting left over from previous Ambassador projects in these placemats. I had some larger scraps that I used for four of them and then pieced scrap battings for the final two placemats.

Since I know these will be going through the washing machine and used repeatedly, I'm not too concerned about the backings not all being the same -- and the same for the binding! I used three different fabrics for the bindings. For placemats, I always sew my bindings completely by machine.

Now my table is ready for my next dinner party!

Make sure to check out all of the other bloggers hopping today and check out the full schedule on Carla's blog!

Wednesday, January 22nd

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Clue #4, #7, #8 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

After a long delay, I have finally finished Clue #4 for my Frolic mystery quilt! While the final reveal came out today, I am not as behind as I thought I might be.

To finish up Clue #4, I made all of the necessary sets of HSTs in navy, dark teal, and aqua.

I split up my aquas so that I used half of the different prints to make the aqua/navy HSTs and the other half of the prints to make the aqua/dark teal HSTs.

The left and center aquas are from my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt, the gingham check is a fat quarter I pulled out of a bundle, and the dot is from my April Showers quilt.

The umbrella print and raindrop print are from my April Showers quilt, the pearl chain dot is my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt, and the bubble dot print is a fat quarter of unknown origin.

(The beautiful print I used as my background is actually the back of one of my Wanderlust placemats.)

I also finished up the cutting for Clue #7.

But I decided that I needed a break from HSTs (which is what I would be making in Clue #7) and I decided that I wanted to skip to making more flying geese in Clue #8 instead! I am part of the way through sewing the blue triangles to one side of the units.

Some of my predictions about the quilt were very wrong, and some were right! I definitely like the blocks and the setting, but I am not necessarily in love with the pieced borders. I am going to think about actually making the center of my quilt LARGER and eliminating the pieced borders. I have lots of options, and I really love the main block of the quilt!

If you are Frolic-ing, what do you think of the reveal? Is it what you predicted? I predicted a quilt on point however I did not think we would have sashing.

Have a lovely weekend!

Clue #4, #6, #7 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

Slowly but surely I am making tiny bits of progress on my Frolic mystery quilt. I was able to dig deep in my stash to find two fat quarters to finish the cutting for Clue #4!

Yay for not having to go to the store and buy more fabric! I started drawing lines on the back of the small squares to pair each with a navy or dark teal small square to make the half-square triangles for Clue #4 and this will be the next thing I sew. Most of my aqua fabrics are left over from my April Shower Medallion quilt and my Pineapple Log Cabin quilt. 

For Clue #6, I am making part of my flying geese using my navy fabric and part using my dark teal fabrics. I started off making the navy fabric geese with yellow scraps for the background triangles and had shown some of the sewn but untrimmed geese in my last Frolic post. 

I have really, really used up my yellow scraps -- so much so that the yellow batik in the upper right hand corner was a fat quarter hanging around in my stash from long, long ago that I originally didn't think I would end up using for this quilt. Some of these fabrics were also used in my On Ringo Lake quilt, too. 

For the dark teal set of geese, I am using a single yellow print fabric -- something I had bought on clearance years and years ago, which I think looks really lovely with the coral dot print. I used three of my dark teal prints for these flying geese.

Making and trimming these geese went much faster than the batch that I made with the navy and scrappy yellow fabrics!

Now I am officially *done* with Clue #6! I also started the cutting for Clue #7:

I still have a pile of coral squares to cut for this step, that will be paired with the navy or dark teal to make half-square triangles and pinwheels or used to make more flying geese in Clue #8.

While a lot of people are itching for another clue to be released, I am happy that we haven't had any additional bonus clues! If I could get through finally finishing Clue #4 and making a dent in Clue #7 before Friday, I would be really, really proud of myself.

Are you Frolicking? How is your progress? I applaud those of you that decided to do half sized quilts this time around because sometimes I am regretting going full-scale for this one!

Sharing at What I Made Monday and Oh Scrap!

Clues #4, #5, & #6 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

While I am going to talk about three clues today, I'm actually only done with one out of the three!

When we got home after Christmas, I had some time to do the cutting for both Clue #4 and Clue #5.

For Clue #4, our assignment was to cut pieces and parts for HSTs and for triangle parts to be used later. I had plenty of my navy fabric and my dark teal fabrics for my required number of sets, however I only had enough aqua fabrics for about 75% of the required number of sets. I will need to either dig deeper into my stash or buy about a 1/3 of a yard of fabric. I decided to hold off on sewing my HSTs using these units until I have more aqua.

Clue #5 was a complete diversion from Clue #4, which was very helpful for me! We made more HSTs, this time using background and raspberry, so mine are white-on-white and my coral dot. There was lots of trimming for this clue too but it was good to just have a completely completed clue.

Clue #6 was our bonus clue that came out on New Year's Eve, and is a highly complicated clue that uses some of the units we cut for Clue #4 to make flying geese. For my quilt, I will be using the dark blue and dark teal fabrics combined with yellow to make my flying geese. I prefer to use the fast flying geese method, but this time around I am using a regular piecing method. So far, I have 8 sets sewn (but not trimmed), so I am about 20% of the way done sewing these units. 

Clue #7 came out on Friday and I haven't touched it yet. I should easily be able to start it because I will use my coral, navy, and dark teal fabrics, however, I would like to get all of my flying geese sets sewn and trimmed first. I will still need to go back and finish Clue #4 once I find or buy more aqua fabric.

Happy Monday!

Sharing at BOMs Away!

Clue #3 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

When I did the cutting for Clue #2, I did the cutting for Clue #3 as well. Thanks to weekend movie watching, I had all of the diagonals drawn on my background fabric squares in short order.

This is the first unit where I actually used my scrappy fabrics! Rather than mixing both my teal and my dark blue fabrics for this unit, I used only the scrappy dark teal fabrics.

I used seven different dark teal fabrics, a few of which were leftover from the Cotton + Steel half-yards I used for my Pineapple Quilt. There are actually two different zig zag prints but they are very similar! I bought these on clearance years and years ago and used one of them in my Summer on the Coast quilt. The teal and gold arch print came from a traveling quilt goodie box and the dandelion print fabric was used in my Odori quilt.

Like the first two clues, I did make a few extra units for this step, just in case. Unlike the other clues which were strip piecing and sub-cutting, this one took a little bit more time (or a lot more time!) because I needed to trim all of my units. I did make a lot of pretty trash.

At this point, I am terribly behind! I didn't get these HSTs trimmed until this week Monday due to holiday prep and travel. I brought my fabrics for Clue #4 with me to prep and cut but have had too many holiday activities to squeeze that in. Clue #5 actually comes out today and I will be lucky to finish both of these clues by New Year's Day at this point.

Maybe one year, eventually, we won't have to travel for Christmas and I can just stay home and sew. That would be a real Christmas miracle!

Clue #2 Progress {Frolic Mystery Quilt}

Mystery quilt season is in full swing and I am *already* behind!

Clue #2 came out on December 6th. Things have been busy outside of my sewing room so I didn't even get my strips cut for my units until this weekend and I did all of the cutting for Clue #2 and Clue #3 at the same time.

This was another clue for me using my non-scrappy fabrics. It was very quick to zip together my strip sets.

It was also quick to sub-cut all of these units two at a time. I cut a couple more units than are required and I still had a bit of one strip set left just in case.

I also managed to cut all of my squares for making half square triangles in Clue #3.

In an ideal world, I would be able to finish Clue #3 this week and somehow do all of Clue #4 before we leave for our holiday road trip next week, but I know that would be a little bit of a stretch!

Today's post is coming to you a little late courtesy of the first real snow of the season!