Tag Archives: 2020 monthly color challenge

Catching Up

Oh my goodness – time is flying by. Nothing like a pandemic forcing all of us to stay home day after day to make a person busy, right? In March when all of this started I thought I would accomplish this huge to-do list due to being stuck at home. I created a list of blog posts to catch up on, pictured myself scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms till they sparkled – it was going to be such a productive time. Ummm, what the heck? I have hardly posted here and it took me until yesterday to force myself to scrub one shower. Not the picture of productivity I had anticipated!

Ah, just proof of my human imperfections!! Also proof I really am not into house work. Haha. OK – moving on to sewing. There hasn’t been a lot going on. I did get the April and May blocks done for the 2020 Monthly Color Challenge. Want to see them?

The block for April was made with purple and I was able to continue my polka dot theme. Have to say, I have no idea how I will put these blocks together. I suppose I need to think of a way to sash them with some sense of continuity.

Love the green block which was May’s color. It is a great pattern and would be cute as a quilt on its own.

I also made this cute little pink Dresden. Now I have three of them. Still not a concrete plan as to how I will use them but I like making them and they use up lots of tiny scraps so that is a win in my book!

A few days ago, I posted on Instagram that I was totally inspired by Kirsty of Bonjour Quilts to start a new project. She sent out a newsletter and as she always does, showed some quilts that had been made by others, using one of her patterns. She has a tutorial called Meadow and when I saw that quilt, I got all excited to make one. I clicked over to this post which was from a long time ago (maybe 2016?) . Deciding I really NEED to make this, even though there are three quilt tops on the guest bed waiting to be quilted, I started to pull scraps.

I spent a pleasant evening sorting through white, off-white and green scraps. I ironed a stack of them and began cutting squares in three different sizes. This is a great pattern to use lots of scraps from my bins.

Last night I started making nine patch blocks – only made a few but it is a start. These are the biggest size, using 6 1/2″ squares. They gradually become smaller. Fun, fun, fun. I love starting a new project!

Finally, I will leave you with a picture of my very imaginative grand daughter. She was pretending to be a bird in her nest, reading books. Thankful this bird is safely wearing her helmet while sitting wayyyyy up high in her imaginary tree. 🙂

Scrappy Dresden and Monthly Color Challenge Block

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Happy Saturday Everyone. It is National Quilting Day so I really hope you each find a few minutes to work on a project or at the very least look at fabric and plan the next project!

I got my two monthly scrappy projects done for March! For RSC2020, the color is teal and I decided to make a smaller Dresden plate. I will combine it with the larger orange one I made in February and likely need to make one or two more before I put them together into some sort of wall quilt.

For the Monthly Color Challenge, hosted by Patterns By Jen, the color is orange. You might remember I did the January and February blocks with polka dot fabrics. That caused me to do a quick search though my scraps to see if I have enough polka dotted scraps to make this a theme for the sampler. I believe I do! So this month, I continued with the dotted fabrics.

The block was a breeze with a pinwheel block in the center and then some flying geese to surround it, making it a square in a square. Easy peasy and very cute!

Next up is another quilt I am working on for Mercy Hospital. I had thrifted some pretty fabrics about a week or two ago. I knew I wanted to use them in a large block design because they are quite large in scale of print. I gathered another piece from my scraps plus a cut from a blender in the shop and pieced a Giant Star Quilt using a tutorial by Jeni Baker from In Color Order. This pattern is super simple and a lot of fun. Side note: I actually made something very similar when I was about 19 or 20 years old for my parents. I remember I saw the pattern in a magazine and made with in tones of burgundy, navy blue and it had a muslin background. I filled it with a puffy polyester batting and yarn tied it. That was a whole lotta years ago!

At this point, I have the quilt basted and did some ditch stitching to stabilize everything. This weekend I should be able to get it quilted. I need to find something fun to use for the binding.

Since all of California is mandated to now ‘shelter in place’, there is plenty of time for sewing and also lots of time to read. I am LOVING this book and highly recommend it if you want something to read while we wait out this Covid-chaos. My girlfriend loaned it to me and it is such a great read.

Let’s close with a picture of my sweet grand daughters, shall we? Little sister has decided she isn’t terribly fond of sleeping in her bed and is creating some sleep deprived parents these days. Coincidentally, big sister is thinking afternoon naps are passe`. Yikes, this doesn’t make for a good combination. Hoping the baby starts to cozy up to the idea of sleeping in her bassinet soon!!

Linking to lots of fun places including Brag About Your Beauties and Oh Scrap!

February Scrappy Projects

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I started the month off by working on two scrappy projects. Kind of nice to play a bit and use up a few pieces from my scrap bins. Besides what else was I to do while the Super Bowl was on??

The first block I made is for the 2020 Monthly Color Challenge. The color is blue and the block was a quick make. Coincidentally, I used polka dots again this month (I used them last month too, but in yellow).

These look so happy and it is making me wonder if I should try to go for a polka dotted theme with this quilt. I need to check the bins and see if I have enough dots though. I am NOT going to buy dotted fabric to make this happen. Sort of defeats the purpose of scrappy quilting, doesn’t it?? Jen does have the colors she will be focusing on listed on her blog. I will take a look and see how many dotted fabrics I have to decide if this might work.

After this block, I decided to pull my orange bin as that is the color for February over at Angela’s RSC2020 challenge. I had absolutely no idea what I was wanting to do with them but thought I should make something just to use some of the scraps up. Plus, I was in the mood to play around.

Somehow it popped into my head to make a Dresden block. I have seen lots of minis or wall quilts with a series of Dresdens of various sizes and colors, made to look like flowers. I think I will do something like this. I like the Dresden’s with the curved tips and might alter a few to look like that as well. It will be a fun thing to work on here and there.

This week was our monthly guild meeting. My friend Sophia encouraged the guild members to make tree blocks for Australia’s fire victims. The result was fantastic. There was a sew day with one local church group of quilters and quite a large stack of blocks was created.

The variety of blocks showed a great deal of creativity. It was fun to look through them since I didn’t attend the sew day. I did make two blocks though and you can see those here if you like.

There were lots of appliqué, many strip pieced trees and an assortment of traditional tree blocks.

This tree was drawn on the fabric which I thought was quite clever. If our little guild came through with all of these, I cannot imagine how many the Wollongong MQG is going to receive. Wow!

Now that my scrappy projects are wrapped up for the moment, I am finishing up the assembly of my Mosaic Quilt top. The main portion of the top is put together. I keep looking at it to see if some portion is flipped the wrong way before I put on the borders. It is much harder to take apart once the borders are on. It looks good to me but I am going to stare at it a bit more before I take that last step!

Linking to Oh Scrap! and Jen’s 2020 Monthly Color Challenge link (which I totally forgot to do with my yellow blocks!) Enjoy the week everyone!