Technical Problem 2021

I discovered a problem this morning when I went to retrieve photos from the cameras memory card. The camera would not let me take photos, *pout*, it gave me a memory card error. The memory card itself still works, I suspect my camera mechanism that determines if the card is locked or unlocked broke???? So until I remedy that, I will have to figure a work around for photos.

Since I cannot upload new content and it is so close to the end of the year I thought I could recap the quilt finishes in my life as well as other counts and milestones.

But first a statistic. All of you have been following along (thank you!) with my 365 Quilt Challenge journey of now two years. This is a long term project that did not intend to be that long, LOL. In looking back during this journey, these are the quilts that I have finished during its making.

Six large quilts (one of those being quilted now). Frolic was the monster of this group, but many squirrels happened. It kept me sewing without losing my mojo. You do what you have to do. The rest of these were smalls of lap size down to just a small wall hanging, but no matter the size, it is still deemed a quilt!

During frolic as well as spring brook blossoms, I did both the 365 as well as that monthly or weekly project.

This quilt was also included in the “during 365” gallery. I made this in about two weeks. I came down with Corona Virus and could not work. And, I am happy to report I was one of those that was asymptomatic with only a couple of days of aches and low fever. I recall one of my posts late in 2020 pondering what I would tell my grandchildren about this pandemic. I really had no idea. Boy, how this year has made a difference in knowing exactly what I would say. The quilt above cost me two weeks of vacation.

So, the fact that my camera has a malfunction combined with the crazed new attitudes (new normal) I have named this post what I did. My only side affect from this pandemic is pandemic FATIGUE!!!! I know all of you can relate.

And then there are the projects that I started….(I became a serial starter, YIKES)!

And I have all of those UFOs mostly from years past.

I am not going to make blog promises for 2022. After the past two crazy years, my logic cannot rule anything out. So for that reason I am going to set goals for myself and may or may not note that in the blog. Just know when you visit my blog in the coming year I will bring content approximately once a week, if not more. It will be sewing. It could have tatting. You will see quilting. As far as defining the specifics…..here are some quotes that may make sense of life.

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”—-Allen Saunders.

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”—Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes .

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

And on that last quote, thank you for reading my blog!

Waiting for 70 Degrees

I am loving the colder temps in Texas! A few frosts in November, and wearing the jacket, breathing in the fresh colder air with holiday spirit in the air has become my favorite time of year. My favorite month used to be October. A month when the airconditioner gets turned off, the fans are switch off, and the house becomes more quiet. A month for baking because it is practically between 50-70 degrees all day. Much gets accomplished because your energy that was drained during the summer heat some how gets restored.

I never knew October was my favorite month, until twenty years ago. The chain of events, my Grandfather died in August. He lived several states up, so I was off from work for about a week. He had been sick for a long time and I never spent any of my vacation time, so I had oodles to spend. When I got back home things were not going so well for the telecom sector for which I worked (Sept 11th caused it to tank). So I job hunted and put in my resume to my employer now. We went back to his estate for all the contents to be auctioned off in late Sept of that same year. When I returned home and back on the job, the happiness and joy the job once gave me, was still there, but because of the telecom bubble burst, many of my coworkers were laid off. It made me glad I still had my job, and so very thankful, but at the same time I was the only one who provided for the family and knew the writing was on the wall. I had to get out and get into something else.

I submitted my resume to my current employer, and heard back from them, I got the job. I took a $2 paycut, but my job would be secure. I knew how much vacation time I had left, so I told them I could start on Nov 12th.

I gave my two weeks notice, and then burned the rest of my vacation. I got to spend 2 weeks in October off with no work and paid. My son was two at the time. It was so energizing this time of year for me. I started my new job on Nov 12, 2001. I have now been at my job officially for 20 years. Perhaps the month of October resembled freedom from any job and the gentle sigh that came that year when I was not working.

This patriotic quilt is all about my 20 year anniversary on the job. My current employer is a gov’t contractor, so it is all about patriotism.

And with 20 years comes change. I still like the month of October for the renewed energy. But with all the time off from work for the holidays makes me able to relax in the month of Nov and Dec.

So I am waiting for a 70 degree day to start quilting on the patriotic postage stamp quilt. I thumbed through my larger pieces of fabrics and selected a couple, and then thumbed through them some more and resettled on a couple of pieces for the backing. Here is one. I purchased this at an antique store. It said this was old. I don’t think it is necessarily old, but I do think it is made with an old technique. This is some kind of dying or printing on muslin. It is very folk-art themed with crows, the letter A in various directions, many lines but mostly each square has a motif inside which does repeat. It was a perfect backing, but was not large enough. So this got paired with the patriotic flag material, which also suits the theme.

If anyone can tell me the process of how this fabric was made it would gladly be appreciated. Educate me please. 🙂

This brings me in the meantime to get cracking on another UFO I have. A while back I polled my readers and the results were 365 quilt block challenge, la passacaglia, and jacks chain. I lack so few blocks on the 365, I will probably tackle this next. I have my tables cleared off, but my time is not in alignment. I have just a few more dark blocks and then the lighter blocks start up again. I am so very close.

But working this project now for almost two years has become hard for me. Harder than I ever thought. Mind over matter, but many of you know what I speak of. I have grown very tired of it. I have asked myself why am I tired of it. The simple answer, the color. I am not a fan of red. I decided to go out of my comfort zone when the decision was made to do this quilt. I had no reds in my stash so I changed that. Perhaps if this were started in a turquoise or a green, I would have already been done. I believe also that my combinations have ran OUT of the current reds I have. I will perhaps make this more appealing by adding fabric to this now to inspire me.

So while waiting for 70 degrees to quilt in the garage, I will be hemming and hawing over the 365, hopefully sewing!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

A wallet of a Tale

A few weeks back I purchased a kit to make a wallet. This wallet was relatively easy to make, except for the very last part.

The zipper went in flawlessly. The pockets were perfect. But the hemming stitch around the perimeter was a fail last weekend. My machine DID NOT WANT TO STITCH. I figured out it was operator error times two! When sewing through faux leather, you must use a walking foot…duh. But the true secret to get the last edge of the wallet almost perfect (still room for improvement) is to glue baste it down with a bunch of wonder clips and glue. GLUE being the KEY to SUCCESS! I am happy to report this Sallie Tomato Two Dollar Wallet has been gifted! It is not everyday you can sew something useful for an important man in your life!

This wallet did not cost two dollars as the name would make you think. It actually was a $27 kit plus shipping. It was a nice little project.

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And I only managed to get two more 3 1/2 inch blocks sewn for my 365 quilt block challenge. This weekend I will probably manage a few more of these.

What has all of my focus this week, is the quilting job above. So, originally I decided to do an orange peel that would radiate from the center. My template was too small. So, each 4 inch block got two orange peels. I stopped in my LAQS and found a handiquilter half moon, that was perfect. So in all the blocks that I had already put two small orange peels, I then outlined in the same direction with a large orange peel.

And then I got to the center of the quilt, and wondered how I would make it cohesive, but make it different at the same time. I accidentally quilted it the wrong way. I put too many orange peels going in all different directions. That mistake, I fell in love with. So I went back and filled in all the directions of all the orange peels.

And remember the AC is out in the garage. So it has been bucket sweating HOT! But I am determined. If I manage a few minutes or an hour a day, I will eventually get this quilted. A pass of two rows of blocks and the outer borders takes longer than an hour an a half. It is all ruler work. Enjoying as it is, it is still hot!

I came across this on Amazon. I am going to get this ordered and try it out. A neck fan!

I had never seen or heard of one of these and was on there looking for a fan for my desk at work, my $5 fan from 15 years ago that I dry my tennis shoes when I get drenched walking into work in the monsoon season finally kicked the bucket and would not turn on. Gosh, the old dollar star bargains were really good stuff in the day. I don’t think I could find this again in the dollar store. So I will let you know if it works. You see, I cannot run a regular fan with my quilting machine. The company told me it would give me thread/tension problems. And I do not want to mess up a good thing!

Did I meet my goals from last week? The answer is YES!

Got the yellow quilt to a flimsy status, started quilting on the yellow quilt, and revealed my next UFO project to my readers.

My latest goals:

• Quilt as much as I can on the yellow and black quilt
• sew at least 5 blocks for the 365 quilt block challenge
• Stitch some on the La Passcaglia rosette
• Start working out details for the demonstration for the Quilt Hop. These details will end up being a tutorial for readers. More on this in the coming weeks.

In additional to my weekly goals, I am also reaching a bit farther into the future and setting a monthly goal as well:

• Try to get some tatting time in on the Jan Stawasz doily

Wish me luck! I have much to do!

Thanks for stopping in and reading my blog!

Scrap Happy July 2021

I have been messing with scraps this past month. I have broke down my scraps to manageable pieces utilizing my accuquilt.

I now have ooodles of 2 inch squares again! The tubs are full. In the back of my craw, I see a postage stamp quilt. Perhaps I will just set these beside my machine and use as leader enders? I have not worked out the geometry of this quilt yet, but I see a 2 inch scrap squares quilt in the near future.

First thing is first. I opened a poll and let readers determine what I would work on next. It would seem I have many unfinished objects (UFOs). There was a tie. Not sure how to settle a tie. I supposed since one is machine piecing and one is hand piecing I should be able to work both?

The viewers have spoken and they want to see progress on the 365 quilt block challenge as well as the La Passacaglia quilts.

I have a whole stack of blocks cut out for the 365 quilt, and managed to get one sewn before I ran out of weekend!

I presume as I watch many live feed videos on youtube that the handstitching will commence on the La Passacaglia.

Last month I showed you the Scrappy Laundry Basket Quilts 2021 mystery. This quilt I donated to charity.

I also completed the Moda Scrap bag quilt. This really was nothing special but fun to have the freedom of no pattern. This has also been donated to charity.

And because I donated the Laundry Basket quilt to charity, I wanted to make one for myself a tad bigger with a border selected by me. I made this in the same pattern as the green one, but what a difference contrast makes! I think the border along with the color scheme really makes the scrappy quilt radiate! I am feeling good that this was just an idea of color in my last scrap happy post. And now it is sew close!

Top sewn, I have it on the longarm now. I have decided to quilt the body of this quilt in an orange peel that radiates from the center out. I have taken the yellow part of the delectable mountains border and made lines that radiate out from the center. The black in the border has more of a art deco style with some ruler work.

The AC is currently not working in the garage so any quilting accomplished is a major electrolyte dump. Although it is a cooler summer here, the concrete pad is like a weather rock, if it is humid, is absorbs the moisture making your body condense at the speed of light! I suppose condense is not the right word….perspire……profusely. If it is hot, that concrete slap absorbs that energy, so there is no escaping the sweat shop environment. No pain no gain!

I have committed to quilting one more charity quilt between now and August 15th. Due to this commitment I do not want to leave this on the longarm long because I do not have a clue when the charity quilt will show up. A race against time. I made pretty good progress on this today, and have gotten down in to the orange peel part. The borders will be the time consumer. Hopefully this weekend I can utilize the weekend cool mornings and progress to the end.

Please visit and see what all the scrap happy blogs are all about! Click on their links below. Thank you Kate and Gun for this lovely sharing opportunity!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn,
Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Me, Bear,
Carol, Preeti, Edith and Debbierose

Quilting Poll-Viewers Coice

Well, this weekend was pretty successful with my tasks. I am saving all my photos to share on my weekend post. Goals met! And since we are up to the Independence day celebration I thought a fun thing for the blog readers would be to vote on content. Polls are open.

A while back, while I was making a quilt, during the construction choices, I ran a poll to question which layout and what direction I should take the quilt top. This was the viewers choice quilt and it turned out beautiful.

So, I have decided to make a list of things that have become ufos. I would like viewer input of what they would like to see as topics, projects, and ufo completions. I am going to set up a poll and leave it open for a couple of weeks to see what you want to see happen on my blog. Viewers choice.

Here are my current unfinished objects (ufos).

• 365 quilt block challenge

• Be Colorful Quilt

• La Passacaglia

• MSQC Triangle Quilt

• Embroidery Quilt

• Jack’s Chain Quilt

• Quilt as you go hexagon

• Row Scrap Quilt

Those are the projects I have on my shelves waiting to be finished. I am certain if I were to dig, there may be some I am forgetting. Some of these are a ton of work in the past or in the future. Some of these are all by hand projects. Regardless I need to move product. Your vote will determine my direction. I am going to try to keep the squirrels at bay.

Answering these question will help me out and it can also help you out.

Thank you for answering my poll and reading my blog!

Orphan Scrappy Blocks

I cannot believe it is already the middle of May! What has my scrappy dept been up to in the last month? A recap:

I have started rosettes for the La Passacaglia Millefiori quilt. This is harder than I thought. One rosette down, one still in progress, not much to go for that one’s completion.

I have joined in two quilt alongs, one offered by CorrianderQuilts and is FREE! I have two blocks done. Each month you will sew two more flower tops. You can finish the stems and leaves ahead of time as this is repeatable throughout the quilt. May 17th a new block posts, join in the flower fun!

Edyta Sitar has a free mystery quilt along, and so far this one has been easy. Making 4 patches. And guess what? I had to cut so few pieces to get to this point! My scrappy tubs filled with 2 1/2 inch squares and 1 1/2 inch squares are getting used. These are trimmings that happen with scraps with various projects along the way. I suspect the clues in the coming days will require me to get to the bigger pieces and work from those.

I am working diligently to get my doily tatted! I am on the last round and ready to start a new doily as I have new books with lovely patterns. I would be done with this but ended up cutting out what you see below amount wise. Tsk tsk, I thought I followed directions, but turns out I forgot one while ring to attach to the fourth chain on the previous row’s rosette and I did it twice!!

And my biggest scrappy announcement, orphan blocks! All us quilters accidentally make one two many blocks and then it just sits there or gets turned into a potholder. Some of us try to make it into one big quilt. Things that I have would NOT marry well together in one quilt. Way too many odd shapes and sizes. So I decided to finish my orphan blocks like I would if it were a pot holder and then hang them on the wall together, to create padded walls hahahaha. I mean our hobby is therapy, so why not add a little touch of the padding to help us with the crazies! Some of these are orphan blocks, some are starts with no finish in sight (that would be the bargello). I have moved much off that “orphan” shelf. All of these finishes have happened in the last two weeks.

This was left over from this:

This boot did not make the cut for this baby quilt:

And these baskets I turned to face the inside and this was left overs from this:

And my favorite block was this one, which did not make it into the quilt because it was the first block I engineered and it came out smaller than all my other star blocks from the quilt below:

And even though this wall hanging looks like a ribbon, it is actually a spool block but because this is all the spool blocks I had left, you only see one spool. This actually looks like a scrappy ribbon, eh?

And this was left overs from this!

And here is my padded wall!

As you can see I have room for more! I can even go over the door, or all the way to the floor (It would seem dr suess is in the house, LOL). As you can see my hanging system is just some push pins. This will enable me to add easily and move around the orphans. Just think you could do this for your Christmas orphan blocks and change your wall out with the seasons.

Taking a little detour here, but have you ever heard of acrylic pouring? It is a painting method of masterpiece! I took a local art class and learned how to do this. I decided for Mother’s Day, we could all do a painting for mom. Acrylic pouring is quite scrappy and random. Here is a masterpiece example in youtube form (ours were dry pours, so very different from what you see here.)

I used Dollar Tree paints with some metallics from Hobby Lobby. Certain paints really dominated our paintings, but each is a Mona Lisa from us to Mom. Here are ours:

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I have certainly had fun in the last month especially with my scraps. Let’s see what everyone else has been up to:

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy Jill, Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Gwen, Bekki, Sue L., Sunny, Kjerstin, Vera, Nannette, Ann, Noreen, Bear, Carol, Pretti, Edith, Hayley, and Me.

As this posts, I have had a migraine for days (thank goodness I do not procrastinate and worked this post last weekend!). As a result, next week’s post will probably be meager. Thanks for tunning in and reading my blog!

Patriotic Rosette

I have been having fun with the orphan blocks! I dug deep in my shelves and found a few easy projects, and a few that are not as easy. I got two quilted this week!

This block did not make the quilt, not because I did not like it, but when sewing it and it was the first one, I did not know what I was doing. It ended up small enough that it would have been too big of an “ease” to put it in with the others. This was from the quilt Stars Upon Thars.

And then there was the Spools quilt orphan blocks. Only one spool showed itself in this pattern. It almost looks like a scrappy ribbon.

The spools orphan came from sewing this.

The backing for the star block was just a fat quarter. I had purhcased electic elements fat quarter bundle and enjoy using up these non-ordinary prints.

This was quilted in a free panto pattern by Urbanelementz.com called Argyle. This looks like a modified honey comb to me.

And the backing of the spool orphan is the panto you see above is no longer offered by Urbanelementz but was by designer Lorena. Sorry I do not know the name. The backing ended up being this.

I purchased this rug printed fabric from Hobby Lobby some time ago. This print of fabric is still available there if anyone is interested.

I managed to get the Jelly Roll Race quilt bound! And Gifted!

And I finished the first rosette for the La Passacaglia Millefiori quilt.

I started what is considered rosette 4. There are several of these to make. I decided to make this one patriotic.

And I got to the star points, but did not get any further.

I love the way you can manipulate the shapes in these cogs for a totally different affect each time. The fill in between all the points I am still pondering. Do I fussy cut something? Do I go with stripe, do I go with solid? The jury is still out on this decision. I have all weekend to figure that out. YAY! I made it to the weekend and got much accomplished along the way.

Goals were met that were set last week.

Goals for this week:

• Finish patriotic cog
• bind Stars Upon Thars orphan
• bind Spools Orphan
• Tat a little

I follow a few tatters on youtube and am delighted that there is new content going on!!!! If you are interested in learning to tat, you can learn how through a few instructional videos. For less than $10 in supplies you can get a tatting shuttle and a ball of lizbeth thread, maybe two.

You can choose if you want to learn to needle tat or shuttle tat. Here is a link to the youtube channel. They show you the basics or tell you where to go for the basics and then they assign homework and teach you how to read a pattern. Will you have a go at it? It is very relaxing. A wonderful tatting community out there. There was a massive overhaul of the former Georgia Seitz site. I guess she is elderly and not doing so good, but in the joy of keeping tatting going, others have taken over. It’s all good. And there is also older content out there by Gina Butler’s channel. I had the privledge of being taught by her in person. Her youtube tutorials can get you started. Frivole on youtube is also a wonderful teacher of this gentle art.

I am off to a wonderful start to the days between Friday and Monday! Have a great weekend and thanks for reading my blog!

A Quilter’s Journey

As a quilter, you have quite a journey from the first project you have ever done to years worth. there is no comparison on accuracy of losing points vs perfect points, perfectly nested seams vs scootched seams.

When I started quilting was back in 93. I made two quilt tops. This was long before the internet capabilities. You were limited to being taught by a loved one, family member, member of the church, or learning from a book at the library.

Those two quilt tops I made, I used 5/8 seam allowance and the pattern I chose for my first two quilts was snails trail. This was a rather complicated pattern. I had a olfa rotary cutter, but had no mat. I actually cut my pieces using an old school binder like a trapper keeper. As you can guess, the trapper keeper did not make it to the end of the quilt journey.

Once I got the two tops made, I stalled. I had no idea how to proceed. I kept those two quilt tops through about 3 moves. And alas, purged them and sold them for the price I paid for the fabric was in them (it was bargain fabric and I think I had $15 in them). So I priced them for $15. And they sold and were appreciated by a quilter (who was the crazy lunch lady at school). I wish I would have kept those tops because I would be able to look at them today and see how far I have traveled skill wise as a quilter. Back then, I had no idea how to go to the next step. I had never heard of a longarmer, and my grandmother passed in 94 so I could not ask her (she was the person who could fix anything or figure out how to make delicious lemonade out of lemons).

In her passing and then my grandfathers passing, I decided to do the right thing and took grandpas clothing, and grandmas fabric and make a quilt for my parents, a memory quilt. I look back at that quilt and see lobbed off star points (I made a farmer’s daughter quilt block as grandpa was a farmer). I can visually see how far I have advanced in my hobby. I also made myself a memory quilt and used the dickens out of it. Because it has polyester batting, it has started to erode away the cotton fibers in the quilt top. And due to a CLR (Calcium Lime Rust cleanser) error in the washing machine, it turned some green fabric that I added, to a weird pink. This chemical reaction with the synthetic dyes in the new fabric, and using some of the old fabric, caused the fabric to oxidize and erode too. I used a drunkerds path block. The block really had no significance but I liked the difficulty and it made a beautiful pattern. One day I will showcase these quilts. They are put up for now.

Each week on this blog, you read about my quilt journey for the past few days in my quilting journey. Most weeks you see progress. Some weeks are pretty meager. This is natural and even thought I strive to show you something, I pride myself to show you quality, not quantity. So this is one of those meager weeks.

Last weekend the weather was absolutely beautiful. My good weather days are running out, soon it will be too hot to quilt. So I wanted to quilt up something.

Many moons ago I made this quilt.

This was a free pattern that was offered by I can’t remember who, but here is the link to my original post so you can click the free pattern link. I called this baby booties, as this was for a newborn. I had an orphan block left over that did not make the count. I snatched it up and loaded it on the longarm and had it done in less than 20 minutes. It was fun to quilt something so small.

I did not measure this, but it is not big. And then I got to thinking about walls filled with pictures. Why could I not just quilt all my orphan blocks like this making small quilts and then hang them all together on the wall?

This would be fun and so up my alley and a great way to change things out with the seasons. And the potholder stack will not grown either LOL. So this is now the new plan. I have one, and I have no idea how many more to go, I will have to dig and play some more.

And then there was a jelly roll race quilt lingering since the quilt hop of 2018. I bought it that day, and took it home and immediately raced it into this quilt top. I finally got it quilted. Fabric dying and all. I will be binding this sometime this week. I used a new panto on it. It has a gentle wave pattern and was perfect for this baby quilt. And because of the simplicity of the pattern it took about 2 1/2 hours to quilt. Perfect for anyone who is pressed for time!

And I did some handstitching on the La Passacaglia Millefiori rosette. I did not get my round done, but will certainly have this finish this week. I look forward to the fabric pull for my next rosette. I know now not to select such a dominating fabric for the larger hexagons. I decided I wanted to distract a bit from that teal. I opted for white. I utilized fussy cutting on the stripe and putting white to the small hexagon on the last round. This is helping break that up a bit, like fabric magic!

I will get that last hexi star blade combo set in tonight, and then proceed to sew the remaining points on the stars. I am loving this! It is slow, enjoyable and more the pace of what I need to be doing instead of fighting for time during the cooking and cleaning and bathing and other family duties that need my attention that take the fun out of my blogging and hobby experience.

My goals for the upcoming week:

• Bind the Jelly Roll Race quilt
• Gift the Jelly Roll Race quilt
• Dig and find an orphan block(s)
• Start a new rosette for the Millefiori quilt
• Enjoy life as much as possible, but not at the speed of light! LOL

I have worked my way through the week, now it is weekend time! Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

La Passacaglia How To

When starting a quilt of this magnitude, you have to “gain your bearings”, meaning you have to have a method to your madness, have a direction to drive this project!

Choosing the right fabrics is key for the rounds of the rosettes. After only a couple rounds of the rosette, I have figured out one key note that I want to pass on. I also want to share my method to anyone who may be trying to figure out what works. *Disclaimer, what works for me, may not work for you.

Fabric selection. If you really don’t want muddy rosettes you will need contrast between each round. These pieces are small. Here is my start:

These two colors are perfectly porportioned together and contrast just right. But notice the dark teal below. Once I added this, I realized my first mistake. This is the largest piece of the rosette. This becomes very dominate. I highly recommend the hexagon to be fussy cut out of a print that is multicolor that you coordinate throughout the rings of the rosette. I am going to call this a mistake. It will be fine, but it sure is a lot of teal. It overpowers all the other work I done. Contrast is perfect, but too much color. Your eye goes right to it.

See how much this really disrupts the La Passacaglia? The meaning of the word basically translates to harmony of music. That teal OVERPOWERS!. This should have been a print. Where ever I put this in the quilt, it is going to stand out loudly. I like loud, but this volume will be louder than other cogs. Lesson learned.

I have had trouble at the begining trying to match my corners perfectly. The more I have stitched, the more accurate I have become in this. And like someone pointed out to me, once the papers are removed, it will be perfectly stitched together.

My process:

There are two types of cuts, one of which is fussy cutting. I took note on something Tula Pink spoke of in one of her videos. She does not purchase fabric for fussy cutting EPP unless she can get several cuts or the repeats are many. She designs her fabric this way too. I have utilized that technique with the striped fabric. The repeat of the bands was just a hair longer than the star tips.

The second type of cut would be making the most of your fabric. Strips. I cut a strip first.

The great thing about EPP, it is very forgiving, my strips are not perfect and that is ok. These templates have 3/8 seam allowance. When you hand stitch these, the seam allowance is completely lost and therefore that precision becomes irrelevant.

I subcut my strip. I was able to do this with the stripes too. I just cut rectangles with the 3/8 inch seam allowance included where I wanted the paper piece to be set.

Then I glue baste my paper.

The key to this step is rolling the fabric over the piece tight! If your corners are sloppy, it will be harder when all these angles are stitched together.

And it is now ready to stitch.

And then you have little scraps of strip left over. I am trimming those down as I go and adding them to my new bin of 1 1/2 inch scrap squares.

There will probably be more lessons I learn as I proceed. I will share as I go.

And then there is a quilt top, jelly roll race.

I have had this quilt top stitched to this point since July of 2019. I have been in search of the perfect backing. I have found nothing in the past 2 years. I had a thought. The bolt of muslin I have is specially formulated. It is to be used for dying your own fabrics. I have never dyed fabric and and thought about this. I already have the muslin, so no fabric purchase necessary. This would be about 3 yards of fabric at a cost of about $30. But for $3 I can dye my own batch and match this just as good as any solid.

Here is my morning muslin! I washed and dried this last night to prep for this morning.

I am attempting to set the color with vinegar and heat.

And here it is muslin in the morning turned to afternoon sun!

This was relatively easy. I had everything except the dye. I will be washing this later today to see how much of this is retained. I hear rit dye washes out over time. Hmmmm. Any of you textile goddesses out there have a remedy to prevent this let me know. I tried to set the colors with cold water, salt, vinegar and then dry in the heat of the dryer. I presume this will work good enough to keep this from bleeding. Unsure….

In reflection of goals last week,

• Finish binding the Elizabeth Hartman quilt
• Gift the Elizabeth Hartman quilt and the churn dash quilt
• Get one round sewn on the rosette for the La Passacaglia
• Select fabric for the next round of the orange rosette above

I met and exceeded my goals!!!!! Horah!

My longterm goals are,

• Work on the last round of the tatted doily
• Bind the Midnight Alaska quilt
• Sew the hexagon quilt top
• Start quilting on the Me and My Sister Designs quilt top
• Work some on my 365 Quilt Block Challenge

All of these would be nice to cross off my list, they are still my long standing list.

My goals for this week:

• Finish one rosette for La Passacaglia
• Sew backing for the yellow jelly roll race quilt
• Start quilting the jelly roll race quilt with a pantograph

My UFO piles shrink, my WIP piles grow, I smile with finishes!!!

Thanks for stopping in and reading my blog!

Scrap Happy April

Can you believe we are already halfway through April! I must be having fun with my scraps, time sure is flying!

What have I been up to in the last month?

This is quilted, bound, washed, and on a bed!

This is bound and gifted to new parents of a baby girl!

I had this quilted some time ago and never got around to finishing. It is also bound and gifted!

Both of these quilts were completely from my stash, no purchase necessary!

Gosh, I think I should be called Scrap Maven (maybe without the S) hahahahahaha!

The rosette round was finished on my tatted doily!

And in less scrappy news I started a new project with a jelly roll and some muslin. I am liking where this is going!

I have started on my La Passacaglia Millefiori! Rosette one is LOUD! I am liking the vast contrast. I just want to turn this up even more!

Have you enjoyed other Scrap Happy posts? I encourage you to click the links and see what Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin, Vera, Nannette, Ann, Nancy, Noreen, Bear, Carol, Pretti, Edith, and Me are up to.

Thanks for clicking by and visiting my blog!