Wonky Stars

I'm working on a scrap project for the Scrap Attack Challenge.  I'm making more wonky stars.  They are a great thing to do with little scraps.  So far I have 67 stars worth, which is 335 blocks that are 2.5 on a side.  I can't even really see dent in the scrap bins, which is disheartening.  I have no idea how to know when I'm done.  Should I do one of every fabric in the bins, until I really have done them all?  That's what I've been doing so far.  I'm not cutting yardage for this project, so there are many, many fabrics in the stash that won't be in this quilt and there are some scraps that I don't have enough of to make a star, so they won't be included either.  This is one of those times I wish I had a design wall.  I have no photos to show you because the all the pieces of each star are safety pined together and as much as I love you guys, I'm not spreading them out on the floor for a picture.

I just cut up another half yard of white to use as the background for the stars.  I've finished the neutral bin and the pink bin and am half way through the blue/green/purple bin.  I've done a few from the warm bin, but that will be a big job too.  As I'm sorting through the scraps I'm trying to put the same fabric pieces back together and I'm trying to be realistic about what I will use and what I won't.  If it isn't more than an inch wide I'm putting it in a box to give to Baby Girl's preschool.  If I don't like it, I'm putting in the preschool box.  If there isn't even enough for one wonky star and I know that's the last of that fabric, I'm putting it in the preschool box.  Did I mention I've hardly even made a dent in the scrap bins?

Just so this isn't a picture less post, here is the Christmas scrap wonky star pillow.

Catch me I'm about to swoon!

I got intrigued by the QAL that is happening on Flickr for the Swoon quilt pattern.  My New Years Resolution was to try more complicated piecing.  The Swoon kit on Fat Quarter shop was made up with Ruby.  I had it in my cart for the longest time and then it went on clearance and I debated some more.  I finally decided to get it and they were sold out.  I called and asked if they found anymore kits in the back, I'd like one.  Sure enough, they found me one.

The first change I made was to swap out the background.  The kit came with Kona white and instead I bought 4.5 yards of Bella Steel.  I like the way bright fabrics pop against a dark background and mostly white quilts make me nervous.

Here are my first two blocks.

I found a picture on the flickr group that was done with 4 fabrics instead of two and I liked the way it shows off the piecing better.  After all, if you are going to go to all this trouble, you should really show off your work.  I figured out that I could build all the base components and if I delayed sewing them together I could swap them around to get the look of the block in the flickr group without having to tax my brain trying to keep things straight.

So here are the blocks with the corners swapped.

Now I'm not sure which I like better.  I would mix the components around among the 9 blocks, so there won't be any 2 blocks with the same 4 fabrics.  Thoughts?

Bucket list update

I can't believe it's February.  January pretty much sucked, except for the week in Vegas, which was only ok.  The Wee Monsieur was really sick.  We thought he might have appendicitis, but it was only a virus according to the ER.  Then I ended up having semi emergency surgery, I'm almost recovered.  Then Baby Girl and The Hubby got the stomach virus, but at least we knew it wasn't appendicitis.  12 hours after they came down with the stomach bug, Hubby and I flew to Vegas for a conference.  Hubby didn't enjoy the first few days and my mother, certainly didn't enjoy being left with a vomiting lethargic 3 year old.  Everyone survived, however.  Then I was rushing around to get ready for a craft fair.  I made 300 bows in a week, I was somewhat behind schedule do to the surgery.  Thursday night before the craft fair on saturday it got canceled.  One might wonder why it would get canceled.  The reason given was the weather.  Um, we live in Iowa, why bother scheduling anything in February if you would consider canceling for the weather.  For the record it drizzled lightly on and off on Saturday.  I hope they feel dumb.  That brings us right up to the present, as I'm writing this post, I'm waiting to hear from Hubby, who took Wee Monsieur to the ER, again, this time for stitches.  He fell in his room and whacked his chin on a toy treasure chest.  We didn't think it was too bad, until we got the blood cleaned up and saw that he split his chin open.

I've done virtually nothing quilty until yesterday, when I started cutting into my stack of fat quarters for my Swoon quilt, but that's another post.  I've done some more wonky star points as leader enders too.

Here is the bucket list.

Swoon- Started cutting and have 2 blocks partially assembled.


Postage Stamp Quilt-  haven't started, haven't uncovered the fabric from it's hiding place.

HST-  so many options, so little time

Drunkards Path-  not yet

Improv stripes bed spread-  Must finish this soon.

Interlocking wonky stars wall hanging-  30 or so stars, debating one star from each fabric, or more than one

Dutch windmills

Rainbow charm squares

Flying Geese

Perfect the zippered pouch

New Patterns- working on 2 different ideas, have prototypes, but need to work out the kinks.

Monday Bucket List

I haven't done anything on the list since last week.  I've been fighting a nasty infection and it's sucked the life out of me.  Plus the Wee Monsieur has been sick too, so kids haven't been in school and there have been lots of doctors appts.  Hopefully everyone is on the upswing now.

Winter tree quilt-  I started off following the Purl Bee tutorial, and was really unsatisfied by the results.  I didn't like having the seam down the middle of the tree.  Making all the trees different blocks seemed inefficient.  I can see why they did it the way they did, just being able to give people measurements for rectangle is easy for a free tutorial.  I wanted to make my trees differently and I invested in a few different triangle rulers.  I have one top put together and now I know how I want to do the final piece.

Postage Stamp Quilt-  haven't started, haven't uncovered the fabric from it's hiding place.

HST-  so many options, so little time

Drunkards Path-  not yet

Improv stripes bed spread-  Must finish this soon.

Interlocking wonky stars wall hanging-  half a dozen star pieces, debating one star from each fabric, or more than one

Dutch windmills

Rainbow charm squares

Flying Geese

Perfect the zippered pouch

New Patterns- working on 2 different ideas, have prototypes, but need to work out the kinks.

Scrap Attack Quilt Along

I'm in for the scrap attack challenge.  Since I first did the wonky star blocks for my 4x5 Modern Bee blocks, I've known I wanted to do a wall hanging for my living room.  That was my plan for my entry in the scrap attack quilt along challenge.  I have started, I have one star done and a bunch of little white squares cut.  I'm debating whether I should use all my white scraps as background, or restrict myself to Kona white scraps.  

Anyway, when I was pulling out the scraps I got an inspiration for another scrap quilt.  I envisioned improv log cabin blocks, which are my favorite thing ever and which I told myself I wouldn't do anymore of this year, with bright blue centers and moving from white around the blue to dark brown at the edges, set in dark brown sashing.  Despite telling myself that I was moving out of my comfort zone this year, I started on them a few days ago.  It's been a hard week and I needed some comfort sewing.  Plus, sometimes when you get an artistic vision, you have to see it through.

 The top two blocks need one more circuit of dark brown.  The blue centers don't pop as much as I thought they would.  Some of that is starting with blue scraps that have too much white in them.  I'm pretty happy with the shade progression from white to dark brown.  I did need to cut some more beige scraps, but it's in the stash, so that's allowed. 

 Some of the squares I cut wonky and some I left natural.

I think I like the mixture of deliberately wonky and naturally wonky.  Anyway, I'm doing a good job of burning through my white, beige, brown scraps and I'm highlighting a few of my favorite blue scraps.

I'm now thinking that to get more blue in the piece I should sash the blocks in a bright blue, which would contrast well with the dark brown outer ring.  Decisions, decisions!

NOEL finished

I went back through the Christmas fabric to find a different border.  The new border needed white, but not too much of it.  I went with the Christmas word fabric.

 It's white enough and incorporates some of the red and green, but still provides a good contrast to NOEL.

I couldn't resist the candy cane binding and I put almost the last of the Christmas argyle on the back.  Feels good to use stuff up.

The last bit of the argyle, I cut into two 2.5 inch strips and I tossed them in the scrap bag.  I'm sure they'll make it into a pillow next year.

NOEL

I had seen something like this floating about, or maybe I was inspired by the LOVE versions, but one of the Christmas projects I didn't get done was a NOEL pillow.  I sat down Sunday night and made my own paper piece patterns for the letters.  I knew I wanted them to be square because all my pillows are square.  One of things I didn't like so much about the LOVE pillow, was having to square it up.  Since I was working with printer paper I made them 8.5 inch squares, which along with a 3 inch border would give me a generously sized 20 inch pillow cover.

This is what I made.  I haven't put my Christmas fabric scraps away, so I might as well get on top of projects for next year.

I sat down last night to quilt it.  I wanted to do a random line quilting, but I didn't want the quilting to take away from the letters.  After staring at it for 15 minutes, it occurred to me that I could do random lines in each area, so that no line crossed from background to letter.

 I used white thread in the white background, green in the O and E and red in the N and L.

 That's some dense quilting.  This little 16 inch square took me almost 2 hours.

 When I was done, I showed it to my husband and announced, (and I quote) "As they say in the business this has the quilt snotted out of it!"  Crickets chirped as my husband stared blankly back at me.  Finally he questioned, "quilt snotted out of it?"  Doh!  We both laughed.  Reverse that, "This has the snot quilted out of it!"  He said that made much more sense.

I quilted the center before adding the borders, so that I could bury the thread ends under the border.  It's a pillow so no one will see the back.  I auditioned a bunch of different fabrics for the border, before deciding on this one.  I didn't want to use red or green for fear the letters would loose their impact.  I didn't want to use white because I have 4 small creatures (human and canine) living in the house.  I thought the cream with the dots was a nice compromise.

 However, now that I'm looking at it in daylight, I'm not loving the cream and white together and the more subdued greens and reds in the border don't look quite right with the brighter fabrics in the letters.  Suggestions?  Any of the fabrics in these pillows are available.

If you got to the end and still have a christmas project in you, I'd be happy to send you the PDF's for NOEL if you leave a comment.  Also, if you know how to enable downloads, tell me.