Scraptastic Tuesday - Whittling Down the Crumbs!

I've been seeing some GREAT scrap quilt ideas out there in Blogland lately!

As a part of Scraptastic Tuesday, I really want to start emptying out these crumb jars and making something beautiful out of them.  (I know - I've been saying that all year!!!)

Well, it's time to start doing something about it!  Let's see....... I've found some great ideas on Pinterest!  Check out all of the ones I have pinned to my Scrappy Love! board HERE.  What about this GORGEOUS quilt called Shattered Rainbow from My Quilt Infatuation?  Wouldn't something like this be fun???

Quilt by My Quilt Infatuation
Photo courtesy of My Quilt Infatuation.blogspot.com

Or this one - the Omigosh! quilt by Sue Garman - YIKES!!!!

Quilt designed & made by Sue Garman

A few friends have made this quilt and it is gorgeous, but Oh My Gosh - all those tiny little pieces!!!  Several blog buddies are now making it - Kathy's Quilts and Sharon Vrooman to name a few - so I am very very tempted to start one too - it's the perfect leader/ender project to use up all my crumbs... and then some! .....

I also love the idea of a scrappy Chevron quilt..... these quilts are all the rage right now - and I love the idea of no triangles :*)

Photo courtesy of  Dream Patch blog
Free Tutorial for this block on her blog HERE!

It could be done very scrappy, just using all blues for one row, with the background next, then all pinks, etc.  But perhaps this one would be more for the larger scraps?  Hmmmm..... maybe a good idea for next year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

I'm also looking through my books and have found a few that I definitely want to try!  For instance.....  I LOVE this Bowdacious pattern from the Scrap Queen herself, Bonnie Hunter.  The picture here is not great, but I've seen this quilt in person and it positively SPARKLES!!!  Mostly little 4-patches and one-sided snowball blocks.

This is a book by Jan Mullen that I have had for AGES!!!!  I love the idea of making my own fabric out of scraps - can't you just see me making this cute little kitty?  I know you can!!! So can I =^..^=

I was thrilled when I found Gwen Marston's book for $5 in the book sale section at the AQS in Chattanooga!  Gwen makes quilting fun!!!  I really want to try making a few of her funky blocks....

Sew... I think that's enough inspiration to get me started.... what about you?
Come back next week to see if I have actually started any of these LOL!!!  

Join in the Scraptastic Fun over at She Can Quilt and Mrs. Sew and Sow !  

Today is the last day to get in on this month's Linky Party HERE - there are prizes!!!!

Also linking up with Vrooman's Quilts 

for Sharon's wonderful Let's Book It challenge!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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Finishing Up the June Challenges!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - this is the last YELLOW Saturday for the month of June.  You can read more about my YELLOW Hootie HERE, 

and Soul Searching HERE.....

The day after I finished the YELLOW Soul Searching block, I put them all on the floor to see how they are looking -- and I just couldn't resist.....

 ..... I HAD to start pulling blacks for the center block to see how it was going to look!

I want the blacks to have the same colors in them to mirror the blocks as they move around the quilt.  Here is a closeup of the fabrics I finally chose ....

Before I knew it, I had started cutting and putting the block together!

And here it is in it's place.  

Can you tell that the colors move around the center block in a mirror to the blocks around it?  I'm really happy with the way this is turning out!!  You'll notice that I have already made the RED block :)  I went ahead and made it a few months ago when I washed my red fabrics.  It's nice to have that done!!!  Now I only have to do an ORANGE block for that center bottom space and these blocks will be DONE!

See more Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks HERE.....

June NewFO Challenge - July Calendar Quilt

I call this one Flowercrackers!  This quilt has been fused but still needs it's buttonhole applique stitching and quilting before it is ready to go on the wall.  I'm really loving it !!!

See more NewFO projects HERE .....

Vrooman's Let's Book It  - Calendar Quilts

I had just about forgotten about this book and how much I really, really LOVE these little quilts for each season!  Thanks Sharon for encouraging me to pick it back up and make this cute quilt for July 4th :*)

See more Let's Book It projects HERE ....

I'm glad I have a few more days before June is officially over - 

I still have lots to do before July knocks on the door!!!

Hope you are all enjoying your summer as much as I am :)

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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It's Party Time!!!!

My NewFO Challenge project for May was supposed to be a simple one.....

Bird on a Branch

I finally decided to make this small wall-hanging from this awesome Piece O' Cake book, Applique Outside the Lines, that I've been drooling over for several years now!

I love Sharon's Let's Book It party because it encourages me to get some of those dusty books off the shelf and make those quilts that I love so much!

This small wall-hanging can be used as part of a larger one that I also love.....

Can you see that the left side portion is Bird on a Branch?  I still need to decide whether mine will just be Bird on a Branch or if it wants to be part of this bigger wall-hanging called Tree O' Life.  I reeeeaaaallllly like this bigger one!!!!

In the meantime, I decided to go ahead and make the small portion and see how I like it before deciding whether to go for the whole shebang.  (Note:  I'm going to pull a 'Barbara' here and advise you that Miriam Webster Online states the definition of 'shebang' is, "everything involved in what is under consideration."  Just sayin'.....

So I pulled fabrics .....

........... and traced off the designs onto fusible.....

But then I realized it was going to be pretty darn small - a lot smaller than I thought it would be.  Looking back at the pattern to see why that might be, I realized they were supposed to be enlarged by 50% - yikes!!!  And of course since I was at retreat I didn't have access to a printer and had to stop working on it.  Basically I'm going to have to start over .....  but I did get started on it!  And that's all that's required to be eligible to join in the NewFO Challenge according to our NewFO Guru, Barbara.  

(Of course, if you ask me -- and you did, didn't you? -- I think Smitty and Gracie are really the ones pulling the strings over at Cat Patches blog *VBG*  They make Barbara say it is all her idea so they won't have to deal with any of the work.... cats are really, really smart that way!  =^..^=)

Linking up with these fun parties - Come on and join in the fun!!!!

Cat Patches' May NewFO Challenge party -

Vrooman's Let's Book It! party -

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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The Rest of the Story - DWM 3/10/14

Are you ready to hear the rest of the story about Scheherazade?  If you're new to the blog, you can read my earlier post HERE where I began the story of my plans for this really old Dinosaur UFO.

So.......Once Upon a Time.......

Well, okay, this is a long story and you may not want to read it all (LOL!!!), so let me begin at the end ..... here is Scheherazade, all finished!

It's straight - I promise!

I have to say I'm fairly happy with it, but not thrilled like I hoped to be.  It's certainly better than just slapping on a few plain borders.  But I'm pretty disappointed because my plans for this quilt's border design were an epic FAIL :(

I had all kinds of ideas flowing about ways to dress up this quilt, and spent hours drawing possible designs that fit in with the Arabian Nights theme.

I worked in EQ7 for hours trying to figure out how to make custom borders - still haven't figured that one out!  But I do have a few books on the way to help me in the future - LOL!!!

My main thought was to try to soften all those sharp edges in the Buzzsaw design in the center, and I wanted to pull that wonderful print into the outer border somehow.  But I had to figure out a way to get good separation of the pieces.  So, I pulled out Susan Cleveland's book, Piping Hot Curves......

I'll link this book and project up with Sharon Vrooman's Let's Book It party!!!

Susan came to our Guild in 2009 and taught several classes.  She is an amazing quilter and such a nice person - we all loved her!  The class I took was about inserting piping in the seams of curves to dress up a quilt design.

I loved the class and totally LOVED the effect of the piping to give that extra little ZING!  I even got a little button to "officially" state that I am a Piping Hottie LOL!!!

Blocks made in class in 2009

I got busy working on a corner design using the piping technique to give the pieces definition, and I have to say I was very happy with the design itself and how it turned out.

But I was totally disappointed in the way it looked on the quilt.  Here it is just pinned on to test it out.....

It just seems to make the quilt too fussy.  Too much going on.  And I ended up liking it better without all the fussy corners.  I'm sure glad I only made up the one!  I'm happy with the stepped side borders design that I ended up with, and I'm sure I'll be happy with this quilt for many years.  But I'm also pretty sure I'll always look at it and think about what could have been if I had been a little more seasoned as a designer!

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As for the rest of my design wall, I saw Lesley, the Cuddle Quilter, making some really cool hexie braids on her blog HERE and was immediately smitten - actually I think most of the blog world was just as smitten!  But when I checked out the price of that ruler I decided it would have to wait a while :O

Then I got a bright idea!  I have several sets of Marti Michell templates, and the Large and Small Hexagons have been sitting in my templates box for ages - never used.  I thought, why not try it?  So I pulled out some of my 2-1/2" strips, lined them up with the largest hexagon template, cut, sewed..... and quick as a wink I had Scrappy Braids!!!!

Aren't these cool???  Super, super easy!!!

And I didn't have to buy anything - I love it!!!

I think these will make a wonderful Leader/Ender project for a scrappy quilt, so I've cut up a bunch of them and set them by my machine.  This also means I can mark off my NewFO Challenge project for March - yoohoo!!!!

And the April Bertie BOM package arrived Saturday!

Don't you just LOVE those cute little bunny ears on Bertie?  

Bless her heart, she really does get into the holidays, doesn't she?   

I got totally sidetracked from the March Bertie and hadn't touched it in quite a while, so I thought it might be just as easy to work on them both together.

Yesterday I finished up the buttonhole stitching on both, and got the HSTs ready for applying to the borders.   The hand stitched embellishments are going to be fun on both of these :*)

So what's on your Design Wall?  

Share with us at Judy's Patchwork Times!
Also linking up with Freemotion's Tuesday Linky Party!

Have a lovely week!!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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A New Week.....

Life is beginning to get back to what passes for "normal" around here, 

and I want to say a heartfelt THANKS to all of YOU!!! 

Your outpouring of love and comfort and prayers  

has meant the world to me, and I love you all!!! 

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Sorry - it's a little blurry :(
But it makes up for it with COLOR, right????

This is my NewFO Challenge project for February ......

Diamonds are Forever

I had the pleasure of taking part in a class given at our Music City Guild this past week and completed one large block, which looks like this.....



It is actually 4 small 6-inch string blocks put together into a larger 12-inch block.  The string blocks started out like this....

These were so much fun, and I loved the play of these colors together so much, that I came home and put together a few more of these little string blocks so I could get that lovely diamond effect to begin shining through as each block was added to the sides of the first large block - YUM!!!

I can see that I seem to have some of my colors running together, but I don't think that will matter once the entire quilt is assembled.  This quilt is from the below book by Virginia (Ginger) Baker & Barbara (Bobbie) Sanders - and these lovely ladies also taught the class :)

Amazon Link HERE

I'll also link up with Sharon at Vrooman Quilts for her Let's Book It party with this project :*)

I love actually using my quilt books for a change LOL!!!

As you can see from the cover photo, the authors made their quilt with black as the neutral star points in the background, and civil war prints for the colorful strings.  I've seen this quilt made with black and jewel colored fabrics - and let me tell you.... it was just simply FABULOUS!!!!  However, I've done quite a lot of quilt projects lately using that color palette, so I really wanted to do something different.

My first decision had to be what I wanted to use for the background - the star points - and black was not allowed as an option.  And then, what colors would be brought out to play with it?  These are the fabrics I ended up with......

My first thought was to use the same fabric for the background star points throughout for continuity.  But I am really short of large chunks of fabrics that would work as a neutral.  See that lime solid in the upper left background?  I had about 5 yards of that, which would have been plenty for the star points as well as a nice outer border.  But lime?  Wow!!!  You all know I love color, but I had to be sure it was "beautiful" colorful, not "circus clowns" colorful LOL!!!  I gave quite a lot of thought to whether I really wanted to use lime, but then I got the bright idea to use the print you see at the very top as a tool for pulling other colors to play with the lime.  Of course, this was easy to do because they turned out to be some of my favorites!  Fuscia! Violet! Blue! Aqua! Purple!

After I had it all together, I was disappointed to realize that the solid lime looked too tame with all that sparkle, kind of flat - which of course led to the choice of using lots of different limes to get variety and sparkle!  Why should the strips be the only ones to shine, right?

Even after I had it all laid out though, I was still not quite sure it was going to work together okay.  How could I be sure before I cut all that fabric and invested so much time and effort?  I decided to tackle my EQ7 to see if I had progressed enough in my lessons to be able to draft this quilt and then try out some color plans before I did any cutting .....

       ..........  I think I did okay - what do you think?????

This is my favorite colorway!

I have to tell you - I am HOOKED!!!  

EQ7 is serious FUN!!!

And all that power can go to a girl's head, you know what I mean?

Here are a few more colorways I played with  ....

Of course, I loved the next few, but the black background was not allowed ...... maybe someday?

So that is what is on my Design Wall today - in addition to my February Dinosaur UFO which is getting some serious work done to it in the next few days!

Amish Beauties - center done and awaiting border treatments

I'll share more about this one when it is finished.  I'm hoping to get it to the flimsy stage by Tuesday :*)  I'm also slowly stitching on the March Bertie's Year BOM, which will probably not get done by March 1....

Most of the pieces are now appliqued down and I'm ready to make the half-square triangles for the border.  Next will be the embroidery embellishments - my favorite part of these little quilts!!!  Well, except for enjoying them once they are finished, of course :*)  

I'm a little late, but linking up with Kathy's Quilts for her Slow Sunday Stitching party anyway.

Also linking up with Connie's Tuesday Linky Party and What a Hoot's BOM's Away!

Come join in on the fun - link up your projects too!!!

Hope everyone has a lovely week!  We are expecting gorgeous weather until the weekend, when it is supposed to turn cold again.  But I'm not going to complain about that .... no indeed!  I'm just thrilled that we've been given this current reprieve, and that SPRING is finally on it's way - woohoo!!!!

Hugs & Blessings!

Teresa

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