Sew Sunshine

I am super excited to be working on more scraps this month. I am joining in with Tea & Brie on IG for #sewthescrapoutofmarch  HERE I have already been working on organizing and cleaning up some of my bags and bags of various scraps. I made two scrap quilts already this year which you can see  HERE  for "Getting Beachy"  and  HERE  for "Scrappydo" First thing I want to tackle this month is my jar and bag of corner bits I cut off when making binding.  I did some sorting last night and found I have bits that are small and then some a little larger. I think I have an idea so I am grabbing the bigger bits first and using some charm pack sized solid fabric to sew these too.  Looks kinda messy now so I hope this idea works. I have 110 solid 5" squares so that means I am using at this point 220 bits ....woohoo! I think that is a start.  I just love seeing the stack of bits go down. I know some of these pieces of fabric have been in 4 or more quilts. It is time for

I put my boots on and went to a few of my photo haunts today. Some easy to get to others not so much because of all the piled up snow. It was so beautiful and calm outside this morning. Fog and rime on trees and surfaces.  Anyway, scrappy scraps here was what I was working on trying to get to the bottom of my scrap bin. Can't even see a dent yet so....more to come hopefully.  You can't really see how beautiful this tree frost is but take my word.  You can see a little more on that front branch.  Oh yeah back to the quilt..... I think I am walking in deer tracks and other various critters.  I could have went scrappier on the back of this one but with so many seams on the front it just felt safer to use a bigger piece. I have plenty of those in my stash too.  This scrap quilt measures 50" x 56" All stash/scraps diamond grid straight line quilting My other recent scrap quilt can be found  HERE linking up with Sarah and  Can I get a whoop whoop and Wendy @  Peacock Party

I....love....this....scrappy quilt! As soon as project quilting 12.2 was over I set out to start to tackle some scraps. Bags and bags and bags of scraps. You know, you finish a project and some scraps go in a bag, or you go out to a sew day (well in the old days) and you take limited stuff with you and then you come home so tired you don't put away and you end up with...bags! I probably emptied and stripped 12 or 13 smallish bags. Some of course had to stay in bags as that project may not have been finished.  Still I started sewing strips together after cutting and making size piles.  I was making some pretty good progress...then  Project Quilting 12.3 Virtual Vacation  came out on Sunday. You have to start a project after the theme is given out. So when I went to see the challenge I came across Sarah's post for  String Therapy tutorials  @ Confessions of a Quilt Addict. This tutorial she got from Christina HERE  from the blog A few scraps. Her tutorial was for the scrappy stri

abound right now so I am looking at today as a small win. I have not been sewing hardly at all in the last few months. My eyes and other issues have not been great. I am to the point right now where I feel I either do what I can while I can or quit. I don't want to quit. I have been able to read on my tablet with the lighting on it set to a mild bright.  Yay! That is progress. I decided since that was going pretty well I wondered what I could do in the quilting department?  Above is a photo of hot pad. I had made the top in the style of QAYG on batting so it was perfect to add some insul-bright and a scrappy binding. It took most of the morning because I had to wind a bobbin and clean the machine. You know what happens when you are away from your machine for months or longer and suddenly you have to remember how to do everything all over again.  Well I did it! And when that one was finished I made two more..... Again.... I had forgotten how much of a mess it is to get out all suppl

Rose Garden  22" x 22" Less Hideous Challenge for OMQG Improv Piecing Organic Hatch quilting One of my local guilds set up a challenge where you pulled fabric out of a big bag of uglies. I picked the two above which I felt were lesser of all the dated fabrics. I kept them laying around until I thought what I wanted to do. It was hard because the bigger print would be hard to put in any kind of quilt block and it would still read traditional.  Then I figured I would have to improv a traditional block, in this case the 9 patch.  Also the colors, which are hard to tell on here, are pinky peachy in the large print and dark deep rosy red in the smaller print. The larger print has a touch of green which is the the complimentary color. If I went there, I would be in holiday territory. I didn't want that. I decided to put only a small amount of green in and pull out the peachy colors in the prints for a more analogous color set up. I chose grunge in both shad

Like many of you, I have been sewing masks.  We have so many places asking for masks that it is hard not to stop what you are doing and sew them if you can. I knew that I had enough supplies already to make a few so it was just a matter of digging through everything.  You know what happens when you dig through everything? You find things you forgot about. I didn't dig far when I came across lots of UFO projects. While mask fabric was washing I organized a few of the ufo's to see what needed to be done. I was able to finish several smaller quilts I had in the pile just waiting for sandwiching and quilting.  I realized that when I finished a couple I had a fence full. I decided on a semi- nice day before guild virtual sew day (the sat. before Easter) I would take a quilt show pic.  I will post more about a couple of the UFO's later. Some of these I have already blogged about last month.  My fence faces a park so anyone driving into the park goes right by and

CrossPlay Quilt test  Pattern by  Simone Quilts   check for her new release soon. I tested the baby size CrossPlay and chose mostly ZenChic Spotted fabrics. I wanted bold colors and a rainbow feel.  Quilting is a serpentine stitch 40.5" x 40.5" Luckily I have a park near by.  Added a bit of color to this blah landscape don't you think?? I have been working on an old scrap project and made a tutorial for inset scrap circles. Check it out  Here

"Mountain High, Valley Low"  48" x 38" improv from scraps line quilting in diamond pattern The improv triangle QAL with Nicholas Ball on IG was so much fun. It was just the most glorious distraction for me. I was able to sit down and make a few blocks at a time and didn't have to worry about measurements and sizes. It was just what I needed during my waiting game with my health issues.  The back piece was something I hand dyed a while back. I think it worked pretty great for this back with a few leftover blocks. I had several versions going and of course didn't think it was going to end up so big but it was just so fun to work on.  Luckily I had just the right aurifil thread. I ended up using most of the lighter ones which were a mix of 50 and 40 weight.  It took a long time to figure out what I wanted to quilt across all those colors. I asked my husband what he saw when he looked at this piece and he said points

I made a new much needed bag! It is the Luisa pattern by  Sotak Handmade I used my stash canvas fabrics for this bag. It went together pretty easily. Of course I didn't take pics of the inside which is a bright pink print. This bag is great! It has a zip pocket outside and on the back two slip in pockets. In the inside it has a zipper pocket and then the whole thing zips shut. It is the perfect size to carry my tablet or just small stuff.  I guess I was in the sewing mood as I got out some knit fabric I had and made a tunic top too.  I might make more since I still have a huge stash of knits and other clothing type fabrics.   I have been neglecting my garden of flowers and veggies but they seem to be thriving pretty well. My husband shoots them some water so I guess I should say they are his garden. This hibiscus has gone wild. We have another one that is white, gotten and planted at the same time and it is a dwarf compared to this one.  We planted one