An Ugly Quilt Finished

Back in 2017, I wanted to use up some ugly fabric in my RSC blocks as the constant. I loved the Buckwheat block discovered while making the 365 Ultimate Sampler Challenge. So, it was one of the RSC block for that year. I made a few blocks every month using the ugly fabric and the color of the month. 

Buckwheat

Then some squirrels invaded my sewing room and Buckwheat was neglected after March. Now a days, I don't even care for this block. So when I rediscovered the blocks in October, while cleaning out a bin, I decided to turn the blocks into something or get rid of them. 

I remembered why these blocks were set aside when I started assembling them together. 

They don't fit together!! 

I managed to make them look "good enough" on most seams but some are just atrocious! 

Anywho! This is the final result. Don't look at the yellow pinwheels (secondary patterns) too close. That's where the sh*t is. 

Like I said it's done : assembled, quilted and bound. It's not very big, only 22 X 36 if I remember correctly. It will be a nice blanket for a dog or a cat I guess. It was brought to a thrift store in town, anonymously. 

The back is nicer than the front. It's a cheat sheet given to me a long time ago. Bound with yellow since it befitted both sides. 

Happy to have another UFO removed from the list. 

The crumb stars are coming along. Here are the red ones. 

I was so excited about having all the stars finished that I didn't take a group photo of the yellow ones. Sorry. 

Half of the blocks are already sewn together and they are a charm to sew compared to Buckwheat! 

Sorry for the shadows. It's hard to find a good place for a photo after 3:30 pm. The sun is already so low by that time. Four more rows to assemble. 

Thank you all for your sweet comments about Raven's departure. I'll try to reply to your comments this weekend. 

Have an AWEsome weekend. ;^)

Will catch up with these talented ladies' link-party at some point. See you there.
Angela at So Scrappy
Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts
Alycia for Finished or Not Friday

Cynthia for Oh Scrap!

A "Slight" Miscalculation

It's one of those innocent mistake one does where it takes a long time before "seeing" the mistake. In my last post, I mentioned that I needed 80 HSTs to finish 10 aqua star blocks. So, I cut 80 squares. I turned them all into HSTs, pressed and trimmed. 

8 Crumb Stars 

While assembling the aqua star blocks, I started cutting red fabric for the red star blocks. Then it hit me!! I had waayyy too many HSTs.

The 80 squares produced 160 HSTs. Duh! All I needed were 40 squares. By then, 60 red squares were already cut. Oh well. HSTs are so versatile that I'm sure I can find another soup to throw them in. 

16 Crumb Stars done

(photographed in the light rain early this morning)

While trimming all those aqua HSTs, I must have thought I needed some kind of punishing because I grabbed this little basket that held the bonus corners from the Good Fortune quilt and trimmed them down to 1.5" too.

The six HSTs at the bottom were rejected because there aren't green enough; too much rust showing. 

I didn't count how many there is but you can see from the quilt that there were plenty of these bonus corners from the stars. 

Good Fortune - Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt 2019
aka - Field of Poppies 

I don't know yet what the green HSTs will become but it will be fun to figure a layout for them. 

Hope you are well and having fun with your stash of fabric. 

;^)

  

Will catch up with these talented ladies' link-party at some point. See you there.
Angela at So Scrappy
Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts
Alycia for Finished or Not Friday

Cynthia for Oh Scrap!

What Happened?

I didn't mean to disappear like this but life got rough and I needed a break. A break from everything, office work included. I am slowly getting back on course. 

I did some sewing. 

Little 3.5" 9-Patch because they're fun to make.

Back in 2014, I followed Judy Laquidara's BOM. Then Judy disappeared from Blogger and the BOM stopped. In April of 2021, it was tagged to the colour Angela called for that month, prompting me to assemble it. I decided to make more Spool blocks and got these blocks into the flimsy stage. Goal achieved. Then it went back in time out because I didn't know if it needed a border or not. 

Well, it does not need a border! It got pin-basted, quilted and bound at the beginning of October. There! DONE! 

It's roughly 35 X 45. 

I used an old (but cute) piece of fabric for the back with a dark green gingham for the binding. No flannel for this one. 

With this finish, I was curious about how many UFOs were left. I was shocked! There are seventeen flimsies waiting to be quilted and thirty-nine unfinished projects. Yep. 39! Grand total of 56 projects to finish. Sigh! On the bright side, I have 63 finished. Yay! Lol. Friends' Favourite is counted with the flimsies. I'll remove it from the list when it is bound.  

Friends' Favourite hand quilting was going very well until it came to a halt. On October 4th, Row 10 was done. The needle hasn't moved since then. Only 6 more rows to go. I'll get back at it eventually. 

During October, I usually go to a retreat with 9 other ladies. A retreat! This is what I needed. So, I got the food ready, packed up clothing, projects and sewing machine. Got to the AirBnB late Friday afternoon, unpacked everything and settled down for four days of sewing and fun with the girls. 

Photo taken on Saturday morning. Just so beautiful. 

That's exactly when I found out that the pump broke during the night and there's no water in the house. 😲

Francine and I went down to the lake with pails to gather some water so we could at least flush the toilets. Needless to say, we packed back up and left. We were all so disappointed and annoyed but that's life. 

Even though our retreat was cut very short, I still came back home with a lot of goodies. 

Yes, these 2 bags are full of fabric. Some I had already shared with others by the time I took this picture, lol. 

 

One of the projects I had brought along was these blocks made by Anne. She gave me these a long time ago, when she moved to the States. That was before Covid. Time to turn these blocks into something. I might not be at the retreat but I can still finish this one. Since the blocks aren't exactly the same size some kind of sashing was needed. 

Then I decided to make the block dance. 

This is the top I named "Dancing Anne". It is counted in the list of flimsies. It's not big but that's all I have. I bought the peach fabric especially for this quilt. I might add a border to make it a little bit wider. It's only 31.5 inches wide by 46 long. The photo is sideways. 

After that, my world stopped. 

This week I was able to sew a little bit and worked on the crumb stars. I would like to give this quilt to Quilts for Survivors, here in Timmins, Ont. 

I'm only making yellow, red and aqua stars. After making these, there are 6 of each colour. I need 48, so 10 more blocks needed from each colour. Knowing that each stars need 8 HSTs time 10 blocks means that I need 80 HSTs in each colour. This quick calculation prompt me to put the pedal to the metal. 

Aqua scraps came out, were ironed and cut. Sixty HSTs sewed, pressed and trimmed. Twenty more are waiting by the sewing machine for the next sewing session. I got a few red chunks out to be pressed and cut. It feels good to have a goal. 

But what happened to me? 

If you follow my blog, you might remember that I had a rough year. And this bit broke the camel's back. 

My beautiful cat Raven, is the reason my world has stopped and I can't sew or hand quilt at the moment. Hand-quilting is very quiet and peaceful activity but only dark thoughts come to my mind lately because Raven is no longer with us. 

He was attacked by something and was wounded. He had a deep cut on his neck, among others. We brought him to the vet but, even with meds, it got infected, it didn't closed, it didn't healed. After 2 weeks of nursing him the best I could, I went back to the vet with the very tough decision to put him to sleep. I couldn't handle seeing him suffer any longer. Tears are running down my cheeks as I'm writing this. I miss him. 💔

Let me finish this post on a happier note. Here's my friend Lucie with her gorgeous butterfly quilt. She's a retired teacher who loves butterfly. 
 

Hope all is well in your corner of the world and that you can find some time to sew. 

;^) 

Will catch up with these talented ladies' link-party at some point. See you there.
Angela at So Scrappy
Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts
Alycia for Finished or Not Friday

Cynthia for Oh Scrap!

So, You Made a Scrappy Quilt

and you THINK you've mixed all the scraps up so that the colours are well balanced across the whole quilt. You've looked at it and looked at it again and again, from every angle, and you've removed certain prints to add more variety or you've moved them around several times to see WHERE was the best place for this or that pattern. You made all the decisions yourself to make sure everything was perfect. 

Riiiiigghhtt!!!! 

And you are so proud of this beautiful scrappy quilt that you decide to hand quilt it. 

The brain is such a wonderful piece of art. Since the beginning of time, humans have sorted and stored things. Innocently, it started with grains and seeds to grow them again the next year, making sure not to mix the seeds, etc., and things evolved and we started sorting and storing bigger things by groups and categories, and labelling everything, etc. 

I believe this process is now in my brain's DNA. Look at a close-up of the image above. What do you see? 

Circles,  

Circles, 

Circles!! 

These 3 prints are one above the other one, meaning in different rows but same column. My brain told me the colours were evenly spread. I forgot to ask my brain if the PATTERNS were repetitive! 

Now, if we look at the left of these circles, we will see a fox (and circles)

Look up at the print above this one and you will find 

a fox ! 

I am NOT kidding you. Go back up to the second image and look at it again. You'll see. It's all there. 

Did you see the green dot to the left of the fox? Guess what? 

Yep! 

Dots, dots, dots!! 

I have one of the craziest brain. Even when I don't want to overthink something and have it all sorted out, I do it anyway! I'm SO good. 😇😂 

I've been doing very well with the quilting on this quilt - Friends' Favourite. 

If I quilt one block a day, it will be done by March 18, 2027. That is the challenge. 

Meaning on Monday, August 17, I should have 40 blocks done. Instead, I had 48 blocks done, INCLUDING the sashing. Three rows were done. Yay me!! 

The hardest part is the first and last block of each row. As you can see the quilt is so big that it's very close to the frame. It is very awkward and cumbersome to sew the end blocks. It takes me longer than the rest of the row. 

 

Some crumbs got together

There are 16 blocks per row. So, I was thinking:  if I quilt 2 blocks a day there would be 14 blocks done at the end of the week. So, if I were to quilt 2 blocks and a bit, I could finish  one row every week. 😲

More crumbs

I know I shouldn't push myself like this because I don't want it to become a chore. It is a relaxing exercise and I want to keep it that way but GOSH! it's tempting. 

Just one more crumb block, I promise

With September sitting on my doorstep, the winter routine will start soon. Actually, September first is my group first meeting, so I wouldn't be able to quilt that evening. Then, the baby quilt drive will take center stage once again, not to mention a retreat in October. This means many evenings with no quilting time. As life gets busier, it will become harder to keep that fast pace of 2 blocks and a bit per day.

Did a crumb star instead, lol. 

So, on Monday, August 24, I had the fourth row finished. WHHAAATT!!?? Yes, because I though I might as well make the most of it while I can because soon I'll be too busy. There are days when I don't really feel like quilting and then I hear myself say "get the sucker done and move on" and I just do it. Lol. (Blocks required : 47 - Done : 64) 

Now that my fingers and wrist are stronger compared to the first few days of quilting, I can quilt longer. The issue now is my back. It's started to complain. It doesn't like the long sitting session, bent over the quilt. It will be another thing to take into consideration in my 2 blocks and a bit per day shenanigans. 

This one, I did do on purpose.
They aren't the same print as the little piece
is not perfectly arched like the square one is but they are so cute. 
Maybe this is where my brain thought it was okay to do associations? 

While I sewed some pieced-backings for the baby quilts, I managed to get a few crumbs blocks together. And a star. (Shown in the photos today)

Hope all is well with you and you get to sew a little bit every day. 

;^)


And I'll try to catch these talented ladies' link-party. See you there.
Angela at So Scrappy
Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts
Alycia for Finished or Not Friday

Kathy Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching 
Cynthia for Oh Scrap!

Another Week; Another Bag.

I've returned to work this week so not as much sewing as I would have liked but still a few things got done.


I challenged myself again this week. I'm starting to like this kicking-my-own-butt-into-action attitude, lol. Let's have a look. 

Crumb stars were quickly done because the centres were already assembled. One aqua and the other is whatever-came-out-of-the-bag. 

A yellow 18 Brick block was also assembled with little 1.5 X 2.5 " bits. As I looked around for the yellow rectangles for it, I found quite a few of yellow with pink, so 

Challenge #1 was to make another block with only yellow and pink print. 

Ta-dah!  I know some are more red than pink but I worked with what I had. The batik one doesn't show up very well in the picture but it's yellow and pink. Then, when all was sewn and pressed, I found some more pink on yellow bits, lol. It never fails! 

Last weekend when I visited her, Pink gave me a bag of scraps. This week, I went through it to put the scraps away as my new morning routine permits to. 

There were many fabric in the bag. 

Challenge #2: empty Pink's bag. 

After putting all the bigger pieces away, this is all that was left. 

Look! Pink on yellow, lol. These were cut in useable sizes and put away too. 

This purple one is so beautiful and there was enough to make a Buckeye Beauty block so, in the kit bag it went. 

Okay, so, that wasn't much of a challenge. How about another bag? My right brain said : yes please. 

Out came another bag of gifted scraps for Challenge #3. Nann asked me how many bags do I have. More than fingers and toes. Lol. 

I grabbed this one. It doesn't look like much but I had some big surprises out of that one. Let's see. 

First thing I saw was a little bag of rectangles about 2 X 3.5". Set them aside to measure them properly later. 

Then this beautiful purple came out. I had this print in so many colourways but it's my first in lilac. Love it. Set it down in the purple scrap box. Also two brown HSTs came out to play. Sent those to the HST box. 

More brown pieces followed. They joined the others in the brown scrap basket. The strings close to the rotary cutter went in the string bags I sorted two weeks ago. 

Next, what I thought were strings of lovely prints turned out to be blocks.  Lots of blocks. 

Then some more . . . 

. . . and some more . . . 

They are obviously from different projects so, what am I to do with these?? (The brown geese are prettier in person. Just saying.)

For now, they are sitting on the bench. Something will come up, I'm sure. 

But wait, the bag is not empty yet. These were the next ones to come out. 

I believe they are part of *Disappearing 4 Patch* or maybe 9 Patch? I'm not very good at figuring which block becomes what when you cut them over and over. Anywho! These are all the blocks I have and no scraps from the bag matched this batik. They too shall become something . . . someday. 

At the end, the bag surrendered and gave up the last of its treasures. 

A 2.5" strip in leafy green, a strip of 2" in dark blue, 70" of blue binding and pink strings. The red and the little pile of scraps on the right were cut to useable sizes. 

Well, this bag is finally empty. Such a generous one. I believe it was from Françoise. The same lady who bind some of the baby quilts for me. 

On Wednesday, I went to Lucie's place again for some garage sewing. I went directly to her house from work to deliver an office chair with wheels. She could use one more in her garage she said and we had one we didn't use, so, win-win. I took some pictures but that will be for another post. This one is long enough as it is. 

Although I didn't take a picture, Friends' Favourite is slowly progressing. 

As always, I hope you can find some time to sew. 

Have an AMAzing weekend. ;^)

And I'll try to catch these talented ladies' link-party. See you there.
Angela at So Scrappy
Frédérique at Patchwork and Quilts
Alycia for Finished or Not Friday
Cynthia for Oh Scrap!