Four patches and kids tops galore!

I started making four patches as part of Rainbow Scrap Challenge many years ago.  And I am still making them, it just took me until June to get back on track this year!

The problem is you think you have oodles of blocks and then when you lay them out, at 4" finished they don't go far enough for a quilt!  So after racking my brain and cruising images on the internet, I came up with a plan to make them stretch a little bit further..

Which resulted in lots of sewing of sashing onto blue four patches. Which turned into this rainbow!  Blue is Junes colour but I do have way more blue scraps then any other colour.  As I am loving this look and love the simplicity of  using my 2.5" scraps and sewing four patches, I am just going to continue sewing.  No reason to try and make this into a top anytime soon, just enjoying the process!

While I was on a sashing roll I got together these purple and pink novelty four patches.  These blocks (and fabric) were mainly given to me last year from my friends at our Robe retreats.  There has been quite a few kids charity quilts made and donated by me since then but not necessarily from the fabrics they gave me.  Which is silly because it was all pre cut! 

Sew I have been working my way through the bag, sorting blocks into sizes and colours.  Sewing up small squares into blocks and then laying out on my lounge room floor (aka design wall).  The second top missed out on sashing because I thought all that lovely colour needed to shine undiluted!

I am happy with these two purple n pink tops, just need to consider borders and find some suitable backing fabric.  I have already pinned two kids quilts this week, so I am back to having a "to be quilted" pile, only one month after clearing the decks!  

Happy quilting Sue.

Using my stash

I needed and went looking for some mindless piecing over the weekend, making some more blue (January) Rainbow Scrap Challenge four patches.

Plus lots and lots of purple four patches for Febuary,  I managed to use up all the pre cut purple triangles, with three stars and one HST block.

I spent most of my sewing time quilting.  There is a limit to how much quilting my shoulder will handle.  So in stops and starts I free motioned quilted this cot quilt.  It started life as a panel, a friend had the perfect shade of blue for the border and then I had some digger & truck fabric for the border.  

Its a good feeling to be using up the stash. 

Its a fantastic, enlightening feeling to be writing my first post without any photo hassles!  I followed  Chooky Blue instructions posted on her blog, and emailed the photos off my phone to my blog - where they became this post :) .  That makes me so happy, you cannot imagine.  

My second source of joy over the weekend was buying myself a second hand desk, I have been using an old laminated table for years.  I had looked, but came to the conclusion needed to look second hand because I have a desktop PC, with a tower, so old fashion, and all the new desks are tiny little things (presumably for people with iPads or laptops) without any drawers to keep things in, so impractical!  So I can now blog in comfort, instead of being surrounded by piles of stuff, that did not have a home.  There was another purchase, from the local op shop - a little chest of draws, perfect for my sewing corner, but it needs sanding back.  A project for later....hubby is still working on the desk I brought our son. So he was relieved my desk didn't need any work on it ;) and so was I!

Happy quilting Sue.

August is Indigo

There are no indigo scraps left in my scrap basket or in my stash.  There is a tiny bit of black and grey in the scrap basket, and a reasonable amount of each colour in my reproduction stash.  However this is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, so the stash is stay intact for now!

In the meantime I sewed up the colours I did have excess scrap of. Which when I got down to it included more dark purple...so that sort of counts!  These are "new" scraps that came from the recently finished scrappy bargello in red/purple...they are perfect scraps as they were already cut the right size!

There is still oodles of green scrap in my collection, not sure where it is coming from!  But I want lots of green leaves, so I just kept sewing!

Because I tackled the left over purple from the scrappy bargello, I then had to deal with the red scraps.  There were way more then I realised, and I have the red scraps from the dresden plate quilt (WIP) still to come!

Happy quilting, Sue.