RSC 2022 Quilt finish

 I have been making Wonky Star blocks most months for two or three years as part of the RSC project.

I’ve already used some blocks in several quilts  but decided to use a whole lot more to make this Project Linus quilt:

It measures 40” square and uses 36 Wonky Stars. I used a piece of leftover fabric for the border and joined leftover pieces of yellow and cream fabrics for the binding.

A couple of years ago when I needed to replenish my stash of backing fabrics I got 3 metres of this lovely autumn leaf fabric which I love:

A close up of some of the blocks:

My niece and two nephews have started the sad task of getting my sister’s house ready for sale and asked if there was anything I would like to keep. One of the items that I wished to have was a little quilt I made for Pat’s birthday in April 2005. It was designed to hang on her kitchen wall where it’s had pride of place ever since. Pat was a wonderful gardener hence the design I chose had that theme. It was from a book of Australian quilts which I’m sure I still have in my Quilting bookcase. Here it is on the wall of my landing, opposite my Sewing Room so every time I go in and out of there I shall think of my lovely big sister.

Light not the best today, well it’s early December, only 4C out there and dark and dreary.

Linking up with Angela’s So scrappy blog.

The embroidered words say “Planters Patch”.

More RSC scrappy blocks

 I basted and machine quilted my Wonky Stars RSC quilt but I want to add some hand quilting around the stars. That’s a nice project to have for Patchwork meetings.

I have made some Windmill blocks after seeing them on Cathy’s Sane crazy quilting blog. I just used pairs of 2.5” strips , whatever colours I found.

Then I made three Wonky Stars, again using whatever colour that was to hand.

And 4 green and 5 blue String blocks. That’s pretty much all the strings in those colours I had in my bag of strings.

The light was starting to go when I took this photo, the actual blocks look much brighter.

Linking up with Angela’s SoScrappy RSC blog.

Some Orange RSC blocks

 Again, not much sewing has happened here this month. I haven’t been well - 2 emergency trips to A& E and a one night’s stay have rather put paid to sewing.

However I have managed to make 9 Wonky Star blocks, using up some bonus triangles for the points:

I don’t have many orange scraps but I did find enough to make 2 Twinkler blocks. I like to make each square of the nine patch from a different fabric.

And one 4.5” Crumb block which contained a couple of orange strips.

I’m also one step ahead of September’s colour Blue as I have started to put together another Child’s  Crumb Quilt and they happen to be Blue. 

Linking up with Angela’s Soscrappy RSC.

Leave no scraps!

 Earlier this week I watched a Pat Sloan video where she was showing the blocks she had made all year from scraps. She intends to use up scraps as they are created rather than put them away to use up sometime in the future. I made a mental note of that idea when I made my red RSC Sawtooth blocks this week.

The centre of the block is a 4.5” Crumb square made from last week’s red leftovers.

Then I used the cut off bonus triangles (created when I made the star points in each block) to make another batch of little Wonky Star blocks:

At the beginning of the week I made more little Wonky Stars, cut out last week and ready to be sewn together.

I always have fun searching through my tin of 2” squares to look for the centres of these stars.

Although I don’t have a lot of red scraps I have already made a lot of blocks this month and there are more to come.

Having fun sewing as it’s been extremely cold here and I’m not good in the cold weather because of heart issues so instead of walking I’ve been sewing. 

Linking up with Angela’s So Scrappy blog.

Christmas in July

 First of all, the RSC blocks I’ve made recently. Some Wonky stars and three Ticky Tacky houses.

Not much sewing in the last couple of weeks because I’ve finally had my Christmas present!

Back in November last year my husband asked what I would like for my Christmas present and I said a new sewing table as I have been using my son’s old desk for the last 24 years. Not ideal because the desk had drawers on the right and with the kneehole on the left it meant that my sewing machine was on the left of the desk and nowhere for my sewing to rest. Particularly difficult when I was machine quilting or sewing on binding when I had to balance the work on my knee to take the weight! I also decided to have two shelves put up on the wall above the sewing table and a set of shelves too. Our carpenter was too busy in the run up to Christmas and then another long Covid Lockdown and our carpenter became difficult to contact. Eventually the job was done on 21st July! Better late than never, I’m delighted with the result.

I spent a long time last weekend sorting out all the things I had taken out of the room ready for the carpenter to assemble everything. I sorted out all my RSC projects, putting them into labelled plastic  boxes which went onto my new shelving units.

Then I sorted out all my tins containing all sorts of bits and pieces and labelled all of those too. They went up onto the wall shelves. All my other equipment, plus rulers etc are in the drawers, all to hand when I’m sewing. 

In between I’ve been knitting. One of my quilting friends has a young friend who is training to become a midwife. She is at a hospital in London which has a lot of mothers living in deprived conditions, so the Maternity staff try to make up baby packages for the Mums to take home including baby clothes. They welcome hand knitted jackets, hats and little blankets so I’ve started knitting. I made this little cardigan and am now knitting a second one. I have lots of yarn so I’ll continue knitting until I run out.

Yesterday was a big day as I went to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC,Birmingham. Obviously there wasn’t a Show last year due to Covid so it was exciting to go yesterday. Lots of differences: 10, 000 less tickets on offer over the 4 days of the Show, an extra hall(which are like aircraft hangars), wider aisles, everyone had to wear a mask and observe social distancing and so on. Most of the larger traders didn’t attend which was a shame and there were not many people there either. I don’t think there were as many Competition quilts and all the Galleries were home grown people and collections, not the world wide variety we are used to. Glad I went but it was all rather surreal. Nice to have fewer people though as I was able to see the quilts easily, photograph the ones that particularly caught my eye and move around quickly so I covered the whole Show very easily. Other years I’ve gone two or three of the four days but one day was more than enough time to see everything. I didn’t make many purchases but I did buy two metres of this rainbow fabric which will be a useful backing for an RSC project.

I’ll write another post just on the Show as I have lots of photos to sort through.

Joining up with Angela’s So Scrappy blog for RSC 2021.

Yellow blocks for February RSC

 I normally don’t have many yellow scraps ( I probably write the same comment every year!) because when I buy yellow fabrics for a project  I’m never left with many leftovers. However I stocked up on yellow a while ago and have been using them in projects and also for my February blocks which I’ve been making all month, dovetailing them with quilt making.

So my total for February:

 13 Ticky Tacky houses

11 Wonky Stars

5 Twinkler Blocks and 2 Roman Stripes 

Love all these blocks and all, except the Wonky Stars, are ongoing RSC 21 blocks, carried on from previous years. And all were ideas I gleaned from Cathy’s blog, Sane, Crazy Crumby Quilting. I wonder what colour will be chosen for March - Green?

Linking up with Angela’s So Scrappy blog

Pink Production Line

 RSC 2021’s colour for this month is Pink.  I had a plan for the blocks I wanted to make but then our daughter suggested I make some baby quilts for a local Charity Shop in aid of The Samaritans.

So I’ve made three flimsies, one almost a finished quilt ( hand sewing the binding now) and two flimsies which I think I can say are Pink - definitely girl colours anyway!

These aren’t great photos. I can assure you they are brighter, more interesting colours than these photos show!

The top one has now been basted and I hope to start the machine quilting tomorrow.

One of the blocks I chose for RSC 2021 was small Wonky Stars, finishing at 4”.

I’ve made 6. Happy with them but my favourite with the little pink elephant fabric nearly drove me crazy. It’s the bottom left block in the photo above. I have great problems with spacial  awareness so getting the elephants in each square oriented the correct way was a nightmare! The seam ripper was used so many times, it was ridiculous.

Linking with Angela’s So scrappy RSC 2021 blog.