Senior moments and Blue RSC round up

 September has been a difficult month for me: health issues for me and ongoing investigations and sudden decline of my dear sister who so sadly died ten days ago. At odd times I have done some sewing, not much, but it is a distraction from thoughts whirling around my head.

Today I decided I was going to do a round up of blue RSC projects.

Firstly, the blue Crumb Coin Quilt flimsy never got basted. I did make a pieced backing and laid them aside.

But I did revisit Cathy ( Crazy by Design blog) and found an idea for using my blue String blocks - not all of them though.  I had a pretty chunk of elephant fabric bought years ago at Spotlight in Nelson, New Zealand which needed to be used. So I cut it into 5.5” squares the same size as the String blocks, added a few yellow String blocks for added zing and I’m happy with the flimsy which measures 36” x 40”.  Just one elephant square leftover for scrap stash. 

A few days later I sewed together two leftover pieces of a great backing fabric ( only scraps left now). It’s an all over pattern so I just sewed, didn’t even think of trying to match. This afternoon I basted it and hope to machine quilt it tomorrow. I also made a scrappy binding from leftover strips of blue and green binding pieces.

A couple of days ago I joined a lot of leftover strips of blue binding ready to bind the blue Crumb Coins flimsy. I had already made the pieced backing so my next job was to baste that one.

Enter Senior Moment.......... could I find the flimsy???? I remembered ironing it and laying it on the bed in my Sewing room but the only thing there was the backing folded carefully in half so it didn’t trail on the carpet. Well I hunted for ages and then  for some unknown reason picked up the backing. There was the flimsy, carefully laid on top of the backing and folded inside it! I have cut the wadding but that’s now on hold. I had lost patience.

Next job was to sew the scrappy blue binding onto the finished Zebra and elephant Medallion quilt.  Decided to use the long blue scrappy binding strip for this too. Now I needed to fix the Walking Foot to my machine, a job I hate as it’s so fiddly, sometimes I do it straight away, sometimes takes half an hour of frustration. 

I keep this in a bag in the bottom drawer of my sewing table. Enter second Senior Moment.

Bag was there, empty Walking foot box was there, no Walking foot. I spent ages searching and then decided I would just order another from Amazon - life’s too short - but I did want to get that binding on so I risked using the ordinary machine foot and it seems OK. Phew!

Final thing done this afternoon was to baste the blue String quilt so that’s ready for machine quilting. As I can’t find my Walking foot I’ve decided to quilt this in the ditch with a Ditch quilting foot I bought a few years ago and wasn’t a hit with me. So that’s tomorrow’s  potential frustration! Off to order that replacement Walking foot from Amazon!

Linking up with Angela’s so Scrappy RSC 2022 blog. 

A blue RSC flimsy and more String blocks

 Blue is the September colour for RSC so I have taken the opportunity to make a Coin Crumb flimsy from finished 4.5”  Boyish Crumb blocks alternated with blue fabrics. I used a blue check fabric I bought on sale years ago for all the sashing and in the process finished every scrap of it! 

There are some interesting snippets of fabrics in the top, good for I Spy.

I sorted out all my small strings and scraps and made 8 more Blue 5.5” String blocks. 

My box of string blocks is very full so I sorted them into colours and discovered I now have 38 Blue ones so I’m going to look back over some photos I have of String blocks quilts designs and perhaps next week I can put together another flimsy? Cathy at Crazy by Design has made lots of lovely String Quilts so I’m going to have a look through her blog posts for some ideas!

Hoping to baste the Coin Crumb flimsy this afternoon.

Linking up with Angela’s SoScrappy RSC 2022 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.

RSC July 2022 Round up & Gifting a quilt

 Not much sewing has happened here during July.

Here’s a Round up of RSC projects this month:

                                7 blue String blocks and one purple( hardly had any purple scraps)

A few HSTs made from Bonus triangles created whilst making Sawtooth Stars blocks, trimmed to 1.75”

  

                                            Sawtooth Stars blocks, one with some purple fabric. 

I continued to make the Elephants and Zebras Medallion style quilt, it’s basted and I’ve done some machine quilting. It will now be a hand project to take to Patchwork meetings when I will hand quilt with Perle threads.

I now have a home for a Baby quilt I made in September 2006! I named it Little Boy Fishing and I loved this quilt - there’s a lot of work in it, all hand quilted with Perle threads and all the appliqué is blanket stitched by hand. I didn’t have a home for is at the time but when our daughter was pregnant in 2009/10 I decided to gift it if we had a Grandson. At that time  I made a similar one in pinks and lilacs with Sunbonnet Sues in case we had a Granddaughter. Our Granddaughter was born on 2nd February 2010 so Little Boy Fishing was put away.

Several times over the years I have considered gifting but then didn’t. Finally this week we received great news from New Zealand. Good friends of ours have a Grandson, Hugo Christopher William, born on 26th July in Wellington, NZ. 

This is the perfect home for Little Boy Fishing! 

It measures 47” square and the label is made, just need to sew that on tomorrow and parcel it up ready to mail on Monday. 

It’s a grey cloudy day here so this isn’t a true colour, much brighter in real life. 

A couple of close ups.

            And the backing, appropriate anchor designs. I still have a bit of this fabric left in my stash.

A finish, a start and a long pause

 Over two weeks ago I finished one of my outstanding pink RSC Crumb quilts. I used 4.5” Crumb blocks I had stashed away and combined into 4 patches with pink fabrics, interspersing the coin columns with pink Snail fabric.

I used a jagged stitch on my machine to quilt it and I’m really pleased with the result.

I backed and bound it with the snail fabric and it measures 40” square. I’m intending to donate it to the Linus Project when I have a few to pass on.

A few close ups:

And a couple of artistic “drop” pictures!

I’ve decided to call this quilt “Coin Crumbs”.

I am very behind with the RSC monthly colours and had got out a lot of blue scraps so I decided to use one of the larger novelty prints as a centre for a medallion style child’s quilt.

I used the idea I made a little while ago and did a narrow stop border with a blue plaid and used some of my Wonky Stars to make the next round. I managed to sew on the side borders and lay out the top and bottom ones( but hadn’t sewn them together].

Then I had my 4th booster Covid vaccination and reacted very badly indeed, after two days I ended up in A & E and then admitted to hospital. After four days I was discharged on Wednesday evening. Extremely tired and still taking antibiotics and getting used to a change of regular medication so no sewing has happened. I am resting and sleeping and watching tennis from Wimbledon.

I did start some purple Sawtooth stars but they’re on hold too!

Linking with Angela’s So Scrappy RSC blog.

And finally, some blue RSC sewing.

 Yesterday I finally sewed 5 blue String blocks as a start for my Blue blocks for June’s RSC colour. I chose this block because my blue strings were handy and I had 5 phone book papers already cut to size.

Earlier in the week I continued with my green scraps- Twinkler blocks, Bear Paws and Wonky Star blocks.

Sorry this photo has turned itself upside down!

Along the way I’m sewing up my bonus triangles as Leaders and Enders: this week’s haul.

I’m hoping to sort out my blue scraps tomorrow and then make a few of my regular blocks.

Joining up with Angela’s So Scrappy RSC blog  

At last, some sewing time!

 My last actual sewing took place on 30th April. Since then we have had two short breaks away, celebrating John’s 80th birthday at the beginning of May and my 75th birthday at the end of May, and fitted in two large sections of decorating, the first between the two holidays and secondly, after the second. We are pleased with everything we had done but of course that meant a lot of moving things from room to room and then afterwards cleaning everything and putting it back. Almost back to rights now but still a few odds and ends to put back. I have taken the opportunity to look at everything very carefully, deciding whether we really love that vase, book etc enough to keep it. As a result I have made a couple of trips to the Charity shop with donations. My Word for the year is “Consider”, so I have Considered everything I have been sorting out. Pleased with the amount of things I have let go.

At the beginning of May I went through my stash, pulling out green scraps for RSC’s Green month. Well, they just sat in my sewing room until yesterday when I eventually found time and space  (my sewing room became one of our dumping grounds during the decorations) to sit at my machine and sew. I cut out a few Bear Paw blocks in the 2 chosen sizes and then started sewing the smaller ones. As I have said many times on my blog, I have a Spacial Awareness problem, and I find Bear Paws difficult to orientate. Well, yesterday was even worse, because I was so out of practice. A lot of mistakes, a lot of seam ripping went on but I eventually made 4 blocks. 

By that time  I had had enough of Bear Paws so I made some strippy blocks as I had a few ready cut newspaper  foundations ready to use. I made 10 and I’m pleased with them. Mindless sewing, what a therapy!

In between, as Leaders and Enders, I stitched together Bonus triangles from my RSC Pink month and a few green ones I created yesterday and today. On the top, trimmed to 1.75”, on the bottom, trimmed to 1.5”.

Today I didn’t have much time to sew and I got off to a bad start, finding I hadn’t cut enough 2.5” squares for some of the larger Bear Paw blocks I had prepped, so time wasted whilst I rectified that. In the end I only completed 2 of the 4 blocks I had kitted out. Then I ran out of time and steam and patience!

I hope you have all had a productive week on the RSC front and I hope to do better next week!

Linking up with Angela, So Scrappy Blog’s RSC Group.