March: 17ufosin2017 Progress

My Quilting Muse must have taken a Caribbean vacation this month.  I have not had much motivation to work on any quilting projects, be they new or old.  I did make a little progress on my 17ufosin2017, so maybe seeing that progress laid out here will help inspire me!

My Quilty 365 circles are almost a flimsy.  I stitched all the 30 circle sets together with a narrow, light gray sashing.  I have 7 circles that didn't fit into the block scheme.  My plan is to add another row of sashing on the bottom, then a narrow row of the 7 circles and some words.  The gray sashing will get repeated on all the outer edges of the quilt.  I'm not sure if that will complete the flimsy - the quilt hasn't spoken yet.

I made the continuous bias binding for my Austen Family Album quilt and attached it.  However, I have yet to pick up a needle and start stitching the binding to the back of the quilt.  

March also found me stitching up another batch of string blocks for the Spring Clean quilt.  I now have 2 completed blocks - only 7 left to go!  I've been working on the string blocks on the weekends we go to our camp.  In the interest of speeding things up, I brought home all the strings so I could make blocks on weekday evenings after work - great therapy!  

Having the 17ufosin2017 challenge has helped with the quilting motivation, even if that doggone Muse went on vacation!

The Last of the Red Hot Scraps

I had fun digging through the last of the red scraps (and a few fabric chunks) to finish up my Rainbow Scrap projects for the month.

One of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects is making pinwheel blocks.  I have a specific plan for them, but I need to have all the colors completed before I start putting them together.  

Some red selvages got sliced and diced into Rail Fence blocks.

Just for fun, I added some purple and aqua blocks from earlier RSC months.

I had to go digging through the fabric bins to find large enough red chunks to make the wonky borders for my New Orleans houses.  As I was choosing the fabrics, I was really pleased with how the reds "worked" with the house blocks.  But after looking at the bordered blocks on my design wall all week, I was a little worried about the border fabrics being too dark.

Last night, I pulled out some of the already bordered blocks to see if everyone would play well together.  I decided my worries were pointless.  I'm looking forward to the finish on this project!

That's the end of my red scrappiness for March.  Red was fun, but I'm looking forward to a new color and new scrappy challenges.  There's more red scrappiness on view at Angela's SoScrappy blog.

Old School Block Building with Red Scraps

It's not all that visually exciting to show this "old school" scrappy block-building, but I'm enjoying the process of using up lots of small scrappy bits.

There's nothing more basic than simple 4-patch blocks, but they are a great way to use scraps.  And the design possibilities are endless!  These 4-patches were a good way to use up leftovers from the Windblown Wishes blocks I made last week.

These 49-patch blocks are using up some of the smallest scraps in my stash - 1.5 inch squares.  So far, the blocks have used up most of the already-cut square bits in the 1.5 inch scrap bin, so if I'm going to make more of these, I'll have to make more squares or do some strip and slice piecing.  For now, I'm just going to keep making blocks and decide how to use them later.

I'm linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge today:  lots of scrappy red inspiration to be seen there!

Red, Red March

It's been kind of a slow start for scrappy March sewing.  I'm still not functioning at 100% after a bout with the flu, so everything seems to be happening in slow motion.  After spending the morning getting long-deferred car maintenance taken care of, I managed to spend a few hours playing with the scrap bins.

Working on the red & pink fabric drawer

The Rainbow Scrap Challenge color for March is red.  I generally prefer using clear reds as much as possible for my RSC projects, and I found a lot of brownish red and maroon in the scrap bin.  That meant I needed to sort through the red yardage for some "new" scraps.  Sorting was a fun project, as the drawer of red and pink fabric has not been straightened in some time.   

After cutting some new scrappy 2 inch strips, I was able to assemble 2 Windblown Wishes blocks.  It was good to go digging through the red yardage and scraps; some of the fabric bits still floating around my stash are from my earliest days as a quilter!

Linking up with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge party and enjoying everyone's red inspiration...