Making do with what you have on hand

As much as I love the Civil War reproduction fabrics, I really wanted to shift gears and work with some brighter, cheerful colors.  I remembered I had bought some fabric samples at my local quilt shop's SuperBowl Sunday sale:

These 3 sample cards were all from the same fabric line, and so they worked well together. The cards measure about 12 X 15", so  there was actually a lot of fabric on them.  Taking the one on the far right and spreading it out, there was all this:

Although not juvenile prints, I thought they would make a nice donation quilt for Quilts for Kids.  So, I played around with EQ software, and came up with this pattern for a quilt:

I needed to add just a few fabrics from my stash to have enough for a quilt top.  

The basic block is just one long rectangle and 2 squares, separated by white sashing.

The best part was playing with putting the fabrics up on the design board:

It looked a little chaotic at first glance, but when I added in the white sashing, it all worked out nicely.  Here is the completed top:

I might add an outer border, but it will have to wait until I can shop again at the fabric store, whenever that might be possible.

Hexies with yellow centers

In addition to the pieced blocks that I made each month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I made appliqued hexagon blocks.   

Prior to the challenge, I had a stack of English Paper Pieced hexies in a rainbow of hues:

I sorted them out by color and picked a batch each month to applique to a white background:

By the end of the challenge year, I had them all appliqued:

I had purposely appliqued them to an oversized white background square so that I could trim them up evenly when I was ready to sew them together.  Once again, I turned to my trusty Tucker Trimmer ruler to get them perfectly sized.  By positioning  the center point of the ruler over the center of the middle hexagon, I was able to size them all to a uniform  4 inch size.

Now they had a more cozy setting:

I chose to border them with a narrow yellow inner border, and a red outer border with yellow cornerstones.  I plan on using a solid red binding to corral those yellow cornerstones in with the rest of the gang.

I'm going to be make this into a Spring table topper for my kitchen.  Those bright "depression era" fabrics are anything but depressing.  

Another finish that would probably still be in a drawer if it hadn't been for the motivation of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.   You can see what this year's Rainbow Scrappers are creating here.