A February Finish

I finally have a finish to show for February.

This is the table runner I made from the "Orphans and Scraps" sew along posted by Pam Buda.  I love the way it turned out.

It's kind of like a "Where's Waldo" with quilt blocks.  

Find the Courthouse Steps block...

Ah, there it is.

I have become a fan of using striped fabrics for bindings.  The tan/black stripe fabric was something I bought from a sale bin without knowing exactly what I would use it for, but I thought it was perfect for the binding on this runner.

On the opposite end of the quilted spectrum, I also finished this month's Block of the Month that I am doing at my local quilt shop.

In my time as a quilter, I have always referred to myself as a "jewel tone gal".  They have always been my favorite colors to work with.  I surprised myself with how much I have enjoyed using the Civil War repro fabrics.   Who would have guessed?

Orphans and Scraps find a home

Remember these cute little blocks?

These are the blocks I made  from following along with Pam Buda on her "Orphans and Scraps"  sew-along.  In week five, Pam showed us how she set her blocks into a  miniature table topper that you can see here.

Pam encouraged us to come up with our own setting if we liked.  I was concerned that such a cute little table runner like hers might get lost around here, so I decided to make mine bigger.

I surrounded each of the blocks with Flying Geese units to turn them into stars.

Then I set them together with lots of two inch squares, and ended up with this:

It's a very busy pattern, but I love how the stars draw you in to look closer at the centers and you see the miniature blocks.

Once it is quilted, this one will be going on my coffee table. I think it will provide a nice bit of eye candy to accompany any coffee.

Working with scraps

This is the final block of Pam Buda's  Pocket Patchwork sew along.  The theme for this sew along has been to use up orphans and leftovers from other projects to make a small quilt from scraps.  Here is this week's block:

How's that for cute?  A 4 1/2" Courthouse Steps block with lots of different fabrics.   Thankfully, Pam provided a template for paper piecing this one. 

This was a great opportunity to find a home for little scraps and tidy up the yardage.  I gathered up the small pieces I had already created when making the first 3 blocks, and sorted those into lights and darks.

I still needed to cut from yardage, so I sorted through my fabrics and chose the ones that had odds and ends poking out along one edge.

I lined up the odd bits,

and cut my new strips from the excess.

This helped to neaten up the edges of my scraps before they got folded up and put back into the bin with the other fabrics.

After I had my fabrics all cut, I decided where I wanted them to go and starting sewing.  The paper piecing went fairly smoothly, but about halfway in I realized that I had switched the position of the lights and the darks.  Instead of this:

I had this:

I decided to finish the errant block, hoping it would still work out, but  I didn't like the result.  It looked more rectangular than square, so I went back to the drawing board, (or should I say "back to the cutting mat")  and I made the block all over again.

Here are the 4 blocks I have made so far:

Next week we'll see how Pam has us put them all together into a small quilt.

Pocket Patchwork continues

I sewed up Block 3 of Pam Buda's Pocket Patchwork sew along.

Pam used 16 different lights and darks for her block, but I used 2 each of 8 fabrics instead.  I started by making 16 oversized half square triangles, and then trimmed them down to 1 1/2 in size.

To help reduce bulk, I constructed the block in quadrants, instead of rows:

and rotated the seam intersections wherever possible.

Here are the 3 blocks we have made so far:

On a completely different note...
I went to JoAnn's fabrics yesterday to pick up some needles.  I saw that they had all Christmas decor at 90% off, so of course I had to nosy around a bit.  I was surprised to see that they still had a few of the houses from their Christmas village series.

Perhaps these were passed over because they actually have "JoAnn's Fabric and Crafts" printed above the door.   But have a look inside:

Bolts of fabric at the cutting table!

The price on the corner of the box says $49.99.  But at 90% off it was only 5 dollars, so home it came.  I won't even take it out of the box until next Christmas, but it will sure be fun to unpack it next year.

Orphans and Scraps Sewing

I sewed up the second block of Pam Buda's Orphan's and Scraps Sew along.  Pam is posting a new block every Friday for 5 weeks.  Here is the block for week number 2:

Pam has shared a great technique for creating this small block with many pieces.  It starts with four hourglass blocks:

Then you need four additional squares for each hourglass:

You sew a square to two opposite corners of the hourglass in a sew and flip fashion.

And then do the same for the opposite corners.

Isn't that a neat little trick?  Here are the first two blocks together.  I left the rotary cutter in the photo so that you could see just how small they are.

Update December 2014:
Hi! This post has been getting a lot of traffic lately.  I'm very pleased of course, but also very curious.  Could you kindly leave me a comment and tell my how you found me?

Scrappy New Year!

I sewed up Block 1 from Pam Buda's  Orphans and Scraps sew along:

I think it's just the sweetest thing, measuring in at 4 1/2 inches.  The purpose of this sew-along is to use bits and pieces from previous projects to come up with something new.  I have lots of CW repro fabric swirling around the sewing room right now, and I was especially happy to be able to re-use fabrics from this pile of light scraps that were leftover from another project.

How much of a dent in the scraps did I think I was going to make with a 4 1/2 inch block?

On a slightly larger scale, I finished putting together the Monkey Wrench blocks I have been creating since the start of the New Year.

I haven't yet settled on a final border, but at least the blocks are all sewn together. (The brown fabric in the background was a contender for the border, but it didn't make the final cut.) For the sashing,  I had a very hard time trying to choose a fabric.  I kept coming back to this striped fabric:

It's not a CW reproduction fabric but I thought it suited the style and colors of the quilt. (The closeup photo of the sashing fabric is much truer to the real color than the picture of the overall quilt.)  I have never used a striped fabric for sashing before, so this was one step further out of the box for me.

I think I like it.  I'll know for sure when I get a border fabric.  I know of a quilt shop within driving distance that features lots of reproduction fabrics and I'll be heading there soon. I hope.