Saturday, July 18, 2015

A Paucity of Red for RSC

Clearly the Rainbow Scrap Challenge has been an eye-opener - I could have sworn that I had lots of reds and even more greens.  Wrong and wrong.  Turns out I'd be ill-prepared if I felt a sudden yen to make a Christmas quilt.  (Though many years ago I was working on a Christmas tree skirt with Christmas fabric, and I have yet to unearth anything to do with that project.  I'll have to check the garage again to see if there's a box of jolly that I've overlooked.)
So I scraped together what reds I have to make a few more Ohio Stars - the dark ones, this time:



Having two different sets of Ohio Stars going is interesting.


I wonder how many Ohio Star quilts I'm going to end up making?

And just for grins, I pulled the red Silly Monkeys out and took a quick pic.


Though that one on the lower left is trying to impersonate orange.  Even a close-up didn't help.


Give it up, Monkey.  You're red.
Red, red, red.
Because it's July and I say so.

On the terrific news front, Katie's Star Patch is basted.  Completely and totally basted.


It took me a couple of days to get the job done, since
a)  my knees weren't up to that kind of floor-crawling for too long at a time, and
b)  my lower back decided to express solidarity with my knees.

Add to that the fact that the temperature was in the 90s today, and it was at least that hot inside where I was working.  When I'd stitched the last basting stitch, trying desperately not to drip sweat on the patchwork, I let out a whoop, fixed myself a tall glass of ice water and went out on the porch to drink it.  When you step outside into a day above 90 and it actually feels cooler...

So, yay!  Basting is done.  Quilting to go.  I'll let my Katie make the final decision on hand-quilting vs machine-quilting.  I'm perfectly willing to hand quilt this opus, and feel like I ought to, but I'm not sure how long it'll take.
And Winter is coming...



Linking to RSC2015.  Come enjoy the rainbows!


9 comments:

Alycia~Quiltygirl said...

Isn't that funny - your red went into hiding!
Love the blocks you did make ;-)

The Joyful Quilter said...

Your RED blocks turned out well. Congrats! on getting the basting done on your quilt.

scraphappy said...

Lovely red blocks, even the on pretending to be orange. I was amazed at first that I had so much of so e colors and so little of others. A real eye opener.

kmkat said...

Thank you for "paucity" -- it will join "plethora" in my collection of words I adore using.

The postage stamp quilt at your link RSC2015 may be calling my name. Curse you! I do NOT need another hobby!

Deb A said...

Yikes - have you tried rolling the top and backing onto boards and pin on a table? A little easier on the back and knees - check a link by Sharon Schamber for a tutorial. Might help the next time. Hope the temps drop a bit for you - we are unbearable too.

Nell's Quilts said...

Hot, hot, hot wherever you go these days. And if it's not hot it's raining and sometimes both! Great red work this week!

Magpie Sue said...

I'm so sorry for your knees and back! Having my son available to do long arm quilting on my quilts has made my life so much easier. What I'll do if he ever decides to go elsewhere I don't know! Since I started making Ohio Stars for the RSC this year I've already made two quilt tops -no, three! - featuring Ohio Star blocks. And they weren't even the ones I've made for the RSC! They can be addictive apparently - who knew?!

Sheila said...

Love those stars and monkey wrenches. We're in a heat wave this week. It will be about a 100 tomorrow. Ugh.

Cathy said...

I feel your pain. I lay my quilts on the floor to pin baste and am getting too old to do that anymore. But I see you still found time to get in some Monkey Business. I never used to have much red but seem to have a lot of red scraps this year. Paucity? Now that's a word you don't hear every day!