Glad to see the end of January

If for no other reason than that my January strip for my temperature quilt was starting to get a little unwieldy.

Here's the last week of the month - the white triangles represent all those nights we had where the temps were below zero.

Now onward to February!  Every day puts us that much closer to spring!  (Can't wait to start working with greens and yellows!)

Another thing I finished in January was my Good Fortune top.  I've tucked it away for now, since I have several other projects queued up for quilting.  (Check out the last Good Fortune Linky Party here, to see all the lovely mystery quilts!)

I do love it truly, and it won't stay dormant long!

With a new month, we have a new color for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge - yellow for warmth and brightness at this chilly and drab time of year.
I cut some squares and triangles for Sand Castle blocks and laid out the first one.  (The next three yellows are stacked neatly at the bottom of the picture)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm cutting my string triangles from strips rather than making strippy squares and slashing them diagonally.

I've been cutting newsprint strips of the correct width and as long as my paper would allow, then cutting off my triangles as I go.  The only problem was when I got to the end of the strip and ended up with a rough HST.  It was possible to sew it on to the end of a new strip, then true up the next triangle, but it was a bit of a pain in the butt.  It would have been nice to just add on another strip with tape, but I was pretty sure that tape and a hot iron would make a pretty bad combination.

Oh, if only there were some way to easily attach one thing to another.

Oh, wait...

Doh.
I lined up my papers and stitched right through.  The pencil line was added after the stitching.
Like this:

Those aren't cutting lines, especially since they'll be buried under the fabric strips - they're just there to give me a heads up that seam lines are in the neighborhood and I might want to compensate with wider or narrower strips to keep the bulk under control.  I try to keep plenty of choices available!

Lumpy seam allowances are yucky, after all!



Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday.  Come see all the golden delight!

Well, now that THAT little clusterfluffle is out of the way...

 Argh.  That was fun.  I don't know why I suddenly had a picture uploading issue, but clearing my cache seems to have fixed it, so there.

Onwards!

January's RSC color is red, and I made another Sand Castle block.

And I liked it so much that I made another.

My tally so far is one orange block and three reds.  (And don't tell anyone, but I've got squares and triangles cut for two blue blocks and another orange.  It's way too easy to cut ahead when I've got strips right there on the cutting table.)

Remember when I thought I might have enough Centennial stars made and it was time to start thinking about a finish?
Yeah, I was wrong.  Apparently I'm still making stars.

Why stop now?

In Good Fortune news, I'm still assembling blocks,

and in between I've been sewing together border bits, just to see how it'll look.

The verdict is - it'll look great!  I'm a big border fan anyway, and these just tickle me no end.  I'll keep puttering along with this quilt - not in any big kind of hurry, but just squeezing it in between other priorities.  I'm going to be very happy with it in the end!


Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday (late again!) and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see all the scrappy fun!

I'll also be linking with Bonnie's Quiltville Good Fortune Linky Party when it goes live.  Can you believe that some people already have their Good Fortunes done?!? 

Good Fortune, now with more Sand Castles

Woohoo!  Bonnie did the Good Fortune Big Reveal on Friday, and am I relieved!  Trying to figure out how all those different sized pieces were going to go together was making me dizzy!
I got a few of the blocks put together and up on the design wall.

I was going to lay out some of the multi-borders that she's calling for (which is where some of the really puzzly pieces are going to end up) (and I gotta admit I never saw that coming), but -

it's already getting a bit crowded up there.
I've got some of my Squared Away blocks laid out across the top and down the right-hand side, and my Sand Castles are lining up on the left-hand side.

Here's the first of my RSC Sand Castles in January red.

I've got a couple more kitted up and will try to assemble them over the course of the month.  My plan (and understand that I tend to use the term 'plan' rather loosely) is to cut squares and triangles for three or four blocks each month, but be happy if I even get one put together.  I can always return to them later, if I have a productive month or two further along in the year.  Or, you know, there's always next year.

So here's my sample block and my first January block laid out side-by-side, to show how they'll be set in the quilt.

And I've found that my little strippy strings (or is that stringy strips?) are really good leader/enders as I cruise along with any of the umpteen projects I usually have in active process.

I'll be building more Good Fortune blocks over the course of the week, and maybe even get some border bits put together so I can better visualize the final size.  I had thought at the start that I'd make a smaller version, but now that I've seen the reveal, I really like it enough to go ahead and make a full-sized one.  Or, you know, that's the plan.
It's good to have a plan...


Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  And when the next Good Fortune linky party goes live, I'll be linking with that, too!  Come see all the fun!

New year, new RSC project

I treated myself to a book for Christmas -

because I had fallen in love with this quilt.

(Well, actually I love all the quilts in the book and I expect I'll be making at least a few of them.)  (At least.)

But for now, I'm in love with Sand Castles.  It hits all the high points for me -
1. String piecing.  I've been wanting to do a string-pieced project for quite a while now, and this one looks like a good way to get my feet wet.
2.  Four-patches.  I've been making four-patches for leader/enders for years and have buckets of them on hand.  Always looking for a fun way to use four-patches!
3.  The individual blocks are a perfect venue for RSC colors.  The four-patches are random, but the squares and triangles to set them with are a perfect fit for the color of the month.
4.  Gabillions of itty bitty pieces to sew together.  That's gotta be my favorite thing ever!

Let's take this little beauty for a test drive.
I string pieced a couple of squares

and sliced them diagonally.

And, as usual, I was irked by how much waste there is in this method.  All those raggedy edges being sliced off and tossed because they're too small to be useful.  (I've whined about discussed this issue before.)  If only there was a better way, where all those square-ended strips could be efficiently utilized.

And then I had a thought.  What if?

and I lined up what I had so far and grabbed my trusty ruler.

And then I cut a long narrow strip of paper and started piecing.

I cut off a triangle and compared it to one of the half-squares that I'd made earlier.

Looks like a match to me!

So, off I go with my happy little strings.  I can still make the regular squares when I've got some too-short strings to use for this strip method, but this way pleases my mingy little heart.  If I end up with a seam in an awkward place, a little corrective surgery (cut here, add there) will soon set me on my way again.

And now since I had a few stringy triangles done and some four-patches near at hand, how could I help but make a test block?

Yes, of course it's orange.

I just checked Angela's blog and the color for January is red.  Thanks to Good Fortune, I've got a bunch of red strips right here handy on the cutting table.  I'm going to kit up some red blocks and see how many I can get put together by the end of the month.

Speaking of Good Fortune, Bonnie dropped another clue on New Year's Day.   I ran to the sewing machine and stitched a few up.

I tried laying out some of the bits we've made so far, but I couldn't get a sense of where we're going with this.

 (And I didn't even get any of those crazy clue#5 quarter-square units into the mix.)

I'm just baffled, I tell ya.  So many pieces in so many sizes.
Baffled.

More fun with strings!

I was quietly (well, I didn't whoop out loud, at least) pleased when Bonnie dropped the next clue for Good Fortune on Friday and it turned out to be more string blocks.

I made a bunch on Friday -

and a few more on Saturday -

I've easily got half the necessary blocks at this point, so I can go off on another path entirely, right?

The strings are turning out to be so much fun that I've got a wild idea for next year's RSC quilt.  (More on that later)
For now, know that I'm going to need a whole bunch of these -

String-string-a-ling!  Off I go!

Linking with Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville for the clue #6 linky party.  Compare admire all the stringy goodness!
Oh, hey, and Happy New Year to all!

What was I thinking?

Just popping in with a quick post - busy busy busy!
Somehow I got so excited with finishing those two quilts last month that I started casting around for another one to finish.
If memory served, checkerboard rails (my last leader/ender project) was closest to being done.  I knew I had taken photos of the last time I'd laid it out, so I could remember how I'd decided to resolve the edges, but it took me a while to find the pics.

Luckily they were on the SD card that didn't get accidentally erased.

So I pulled out their bin, laid out the blocks, and started finishing the bits that were already cut and partially sewn.

And Tada!  Not a finished top yet, but the upper right is sewn together and the rest of the diagonal rows are assembled and awaiting attachment.

Corners will be added, and a simple stop border, and then it'll be done!  Woohoo!

And I squeezed in a bit of sewing for Clue 5 of Good Fortune.

I've got lots of triangles cut and waiting by the machine.  My strategy is to make them in pairs so I don't get confused about how many I've made of each.  The less thinking I have to do this time of year, the better off I am.

Linking with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! and probably this will serve as my Good Fortune linkup post as well.  (I don't foresee me getting any more sewing done until after Christmas...)
Happy scrappy, everyone!
And happiest of holidays, too!

Stringing along

This year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery is the fourth year I've played along.  While I loved making Allietare, En Provence, and On Ringo Lake, I'd always hoped that Bonnie would revisit the string blocks that she used in mystery quilts of old.
And hooray hooray - this year's the year!
Clue #4 dropped on Friday morning, and not only did it involve string blocks, but it involved making orange string blocks!
Oh, bliss!

There's just one teensy-tiny problem.
String piecing is just so...  so... untidy.
(If you were to draw a Venn Diagram of People Who Are Extremely Stingy and People Who are Anal-Retentive, you would find me in the overlap.)  (I'm not kidding.)

So I gave the process a lot of thought and decided on a way that made the least waste and the least mess.  I'm probably violating the spirit of stringness here, but so it goes.
Grabbing the stack of old phone books that my dad had just that morning added to the kindling pile (good thing I was paying attention since I'd forgotten to tell him I wanted them), I started cutting and marking pages.
This page is going to give me six of those pretty little orange string blocks.

And here is where you can see me in action, in all my OCD glory.

Instead of starting the first strip in the center and working out from there, I lined up the edge of the fabric and the edge of the paper.  Perfectly.  Because of course I did.

Surprisingly, I can actually sew crooked strips on after that first one without twitching.  But that first one...

Here you can see I'm bearing down on the red line that I marked on my paper.  (You can see both red lines in the photo of my prepped paper above)  That line is where the block unit will be cut, so I know I have to watch out here and allow a wide enough strip that the seam allowances stay out of the seam allowances, if you know what I mean.

It's clear in this next photo, where that solid orange strip is in the middle of the strip set - it's wide enough to allow lots of leeway.  The strip on the right is where I trimmed on the other red line, and that little strip will be used in the next block.

Here's a view of the back where you can see just how stingy I am.  This is how I trim as I sew, so there's a minimum of waste.

We all have our little quirks...

Once the paper was covered and trimmed to size, I sliced it into thirds

and then cut them in half to yield six string-pieced units.

And then I did a bunch more!

I started to throw out these leftover bits of paper that had been trimmed off the end of each set of blocks, but then realized if I saved them, I wouldn't have to count all those little blocks - all I have to do is count these papers and multiply by six!  Given the troubles I've had with block-counting lately, this seems like a good plan.

Adding these clue #4s to the bin (and including the chevrons that I've got on the pressing board waiting to be flattened), I've now got a bit more than half of the units I'll need for each clue.

I'll carry on making more of all these, using them as leader/enders for my other sewing.  Onwards and upwards!  And stringing all the way...

Linking with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap, and with Quiltville's Clue Four Linky Party.  Oh the scraps that you'll see!

Scrappy Fortunes

One of the best things about Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt is that it gives me something to show at this time of year.  I'm up to my armpits in super secret gifty bits, but at least I have some pictures to share as I putter along with Good Fortune.

First, though, here's some greens I couldn't resist when my sister-in-law and I visited our favorite quilt shop for their semi-annual big sale.

(Zucchini!  Who could pass up fabric with zucchini?!?)

So, I got a start on Clue #3 for Good Fortune.  These chevron units seem to be a favorite of Bonnie's - she includes them in a lot of her quilts.

And into the bin they go.

I'm continuing to make all three units, squeezed in between my other projects.

Though there have been some boo-boos.
I took a closer look at this HST I'd made.  Something wasn't right.

Flipping it over, I found that I'd sewn the light triangle in backwards.  So I grabbed the seam ripper, separated the triangles, and re-sewed them.

 And damned if I didn't make the same mistake again...

At that point I gave up and just left it.  It sort of looks like just a very pale print and it's not like anyone will ever notice it but me.  Scrappy is as scrappy does, right?

And bless our Bonnie for her tutorial on mass-producing triangles with the folded corners ruler.  I tested it out, making some triangles in the size I'm using for Totally Demented.

I had no idea that the ruler could be used for this - I'd gotten it for another purpose altogether.  Bonus!
I've been playing with every possible way to make HSTs, since I need so many of them.  Even after I finish Totally Demented, I have other quilts planned that need kabillions more. (Tree of Life, anyone?)

Linking with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap! and with Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville for the third Good Fortune linky party.  Come see all the scrappy fun!