Purple's last hurrah

 Well, here we are at the end of August, which has been purple month for the RSC.

I made another cake stand -

and another postage stamp block for PSP20.

I'll miss you, purple!

And Demented marches on.  This stack has enough blocks to form the second quadrant, which means I'm past the halfway point of this stage.

I kept going and have another stack of blocks growing, but I haven't counted them to see if quadrant three is good to go.

The twosies are really piling up -

and here's what's left of the 256, waiting to be paired up.

Out of curiosity, I counted that little stack and - horrors! - came up with an odd number.

Since I'm sewing them together in pairs, this is Not Good News.

Possibilities:

1) I miscounted the blocks.

2) I made 1 too many blocks.

3) Or I made 3 too many blocks.

4) I made 1 too few blocks.

5) Or I made 3 too few.

I'm pretty sure I can throw out  #3 and #5, but the others are entirely possible.

I can go through and count everything again, or I can just leave it as a problem for Future Gayle and carry on sewing.

I'm going with the second option.  

After all, sometimes surprises are good, right?

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come enjoy the last of the purple!

Rolling along in my own Totally Demented way

 Cue the confetti!  Totally Demented is in the final stretch!

I finally hit my target of 256 blocks for this mammoth of a quilt!  

(Unless I've miscounted)  (I'm sure I haven't miscounted)  (Well, pretty sure)  (I'm pretending I haven't miscounted)  (La la la)

Part of the process - which was necessary but slowed me down considerably - was twirling all those little seams as I went along.  It's going to make the final assembly easier, but oh my - what a pain in the butt at the beginning!

However, I am NOT continuing this twirly mayhem as I start making the small blocks into larger blocks.  If my thinking is correct (but remember what I've named this quilt), when I combine these bigger blocks into even bigger blocks, the seams will still nest.

My process so far has been to sew blocks together into pairs until I'm thoroughly bored, then sew pairs into foursies until I get sick of that.

Back and forth between twosies and foursies, twosies and foursies...

Fairly quickly I had enough to put up on my hastily cleared design wall.

I got so excited that I put together four more.

And then since it was going so well, I just kept rolling!

And that's enough for one fourth of the quilt!

I've got a stack of twosies still by the machine, and lots more blocks to sew together, but the quilt is starting to look real!

Every time I look at it, I make a little 'woohoo' noise - which makes me think I might actually finish it at some not-too-distant point.  

Woohoo!

Linking with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  (I didn't get any RSC sewing done AT ALL this week, unfortunately, so I'm skipping my usual other link.  Next week for sure!)

45 Blocks and an Oops. Oh, and a Cake Stand. And another Cake Stand.

 Lately I've been making a big push to get Totally Demented to the flimsy stage.  (I'm trying to be good and clear the decks first so I can start Sand Castles 2.)  (Being good is hard.) 

The other day I put my head down and my butt in my sewing chair and turned out 46 blocks.

Well, 45 of them went smoothly, but as I was ironing the last one I discovered that I'd made an oopsy block.

When I sewed the two halves together, I'd spun one of them around the wrong way.  A few minutes with the seam ripper and a quick trip under the needle and all was good.

That means I now have 224 of the 256 I need.  I'm back to churning out quarter blocks and half blocks, and am hopeful that I'll be done soon.

Then as a palate cleanser, I made a purple cake stand.

And that was so yummy that I made another.

I'll probably be able to find another purple or two in my stash so I can make a few more.  Purple is the next best thing to orange, so I do tend to accumulate them...

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come join the scrappy fun!

And hey, it's my birthday!  Purple seems like a good color for my birthday month!

Okay, I give up. I"m making Cake Stands for this year's RSC.

This is actually a purple cake stand, but my camera struggles with purples so I admit it looks kind of pink.

So now Cake Stand is officially a RSC 2020 quilt and will roll over into 2021.  There.  That's settled.

I was really glad when Angela announced a new color for RSC, both because purple is my second most favorite color to play with and because it gave me something to actually show for all the stitching I've been doing lately.

It's not that I haven't kept busy.  Here you can see my nine-patches-in-progress in the upper left corner, with the postage stamp squares cut for PSP20 for August, light green for January, and yellow for whenever it might turn up on the calendar.  At upper right is a couple of platefuls of Easy Peasy leader/enders, with my four-patches-in-progress all across the bottom of the picture.

And I pulled out the Demented bits and have been diligently getting more demented by the day,

but it doesn't leave much to look at.  The pile of half-blocks on the left is growing higher, but one picture pretty much looks like another.

Four-patches for Sand Castles 2 are appearing, too.  Normally I have tons of these on hand for assorted projects, but the first Sand Castles quilt used up a metric butt-ton of them.  (Well, only 512 of them, but that's pretty close.)  But you know, you've seen one four-patch, you've seen them all...

The Easy Peasies are drifting in, too.  But again, not very impressive as a way to show progress.

Though here we go.

First purple Postage Stamp block.  That's a bit better.

Nothing like purple to give a little flash!


Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday (I'm late again!) and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see what all the scrappy folk have been up to!

(And a New Blogger update - I thought I'd finally figured out and gotten settled in with New Blogger, but tonight it wouldn't let me create a new post.  I've had to revert to Old Blogger in order to post all this.  No idea what the problem is, but I sure wish they'd get their act together.)

And then one thing led to another

We all knew that purple kitty print was going to make a handsome cake stand, right?

Right.

And then, because one thing leads to another and because we've already done both lime and orange for the RSC this year and because I do like to play catch-up

I made another.  And then, since I found the pink one that had mysteriously disappeared, I decided I needed a group shot.

You know, a group shot of the blocks that I'm going to be making for NEXT YEAR'S  RSC.  Which I obviously haven't started yet.

(I found the missing pink one when I decided to get a bin to put the kitty block into so it wouldn't get lost like the pink one.  I spied one on top of a stack of bins full of blocks.  Guess what was already in it?)  (Apparently I'd had that idea before, but then it fell right out of my brain) (This time I remembered to label the bin)

And since this is the last Saturday for our July dark blue RSC blocks, I made another postage stamp for PSP20.

Lately it seems like my world is just full of these little 1.5" squares.  Between the postage stamps, the 4-patches I'm making for Sand Castles 2, the squares for Bonnie Hunter's Easy Peasy leader/ender project,

and the nine-patches I'm making for my Jack's Chain,

 it seems I'm all about the itty bitties.

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come join in the scrappy magic!

Well, maybe just one new project. Or, umm, two...

Did anyone else accidentally start Bonnie Hunter's new leader/ender challenge?  (Well, some of you might have started on purpose.  I just sort of seem to fall into these things without really noticing...)

I'll just make one block, I told myself.  You know, as a sample.  

You can see where this is going, right?

Bonnie is calling this "Easy Breezy", but my brain insists on saying "Easy Peasy", so I guess I'll be sticking with that.

Because it sure was easy peasy to end up with a whole plateful of blocks cut and ready to go.

In RSC news, I got another catch-up block done for PSP20.  (I completely deny this was so I had an excuse to sew some new leader/enders together.)

Now I've just got January's light green to do and I'll be all caught up!

And you know how in my last post I showed you I was a winner?  Well, I'm an even bigger winner now - Sally T drew my name for her Table Scraps giveaway and sent me a huge stack of solids.  (You know how Joy's middle name is Whoosh?  Sally's middle name is Enabler.)  I see a lot more postage stamp blocks in my future.  (And maybe zippers) (and cake stands) (and maybe friendship stars?)

And then apparently Molly decided to add a few scraps of her own, so I've got some lovely kitty bits to play with, too.

And since the fabrics were all just Right There -

I may have to stop kidding myself about whether I've started that Cake Stand quilt or not.

Sally's last laugh was this print -

just to make sure I don't run out of squirrels.  (I think that one might make a good background for when the RSC gets around to red month.)

Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday, and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come enjoy the scrappy fun!

Momma's got a brand new... umm... log

Well, my friend Joy actually calls it a stick, but it's mine now so I can call it a log if I wanna!

So late last month the busiest quilter I know (I swear her middle name is Whoosh) had a giveaway for her stop on a blog hop.

Since the theme of the hop was sunshine, she made the sunniest, shiniest, sunshiny pincushion possible, and guess who was the lucky winner?

Yes, me!!!

Thanks so much, Joy!  I'm going to enjoy this little log of joy!

(I may have to buy some fancier pins, though.  They have a lot to live up to now!)