The hard(est) part is done

This week I took my Frolic mystery from this:

to this:

to this:

 Ta-da!  The center part is done, including squaring, trimming, and stay-stitching the edges.  On to the borders!

Now that I've got the tricky parts done, I can do the borders at my leisure.  I'll be making HSTs in both purple and orange for a while, which will be a perfect leader/ender as I push forward some other projects that have been on hold while I frolicked mysteriously along.

And I got two more doodads done for the RSC.

Is it just me or are they getting brighter?


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

Orange you glad it's February?

Finally got to my sewing machine after that last storm snowed me out of my studio.  (Not a fan of big storms)  (Or snow in general for that matter)

First up were these Jacks 'n Sixes blocks that I'd cut out the other day.  These have been RSC blocks for several years now.

At some point I'll pull them all out and count them again - it's been a while.  I made one or two a month for a year or two, then none at all last year.  (Sandcastles grabbed all my RSC sewing time for most of 2019!)

And another doodad turned up -

All the above blocks functioned quite well as leader/enders as I've kept up the push to finish Frolic. 
At the end of my afternoon's sewing I laid out the last Frolic block (tada!), ready to sit right down and sew at my next opportunity.  (This strategy has worked really well for me.  It really cuts into my dither time - "What shall I do first?  This?  Or this?  Or maybe this?")

And while I was at it, I set up another doodad.

Can't have too many doodads, after all.


Linking with SoScrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see what everyone's been up to this week!

Oopsy diddly oopsy deux

When you make two mistakes in the same half-block in a two minute span, it's time to call it a day.

Ready for next time.

*sigh*

At last a wee bit of rainbow

Yay!  It's orange month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, which means it's my favorite month of the year.  Here I've managed to squeeze in a bit of orange that wasn't directly Frolic-oriented. 

Two more little doodads for the RSC.  Or widgets.  I don't know what to call them.

That's the whole of what I've got so far.  I'm combining leftover 2.5" print half-square triangles (and between my temperature quilt and all the Bonnie Hunter projects I've worked on, I have a great plenty of those) with whatever solid I grab that doesn't look too terrible, and ta-da!  A widget!  Or a doodad! 
Or a thingy?  I need to come up with a name for these...


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

I should have known this would happen

Last time I posted, I showed a photo of my Frolic with the blocks laid out in a straight set. 

It'll be fine, I told myself.  Terrific, in fact.  I really like it, I said.  I don't need to do the on-point setting like Bonnie Hunter designed it because it'll be quite okay this way.  Just because I usually prefer an on-point setting is no reason to think that that will be the case this time too.

Yeah.

I decided to make up a block and the two half-blocks needed to fill in a corner if I turned the blocks on point.  You know, just for scientific purposes.  Not that I was going to dump the straight set or anything.

Uh oh.

You saw this coming, right?

On point just dances rings around the straight setting.  I liked the straight set.  I LOVE the on point.

So okay, three blocks and six half-blocks to go.

I should've known I wasn't done...

Let's pretend I did some RSC sewing

Look!  Greens!

Not RSC January greens at all, though.  Those are more numbers for the temperature quilt.  (I'm really proud of that 7 in 70, by the way.  I just slashed a square with my rotary cutter at an angle that 'looked right' and it turned out really well.  I'm not usually that lucky!)

The other win was that I've got nine blocks done for Frolic, which is all I'll need if I decide to go ahead with a square setting.  If I dither myself into that lovely diagonal setting, I'll just need four more blocks and a bunch of setting bits.  (I've got some of that stuff cut out anyway, from when I panicked and thought I wasn't going to have enough parts for clue 7.)  (Or was it clue 6?)

At one point I had all the sashing strips in place between the blocks, but in the process of rearranging for value (because I couldn't help myself), most of those sashy bits fell onto the floor.  (I cropped them out of the photo)  (It's just as well)  (Who needs to look at a swathe of sashy bits on the floor, after all?)

So, I'm either done with the Frolicking blocks or I'm 9/13ths done with the Frolicking blocks.  We'll see what happens next.  (And can I say once again how happy I am with how my colors worked out?)

Frolicking Revelations

As of last night, before Bonnie Hunter's Big Reveal, this was my best guess for Frolic's main block -

and since we hadn't used much for neutrals yet, I thought maybe some of those HSTs might be needed to fill out the corners.

I'd figured 25 blocks, set on point 5x5, but I was thinking there would be 16 alternate blocks filling the spaces between them.  (Deploying some math at this point would have helped me see that THAT quilt would have been way too big.  Math is ALWAYS necessary.) 

I wasn't ridiculously far off, anyway.

Here's the actual block, as Bonnie revealed this morning -

and I not only like the block, I really like my color choices for it.

So I scurried to make a second one.  (This one actually took longer to put together than the first one, since I made the classic mistake of thinking I knew what I was doing.  I love my seam ripper, I truly do.)

And then I tried to take a photo at a 45 degree angle to show what they'd look like on point.  (As you can see, my design wall is currently crowded with flying geese, and I didn't want to clear space to make room for that on-point layout.)

And then while I was at it, I made a third block, since the pieces-parts were right there and all.

And I laid out a fourth block so I'd have something to start with next time I make it to my sewing machine.

I have nowhere near the number of units I need to make the whole quilt.  I'd just been puddling along behind everyone else, only making enough components to keep my hand in.  I'm still not convinced I need another bed-sized quilt at the moment, so I'd had it half in mind to make a smaller one anyway.  (And doesn't that take the pressure off!) 
So my plan at the moment is to make nine blocks total and sew them together in a 3x3 setting.  I actually like the straight set at least as much as the on-point set, so if I decide I'm satisfied with that, I'll put borders on (hello, HSTs) and call it happy. 
If I decide I absolutely need to get fancy, I can make 4 more blocks and do all those wild setting triangles and corners with what I've got cut and a few more bits, and just end up with a slightly smaller Frolic.

Win/win, I think. 
I'm really happy I went with this purple-orange color scheme - it just makes me smile every time I look at it.