Confetti

Hello everyone! Are you cooking yet?  Thanksgiving is coming really fast, and there is always a ton of stuff to do.  Usually we have a big family dinner at our house, but everything is topsy-turvy this year and we are heading to our older daughter's house in Maine for the holiday. This means she is doing most of the cooking, not me!  This will be a new experience.  Gosh, I hope I can handle it.

Before we leave,  I have a happy little finish to show off.  This is my Confetti quilt:

Doesn't that look cheerful?  The best part of this quilt is that it was made entirely from scraps, including the white on whites.  These were some of the bigger pieces in the scrap bags, which I am happy to say were mostly used up.  And I even found enough of that blue-green to piece together another couple of squares after I messed up the first time.  I don't think anyone can tell I pieced them together, and after it's quilted you'll need a magnifying glass to see it, so I'm happy. (You can't tell, can you?)

This little quilt measures about 54 by 73, which is one row longer than the pattern, because apparently I can't count anymore.  I'm blaming it on the fact that I was cutting so danged many scraps. Just keep cutting, just keep cutting.  Thankfully, I happen to know some tall people who might enjoy this, so it's not a problem.

Better pictures outside, but it was very windy!

Confetti was made from this pattern, still available at Patched Works:

This is a simple, fast quilt to make, and if you make it all in one color it wouldn't take very long at all.  If you're like me, though, you'll want to do a little figuring before you start cutting.  The pattern calls for making the blocks over sized and then cutting them down.  My frugal nature just wouldn't let me waste that much fabric.  (Seriously, it calls for the blocks to be cut down by about an inch and a quarter.)  So I did some math and cut everything the right size to begin with.  It worked well for me.

Wrinkled but festive!

Anyway, that's my finish!  I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and you get to squeeze in a stitch or two.  Don't forget to thaw the turkey!  If you're not in the US, I hope you have a wonderful week filled with family and friends as well.

Travel safe, everyone!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social,  Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  and Finish it up Friday.

Stars

Hi everyone!  How is your week going?  Mine is pretty busy.  You know how you just "lose" days when you go away for a weekend or go on vacation? Yeah, that's what happened with me this week. We went to my friend's wedding, which was lovely, and then came home and no one had miraculously come in to do the laundry or the dishes or my sewing projects.  Where is that fairy godmother when I need her?

Anyway, not a lot of progress here, but I did make these:

These are my contribution to the friendship star swap for this month.  They're a little brighter than anticipated, but I like them.  Somehow I miscounted when I was cutting for them (months ago now) and I ended up putting a blue center in one of them:

I think it looks all right, don't you?  I hope no one will be disappointed with the color combination when they get this one.

No fairy godmother showed up this weekend, but the mailman did.  Look what he brought me:

I finally broke down and got new rulers.  I also got a new large cutting mat.  Yeah, I know.  When I was packing up, I was thinking that I could get along okay with just a few smaller rulers and a small mat.  That's what I used to do, right?  Well, I can't do it any more.  Not sure what I'll do with the older ones once they come out of storage, but that's a problem for another day.

Hope you're having a great week!  If you know how to call out some helpful mice or singing bunnies to do my housework, be sure to let me know!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, and  WIP Wednesday.

And once again, I have to add this sad note: Je prie pour le peuple de Paris et tout le peuple de France. Nous sommes avec vous dans votre chagrin. Vive le France.

Bright spots

Hi all! Well, this week I looked at the calendar and realized that it's the middle of November.  How in the world did that happen?  Seriously, isn't it still September? 

This week I actually finished two small projects.  Yay me!  Here is the first one, a green crumb star for my RSC 15 project:

I don't have a ton of lime green, so I was going to mix the light greens and limes.  Don't do it!  You wouldn't believe how bad the light greens look next to the brighter greens.  They really look gray.  The crumb block is the last one I need for this year's Framed project.  Yay!  I do need to go purchase a small bit of lime for the frame in order to finish off that quilt.  Gosh, shopping for fabric.  Doesn't that sound awful?

Don't know why it looks a little gray on the tree, except that it was raining when I took the picture.  This photo shows the colors a lot better:

I tried for this crumb block to be somewhat "log cabiny" and I think it worked out.
 
Since I wasn't thinking when we were packing things up in a big hurry, all of our coasters are in storage. What was I thinking?  We still have furniture to protect! So, I also made up these coasters from a treasured Mary Engelbreit scrap:

I really did not plot out the storage thing very well.  There are so many small things that I wish I had, but they're all in boxes.  But at least these little things will be a spot of brightness in the living room at the condo.  That fabric makes me happy every time I look at it.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  We are going to my best friend's wedding.  She is my age and has never been married, and we are all so happy that she has finally found someone to share her life with.  It will be like a reunion for us, so it should be a lot of fun!

Happy sewing!

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict,  soscrappy, and Finish it up Friday.

Distracted

Hi everyone!  How are you today?  It is raining, raining, raining here, which is okay because there hasn't really been a lot of rain recently.  It makes things pretty gloomy, but it's fairly cheerful inside.  I bet if I made some brownies it would be even *more* cheerful.  That's a theory I may just have to test out.

So, today I was going to show the progress I've made on the Confetti quilt, which I thought was about half-finished.  Here it is:

See the problem? Short rows with pieces missing!

Okay, so this is what happens when you make a row or two and then come back the next day and make another row without checking the pattern. At least it's a very colorful picture with all those leaves outside.  I think a cloudy day is perfect for getting the colors right. It's a little wrinkly and damp, but colorful!

So really, this mistake is not that bad. It could be worse! I did find enough scraps of most of the fabrics to make the pieces I missed:

I can strip those in to their rows pretty easily.  Well, all except for the blue-green row.  All I have left of that fabric is this:

Eeep! Not sure what I'll do there.  I do have a couple of bags I haven't sorted out yet, so maybe there is another small piece in there somewhere.  If not, this row may end up on the back, or maybe I'll just stick a couple other blue-green pieces into that row.  It's a scrap quilt, right?  How bad could it look?

And I do have a couple of rows still in progress:

I admit I wasn't paying attention with that row, either, but at least it isn't put together yet.  In spite of my mistakes, I think it's going to be quite happy when I'm done with it!

Other than that, I've been cutting up the danged scraps.  Feels like I've barely made a dent, but I think I might actually be one bag down very soon.  Cut up, that is, not actually used! Don't ask how many are still left.

Hope you all are having a great week!  The temperatures have dropped here, so it definitely feels like fall, which feels great.  I fear that I really am a cold-weather person.  Oh, dear.

Sharing at Let's Bee Social, and  WIP Wednesday.

Classic Stitches--Lime and light green

Hi all, and welcome to the last row of the Classic Stitches quilt!  Isn't this exciting?  As soon as this row is done, the quilt will assemble in no time!

The color for this month is lime green, but I don't have a lot of lime, so most of mine will be light green.  Here is the block for this month's row:

This is the Peace and Plenty block, a classic block that is undated, but has variations that date to 1877.  It looks complicated, but don't worry!  This block actually goes together very easily and fairly quickly.  The secret is all in the cutting and chain piecing. (And no hsts or quarter-square triangles to make!)   Really, you'll have these done in much less time than you'd think.

Let's get started. . .the steps and measurements shown are for a 6-inch block.  As always, other sizes are given at the end of the construction directions.

Cutting:

From the green, cut 1 4-1/4 inch square, and 4 2-3/8 inch squares. From a background color, shown here in white, cut the same--1 4-1/4 inch square and 4 2-3/8 inch squares.

Now take the green and white 4-1/4 inch squares and cut them corner to corner twice, making 4 smaller triangles.

Take the 4 smaller squares of each color and cut them in half diagonally once, making a total of 8 small triangles of each color.

That's all the cutting!  Let's make this block!

Construction:

Take the triangles made from cutting the larger squares and stack them as shown:

Stitch all of these together along the center line.  You should end up with 4 units like this:

Put these aside, and take the triangles made from cutting the smaller squares.  Stack them like this:

Stitch on the center line, making 8 units like this:

Take the units that you just stitched, and lay them out like this, in 4 pairs:

Stitch and press. You should end up with 4 of these units.

Take the larger triangle units and lay them out with the smaller triangle units like this:

Stitch and press.  You should have 4 of these final units.

Lay out the 4 units as shown and assemble your block!

That was easier than it looked, wasn't it?  Ten of these will make a 60-inch row, and 6 will make a 36-inch row.  Measure to be sure your row is 60-1/2 inches, and then you're ready for the final assembly of the quilt!

Variations:

Use two different greens for the block, one for the larger triangles and one for the smaller ones. A picture of this variation is below.  You could also use two completely different colors.  Blue or yellow might be good choices to go with the green.

Reverse the colors for a different effect.

For a very cute (but very fiddly) 4-inch finished block, cut 1 square of each color 3-1/4 inches for the larger triangles, and 4 squares 1-7/8 inches for the smaller triangles.

For a 9-inch block, use 5-3/4 inch squares for the larger triangles and 4 3-1/8 inch squares for the smaller triangles.

For a 12-inch block, use 7-1/4 inch squares for the larger triangles and 4 3-7/8 inch squares for the smaller triangles.  Or make 4 different 6-inch blocks and combine them into a 12-inch square.  I opted for the larger pieces in two different greens for my 12-inch block:

That's it for this last row!  Once this is finished, the rows are all done and it's time to assemble the quilt!  Be sure to come back on Tuesday, December 1, for the finishing instructions (or at least to take a peek at some glamour shots of my finished quilt top!)

Happy sewing, everyone!

Linking to Linky Tuesday, Let's Bee Social,  WIP Wednesday, and at soscrappy for RSC15.