Blocks in blues

 Hello quilty friends! How are things today? Today I finished my syllabi for the coming semester while I watched the temperature drop. It was nice and warm (for January) and now it's cold and more January-like again. Complete with rain and the possibility of snow. Yay?

This week, in between planning my classes, I made some progress on starting this year's RSC projects. As I said last week, I am going to clean out those danged bins this year if I have to sew all day and night to do it. To start, here are a few blocks from this week:

 

Aren't those pretty? I've decided to make a star quilt this year, and these are the first blocks. These are 9-inch blocks, so some of the pieces were very small, but they were all fun to make. And I got to use up this beautiful, long-saved bit of leftover fabric:

But wait, didn't I make a star quilt last year? Yep, but this one is different. I made a list of about 40 star and star-like blocks that look interesting to make, and every month I'll make a few of them in the color of the month. I have no layout yet, just a few ideas, but I think it will be fun and interesting to choose some blocks every month and see what I can come up with. Why make them all the same when I can make them all different?

Nine inch blocks, even 40 of them, won't use up very many scraps, so I'm also making these to use up the bigger pieces:

These are 12-inch blocks called Peace and Plenty, a classic block from the 1870s. The block itself has some neat secondary designs, depending on how long you look at it, but when you put the blocks all together without sashing they make even more fun patterns. I think the final quilt will be really interesting.

 

 

I made this block for a row quilt project in 2015 (!!!) and lucky for you, the tutorial for making it is right HERE. No hsts or qsts to make, and much, much faster than it looks. And don't they turn out cool? I think this quilt will finish at a nice size for a donation quilt once all is said and done. I'll aim for three blocks a month, but it all depends on the scraps. Pretty sure there won't be three in dark green as those scraps are almost gone (hurray for that!)

 

Sad to say that's as far as I got on those scraps. There are a bunch more in that bin, but the pieces are getting smaller and smaller. I may make a bunch of hsts with some of it, and maybe cut the rest into strings. We'll see how desperate I get. 

 

 

Have a great weekend everyone! January is the best month of the year to just stay inside, so I hope you make the best of it!

 

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC23.