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.

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.

Scrappy dilemma

Hello everyone!  How are you today?  It is raining and wet here, and quite gloomy.  Plus, I have to compose an exam this afternoon, and that can make anybody a little cranky.  On the upside, can't go out walking, so I might as well sew.  Or do laundry, but who would rather do that?

Today I have to share a little problem I'm having.  First, though, a pretty picture for the top of the blog:

Okay, maybe not so pretty but at least it's not a mess.  It was raining when I took this, but I think that makes it look extra bright and happy.  This is the first row of a new quilt, and here's how I got to it.  It all started with this mess:

This is not even close to being all of my scraps, most of which made it to the condo with us.  I have at least one more big white bag and a smaller clear bag, also stuffed full.  When we had the house, I had these all nicely sorted by color and type--solids over here, batiks here, prints there--in their very own boxes, all nicely stacked.  It didn't look like quite so much then. Well, that system wouldn't work here because there is just not enough storage space. (Really, I'll be thankful for closets forever.) So the boxes are in storage, but I pulled out the fabrics and brought them with me.

Folks, this is just overwhelming me.  I have too much!  All the space that is taken up by the scraps means that I have no room for yardage.  And I really want some yardage!

Anyway, I have to use these up and clear them out, so I've started cutting them up into manageable pieces and I have a couple of patterns in mind for them.  First, there is this one:

This is a pattern by mamaCJT, and I got it at Patched Works a long time ago. (Pretty sure they still have some in stock.)  She shows it all in a single solid, but why does it have to be done that way?  It doesn't!  So I've pulled out some of the bigger pieces to make rows and put them together into a cute little quilt.

I've also been cutting pieces into 1-1/2, 2-inch, and 2-1/2 inch squares.  There are tons of patterns for squares this size.  There may be a Bonnie Hunter quilt in my near future, but for now I've chosen this one from Wedding Dress Blue.

It looks simple enough that even I can't mess it up, and the directions are really good, so I grabbed some 2-inch squares and started putting them together:

So far it's mainly stress-free, but we'll see as we go on.  I have a couple of other ideas, and I even thought about cutting some of the bigger pieces into triangles and making an all-triangle quilt, but after working on the Roman Floors quilt for a while now I'm pretty tired of triangles.

Put them all in a bowl and toss like a salad!

That's it from here!  Let's see how much progress I make this week.  Pretty sure I'll be cutting like a crazy person. And if anyone has any good suggestions for patterns for using up those scraps (or the vast majority of them), be sure to let me know!

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