Bright spots for a gray day

Hi everyone! Are we all feeling motivated today? Hah! I am feeling a bit more creative than I have for the past few weeks, and I've actually pulled out a couple of RSC projects that I think I can get finished up pretty quickly. And hey-- I have a few days off next week for some small, obscure holiday, so I may have some actual sewing time, too!

The first little project I want to finish up is actually from last year's RSC. You may remember the hollow 9-patches that I made to use up some 2-inch squares. I ended up with quite a few of them, enough for two small quilts. Here is the first one:

Wow, nothing like a shot of color to wake up your creativity, is there? I've played with these for a while, and I think this will be the final layout. Maybe I'll move a couple.  I'm just going to use a plain narrow white for the sashing, and I haven't decided about borders yet. It will be small, but it will make a nice child-sized quilt.

Here's what I'm doing with the remaining hollow 9-patches:

Putting them on point!  This will be another kid size quilt, but it will still be a usable size. Thankfully, too, I know some small people who like colors.  The best part of these two layouts is that they mean that I have only 4 of the hollow 9-patches left over, and I just might stick those on the back.  Win!

So there's the plan for one set of older blocks. The other project that I pulled out to finish pretty quickly is from this year, and it's these blocks:

These are the Cut Glass Dish blocks, and I love them. I just don't want to make any more of them! The plan was to make 30 blocks, but I think a quilt made with just 20 blocks will still be a very nice lap size. Plus, the blocks will not be waiting in the closet any more but will get to be in a nice, happy quilt.

I need five more blocks, and I was thinking about using pink and purple, but what colors would you suggest? The red always throws me off, so I do need something to balance it. Do you think the purple would do that?  Plus, I thought I liked the layout shown above, but, wow, I really don't. It looks like I'll have to play with those blocks a bit more.  They do look like cut glass, don't they?

That's the update from here for now. I'll be stitching these together and trying to figure out a layout for the Cut Glass blocks. Oh, and then I might have to go to the grocery store. I'm wondering if it will be very crowded this weekend. Probably not, right?

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC19 (soon to be RSC20-- eep!)

Spring greens

Hi everyone, and happy Saturday! Well, I had big plans for this week, but it didn't quite work out like I expected.  We had a turn in the weather and I was lured outside for a bit, and then I actually did some yard work! Mostly it was picking up sticks (where do they all come from?) and raking some leaves, but it felt *great.*  Then when I came inside I looked around and realized that the house needed some serious cleaning, so I opened the windows and scrubbed some baseboards and touched up some paint.  Do you ever get that feeling in the spring? It definitely feels much cleaner and nicer now.

All of this meant that I did not finish quilting a quilt this week, and in fact I only finished the green Cut Glass Dish blocks:

If you recall, these blocks are one of my projects for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year.  I love how they look, especially the zippy green one on the left.  Next month I promise to take a picture of all the blocks I've made so far because all of the colors look great together.

And that was it!  I did one other thing using green fabric, though it isn't as much a scrap project as a "using things up" project.  I made some test blocks to use as alternate blocks for a panel I cut apart:

These are actually simple hourglass blocks, using a dark green print and a beige print.  I'm going back and forth on whether the green is too dark or not, and also whether the green print is too busy.  I have just enough of the green to make the alternate blocks, and then I thought about using a small beige border and maybe a red binding.  I actually might have another little bit of dark green for a binding if I like that better.  This would use up the panel, the dark green, the beige, and maybe another bit of dark green or red.  Plus it makes a nice comfort quilt to donate, too!

That's all for my green projects this week, but there is one more green thing to share:

Daffodil shoots!  This makes me so happy.  Spring will really be coming soon!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! The temperatures will be falling again, but I plan to enjoy it while it lasts!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC19.

Red cut glass

Hi everyone, and happy weekend! The first week of the year is always so weird, isn't it?  I always feel disoriented.  I usually go to a conference in early January, but this year the conference fell this weekend, and I knew there was no way that I could get myself together enough to go, so I didn't.  I feel kind of bad about it, but not bad enough to get on an airplane.  There's always next year!

Since I stayed home, I went ahead and started one of this year's rainbow scrap challenge projects.  Yay me!  Here are my first RSC blocks for this year:

We're stuck with indoor pictures for now, but this block is an old one called Cut Glass Dish, a Ladies' Art Company block from before 1895.  These will finish at 12 inches.  My plan is to make 30 blocks, 3 for every color, and then have a nice-sized quilt at the end.  I've done this with a few quilts and they turn out great.

If you count, each of these blocks has 24 half square triangles.  I used some of my massive stock of Triangle Paper to make 72 perfect triangles really fast:

I really do have a bunch of this paper in various sizes, enough to make literally thousands of triangles.  I'll definitely have enough to make this quilt!  I don't know why I have so much, except that I probably bought it on sale, and I did use it often before I discovered the Magic 8 method.  The hsts really did turn out just great, and quick.  No lines to draw and pulling off the paper is therapeutic.

These were the only red blocks I managed to make so far. I've had a rocky relationship with the color red. It was always going to be a difficult color for me because I don't use it very often at all, so I don't have very many scraps, and last year I gave away all of my old scraps.  (Thanks again to everyone who took them!) Over the break I sorted out the big basket where I throw scraps while I'm cutting things, so I do have a very few reds:

I thought that I could build up the red supply this year by the time that color rolled around, but it's first, so I ended up cutting up some fat quarters.  I'm pretty happy with that, and I've asked some friends for some of their red scraps, so I probably will be able to scrounge up enough to get the rest of my projects started.  And I do have lots of ideas!

Another weird indoor picture.  Sorry.

Hope you got a good start to your RSC projects and are enjoying the first weekend of 2019.  We're de-Christmassing the house, and I'll bet that means I can talk the hubs into some takeout.  Better than a conference for sure!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC19!