Red stars and a basket too

 Hello everyone, and happy weekend! Yesterday, I finally parked in my new garage! It doesn't have any doors yet, and the walls still aren't drywalled, and the siding isn't here yet, but I parked in it nonetheless. Yay! For those of you keeping track, the timeline is too depressing to contemplate, but it should definitely absolutely be done before it snows. Or spring, either way.

This week I finally caught up on my RSC projects for September. Once again, I am thanking my lucky stars that I chose these super easy Ohio Stars for the RSC this year:

 

Dear Blogger, I am unhappy with your new image size controls. Why do you keep changing, and why are my pictures fuzzy? 

These stars are very easy and fun to make, and they go very fast, relatively speaking. This is a good thing right now, isn't it? I pulled out all of my stars and laid them out on the lawn, because it was quite nice and they looked nicer out there than on the design wall:

 

They look good, and nice and random, but somehow I managed to skip a color. I should have nine colors and I only have eight. I'm pretty sure that I skipped one of the blue months because I don't have much in the way of blue scraps. So, assuming next month is yellow for the RSC, what color should I use to make up the right number of stars? 

I also put the binding on the red scrap basket this week:

Yahoo! I made this basket quilt as you go with strings that I had leftover from another project, long ago. I was a bit overzealous cutting strings for that project, but they worked great for this basket. There is a lot of variety here, and it went really quick. Of course, even the binding is a scrap, and now I am left with very few red strings. 

Very few reds at all, in fact. I should probably do some shopping, don't you think?

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. I am going to be chained to my desk finishing my writing project, and when my brain can't take any more, I'll be relaxing outside with a nice beverage, contemplating my plywood garage walls. I think there might be some chocolate in the near future, too!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC2020.

Purple daze

 Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a good day. It's hot and rainy again today, and I'm getting a little tired of it. One of my brothers lives in California and my mom used to say that it was "boring" there because the weather was the same every day. I don't think I would be bored by sunshine every day, but the heat and rain is getting a little tiresome. I couldn't go walking this morning because it was 73 degrees at 6:30 am, with 94% humidity, and it was just too much. I got about 100 feet before I decided that yoga would be nice for today. Good decision, I must say!

So, now that I've complained about the rain, of course my first picture has to have sunshine in it! Here are my purple Ohio Stars for the RSC this month:

 

These are pretty! I have mountains of purple scraps, and I love them all. Probably why I still have so many of them. (Why do the pictures look so weird? Get it together, Blogger!)

The larger star doesn't show up there too well, but it is one of my cherished scraps.You have those, too, right? Pieces that are just so good that you have to save them for the right project. I kept putting this one aside on project after project because it was just too nice to use up.

 

I think I finally found the right project for that pretty paisley! I can't say why exactly I like this fabric so much, but it's been here for a while waiting for a project. I still have a small piece left for another special project, too (and no, it's not big enough to make a mask!)

And speaking of waiting. . .it's time to finish this purple project:

 

If you think you've seen this before, well, it's been hanging exactly here on the design wall all summer. Longer than that, really. It is past time to get it out of there and finished off. I have no excuses except that I'm tired of looking at it and it just doesn't excite me. I have all the pieces and the rest of the blocks, but I just don't want to do it. But I need to, because putting it back in the box feels like failure, and I need to get rid of it. I'm definitely going to need you to cheer me on for this one. Let's make that a goal for the end of August, okay?

That's my update from the sewing room! As far as the rest of life goes. . .my university finally announced that we will be all remote teaching again for the fall semester. I don't know how to feel about this. I'm relieved, and tired, and anxious, and everything else, all at once. I hate teaching through the camera. It's so limiting, and there is so much you can't do in classes. At least I don't have to worry that I will make a student sick, or that a student will give me the virus to pass on to my husband (who is immune compromised) or anyone else. But I do have to rewrite all my classes again! A small price to pay, right? But I do miss my students, and collegaues, and my books and my office. We'll all get it back someday, but right now it feels a lot like loss.

Sigh. I don't know, but I do hope everyone is having a good week and staying nice and healthy! Sew a mask if you must, and wash those hands!

Sharing at Angela's for RSC20.

A bright green beginning

Hi all, and welcome to 2020! Time marches on, and somehow it always surprises me. How on earth did we get one-fifth of the way through the twenty-first century? Wasn't it just Y2K a few years ago? This year is going to bring a lot of good things for us, including a new granddaughter, and I'm happy to get it started!

Somehow time marches on but the scraps never seem to! I still have a ton of scraps, even after many scrap quilts. It's time to just accept that a good bit of my fabric stash is small pieces. The good news is that that gives me a lot to do for the RSC this year. I'm trying to hold myself back and I've only planned three scrap projects for this year. But you know that I'll probably add in another as we go along, right?

Here is my first project for this year:

Ohio Stars in two sizes and opposite colorways! I've long admired Bonnie Hunter quilts, and I know (in my head) that they would be a good way to use a lot of scraps, but I can never really tackle the whole quilt. Last year Maggie broke up Bonnie's Sand Castles pattern to fit the RSC, and that has inspired me to pick a Bonnie pattern and do the same thing. I have a separate personal resolution for this year to be more gentle with myself, so I chose this Random Ohio Stars pattern from her free patterns tab to make this year. I think I can make three blocks a month. Maybe. We'll see.

My second project includes a whole lot of these blocks:

I had two yards of Kona Snow that I knew I wouldn't use, and I also have tubs full of squares that I've already cut from scraps. Why not put them together? I cut the Kona into 5-inch squares and then used 2-1/2 inch squares to snowball the opposite corners. They don't look exciting, but they can be put together into some exciting different patterns.

If you have a whole bunch you can make a really interesting quilt. In my unfettered optimism, I cut up all of the Kona and have enough for 120 blocks. I don't know how many RSC colors we'll have this year, so 10-12 blocks a month is a good goal. These are really easy and I made all of the green ones in about 20 minutes.  And then I have these left over:

Tiny 1-1/2 inch hsts! These are the offcuts from snowballing the blocks above. I know I really shouldn't keep these, and I have no plan for them, but I can't resist!

That's a good start to the year, don't you think? Hope you have some lovely projects in progress and are finding 2020 to be a good year so far. I know we're only a few days in, but it's looking good from here!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC20.