Quilty blue persuasion

(For anyone interested, there are TWO scrap giveaways at the end of this post!)

Holy cow, it's the end of September! Pretty soon it will be Halloween, and then 2018 will be gone before we know it.  I am not ready for this!  As it is, we're up to that part of the year when I'm ready to wind up my RSC projects and get some quilt tops made.  And we're also to the part of the year where we hit the colors that I seldom use and therefore have few scraps to work with.  Kind of a good problem to have, though.

Since I put the galaxy stars into a top already, all I have left are the patchwork scrap stars and the hollow 9-patches.  Let's look at those first:

Only three! These were the squares that I had cut already.  I could have cut some more, but that would defeat the purpose of using scraps.

I also made some black hollow 9-patches:

Confession:  these were the only things in the black scrap bin.  Really.  I have something like four black squares left.  Pathetic, I know.  I like the color variations in these, and now I think I have almost enough hollow 9-patch blocks for the two quilts I want to make.  I'll have to count and make sure that I have enough of them next month.

For the patchwork scrap stars, I did not make dark blue ones, both because I didn't want a dark blue block in the quilt and because I was just too lazy to cut up any of the blues.  Instead I have these:

Yes, it was raining, so we get indoor pictures today.

Okay, that one on the right is a little wild, but I think it works okay with the rest of the blocks.  I really love the little penguin peeking out.  This block was just leftover bits and pieces with a red print star, and the other is obviously a lime green block.  Still have plenty of those pieces left over, too.  I do like the fussy-cut purple star, too.

So those are my remaining RSC projects!  Next month I should be able to start putting these together into some tops.  That's the hope, anyway!

As I have each month this year, I'm giving away what's left in my dark blue scrap bin this month.  These giveaways have helped me so much and I'm so grateful to all of you who have taken these old, unloved scraps off my hands.  The empty bins have opened up a whole new world of ideas for me, so thanks!

Here are the dark blue scraps:

There was more there than I thought there would be! Since I seldom use dark blue, these are pretty old, but they also include the (very few) leftovers from my blue-background projects this year, including a few small pieces of the Kona solid I've used for the larger Squared Away blocks.  There are also a handful each of the 2-inch and 1-1/2 inch squares.

But wait, there's more!  Take a look at these florals:

This is the entire contents of the floral scrap bin, which was so full that I had to use rubber bands to keep the lid on it.  I doubt that I will ever use most of these.  There is a piece in there that I know is from 2012 and others that might be older. (Eep!)  There are newer ones, too, of course.  I would also like to give these away to someone who will swear on a stack of quilt books to love them and use them.  They are very pretty, and there is quite a bit of fabric here.  I didn't weigh it, but really, I could not get that bin closed any more!

This giveaway is now closed.  Thanks all, and congratulations to Lori and Liz.

If you would like to have one of these sets of fabric, delivered to you in the US or Canada free of charge, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post!  Really! Tell me which you would like, the blues or the florals, and I will separate the comments and use the random number generator on Monday evening, October first, to choose two winners.  Please, please, if you are no-reply, leave an email so that I can contact you.  If I can't reach you, you can't win!

Hope you are having a great weekend with lots of cool temperatures and low humidity.  If that ever happens here, I'll be sure to let you know!

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC18.

Block by block

Hi everyone!  Well, the leaves have officially started to turn, so it must be fall.  I can see yellow leaves on my neighbor's trees, though ours are still all green.  Plus I noticed that it's definitely getting dark earlier in the evening.  Thankfully, I have those great lights in my sewing room now so I can still see everything no matter how bleak it is outside.

Right now I'm working on blocks for two quilts.  First up is this new one:

One of the colors for the rainbow scrap challenge this month is dark neutrals, so I pulled out the bin of black fabrics.  It was almost comically empty, just a few small squares.  It happens, though, that I have a bunch of fabrics with black backgrounds that I have never used. 

Aren't those pretty ? They really deserve to be used, but I've never found a way to incorporate them into my quilts.  I should totally work on that, but until then, I decided to use them in a quilt all their own.  Sounds fair, right?  Plus it will get them off the shelves and into something cozy.

The block is from my Intricate Stitches quilt and the pattern can be found HERE.  In a bit of serendipity, one of the names for this block is Black Beauty.  It was meant to be! I've got ten more of these cut out and ready to stitch, and I think I'll probably get 20 blocks out of the pieces I have.  And then I'll also have some black scraps!

The second project is the fall flowers quilt:

If you recall, these are flower blocks that I'm making from the bundle of fabrics that I chose for Bernie's shop.  (There are still a few bundles available HERE, or you can find some other fun stuff you like there.) I've been having fun making a variety of flower blocks using the fat quarters from the bundle.  Some of these I've also done before, but some of them I just drafted for this project.  I'm not sure about the two orange squash blossom blocks so I may yet take one of them apart.  I think I can manage to get 4 or 5 more blocks from the bundle, then I'll figure out some alternate blocks to make the quilt a decent size.  What if I used the adobe-colored scraps to make some fall leaves?  Hmmm. . .

Lots of little pieces in a complicated layout--just what I love!

That's my current progress!  I'll keep working on these, but I've also pulled out the walking foot because I've got several quilts basted and ready to go and I really need to get to them.  I need the room!  Plus, it's getting cooler and it will be cold before you know it, so I'd better finish up at least the quilts for my daughters.  And we all know I have to finish them at the same time, right?

Everyone have a good week!  Hoping to have a binding on something before this week is over!

Sharing at Let's Bee Social and soscrappy for RSC18.

Mission San Miguel

Hi everyone, and happy last day of summer! I know it doesn't feel like it everywhere (certainly not here!) but fall officially starts on Saturday.  I am ready for some cooler temperatures, but very unready for the season that follows the fall, which shall go unnamed for now.  So far, we have some dead leaves that have fallen, but nothing colorful yet.  Oh, and the tomato plants have given up, though they did produce really well this year.

This week I'm showing off my second free-pieced church!  Let's take a trip back in time, to last spring, so that we can pretend that I actually made the free-pieced church for the spring panel *in* the spring.  Just use your imagination! 

This is San Miguel Chapel, also known as Mission San Miguel, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It's reportedly the oldest church building in the continental United States, built between 1610 and 1626, long before any church building in New England or Virginia.  You can read much more about the church HERE.  It's an exciting story, really, because the church was originally constructed by the Tlaxcala Indians and it's been destroyed and rebuilt several times.  There are many historical pictures and pictures of the inside online as well.

I made this church using techniques detailed in Julie Sefton's book Build a Barn, No Pattern Construction. There was no pattern or anything, I just used a couple of photos that I had (which are not suitable for publication here since I knew even less about photography years ago) and pieced it in sections.  One thing I found helpful was to print out a photo on plain paper and then fold it to get a sense of the proportions.  Oddly, the church is almost symmetrical, in three parts.  The hardest part of the piecing was figuring out how to show the buttresses.  They're more like wedges than they appear in the quilt panel, but I think I did okay with it.

The main reason that this wasn't finished in the spring was that  I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect fabric to mimic the adobe.  That red-brown is a pretty difficult color to find.  Everything was either too light or too brown.  I had a lot of fun looking, though.  You may notice, too, that there are not a ton of plants around the church.  It is New Mexico, and most of the area around the church is paved, with other buildings very close to the church.  I always expect iconic buildings to be set off somehow by themselves, and then it ends up that they're across the street from a hotel or something, like the Alamo.  This church is in an historic district, but it's right there in a neighborhood, with apartments really close.

This church panel finished at 25 by 33, which is only a tiny bit different from the first panel.  This was a total coincidence, because I purposely didn't measure so that I could give San Miguel the space it deserved.  I was really surprised when I took the first church out of the box to take this picture.  Funny how things work out, isn't it?  I should also add that there are many details that will be quilted in, too, like the branches and leaves for that tree on the left, and the window panes.

So there's church number 2!  I've picked out the church for a summer panel, but I have a few things I have to work out for it first, like how to make the siding.  Maybe I'll make the fall church before the summer one because it's brick, which might be easier. 

Everyone have a great weekend!  There are no bridesmaid's dresses to alter this time around, but this weekend is my birthday and I have some gluten-free cake to enjoy. I have it on good authority that there will also be takeout, which we all know is my favorite thing.

Sharing at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Finished or Not Friday, and TGIFF.

Cloudy with scattered stars

Hi all, and welcome to another wet weekend!  What a surprise, huh?  The weather people said this week that we've had the wettest summer in 50 years, thus confirming what I have suspected all along.  Of course, I can't complain, because we are not currently in the path of a hurricane.  If you are, my sympathies and please stay safe.  I hope it dries out for you very soon!

Since this is the dark blue month for the rainbow scrap challenge, I decided that it was time to put together the galaxy stars quilt top, which I've been making to use up some dark blue half yards that I bought to test out another pattern.  I never use dark blues, so they were just going to sit around here, doing nothing.  Instead, they've become this little quilt:

Oh, gosh, that turned out better than I thought it would!  It's been quite cloudy, so the pictures are a little dark, but that's letting all the colors of the stars shine through.

The pattern for this star is HERE, but I made mine larger, 8 inches finished instead of 6 inches.  They were super-easy to make, and I used all scraps in the color of the month to make the stars.  I tried to mix up all the backgrounds as much as possible each month, and I didn't have a set number of stars that I was aiming for.  This made the quilt a pretty relaxed project for me.

I put the stars up on the wall and played with the layout and the distribution of colors for a couple of days, which was fun.  I didn't want to put them in a plain straight set, so I moved them around a bunch until I liked it, then filled in with leftover blue squares.  I laid this out in rows, but pieced it in columns, adding a piece to the tops and bottoms of the columns to make the stars off set.  This made them look much more scattered, which was exactly what I was going for.

So there's one more scrap project down!  I'm really pleased with it. I didn't put any borders on this top, but I still might.  I have just enough for a small border to go all the way around, and enough scraps for a binding.

Hope everyone is having a nice, dry weekend and you all have something fun planned.   I have to go to my daughter's house and alter a bridesmaid's dress.  Wish me luck!

PS-- There's still time to enter to win a blogger bundle from Bernie!  Check out THIS POST for details.

Sharing at soscrappy for RSC18.