WIP Wednesday 3.30.2022

My current project is moving along nicely. I decided that I didn't like the look of the lighter, different shade of gray I had on the design wall so I switched them out for one consistent darker shade of gray. I'm liking this look a lot more! I did decide to stick with the different red cornerstones as there is not a lot of variance in the tone. As per usual, I ran out of reachable room on the design wall so there will be one more row of sashing and cornerstones on the top.

I've actually started sewing this one from the bottom up. It works out well for me! I found that I have a habit of knocking blocks off the wall when I'm reaching for the taller portions. Now, when a row is complete, I pin it to the wall and it stays!  I think I used ALL the pins in the sewing space...LOL

Who would have thunk???? 

pattern inspiration: 

I found this on Pinterest here but only an upload and no construction method.

This setting did use all my pre-made string blocks. I have a bagful of the used Shout Color Catchers saved from before (like 2009 or so) to use as foundations so I set up a spare table and got to work.

As of last night, I have over 200 made and I still have a nice little pile of foundations to use. It's been a fun trip down memory lane with the older fabrics. Although I must admit, some I have actually no recollection of buying or using... I did trim all the string blocks to 4.5 x 8.5 inches.

Linking up with Susan at MidWeek Makers

Design Wall Monday 3.28.2022

I knew this time would come when I would run out of pre-made blocks. I still have plenty of 'spare parts' though! I set up another banquet table on the right hand side of Baby so I could 'see' the 'spare parts'. I did work on ironing and cutting down the 'spare parts', hopefully stream lining the process. 

This is the current project I'm working on. This time the string units are going to be the sashing!

Here is the inspiration piece that I found on Pinterest. Once again, it is only an upload and no construction methods given.

I roughly figure that with the pre-made string blocks I found, I made 3.5 quilts (not including the backgrounds!) I have always wondered how many quilts are lurking in all my totes I have squirreled away in my sewing space... 

Spoiler Alert: Too Numerous To Count! LOL

Linking up with Judy at Design Wall Monday

Angie Update:

Angie and Brad became fast buddies. Here they are bringing in the mail.

Angie giving Brad the 'stink eye' for waking her up from a nap.

Angie back home in the 414 area code. 

Time will tell if she developed any bad habits while here. 😍

Stop Tossing...A Military Mystery...Finish 3.27.2022

Well, Alycia's Stop Tossing Mystery went fast! I think it was 5 clues total! You can hop over to Alycia's blog and search 'Stop Tossing' and still get the clues but she will be taking them down soon and transfer them to her Etsy store for purchase. 

Here is my finished quilt.

pattern: Alycia's Stop Tossing Military Mystery

                find Alycia's blog here

                find Alycia 's Etsy store here

panto: square spiral

Angie filling settled down for a little nap on Friday while her Mom was away! Angie's a very light sleeper and is always listening! LOL

SoScrappy Saturday 3.26.2022

I've been eyeing the 'Missing U' pattern by Cheryl Arkison from her book she wrote with Amanda Jean Nyberg 'Sunday Morning Quilts'. The main concept of this book is to make 'slabs' of fabric using larger pieces rather than crumbs. Since I ran out of yellow projects, I thought. 'Why not add another block to the RSC22 party'? I also had odd bits of white leftover from my Shout Chain Quilt.

Here is my yellow block.

I also played catch up with the red and aqua blocks. I did repeat a few of the fabrics in the aqua block to get to the 15.5 inch unfinished size. Looks like I repeated one of my yellow fabrics, too.

pattern: Missing U by Cheryl Arkison from Sunday Morning Quilts

                (see above)

Linking up with SoScrappy Saturday

Finish or NOT Friday 3.25.2022

I have a finish! The Shout Color Catcher Chain quilt! I chose a medium gray thread as I thought it would blend more but it rather stands out on the white background.

pattern inspiration: found here on Pinterest but no link to contruction methods

panto: serpentine

Linking up with Alycia at Finish or NOT Friday

DD has a wedding shower tomorrow about 2 hours from here and asked if DH and I would dog sit Angelo. How could I say, 'No'? So DD and Angelo are here than Ang will be here alone. I'm hoping it all goes well. I feel like I'm on a trial run for granddog sitting...

WIP Wednesday 3.23.2022

I'm inching closer and closer on the Shout Color Catcher Chain quilt. I call it 'Shout Color Catcher' since I sewed the strings onto a used Shout Color Catcher as a foundation and I am leaving the foundations in the quilt.

Like my inspiration, I knew that I wanted the string blocks as the border. Something was still off to my eye. I decided that I wasn't grooving to the string chains with that extra float on the top. 

Sew...since I sacrificed width on it, I thought, 'Why not a little length?'. 

Ah, yes...I like this decision. 

It is a little fuller in the middle because of the bias but not to worry...

IT WILL QUILT OUT. 

Ha! Famous last words!

pattern inspiration: found here but no link to contraction methods used

Linking up with Susan at MidWeek Makers

Design Wall Monday 3.21.2022

I'm still at play, or is it work?, in the Shout Color Catcher string bin. Believe it or not, I'm still using blocks from my pile that I found! This time, I'm trying an on point set. To do this, I wanted the Shout Color Catcher block to be square. I settled on adding a piece of 4.5 x 8.5 inch white to the Shout Color Catcher block to bring the size to 8.5 inch square unfinished.

I really, really wanted it four blocks across for the width but I was not liking the 'strings' hanging out and didn't want to add another row to finish the chain. It would have grown too big! 

Sew...I settled on this. It will be a little smaller but much more pleasing to my eye.

I actually found this picture on Pinterest but it is merely an upload with no link to the construction of the quilt.

Linking up with Judy at Design Wall Monday

Stop Tossing...A Military Mystery...Clue 5

Last Wednesday, Alycia released Clue 5! It was the reveal!

I had to make a minor adjustment to her border treatments as I was running out of the red contrast fabric. I 'knew' I would be close as the mystery unwrapped. Alycia called for 2.5 inch contrast on the sides of the inner border and 4.5 inch contrast for the top/bottom inner border. I only had enough of my red (contrast) for 3.5 inch top/bottom border and 2.5 inch sides border. In order to keep the length in the 'right ballpark', I made the outer blue (background) border 4.5 inches all around instead of the 3.5 inches original to the pattern. 

Clear as mud, eh? I think overall, it still looks good!

pattern: Stop Tossing...Clue 5

Alycia promised a Military Mystery with no HST's and she delivered! It's a beautiful quilt design and THANK YOU for another quilt to cover our veterans!

SoScrappy Saturday 3.19.2022

Today is the third Saturday of March of the color Yellow and Gold!

Time for my Crumble Jumble blocks...I was able to make 7 blocks this month. I picked the happier yellow crumb blocks as the base. Is happier such a thing will yellow? It seems to me that almost all yellow fabric is happy! 

 pattern inspiration: Crumble Jumble from String Frenzy book

Linking up with SoScrappy Saturday

Finish or NOT Friday 3.18.2022

 I actually have two, yes! two finishes this week! I already had the 'parts' made so it was a matter of cutting the contrast fabric, assembly, quilting and binding.

First up is the Horizontal Shout Color Catcher string quilt. This layout was inspired by Victoria Findlay Wolfe and her '15 Minutes of Play'. I used a dark purple thread and it really blends onto the black contrast fabric.

pattern inspiration: Victoria Findlay Wolfe '15 Minutes of Play'

panto: serpentine

I also finished up the Vertical Shout Color Catcher quilt. This one was also really fast, see reasons above! Once again, thanks to the 'parts' department for a quick finish! 

I actually like the vertical set better than the horizontal set. 😍

Similar pattern: Allison Ramsing Majestic Scraps pattern

panto: serpentine

Linking up today with Alycia at Finish or NOT Friday

WIP Wednesday 3.16.2022

My Shout Color Catcher string quilt went together fast! It sure does help having the 'parts' made! Just a side note: I saved my used Shout color catchers, gave them a press then used as foundation for the string blocks. I elected to leave the color catchers in the finished quilt. 

pattern inspiration: Victoria Findlay Wolfe's book '15 Minutes of Play'

When I stitched the Shout Color Catcher blocks (so long ago), I didn't pay attention the the orientation of the fabrics. As a result, some motifs are vertical while others are horizontal. I sorted through the remaining blocks and pulled as many as I could find with a vertical orientation and began to set those into a top.

I was surprised when I was trolling Pinterest and I found another quilter had recently published a very similar quilt pattern in December  2021. Although I didn't use Allison's quilt pattern as inspiration, you can see it is very close indeed. Find Allison Ramsing's Majestic Scraps Quilt Pattern here.

Alycia released Stop Tossing...A Military Mystery Clue 5 today, I'll take a brief break from my String Adventure and piece Clue 5 in the coming days (or maybe today...<grin>)

Linking up with Susan at MidWeek Makers

Design Wall Monday 3.14.2022

I decided to dive into my box of multicolored strings and things. 

Sometime around 2009 or 2010 or so, I started piecing my leftover fabrics onto used color catchers. DS was starting to do his own laundry and I had him throw in one or two color catchers in his wash load just in case 'something' bled. I ended up with quite a large pile! This picture is actually two piles, 5 inches deep!

I think my first quilt will be one inspired by Victoria Findlay Wolfe and her '15 Minutes of Play'.

pattern inspiration: Victoria Findlay Wolfe '15 Minutes of Play'

Linking up with Judy at Design Wall Monday

Stop Tossing...A Military Mystery...Clues 3 and 4

As I was waffling on my background choice, I feel behind on the clues. <sigh>

I settled on the light blue since Alycia used the light blue in her mock up of the clues...imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Here is my progress after Clue 3.

 pattern credit: Stop Tossing Clue 3

Here is my progress after Clue 4.

pattern credit: Stop Tossing Clue 4

Believe it or not, it's measuring pretty close to Alycia's size in the clue directions! Whoop! Whoop!

Maybe I'll make a light blue D9P with the red accents and tan background...time will tell.

The next clue will be out on Wednesday...I wonder what the border applications will be?!

SoScrappy Saturday 3.12.2022

Today is the second Saturday of March of the color yellow/gold! 

One of the blocks I am making for 2022 is the wonky star. 

First up is the selected color with white background. 

Sew...yellow stars with white background

 Next are the white stars with the yellow/gold background.

pattern credit: either 'Pinterest search' or 'Google search' wonky stars and you will

                        be treated to many tutorials!

Linking up with SoScrappy Saturday

Finish or NOT Friday 3.11.2022

I finished piecing the Amazing Grace panel this week. This fulfills my low key goal of piecing one quilt a month for potential Christmas gifts. I used green as an accent with the paver blocks around it. I first placed a light blue as the top border, thinking to simulate the sky.

Well, I wasn't feeling it. So I took off the light blue and replaced it with more green. Much better!

pattern inspiration: Sew Yummy's paver blocks

The local Historical Society is having a display about the Casual Quilters Guild. I have kept a pictorial notebook of the guild QOV's I've quilted in 2020 - 2021. I thought our guild historian might like to add it to the collection so I made a cover for it! I then promptly forgot to give it to our historian...Duh!

pattern: shared by PatR at the Oconomowoc Quilt Guild circa 2010.

Linking up with Alycia Finish or NOT Friday

WIP Wednesday 3.9.2022

I've made the paver blocks, the corner turner blocks and added an inner coping border. Just a few more paver blocks to go.

I'm liking where it's heading. 😍 I'll need to add a little something to the top and bottom to get it more rectangular.

 pattern inspiration: Sew Yummy's 'paver blocks'

In other happenings around the sewing space, I was long arming my last guild quilt in the current batch. I was really struggling with it when the top thread came out of the tension disk and I actually needed to un-pick a partial row. I got that done and fixed the thread path problem only to roll the quilt on the next quilting pass to discover this:

I was NOT a happy camper! When I looked closer, I realized my cut off threads had somehow gotten caught in the needle pick up and were sewn onto the quilt. WHEW! All I had to do was simply tug and cut (carefully) at the loose threads and the quilting was fine!! Thank Goodness! I was very very happy when I did the final pass on this one. In case you are interested in the front:

pattern: sewn by a member of the Casual Quilters...unknown pattern

panto: serpentine

Linking up with Susan at MidWeek Makers

Design Wall Monday 3.7.2022

I found this Amazing Grace panel in a bag that was given to me after our guild tag sale. The instructions were, ' Everyone take one bag of fabric NOBODY wanted to buy and throw it in your trash. That way, we will spread out the trash and one member won't be overwhelmed.' Dutifully, I took a bag and to my surprise, I found a few things that I could actually work with. Would I pay for it, 'No' but I could make a quilt with it! LOL. Here is the Amazing Grace panel and some fabrics I pulled as 'go withs'.

In my mind, I see a path around the panel. Grass, sand, pavers...you get the picture.

Something similar to the blocks found here at Sew Yummy's blog. This is Sew Yummy's picture that I boosted from her blog. Sew Yummy states in her post that she found the original post by JudyL but there is no picture.

Linking up with Judy at Design Wall Monday.