Cutting the Next Scrap Projects

I finished sewing up what I was working on in the living room, so I packed up the sewing machine I had in the living room and converted the space over to a cutting area. 

Now that I'm tackling the 2.5" strips, I looked through my jelly roll patterns and chose a few that I think will work with novelty strips. I pulled out all the novelty strips I had, and I'm working on busting those first. Novelty prints get weird sometimes when you cut them up, and so do large scale prints, so I am planning to use those strips up first. Any strips that mostly read as a color I'll tackle later on, because they are easy to use. I also pulled out my neutral background strips that have a lot of color in them. I chose a pattern to use those up as well. I'll be needing to cut some background fabrics for some of the quilts, but I cut yardage on my cutting table in the basement. Sub-cutting is easy to do while sitting down, and since I'm only cutting three different sizes right now for the patterns I chose, it's even easier. 

Time to show some of what I was sewing up in the living room. 

I decided to sew the six inch red/cream blocks into four patches. Here's four of the now 12" blocks so you can get an idea where this project is heading. I'll need the design wall to be empty before I can sew this together any more. This busted all the cream tone on tone strips I had in 2.5", but I've still got plenty of red. I really like the way this one is looking, so I might cut more cream strips and make it bed sized. 

I've been wanting to make a blue and yellow quilt for a while, so I pulled some of my blue and yellow 2.5" strips and made a bunch of these 8" blocks. I could make a throw with what I've got done, or I could make more blocks, but I haven't decided. I have more blue and yellow strips, so I could do either easily enough. I think I have 51 blocks now, so I could set them 6x8 with three blocks left over, or make more. I haven't decided on whether or not to use sashing or borders either, and both of those will affect the finished size. 

I needed to get the sewing machine put away because I will have two of my little grandsons for the weekend. They aren't safe around a sewing machine, but I can easily put up the rotary cutters until they are in bed for the night, so by switching my living room sewing space to cutting, I can work a bit at night, with no risk of them getting hurt. I keep my sewing room door closed while they are here, and they rarely go in the basement anyway. I know I won't have any time to do anything while they are awake, these boys are high maintenance, but I love them so!

I finally started working on my oldest grandson's cape. I'm using the Bernina because it's a champ with all the difficult fabrics. I worked on the liner today, and got a good reminder of why I hate working with satin. It's SO slippery and it frays SO much! Since the satin I'm using is repurposed table runners, I had to sew the skinny lengths together so it would be wide enough to be a cape lining. I made all flat felled seams so there will be no fraying once the cape is finished. I need to unsew the rod pocket of the curtains I'm repurposing to be the outside of the cape, and I figured I could do that while watching TV tonight. I'm hoping to get quite a bit done on the cape tomorrow. I still haven't cut out the hood, but that won't take long. I'm not lining the hood. 

I did manage a little sewing time in the sewing room on quilts in the past week, and I've got the first quarter of the king sized wedding quilt sewn into rows. I've got the second quarter up on the design wall. The way the layout works for this quilt I can make each quarter of the quilt identical, then turn them to make the design line up right. I figured I'll sew all the quarter rows first, then sew the rows together for each quarter, then sew the quarters together and it's a top. No border on that one. If my design wall could have handled the whole quilt, I'd have rather have sewn the whole rows, but this quilt will be 105" square, and my design wall isn't that big. 

I don't know exactly what it is, but it seems like housework has been taking a lot of time lately, and it's not because I've become a neat freak. I have been cooking more, which means more dishes, more cleaning the kitchen, more food prep time, etc... I've had a lot of grandkids spend the night lately, so I keep having to change beds, wash linens, etc.. I guess it's just that, but it seems like more than that. I have been changing the way I prep food, now that most of the time there's just two of us in the house. For example, I bought a 10 pound bag of onions at Costco, and today I took the time to chop all 10 pounds and freeze them. I never use raw onions because they don't agree with me, but I use lots of cooked onions, and frozen onions work fine in cooked dishes. Speaking of food prep, it's time to start dinner, and it's breakfast for dinner tonight, biscuits and gravy for dinner! DH loves breakfast, so he never fusses at me serving him breakfast at dinnertime. 

Sewing up Scraps in the Living Room

I haven't spent much time downstairs at all lately. I didn't get my non-quilting projects done, but I'm hoping to get them done late next week.  

Lately life has been much more about family, and a lot less about sewing. I'll take it! DH and I spent a couple days away visiting two of the grandkids, then we had a couple others stay overnight. Unfortunately one of those was sick the whole time, running a temp of 103 and complaining of a horrible headache but no other typical virus signs. DH went out and got a covid test since headache is the number 1 symptom of the Delta variant, but thankfully, the test was negative. DH and I are both fully vaccinated, but we figured if it was Covid we needed to take stronger precautions. We were all washing our hands like crazy just in case, but if the test had come out positive I would have masked up, even in the house. 

The sick grandkid is feeling much better last we heard, and DH and I seem to be fine. We're celebrating July birthdays with a different one of our kids families tomorrow, which I would have cancelled if it had been Covid or had either of us gotten sick. Trying to responsibly visit with people is certainly a challenge these days. 

I'm supposed to have three grandkids for a couple days this coming week as well, so again, sewing is taking a backseat. 

Now, just because I haven't gotten any deadline sewing done, doesn't mean I haven't gotten any sewing done. 

^This is my stack of red/cream blocks, which I am currently sewing into four-patches before I try laying them out. I figured 12" blocks would be easier to lay out than 6" blocks. 

I save 10.5" squares to piece into quilt backings by color family. I was dividing up the blocks by color to see what I had, and I pulled out the blocks that didn't have enough of one color to make a backing, and I cut those into strips and made rail fence blocks from them. Well, I ended up with 90 blocks, and I'll pair each one of these blocks with a solid background block, and I'll end up with 4 HST's from each pair. That's 360 HST's! I'm thinking 3 throw quilts laid out 10x12. I was planning on using a dark grey solid, but I'm not sure I have enough to cut 90 10.5" blocks from the piece I have. I might go with a different solid on each throw quilt instead. I'll have to measure the fabric I was thinking of and decide from there. 

I know we all have our favorite YouTube quilters, and since I've been on a scrap busting spree for over a year now, I've watched lots of videos on scrapbuster quilts. Karen from Just Get It Done Quilts has some great ideas, and after watching this video I decided to use one of her patterns to make a couple quilts. I've completely busted my 2" cut strips, I've seriously dented my 1.5" cut strips, probably down by half, but I'm just starting on my 2.5" cut strips. I was least worried about using those, because there are jelly roll patterns everywhere, and I have several books for using jelly rolls as well, so I knew ideas were easy to come by. 

With some quick pulling of strips while the grands were here, I ended up making 55 blocks, and that will go for one boyish "almost twin" set 5x7 and one girlish throw set 4x5. Since the blocks I decided to make just needed one WOF strip that reads solid, and one WOF strip that is a print, I had a good time experimenting with different combos. The blocks are so simple, and with large enough pieces that it was really easy to see the way a different background can completely change a print. Most of the blocks I only have one of that print, but I did have a few that I used more than one strip of, making sure to pair it with a different background each time. 

The block on the left has a peach background, and that really bleaches out the bright print. The block made with the burgundy background makes the print look much darker and richer. Both are pretty, but create a different feel. 

With this pair, again, I find the brown bleaches the print out a bit, while the dark green makes the print look darker too. 

Even with fairly similar backgrounds, your can see how the colors they bring out of the print make for a different feel. 

I made a couple of these blocks from 2 fat quarter strips rather than WOF strips. That meant I had to do some poverty piecing. 

If you look closely you can see which set of rectangle pairs is made up of two sections, but I think in the final quilts it won't be noticeable at all. 

So, I might not be working on my deadline stuff, and I may only be sewing for short bursts of time in the living room, but it all adds up! I think once August arrives and school starts back up I'll be back to the deadline projects. For now I'll enjoy the grands and stick with sewing 15-20 minutes at a time. 

Watching the Bunnies

 Not much in the way of sewing has happened around here. I am almost done the red/cream blocks, and I've started another leader/ender project while on the last few. I really need to get back to assembling quilts, but that's not my favorite chore when it's so hot. Even when FMQ it's  easier to keep the bulk of the quilt off my lap than when assembling or piecing backings. Of course, since I haven't wanted to tackle piecing some backings, I don't have anything basted to FMQ either, so I just keep making blocks. 

My backyard has been full of bunnies lately, and since I've been doing most of my sewing in the living room, I can see them pretty easily. I have to take all the photos of them through the sliding glass door, and from a bit of distance to not scare them, but here are a couple of my favorites.

This one is kind of a family portrait. The adult bunny was drinking from some water we set out. It has been so hot and dry, we've tried to keep water out for the animals. We don't normally feed any wild animals, but we had a couple of the grandkids over, and they wanted to see the bunnies, so we put out a couple of vegetables which is what the baby bunnies were munching on. There was a fourth rabbit in the yard that I couldn't catch in this photo.

This is the best photo I've taken of the baby bunnies to date. I'm not much of a photographer, and most of the time I don't take photos when I see them. I was happy they were both facing the house when I took the photo. 

We went out to DD#1's homestead this week, where she had her ducks all in a row ;-)

She is getting to have quite the menagerie out there, and they are looking to get goats and pigs next. 

I had a birthday last week, and DH got me something I'd been eyeing for a long time.

Isn't this thread stand pretty? I didn't technically need a new thread stand, but replacing something plain with something pretty that does the same job? I'm a fan. 

DH has next week off work, and part of that time I'll be dog sitting, so I doubt next week will be a big sewing week either. I do have a couple non quilt related sewing projects I need to get done, but neither should take that long, it's just a matter of actually doing them. 

The grandkids I was blessed to have some time with wanted to make themselves coasters. I let them choose the fabric, and then sew it on an electric machine for the first time. Up until now I've only had them use a handcrank. My Bernina has a speed limiter, so I put it down to the lowest speed. With that, even if they floored the foot pedal, the machine still wouldn't go too fast. One of them really liked the electric machine, and the other still prefers the handcrank. We decided our next project will be drawstring bags. 

I've also been somewhat on a homemade ice cream kick. We made homemade peanut butter ice cream for Father's Day. DD#1 make homemade mint chip when we went out to the homestead. I have a small 1 qt freezer besides the big ones, and this week I made strawberry banana ice cream for the first time, and tonight we're attempting butter pecan. I have issues with corn, and most ready made ice cream has corn syrup in it. Because of that, I don't eat ice cream very often anymore, which is probably a good thing, but homemade ice cream in the summer just seems like the thing to do. Since leftover homemade ice cream tends to get really hard in the freezer, I've learned to put the leftovers in small single serve size containers. The real genius in that is it limits the portion size while making it easier to eat as well, it's a win/win!

Oh, I had a great Goodwill find this week too.

I've been wanting one more side table for the living room, and this is the same shape as two of the others I have. The red on this one looks great with the area rug in the living room, and it was only $20. I don't really care that all the side tables don't match exactly, the tops are very close in color, and the style and size are quite similar. The other two side tables I have were over $100 each, and they aren't being made anymore, so I couldn't get a third matching one anyway. I'm trying to be mindful of what I bring into the house, but this was an item I've been looking for and the price was fantastic, so I'm happy with that purchase.