August Wrap Up

Somehow, I managed to lose the entire month of August.  I feel as though I blinked on July 31st and when I opened my eyes it was Labor Day weekend.  When my daughter was home on vacation, she brought home a pile of skirts with various ailments:  hems hanging half way down, seams ripped, and one that needed new elastic in the waist.  Even though she is 25, she is still hard on clothing.  I fixed all but one of the skirts and should have the last one finished this weekend.   She was offered a full time job in the University research lab where she was working during her Master's program and is waiting for the final paperwork to go through.  Although, I admire her thriftiness, hopefully, with a little money in her pocket, she will buy some new clothes and I can stop mending for a while.

I did manage to take pictures of the blocks I completed.  This weekend is the last chance to finish up this month's Rainbow Scrap Challenge color, light and/or bright green.  The two blocks below use a mint tone on tone that looks a  bit washed out.

I added a light green row to my Rainbow Chevron quilt.

Our church's craft group received a donation of an unfinished quilt top that was a perfect example of how not to make a quilt.  I suspect it was the first attempt for the person who made it. The various patches were not uniform in size and the seams were stitched in varieties of zig zag stitches, tight satin stitches, decorative stars stitches and tiny straight stitches.  The fabrics used were a combination of jersey knits, cotton/poly blends, and what appeared to be ribbon.  The ladies at church were about to throw it away, but I liked the Peter Rabbit squares that formed the center of the blocks.  It took me two days with a sharp, new seam ripper to take the blocks apart.  I trimmed the squares to a uniform size and started a new quilt top.  I have a few more blocks to put together.

I like how the blocks look in person, but after seeing the photo, the pink seems very distracting.  I'm thinking of sashing them with white so that may help.   There are three that have a light dotted fabric in the final border and they will have to be changed.

I've been going through my stash and trying to find sensible uses for some of the older fabrics.  I have two large Rubbermaid bins loaded with novelty fabrics.  I spent a few days fussy cutting some of the fabric into 5 inch charms.  I will be making a few Eye Spy quilts using the 254 squares I already cut.  Truthfully, it didn't make as much of a dent as I had hoped.

I turned piles of scraps into 2.5 inch charms

Made few more four patch blocks for my ongoing project.

These are the blocks I made this week.  I took the picture on our very sunny deck and the moment I snapped the picture, the wind blew the blocks all over the yard.  The 7 four patch blocks on the left are lying on dark blue fabric because they were completely washed out on the sheet.  The seven bordered blocks will receive sashing and then be cut into wonky squares for an Eye Spy quilt.The quilt requires 30 blocks, so I will be making more in Septembe.

The August goal for the 350 block Project at Prairie Moon Quilts is 30.  I struggled this month to finish 40 blocks, but I am delighted that I met the goal.  My total number of blocks made this year is 529.
I am linking up with Angela and all of the other great quilters at Sew Scrappy for the August Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I didn't have much bright/light green fabric to make use of this month, hopefully, I can get more blocks done in September when the color will be orange.

July Wrap Up

The last two weeks of July were filled with vacation trips, but not much sewing. My daughter has been home on vacation and we have been taking advantage of the great weather.  When she comes home, she loves to do all of the same things we did during the summers when she was growing up.  That includes a trip to Greenport and riding the ferries.  The first ferry goes from North Haven to Shelter Island, we ride across Shelter Island and take the North bound ferry to Greenport.

She always rides the carousel.

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the quilting pictures.  I have been having some problems with the settings on my camera.
I managed to finish two quilt tops, both made from the Film at Five pattern from Wedding Dress Blue. I've already made a quilt from this pattern so the 2 new quilts are Film at Five-Thirty and Film at Six O'Clock.

It is really a fun pattern to make and uses up a lot of scraps, but I think three times is my limit, so I won't be making any more for a very long time.

I finished up six more blocks for my red postage stamp quilt.  I plan on making the quilt 64 x 80, so in addition to the  five blocks I made earlier in the month, I will need nine more blocks.

 Even though I did not have as much time to sew as I would have liked to, I managed to take my boot on a carousel ride,  finish two quilt tops and thirty nine blocks in July.   That's a total of 489 blocks so far for the year.  I've met my goal for The 350 Blocks Project at Prairie Moon Quilts each month in 2014.  The challenge has really kept me on track.  Hopefully, I can keep working at this rate and finish strong for the year.