Back to Basting

It's huge.  I had to make a day of it, the first thing I discovered was I had made the back too small.

One down and 3 to go.  I have 2 large lap sized quilts and another giant one even bigger than this.  I haven't decided yet whether to have a basting orgy and get all 4 done, or to get this one quilted first.  If so, I can do the label on my scrappy lattice, wash it, and have it ready for my friends.  I think I just talked myself into plan B.   I'm supposed to get 2 king sized flannel sheet sets tomorrow that I ordered from ShopNbc.  Quite a deal, nice heavy 100% cotton flannel for about 39 dollars and change including shipping for a whole king sized set, which means yards and yards of fabric. 

Is it Tacky?

Friends who we have known and loved since we were young are coming to visit us in a month or two.  I was going to try to make another Scrappy Lattice for them, but the only fabric I had enough of to do the lattice strips is a print.   That made me think that even though we've used this one for a couple of months that I would wash and label it for them and then have the second one for our bed when it is done.  A couple of reasons.  One, it would take the time crunch off of me, I wouldn't have to feel like it had to be done quickly and second, it's already a fairly busy quilt and the print will probably make it a bit busier.  Most men like plainer things and I think that our friend may be one of them.  Would it be tacky to give them this one even though we've used it for a couple of months?

Meanwhile, I have the 440 five inch squares cut out, and the 440 lattice strips.  There are more than 100 fabrics, as I made a rule for myself on the first one that I could use the same fabric up to 4 times and some of the fabrics are only once or twice.  I would guess probably at least 120 different fabrics.   I used up a lot of fabrics from my scrap bins.  I was surprised that for this large queen sized quilt (about  105 by 115.5 inches)  that it took about 5 1/4 yards of fabric for the lattice alone.  This is one of my favorite quilts that I've made and my thanks again to Jean at MaDan's Quilting.  If you are interested in the tutorial it is here.

PS  Here are the first 40 squares.  Not much of a palette of colors yet, but I'm not hating it.  I think the print lattice will work out fine.

 

Scrap Vomit is a Flimsy.

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Catching up Kaleidoscope Blocks for RSC and Mistake

Since I got the urge to do kaleidoscope blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I had to catch up January pink and February purple.  So far so good.

Then as I was sewing on the last strip in the stripset I realized that the stupid that seems to have overtaken me since DH came home had struck again.  This doesn't look like purple.  Oh well, I'll have it done when we get to blue. 

Here is my required purple.

Each time I've done the strip sets I've had some extras, so here is bonus block number one.

And bonus block number two.  I''m sure that by the end I will have had all manor of strange blocks.

And here are the first 3 months, plus blue in advance and my two bonus blocks.   Quite colorful if I do say. 

And March's contribution to my Jelly Roll quilt which will be put together at the end unless I decide to start doing my long long strip before that, I just may.

Tuesday, 03-12-2013

The orange nine patches were a mistake when I was making the snowball and nine patches for the RSC.

having some type of mental illness which doesn't allow me to let well enough alone I had to back track on these also and do the January pink and February purples.  I hope that I don't make anymore mistakes, I think I'm getting out of hand.

I was just thinking I'll probably use this post in the next Saturday link-up for RSC and if you'd like to see the other orange that I did between last Saturday and next Saturday, go here.
And if you'd like to see what others have been doing with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge that Angela provides for us, go here.
Meanwhile, I did the last 8 of my 49  Throwing up Scraps (Scrap Vomit) blocks and I'm in process of preparing borders.  I have 100 4 patches to do and then I'll attach them and see how the finished flimsy fits on my queen sized bed.  

Last Orange? Also, Learned Something New!

It's getting harder to find enough orange to go around.

Maybe, this is part of the reason.  First, I made my 9 patches too big.  I wasn't thinking and since I usually use 2 1/2 inch squares, I just automatically did it again, and didn't realize (how did I miss it) until I actually finished one.   Then to make sure that I fixed it 'good' I got in my mind 4 blocks instead of 3 and made an extra 2 nine patch blocks the correct size.  Duh.  Oh well, I have some extra blocks for a back or something.

I did do ok on my 16 patch blocks though.  They do use 2 1/2 inch blocks.  Now, I'm itching to do the pink and the purple kaleidoscope blocks and to finish some quilts.  Hope all is ok around here and I can get to some of it.

On the Craftsy BOM 2013 some people had used the coloring page and did a mock up of their quilt.  I decided to try it, although I had no idea how until I saw instructions by KarenFSP, "I used Windows Paint. In my computer Paint is located under the Accessories menu under All Programs. I opened the Jan. block in Paint, highlighted the block, right-clicked to open the menu so I could copy the block. Then I opened the layout in Paint and pasted the block onto the layout. I drug the block to the space it belonged, resized it to fit the space, and rotated it to lay the way I wanted. I then pasted the remaining January blocks and did the same with them. I saved the new layout and proceeded using the same method to copy and paste the February and March blocks onto the layout. Hope this works for you!"   I never used Paint before, and was quite proud of myself.  Neat, huh.
Since I can't ever do anything in moderation, I also did one for the Craftsy Repiecing the Past.  

Craftsy Repiecing the Past - Lesson 5

Yankee Puzzle Block

Temperance Block

Barbara Fritchie Star

March Craftsy 2013 BOM - It's Huge

I was going to say that it's giant, but I'm not even sure that it's the biggest one, so I decided that huge would do.  It's a 17 inch block.

March OKC Modern Quilters BOM

This one was a surprise.  January and February blocks were all solids and when I saw March with all the prints it didn't compute in my brain, but I pulled out my prints and this is what I came up with.  Now I'm wondering what the next 9 blocks will be like. 

 

March Sugar Block Club and March Craftsy BOM 2012

OOps, I didn't look at the instructions and I turned a diamond into an X. 

March Sugar Block Club was more fancy making than it is fancy looking. 

This one is wrong too, but it was on purpose.  It was supposed to be a star, but I turned it into a cross or X to be consistent.

The March Craftsy BOM 2012 and the March Sugar Block club.

For fun and because 9 is a nice even quilting number, I thought I'd see what January, February and March would look like.  Sugar Block club blocks are up and down the middle.  I'm hoping that my light pink background and the gray will keep the red and blue from making it into a patriotic quilt and make it more unisex on the feminine side for DH and my bedroom. 

It's Only Just Begun!

I think SoScrappy has created a monster.  I seem to be like eating Lay's potato chips, I can't stop at just one Rainbow Scrap Quilt.  Today I ran across Don't Call Me Betsy's QAL from 2011, "Kaleidoscope", and I was so tempted, and then I thought, I was tempted before by Elaine Adairs beautiful Kaleidoscope quilts, so I kind of mixed them together.  I didn't have Elaine's big ruler, so I used Elizabeth's (she said don't call her Betsy) dimensions, and Elaine's strips.  I only got enough for 7 cuts from my strip set so I had to do two strip sets for one block.  I know I'll get better at these.  Bad news, I have to go back and make a pink one and a purple one for January and February's colors. 

Here's what my orange will be like if I decide on the Rainbow Bargello.

And if I decide on the Rainbow Scrappy Trip Along.

Next month, when I have 4 colors I'll see how the Rainbow Scrappy trip along would look, but I couldn't resist seeing what the scrappy Bargello might look like.   Tomorrow (Tuesday), we start the process to get DH out of rehab.  We are having the home assessment at 11:00 and the meeting with the social worker at 3:30.  Shouldn't be long now.  
For more RSC 2013 visit Angela here.   
PS  Update DH came home yesterday (Friday).  We are adjusting and doing fine.