Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2017

I haven't finished last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but I'm working on it. Meanwhile, I started this year's challenge with 5 flying geese blocks done in January's chosen color of purple. I'm working on this with a friend who lives well over 1500 miles from me. She comes to visit often - usually in the winter months because she lives in Montana and I live in Las Vegas - and we quilt (and drink wine) when she's here.

We're going to make the same quilt using our own scraps, although we will undoubtedly share some with each other. The pattern we're following is from the free patterns on the Robert Kaufman Fabrics website. It's called Remixed Geese. Shown below is the picture from the Kaufman website:

The fun part for us is that we're quilting together on FaceTime. So we can pour a glass of wine and each go to our sewing room, where we set up our iPads and get ready for some sewing, gabbing and laughing! And we can get opinions on fabric choices and squeal over each others completed blocks. She doesn't blog, so I'm going to try to get her to send me a photo of her blocks each month to add to my blog post. It'll be fun to see both scrappy versions of the same quilt!

We will make 5 blocks each month. Here are Dianne's purple flying geese:

And here are mine:

We've also decided to make a second RSC quilt using half square triangles. As soon as we get those blocks done, I'll post them.

A Finished Quilt Top

I finally finished my Maggie's First Dance quilt top.

At the beginning of this quilt along with Jacqueline Steves, I selected the fabrics to use. Three of them (shown below) came from the same line. My plan was to use the solid-ish fabrics in the quilt and the wild print for the outer border.

Very early in the process, it became quite obvious that the fabric I had selected for the border wasn't going to work. That fabric didn't look any better once the blocks were sewn together either!

I had 2 other print fabrics in this line, but they were both just as bad as the first. (I know what you're thinking: "how did she ever think any of those fabrics would work with the applique flowers in that quilt?"  And I have nothing to say in my defense! :)

In the end, I went with with the same blue-gray that I used in the blocks. I thought it would be super boring, but now that it's done I kind of like it. 

Sweet Sixteen

I have most of my little 2-1/2" bow ties sorted into 48 stacks to be sewn into 16-patch blocks. Even though it's the same amount of work, it seems less daunting to face the task of sewing 48 blocks into a quilt top instead of 768 individual blocks!

So far I've made 16 of the blocks, which will finish at approximately 8" each. I'm anxious to get this done, but my mind is already getting in my way. I'm trying to decide if I want to put a border on it to make it a little bigger. The way it is now it should be about 48" x 56" which is just a little small for a lap quilt (especially if it needs to cover my lap!)  :) :) :)

I'll probably adjust my current layout to 6 across and start sewing a few rows together. I want to see how those corners look when they're sewn together.

I'd really like a cool way to do some dots in a border so I could call the quilt "buttons and bows", but that's just not panning out.

So now my thoughts have turned to some kind of fabulous applique. Something kind of like this:

This is a border from Piece O' Cake Designs. Unfortunately, the pattern is now out of print.

I guess I still have some time to think about it....

Merry Christmas!

Is This a New Me?

I really had no business starting as many quilt-alongs this year as I did, but that didn't stop me. So when life's blessings and challenges took priority, I fell behind.  I would wander into my sewing room occasionally to work on something, but most projects just gathered dust. Generally, once I get too far behind I lose interest and don't finish. I don't actually quit the project - I just stuff it in a bag or container to finish later (ha ha)!

Luckily (?), I have no space left in my sewing room to start another project so I'm trying to finish a few starts from earlier this year.

I have actually finished all my little blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and now I'm sewing them into larger blocks for the piecing portion of my quilt. Yay!

That is such a good feeling. I definitely want more of it! The Meadow Mystery is still in progress, so yesterday I got busy finishing what I could. And now I think I'm caught up on that one too!

I'm really liking this. Maybe this is a whole new me.....like version 2.0.  Or Vicki2017...or....hey! does anyone remember the old Commodore Vic-20 computers? Is that what they were called? Wait. Where was I? How did I get so far off-track?

**sigh**  I guess the old me is still alive and well!!

Quick Bow Tie Cutting

To be honest, I didn't really think I'd get 800 little bow tie blocks finished by year end (80 blocks each month of the assigned color) back in April when I started the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I wanted to make a scrappy mini bow tie quilt and I was already behind as the quilt along had started in January.

800 Quilt Blocks!!

What does 800 quilt blocks look like?

Full disclosure -  these blocks are very small; it's not like piecing a 12" block. Right now they're unfinished 2-1/2" squares.

These are the blocks for my first ever Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Each month for 10 months we make one or more blocks of our own choosing from scraps of a designated color. I'm really excited to finish this one, so hopefully I can have a completed quilt to show soon.

I'm working on a tutorial for making a ton of these little blocks very quickly. Sadly, it was sometime during month 8 that I figured out how to cut out 80 of these in about a half hour. That's compared to the first color I worked on, which took me 3 or 4 evenings - working a few hours each night! So if you have a lot of smaller scraps you'd like to use up, this might be a scrappy quilt to consider making.

I should have the tutorial with my super speedy method for cutting the pieces for a bow tie block posted sometime this week.

Linking up with the RSC16 ScrapHappy Saturday.