Make-A-List Monday - Victories!

Hi, all!

Welcome to Monday!  I hope you had a fabulous weekend, and have recovered from either your Super Bowl Sunday, or your crying jag after This Is Us!  Both were nail biters, for sure - but I think that ball game was the most fun I've had in a long time.  I did spend some time Sunday afternoon cutting up scraps (always a fun project on Super Bowl Sunday!)  But now, let's see how last week's list went...

1.  Quilt the second t-shirt quilt.

Done!  Both quilts are finished and will be delivered tomorrow!

2.  Make a special quilt for a 2-year old with cystic fibrosis.

Done, although I forgot to take a picture of the finished quilt.  Here's a pic of the flimsy blowing in the breeze...

3.  Start contacting donors for Hands2Help.

The first round of requests went out this morning and I'm already starting to get responses!  I love the quilting community!

4.  Keep cutting those scraps, and write the Scrap Attack 2018 monthly summary blogpost.

Oh boy, have I been cutting scraps!  I cut up all the t-shirt remnants I had stashed away, ending up with a large pile of pieces 15" wide and various lengths...

...and I cut up a bunch of scrap quilting fabric and ended up with these two boxes nearly full of pieces!

5.  Quilt the third Scrumptious Scraps quilt.

I did this today - here's a pic of it on the frame.  I finished it late this afternoon, but it was too dark to get a finished shot, so this will have to do!

6.  Keep up with any quilt ministry needs that come up.

It was a little bit easier this week...

These two quilts went to sisters whose father died unexpectedly.  We also sent one for his wife, but apparently that picture disappeared!

And this quilt went to a woman who is in hospice care.

 And..... I got to spend some quality time with my favorite young'uns!

I'm really happy I finished everything on the list, and I'm definitely counting cutting up all those scraps as a victory (or two or three!)  Here's what I'm hoping to get to this week...

1.  Write a tutorial for this week's Scrumptious Scraps quilt-along post.

2.  Work on repairing a t-shirt quilt top for a customer, and sandwich for quilting.

3.  Mail off a prize package of scraps.

4.  Keep cutting up those scraps!

5.  Start on a second list of potential donors for Hands2Help.

6.  Finish some quilts for the quilt ministry.

7.  Keep up with any quilt ministry needs that come up.

Once again, it feels like I'm forgetting something important, but I'm sure it will come to me!

So now the question is - - - what are YOU working on this week?

Hugs!

Sarah

Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along - Twin Sisters!

Hi, all!

Welcome to the second week of the Scrumptious Scraps Quilt-Along!   This week, I'm getting by with a little help from my friends - one of my favorite people, Sharon of Vrooman's Quilts, is going to share one of her scrappy quilt tutorials with us!  Sharon is a fabulous scrap quilter - I know this, because she sends our quilt ministry lots of blocks and they are beautiful and so scrappy, they make my heart sing!  And she has the coolest address ever - she lives on Quilt Lane!  I hope you love her tutorial as much as I do, so here it is...

PS Be sure to read through to the end of the post for the winner of last week's giveaway...

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Hi! I'm Sharon, and I blog over at Vrooman's Quilts!  I'm going to share a very easy quilt pattern that originated from my TV days with Eleanor Burns - TWIN SISTERS.  (this tutorial is also listed on my tute page - just another quilt)

Since I am a scrap quilter I don't want to ever use up my scraps, but I do need to tame them from time to time.  Even after using a lot of blues in the past few quilt-a-longs, I seem to still have an overflow  as well as my 'neutrals' are a bit out of hand.

I make this using 2.5" strips (jelly roll friendly) and you need at least a 19" length.  I use 20" to give myself wiggle room.  Some of my scraps were shorter, but I used two 10" lengths that work just as well.  One light and one dark - you can mix up your fabrics to use up those scraps.  Sew strips together and press toward the dark.

Sub-cut your strip sets into 4.5" units.  As you can see, you could even make four strip sets if your scraps are shorter. 

Cut each 4.5" unit from corner to corner using the same direction for all.  Lefties might feel more comfortable cutting from bottom left to top right corners.  The block pattern will work either way, but be sure you cut the units all the same.

Now pair up your units with the larger light section into one grouping and your larger dark section into another grouping like in the photo.  You are creating mirror images.

Stitch two triangles together - starting at the long edge and sew down to point.  Repeat  and press to the section that has no seam.  No  match up your two triangle units, pin center seams (they will nest) and point to hold and sew your center seam.  Press center seam open.  Square up - unfinished size is 5.5" and you can see I had very little to trim off.

This is the pile of scraps that I had left once completing the number of blocks I wanted for this quilt.

  I know Sarah has been trying to break her habit of tossing those left overs in a bin again - instead, trimming them up into workable units for a quick start on a new project.  This is a habit I have used since I started quilting.  All left overs go into my fabric system from various size squares that I use frequently and strips/strings.  Now doesn't that neat order look more appealing to use than that jumbled pile?

You can put your blocks together as is and the way they are pressed makes matching seams easy, but I like to sash.  I used 1.5" x 5.5" sashings with 1.5" corner stones, but you can play with this to make your own quilt.

You can play with your block layout, but I just placed the mirror sets one after the other as they look so different anyways.

I used the white for an inner border at 2.5" (again optional) and a 6.5" outer border for the finish look.

The backing  (and outer border) was left overs from an extra wide used for another quilt  I had to piece the back in 5 different sections, but you can't tell.  Hey, it's about using it up!

I quilted it with a curve from point to point and thru the corner stones for curved cross-hatch which looks like a loppy apple core on the back.  You can quilt as desire or even tie.

I used some of those dark blue scraps for the binding, too - just an added interest.

Another look at the finished quilt.  It took me a day to cut and make the blocks, a day to sash and assemble the flimsy, and a day to quilt and add the binding (all completed by machine). 

Thank you Sarah for inviting me and I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

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Oh, how I love this quilt!  Sharon, thank you for sharing this wonderful scrap buster pattern with us - I have a whole tub of red scraps that has been screaming "use me, use me" and this may be the answer!

And now for the winner of last week's scrap giveaway.....

BethJanuary 28, 2018 at 11:43 PM

Other people's scraps are always more fun than my own--why is that? I've been plowing through my scraps, making kennel quilts, and I'll be happy to get an infusion of newness. (Any Christmas in there?)

I love the way you broke up those Jelly Roll Race quilts! That would be very fun for our Ronald McDonald Quilts. I'm going to add this to my list. Great idea for "leaders and enders", to sit a bag by my machine and work on the quilt even as I make progress on other projects also.

Congratulations, Beth!  I'll be contacting you to get your snail mail address and ship off that box of scraps ASAP!

Anyone interested in a box this week?  If you are, mention it in your comment below (be sure to leave some love for Sharon, too!) and leave me your email address, too!

Hugs!

Sarah

Can I Get A Whoop Whoop? A Great Workspace...

Hi, all!

Friday is here once again - and that means it's time to get our whoop whoop on!!  Are you ready?  Let's get started!

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I did finish up a few things this week...

First up was this bright little quilt for a 2-year old boy with cystic fibrosis.  It was VERY windy, as you can see in the pictures above - I managed to get pictures of the flimsy (sort of) but didn't get any of the finished quilt before I delivered it!  Oops....

I also finished the two t-shirt quilts!  

But my favorite finish of the past week or so is my office space - something I don't need most of the year, but it comes in really handy at this time of the year, as I do all the administrative work for the Hands2Help Challenge!

This is an odd-shaped little room - about 8 feet by 16 feet, with doors in the middle of both of the long walls.  I moved my desk down to the end with the window, along with a great small wardrobe cabinet that I picked up at a yard sale recently.  It needs to be refinished, but I wanted to get it in the room and see how it works.  I like it!!

Here's the inside.  The pillow forms on the left need to be stuffed back into pillow covers, but I needed to put them somewhere while I straightened up the room!  There's a little hanging rod in that side, so eventually my finished flimsies will go in there while waiting to be quilted.  Giveaway items and mailing supplies for H2H are on the shelves and in the drawers on the right side.

And this is the other end of the room.  All the bookcases are down there now, along with a comfortable chair for reading or handwork. It was a pain to move all those bookcases, but I cleared out a lot of outdated books and stuff, so now there's a lot more room on them!

And now I have a fresh, inviting workspace!

So - - - can I get a whoop whoop??

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And now it's your turn!

What's got you whooping it up this week?

via GIPHY

What's making you do a little happy dance?

Share! We want to dance right along with you!

And it's always more fun to dance with friends!

The party will stay open until Sunday midnight.

Hope to see you there!

Hugs!

Sarah