Sunday, February 17, 2019

I Can Stop Anytime I Want


When I started making the butterfly wreath blocks, I decided to just make a few and when I get bored, put whatever I have together into a quilt and call it done. Each set of fabrics make 8 HSTs and there are two HSTs from each set in each block, so each set of three fabrics make four blocks. Some of the HSTs do have to get rejected for size, especially ones that use charm squares.  Charm squares are sometimes slightly bigger or smaller than 5 inches so they don't play well with the others.

I made a few, and a few more.  Yesterday, I laid them out to see how they would look in a quilt and get an estimate of the size.  [I even counted them and safety pinned them in sets of ten to be all organized, but had to take out the safety pins to recreate the picture for you.]


It is a good size and I could easily put them together and get a quilt about the size of a bread box. I would work great as my mini for the month of March. But I am having fun with making these blocks so I made a couple more sets. They are like potato chips. You gotta have more. I don't want to use bright blues for this quilt, so the blues from On Ringo Lake won't go in here.  Since I am having a hard time finding the right tone of blues in the scraps, these blues came from the stash.


The decision making for this quilt has been surprisingly easy.  It is strange when I am looking for blue and green fabrics and the Cave of Wonders delivers a red fabric. I think it is a mood and not a color it is delivering.

 

Week 7 of 15 Minutes to Stitch


There was no work this week, so I had plenty of unexpected time.  I spent it doing household chores and getting appointments in and otherwise generally whittling down the to-do list on my calendar. I got my blog  post ready for the Dust Off a Quilt Book Blog Hop and scheduled it to post on Tuesday morning.


I was able to sneak in a lot of quilting time, which I spent cutting up the shoe box of scraps. There weren't a lot of pieces big enough or the right color for Butterfly Wreath, but lots of one and a half inch strips for Four Rails.  I put together the pieces that weren't long enough for Four Rails and made a long chain. While it was tempting to make another Matchstick Mansion, I decided to go with my original plan and cut them into rails. I want Four Rails to be less boring than the traditional rail quilt and if I get lots of these sewed pieces, then it will look like a natural part of the quilt instead of a few making-do-when-I-ran-out-of-fabric pieces.

I read a comment on a blog that said that a shoe box full of scrap fabric makes a queen size quilt. I guess that explains why it took so long for me to get through my box! It was my latest scrap box, and it was full of scraps from On Ringo Lake and other projects I worked on last year.  Since I had made snippet quilts [I Llike you a Llot Llama and the elephant], it included everything, including dog ears, orphan blocks (bonus HSTs mostly), and scraps and bits of fabric. I put the orphan blocks in the orphan blocks box but everything else was cut up for the rails and trash. I didn't generally keep dog ears and selvages and fabric dust so hopefully going through the rest of the scrap boxes will be easier. I do have a huge tote of scraps in addition to little containers which is scary but I am sure I will be able to get them all a little at a time.


The fabric trash can is now full, and the shoe box is empty.  I want to make something out of those little pieces in the trash can before I move on to the next container of scraps.

15 Minute sessions of stitching this week:  7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year:  41 out of 41 sessions
Success Rate: 100%

Linked to:
Life in Pieces 15 Minutes to Stitch 
Can I get a Whoop Whoop? 
Off the Wall Friday 
Lets Bee Social

7 comments:

Joyful Quilter said...

Your butterfly blocks are looking great! How big are you making them? I dived into my scrap bin today, after 4+ hours you couldn't tell I made a dent but I do have a bag of strings, and some assorted sized strips. I also have a stack of odd sized pieces that I'm going to try to use for butterfly blocks...hmmm...we'll see.

Wendy Caton Reed said...

First of all, good for you for sticking to your "15 minutes a day" goal - and then some! I love the Butterfly Wreath blocks. Funny how some scraps just keep calling to us until we hack them up and get it over with. It is hard to believe that a shoebox full of scraps can make a full size quilt so I am happy that you proved the theory!

Mrs. Goodneedle said...

I love this block and the way that it combines to create a secondary pattern-- nice movement made all the more wonderful with your scrappy, colorful fabrics. Well done!! Yeah, right, I can stop anytime I want too!! ;)

Kyle said...

Your quilts, your scraps, your rules. Keeping those scraps at bay, can be a big challenge.

Kate said...

Your butterfly blocks are looking good. It's always good to work off a box of scraps. Congrats on making time to stitch every day. That's an achievement!

O'Quilts said...

wow...you certainly are a focused one...good work

Bobbi @ Snowy Days Quilting said...

Those blocks look addictive! It's really fun seeing how well they play together.