Make scraps, use scraps, make scraps...

I am not sure whether I have used more scraps or made more scraps with Christa's Colors (that still looks odd without a u in it).  I did dig into my strip boxes and use fabric from those, but I also trimmed off lots of pieces that got dropped into the scrap bag.  Those odd shaped bits will get used in crumb blocks as and when I get around to them.  All my blocks for this quilt are now made so now I can play with the layout, after all it is Design Floor Friday :)

I love working in the diffuse light on a snowy day

There will be a black or other dark border around the outside and I am toying with the idea of a narrow black/dark strip between each row.  I shall offer that idea up once the blocks are joined into rows.

In other news, I have made progress towards my OMG - the smaller table runner is no longer a UFO and now in its new home just awaiting a label.  The larger one still needs to have the binding hand stitched to the back and have a label made and attached.

Tested and approved!

So far this week we have had rain (put the tender herbs out to get some moisture), sunshine (also good for the plants) and on Thursday night we were back to snow and the plants need to come back in... It certainly felt like all four seasons in one week!

 

Today I am linking up with:

Quilting is more fun than Housework: Oh Scrap!

Busy Hands Quilts: Finished or not Friday

Confessions of a Fabric Addict: Can I get a Whoop Whoop?

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday

Rainbow crumbs

I have a confession to make, I can't throw away a piece of fabric that I just might be able to use however small it happens to be. This is my bin, see how small the trimmings have to be to make it into there?

Essentially if it is larger than 3/4" square I keep it. Occasionally pieces larger than that go into the bin, but sometimes they creep back out!  I keep my binding offcuts separated by width and strings (random/varying width long pieces) live in their own shoe box.  I also cut down leftovers into regular sized squares, particularly 2.5" squares. The other tiny bits end up classed as crumbs.  For last year's RSC I started making crumb blocks that I squared up to 4.5", but when my quilting mojo went walk about those few blocks just languished in a little box with some scraps and crumbs sorted by colour.  This week I revisited that box and added to it with 8 purple (January) blocks and 8 turquoise (February) blocks.

Now I have TWO rainbow scrap projects on the go.  It was easy to find the crumbs for these new blocks as I had already sorted out my scraps by colour to make the Dresden plates.  I have also pre-sorted more of my scraps into ziplock bags ready for future months.  Only another week and we find out what the colour is for March, I really don't want to wait! For even more great scrap ideas check out the Oh Scrap! link up.

Weatherwise this last week has been unseasonably warm with a record high today!  Our outdoor Christmas lights are now down (they have been off for a bit) and I did a little preparation in the raised bed ready for planting out later in the year.  There are still leaves to rake, so that has gone onto the list for the weekend. Last week we had lots of wind and rain so I have also picked up the small branches from the garden and set them out to be collected by the township. Many of the verges in our subdivision now have piles of sticks waiting for pick up looking like giant twiggy nests.  We have a few brave crocuses already in bloom and I belatedly planted a bag of grape hyacinth bulbs that had been forgotten, oops!

Weekend progress

By the end of Saturday I had all my En Provence units sewn, though not all pressed and trimmed to exact size.  On Sunday I pressed all the four patch units and finished spinning the seams to make assembly of the quilt top easier.  I did a quick calculation and the quilt top as designed will have 2868 pieces of fabric in it! Wow! Next I need to trim all these to 3.5" square then I can start putting it together.

All the units for En Provence

For a bit of light relief I organised my small scraps into bags of the same colour, this will help with the rainbow scrap challenge during the coming months, and also made 3 turquoise Dresden plates to meet the February colour choice of teal/aqua/turquoise.  All the "petals" came out of the scrap bag, no yardage was harmed in making these so I can also link to Oh Scrap! :)

The weather turned almost warm on Saturday with temperatures of over 50F (over 10C) and as the daylight faded there was much less snow on the ground than we awoke to. My tender herbs got moved out of the garage to get some light and, possibly, some rain, but I expect to need to move them back inside during the week as more cold air, and possibly snow, comes our way.

At the moment I am holding off starting any new knitting projects, though I can hear the siren song of various balls of yarn, as I have at least 4 projects that need to be finished. Of the four things one of them only needs seams and a neckband, the others need a little more, but they are all at least 80% done so I must finish at least one of them before casting on again.  I also have a barely started scarf, but as that is for me there is no great rush to carry on with that at the moment, it will probably become my in-car project when we are driving to places in the better weather.

New year, new effort to keep up with the blog

Well, my blogging efforts in 2016 came to a dead end when my rhythm was broken by travel and other things. I also went through a fallow patch in my crafting.  Attempting to grow things in our tree covered shady garden took over my creative efforts over the summer months but my drive picked up towards the end of the year and I started making stuff again, which has inspired me to put my fingers back on the keyboard ("pen to paper" just doesn't work) and bring my blog back to life.

Here are some of the things I made and grew last year. We also took a trip to New Mexico in November and enjoyed the sunshine and wide open spaces.

So far this year I have been working on Bonnie Hunter's En Provence mystery quilt and my OMG (one monthly goal) for February is to turn this collection of pieces of fabric and sub-units into a quilt top/flimsy. I have at least done ALL the cutting (but not all the pressing and trimming....)

I also want to take part in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and my plan is to make dresden plate blocks in the various colours.

Update: I had these done by Tuesday evening:

So that is the purple done for January, next aqua/teal/turquoise for February....
 

Playing in the garden

In February 2016 we purchased the house that we had been renting since August 2014.  This gave me more options in the 0.3 acre garden, though I am holding back on big stuff until we have had some of the trees felled. Currently our back garden/yard is almost unimproved woodland and the front isn't much better. The soil is poor as the goodness from the leaves has been lost each year because in the fall all the leaves had been raked to the kerb (curb), to be vacuumed up by the township and taken away for composting.  The best light is for growing anything other than mature broadleaf trees is in the 10 feet nearest the road, of which 3 feet is concrete footpath (UK: pavement, US: sidewalk).

2014: Lots of trees! The piles of greenery are from removing an evergreen that blocked all light into the sitting room.

2016: My refuge from the mosquitoes

Spring/summer of 2015, while we were still renting, saw us try out straw bale gardening, with mixed success. I ended up being back in the UK for the whole of May, June and July so my husband and sons took on the learning curve and that is when we discovered just how little growing light reached most of the front garden.  The straw bales were also used for growing in 2016, but will be composted this year once they are no longer frozen solid.

Heirloom tomatoes in straw bales

Chillies & tomatoes ready for drying

In autumn 2015 I planted some spring bulbs (daffodils and crocus) in the verge which gave a good show last spring and I am hoping they will repeat and improve this year.


Last summer I added three 3' x 6' raised beds in which I planted herbs, vegetables and fruits and we also had an outdoor hydroponics system for tomatoes and basil (Genovese and Thai).

Fruit & veg raised beds after transplanting

Herb bed after transplanting

Hydroponics system a couple of weeks after transplanting

One basil harvest! There were several

Huge basil leaves

As a novelty I grew a loofah, and although it set fruit they didn't ripen before the cold weather arrived. I shall try again this year.

Alphabet Soup - or a post full of TLAs

In 2016 I am aiming to move things from my UFO list to my completed list - in this instance a UFO is an UnFinished Object as at 1st January 2016.  To count as a UFO the project has to actually have been started in some way, i.e. at least some cutting and/or sewing must have been done.  This means a WIP* at the beginning of the year counts, but PIGS, PITs & PIWs don't, nor do USOs or WHIMs.  My UFO count at the start of the year was about 15 and I would like to get at least one completed each month.

This week I managed to complete a UFO from 2013, unfortunately this is not my oldest UFO, but it is now quilted, bound, labelled and has a hanging rod fitted so I can display it when I decide on where it will look best.  This was a class project from a workshop I took in October 2013 with Jenni Dobson.  The central panel was a joint exercise with another of the ladies taking the class.  I think I may yet replace the letters in the word "contrast" with black fabric, but I shall let that idea mature for a while.....  However it is finished and ready to hang so I have completed my OMG for March!

Of course having completed a UFO I didn't pull out the next one to work on, oh no, I started a new project instead!  This time an elephant quilt for my grand-daughter from Quilter's World magazine Spring 2016 issue.

I am using up pink fabrics for the elephants, many of which are from the scrap box and some yellow scraps for the ears.  The stash and scrap raid yielded sufficient fabrics for fifteen pink elephants and by the end of the weekend the five small ones had been assembled and placed on my design "wall" aka my ironing board.  All the pieces for five medium and five large ones are cut and ready to go.

A bonus this week has been some warm sunny weather meaning I was able to get out into the garden and carry on clearing last autumn's leaves from the flower beds and my plant pots where they have helped shelter my herbs from the coldest winter weather. The herbs were all pushed up against the wall of the house to aid their survival but now they have been moved out into the open to benefit from the rain we are promised next week.  My spring bulbs are also looking good, some of the crocuses are blooming and the daffodils are pushing up leaves and flower buds.  Now I have to be patient before planting my vegetable seeds for the year - last year I was a bit too impatient and the seedlings were getting too big before it was safe to put them outside, this year I shall hang on a bit longer before starting them inside.

This week I am linking up with:
Design Wall Monday and
Oh Scrap!


* WIP = work in progress
PIGS = project in grocery sack
PIT = project in tote
PIW = project in waiting
USO = UnStarted Object
WHIM = work hidden in (my) mind
TLA = Three Letter Acronym :)