Scrappiness Is Happiness Week 13

Lori Holt has a section in her Scrappiness Is Happiness book that teaches her short cut methods for making flying geese, half-square triangles, quarter-square triangles and square-in-a-square.  The technique for some units involve making them larger, then cutting them down.  However, the process she uses for making flying geese is not designed in this fashion. The cutting instructions provided in the book yield the exact size unit you need for whatever the block pattern requires.

Week 13’s block for the Scrappiness Is Happiness QAL is Lori’s Shortcut Star Block.  I followed the instructions in the book and produced the most hideous looking block I’ve made since I began my quilting journey.

 

Wonky!

The flying geese are too small. My seam allowance hasn't changed, it is the same for all the blocks I've constructed so far. I just do not think Lori's method works for me.

I remembered my friend Gene Black has a YouTube video on how to make flying geese where you cut the unit down after piecing it together.  See his video here.

 

I completely remade the block using Gene's method and with great success. It measures exactly 10 ½”, which is correct.

 

Then I recalled picking up a couple of project boxes from our storage unit when I was in Florida recently.  Guess what?!?

 

 

Yup, this one is almost six years old! I was beginning to make what Gene calls flying stars.  They are sawtooth stars made with flying geese units.

 

The fabrics are some leftover Bonnie & Camille called Miss Kate. Looks like there are several blocks already cut out and ready for a night of steady chain-piecing.

I did find one block that clearly doesn’t measure up and will find its way into the quilt backing.

 

Hope everyone is having a great week so far.  We were forecast for snow, but alas, no more ☹

 

See you soon…

 

 

FNSI – Sewcialites 2 Blocks

Friday Night Sew In hosted by Wendy at Sugarlane Designs provided just the motivation I needed to catch up with the Sewcialites 2 quilt-along.

I was able to sew last week’s block

Sewcialites Block #11

Nurture Block designed designed by Lissa Alexander
www.modalissa.com

And I completed this week’s block

Sewcialites #12
Captivate Block designed by Barbara Groves
www.meandmysisterdesigns.com

We are about half way with completing the blocks, I think. I'm really looking forward to having a new autumn quilt.

I was behind one week because we traveled to Jackson Center, OH to pick up our Airstream from the service center.

 

The ride home was through the snow-filled Great Smoky Mountains, which were beautiful to look at.

But by the time we returned home, the truck and Airstream were covered in road salt. Not great!

We found a great RV detailer and he gave the camper a much needed bath. She came out very shiny.

Thank you, Wendy for hosting FNSI. I had a great time. Now I’m off to see how everyone else spent their creative time tonight or last night for those down under 😊

 

Have a great weekend!

Scrappiness Is Happiness QAL

 Hello, friends!

In my January 4^th post I told you I had a lot of fabric leftover from the kit for Lori Holt’s Flea Market quilt. I am nowhere near finished with making all of the blocks for that quilt, but I do have the fabric for them already cut and organized to sew.

 

Lori and the Fat Quarter Shop are now hosting a quilt along to promote Lori’s book Scrappiness Is Happiness. The book contains patterns to make 32 quilts. 

 

The Scrappiness Is Happiness quilt along is for a sampler quilt that will contain one or two blocks from each quilt pattern in the book. I thought this would be a great way to use the leftover Flea Market fabrics as well as a generous bundle of fat quarters that my Santa gifted me.  

The QAL began on October 31^st and we sew one block per week. 

 

Here are my blocks…

Buzzy Bee Block
Measures 14-1/2" x 14-1/2"

Large Calico Mushroom Block
Measures 12-1/2" x 12-1/2"

Small Calico Mushroom Block
Measures 6-1/2" x 6-1/2"

Chex Mix Block

Measures 7-1/2" x 7-1/2"

Criss-Cross Star Block
Measures 15-1/2" X 15-1/2"

Happy Trails Block
Measures 16-1/2" x 16-1/2"

Second Lincoln Logs Block
Measures 12-1/2" x 12-1/2:

Plaid Block

Measures 7-1/2" x 7-1/2"

Tall Pumpkin Patched Block
Measures 6-12" x 12-1/2"

Santa Hat Block

10-1/2" x 14-1/2"

Scrap-Apple Block

Measures 24-1/2" x 24-1/2"

Scrappy Crossroads Block

Measures 16-1/2" x 16-1/2"

Scrappy Strings Block

Measures 8-1/2" x 8-1/2"

The quilt is designed to finish at 74 1/2" x 77 1/2".

 

Scrappy is not usually my thing but this has been a lot of fun so far.

 

Do you like scrappy? I’d love to know what you do with your leftover fabrics.

I'm current on this quilt along so I'll be sewing two Sewcialites blocks on Friday. Speaking of Friday, I'm going to join Wendy at Sugarlane Designs for her first Friday Night Sew In of 2023. 

Check her linky party over the weekend and see what everyone got up to on Friday night...or consider joining us.

Fat Quarter Shop - Sewcialites 2

This is the second year Fat Quarter Shop is hosting a free block of the week called Sewcialites. Each Friday, for twenty-four weeks, they feature a different designer's block. This is my first time participating and I'm enjoying it. 

I selected a fat quarter bundle of Cinnamon & Cream by Fig Tree & Co. for my quilt and I'm making the 9" blocks.

Ten weeks have been released and here are my blocks…

Block 1 - Perennial Block by Bev McCullough of Flamingo Toes

Block 2 - Tussy Mussy by Susan Ache

Block 3 - Patchy Days by Jackie MacDonald

Block 4 - Flirty by Chelsi Stratton

Block 5 - Empower by Carrie Nelson

Block 6 - Always Star by Camille Roskelley

Block 7 - Butterfly Garden by Pat Sloan

Block 8 - Interwoven by Shereece Nicole of Sew Hooked on Treasures

Block 9 - New Plus Old by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic

Block 10 - Flourish by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet

I’ve been using traditional methods as well as paper piecing for some of the blocks.

 

The next block will be released on Friday, but I won't sew it until the weekend. We have yet another road trip this week so it will be early next week before I get around to this project. 

 

Enjoy your day!

 

This Week’s Cross Stitch Progress

Hi and Happy Friday!

 

Today I am sharing two cross stitch pieces I worked on this week.

 

The first one is A Christmas Morning in Santa’s Kitchen by Twin Peak Primitives.

I first shared this last year, and this was my start. 

Part of the border and the top of the Christmas tree.

 

Here is my progress now…

The next one is a companion piece to the one above.

A Patriotic Christmas Eve also by Twin Peak Primitives.  I decided to do the border first.  What a relief when it matched at the end.

I am stitching this one with a friend.  We’ve broken the chart into nine sections with the hope that it will be finished by the end of September, allowing us enough time to fully finish it in time for Christmas. January’s section was, you guessed it, the border. Now I’ll put this one away until next month.

 

In the meantime, I’ll work on the first chart and maybe have it finished close to the same time.

 

I’d like to make them into pillows and place them on our little bench during the holiday season.

 

I have two cross stitch retreats scheduled for this year (so far) and need a project for a smalls exchange for each.  This will be secret stitching until the retreats.  I also have another secret stitch planned for someone who reads my blog but doesn’t have Instagram, so that is where I will share it’s progress.

 

We have one more day in the warm sunshine of south Florida then we drive back to North Carolina on Saturday.  I have several quilt blocks that need to be made and plan to work on those Sunday.

 

Hope you have a wonderful Friday and even better weekend.

Flea Market Quilt Update

Flea Market Quilt by Lori Holt is still a work in progress for me. I had completed 8 of the 24 churn dash blocks when I last posted about this project here.

All 24 churn dash blocks are complete…

 
I’ve also finished 8 of the 12 basket blocks…

 

This was a quilt kit I purchased from Fat Quarter Shop.  They are so generous with the fabric in their quilt kits that I had enough left over for another quilt-along. I will share more about that one next week.

 

We drove Mom back to Florida on January 1^st and we’ve been here since.  We’ll return to North Carolina on Sunday. I brought along a couple of cross stitch projects to work on in the evenings. I’ll post about that progress this Friday.

In case you missed my last post about our move, you can read about it here.

 

Hope you are having a great first week of 2023.