What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I finished my two blocks for Rainbow Scrap Challenge, using Orange scraps. There were small curved bits left after cutting the snowball blocks, so I sewed them together to make little petals.

  I practiced on paper, painting one with petals for hair...
before painting a face on fabric.

It wasn't as simple as painting a watercolor face, I used prisma-color pencils to do her face on muslin, and although the pencils blend well, there's a tug on fabric's weave. I'm pretty happy with her though. I think I'll use the batik for clothing, and applique ...

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The color for May at Rainbow Scrap Challenge is orange, so here are my orangecicle snowballs. Like a snowcone, or some people call them shaved ice, with orange syrup.

I love the color orange for it's warmth and sparkle, and the smell of orange blossoms, the taste of a really juicy orange. Sweet and tart.

I have a small but mighty stash of little orange scraps, and since they are a bit small for my template, I had to use many of the same fabrics in both snowball blocks and chandelier blocks.
I made 12, to be combined with ...

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It started with the kind folks of my Maryland bee who sent me scraps from a group project.
This pile of scraps led to two quilts, and three bookmarks!

The angles intrigued me. I  soaked and washed the large pile of scraps for days because batiks, lovely as they are, have a lot of chemicals in them that cause a reaction when you press them.

I began deciding which angle to join them trying different ways to put the uneven tiny pieces together. I'd sew enough to cut them into larger different sized blocks.

Then I started moving them ...

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getting the pieces planned out before sewing them

The color for April at the rainbow scrap challenge is AQUA which is a personal favorite.
As a working artist I need to know my colors... and as a fiber artist I need to have all colors here and ready to be used.
 The challenge is to use your scraps to create something beautiful. I have a lot of scraps organized by color. I have yardage organized by color or sometimes by type (flamingos) I label my drawers, and bins of scraps. None of them said Aqua. More about the snowballs in ...

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So I read my friend Kelly's blog post on flowering snowballs... (her blog ishttp://pinkadotquilts)
and I wanted to try making them. After all, we've had the snow...
and I'm almost finished with the cattail quilt top.
I went to bitsofeverything blog for the free pattern... but...something funny happened along the way from pattern to printer and it didn't really work well.
See block above, sewn with scant quarter seams and came out 1/4" too small all over.
I tried enlarging the pattern on my printer and it got worse...
I cut it ...

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Turquoise is the color of the month at Rainbow scrap challenge. It's one of my very favorite colors.

I did a slightly larger Dresden from the scrap bin...
Look at the little scissors, and the fish, the planets.
When you are looking at color sometimes it's hard to tell... blue? Turquoise?
That's why a mix is fun.

cut offs from Dresdens
other turquoise stuff around here...

turquoise scraps in a clear bin

brown scraps in a turquoise bin

empty bins in turquoise

sharp turquoise things plus a spray bottle

IPAD cover

Irish chair   "Paddy O'Furniture

and ...

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Purple posies!

My improv flowers are growing !
I needed some sew time, so I dug through my tiny purple scraps...
Nope, too regular... but I picked out the odd shaped ones to start sewing. I do not measure or worry I just sew angle to angle, curve to curve and they come out kind of lumpy...
til I spray them with water and press them with this

the big iron

and bend them to my will til they are terrifically flat
this one is way too interesting to be a flower so it goes back in the box as starter ...

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The color of the month at Rainbow Scrap Challenge is pink. I took an hour this week to play with my pink scraps as I could actually FIND my pink scraps! I made a dresden
and with the trimmings from the blade,  sewed together a flower
For fun I placed a turned-edge green stem and a purple heart on it. Of course after stitching the angled bits it was uneven so I quickly went along the outside with my pinking sheers.

Can't throw away anything so the cut offs from this
went into these, and I actually might not ...

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Imagine... spring sunlight through the budding trees... birds gathering again, life restarting for flora and fauna.
Remember the watercolor squares I picked up at the Boulder Quilt guild free table??  A while back I arranged them, sewed them together, then let them rest.

This week I picked them up and appliqued the tree by just cutting out with pinking sheers laying it in place, using a glue stick to baste, then sewing it with a straight stitch to be gone over in the quilt process. I love a bit of a raised edge, so I'll heavily quilt it and ...

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I spent an hour with my yellow fabrics, and cut out some blades for a dresden plate pattern.
What fun to choose tone and patterns to put together.
So this is how I did it...
After you fold the blade in half lengthwise, and sew across the end causing it to make a point, you sew pairs together.
I'm just stringing you along...
then sew pair to pair
quartet to quartet
til you sew the last piece to the first in a circle of happiness.
On to pressing matters...
press open
then give it a good press and put ...

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I love to do piece work, but I also love to machine quilt. "N" is for Needles!
 Seeing the thread create texture is exciting!
This week I zoned out and let my inner child choose patterns to quilt in my woodland quilt. There is a video of how I began the process at the end of this post.

I made a backing of scraps, and there was no real need to pin baste, so I started with the walking foot.
 After it was all evenly quilted I wanted to make sure it was very flat and at right angles before ...

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I sewed some this week. Sewed like a dervish. Even Milo's antics were ignored.

All sewing was improv.

For me, there are two ways to sew as you go... one involves sewing free cut curves with oddly shaped pieces. I did that with the green scraps.

 The other is fitting in hard edge shapes, like squares, rectangles and triangles together, and I used that technique with my ocean scraps. To me, that's more like putting a puzzle together.

 Both ways are fun.

With curves I use all the odd shapes so it's a bit more like a ...

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note some blades are from strip sets

Hee hee! I found my green leftovers box !

I found a couple scrap bins and brought them to the loft

We are reluctant to un-box possessions as we hoped to find a more permanent home but... things being what they are, our home still not sold in MD, and homes here so expensive, well, we may be here longer than we thought. So... better go ahead and open some boxes
I got this dresden tool in a magazine for Christmas so I thought I'd try using it... a different angle and size ...

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Beautiful Native girl  15" X 18"

In the midst of all the decisions and actions required in moving from home to home, state to state, I sewed one afternoon this week and finished the little flamingo scrap piece. Once I chose borders it didn't take long.
My friend Maria suggested orange, so I used the orange feather fabric I mentioned on my I Like post Thursday.

I wish I'd made it larger now, but what it did was add a hint of highlight, and subtly change the tone of the piece...

lesson learned!
Pretty as is! Then I ...

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