Rainbow Scrap Challenge finishes

At the end of 2020, I finished up two RSC quilts. The blocks were made over the last several years, using up strings and crumbs. I find those types of scrap blocks a little chaotic unless I make them in a single color. This quilt is made from string blocks pieced on foundation paper. Since most junk mail is 8.5"x11", I cut the paper into 8.5" squares and trim the final block to that size, too.

I generally start my string block with a dark strip, say navy blue, then fill in one half of the square with darker shades of blue and the other half in lighter blues. Four blocks made like that can be put together into these diamonds. Since red and pink are two different RSC months, I separated them. Pink blocks use dark/hot and light/baby pinks. Red blocks use mostly red strips for the dark side, and neutrals with a little bit of red for the light side. There's a black and white block, too.

On the back of this quilt, I tried to match less-loved fat quarters in the same color as the block directly opposite on the front. I was mostly successful, but I doubt anyone would ever really notice. Mostly it just looks like a collection of rather ugly fat quarters!

The second quilt is made with crumb blocks. I seem to have lots and lots of crumb blocks, so rather than use all colors of the rainbow, I stuck with purple, pink and yellow in an ombre.

Each block has a sashing strip of black on two adjacent sides, and this sort of tumbling offset look is easy to achieve. Lots of fun little bits and bobs among the crumbs!

The back is also purple, pink and yellow. Both quilts were finished in late December 2020, and donated to Quilts Beyond Borders. 

Around the same time, we were anchored in West Palm Beach, Florida. At the local mall, there is an artificial tree with color-changing LEDs on each "leaf." The leaves slowly change colors in various patterns. The effect is spectacular! Here it is in red.

And here it is in rainbow. I've never seen anything like this before and we visited The Tree several times while in town. It's mesmerizing!

Red Crosses

When I first started piecing this quilt, I didn't have a plan beyond wanting to try the pattern. It was in an older issue of a magazine and I cut it out and tucked it away in my files. A few months ago, I found the pattern again. The large squares were supposed to be single pieces of fabric, cut 8.5" on a side. 

I've been making crumb blocks in that size for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for the last two years, and thought it would be fun to use some of those blocks for the squares. I had a ton of blue blocks, and a recent purchase of red fabric was sitting on my cutting mat. Red, white and blue always look jaunty, so I pieced it up.

In the pattern drawing, the squares take center stage, but as I stitched those red pieces in, the cross shapes are what really stood out. The quilt became Red Crosses, and whispered to me that it wanted to comfort one of my friends who is a nurse. While I've known T for many years, we aren't super close, so I kept thinking, "It's kinda weird to give a quilt to someone you haven't seen in so many years. And R/W/B is kinda rah-rah patriotic, right?" But the quilt whispered, "I think you should send me to T."

T is part of our group of motorcycle friends who live in California, and they keep in touch via Facebook. I'm not on FB, so Sean fills me in when there's news in the group. As Covid cases get worse and worse in the West, he's been telling me about how T is so tired and stressed and overworked and frustrated. She lives up in the mountains where it snows and is getting cold and dark. It sounds like 2020 is grinding away at her! The quilt stopped whispering and said out loud, "Hello? When are you going to send me there to do my work of keeping her warm and comforted?" 

So last week, I did. I shipped out Red Crosses, wondering if T would think it was really strange to get a quilt out of the blue. What if it clashes with her home? But I shouldn't have worried, because quilts just know where they are needed. T says she loves her quilt and it made her teary. And that's the very best thing for a quilter to hear!

Linking up with the Hands2Help "Hometown Heroes" challenge. 

Lutheran World Relief

 

Today marks the beginning of a big batch of quilt finishes I'll be sharing on the blog. I actually completed many of these quilts weeks ago, but had to wait until now to get them washed and photographed. To maintain as much social distancing as possible, we've been anchoring more than usual which means conserving our water.  But this week we needed a marina for other reasons, so I have unlimited water and have been washing quilts like a crazy woman!

I thought this dock would be a great place to hang the quilts from the boat railing for photos, but it turns out that the dock is on the north size of the boat so the lighting is lousy for that. Rats! In the top pic you can see Sean stepping off the boat into deep shade, carrying each quilt to me one at a time. So helpful!

To get the quilts into the sunshine, I strapped our expandable boat pole between two pilings and hung the quilts from that. It worked fine, although the quilts hung precariously over this murky water! 

The pole wasn't quite high enough to hang things vertically, so most of the pics will show sideways quilts. Sorry about that! With so many to photograph, I couldn't ask Sean to hold his arms over his head for an hour. So for this performance, the role of Helpful Husband will be played by his understudy, Beaux T. Pole.

Without further ado, let's see the first finished quilt!

This Rainbow Irish Chain is made from nine patches I've been sewing for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. They've been accumulating for several years and their day has finally arrived.

Back in August, you may remember that there was a huge explosion in Beirut. Along with a devastating loss of life, many buildings and shipping containers were destroyed in the port. Among them was a one that held thousands of quilts to be distributed by the Lutheran World Relief (LWR.)

Joy of The Joyful Quilter put out a call to sew quilts to replace those lost, and she would coordinate collecting them and getting them into the right hands with LWR. At first I said I would donate a top and backing, but decided to go ahead and finish the quilt myself. The required size, 60"x80" pretty large to wrangle in my small space, so I don't usually make them that big. 

Since I already had all the rainbow-hued nine patches, it was a simple matter to cut 6.5" scrappy neutral/low volume background squares and piece it all together. For some of the backgrounds, I used the reverse side to keep the colors light so the chains would pop.

I also had a big chunk of this lime green floral for the backing. It only needed a little extra blue tie-dye to make it big enough. A green and cream plaid binding kept the edges looking light and airy.

For a quilt this big, I wanted to get the quilting done quickly with minimal pushing and shoving through the machine. Simple stippling to the rescue. 

This quilt has been shipped to Joy so she can add it to her growing pile for LWR. Many, many thanks to Joy for honcho-ing this important effort!

Red for RSC

It's RSC Saturday! I haven't posted any of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for a long time, but I make them each month. This year I've been trying to tame the string bins, so both blocks use strings.

These classic string blocks are made on paper foundations cut to 8.5" squares. That makes good use of standard size 8.5"x11.5" paper from junk mail. I like using paper rather than fabric foundations because the blocks end up lighter. And tearing off the papers later is rather satisfying!

I'm starting my blocks with a dark strip down the center diagonal, then doing all darks on one side and all lights down the other. For most colors, the lights are a paler version of that color. But for red, I had already used most of my pink strings during the pink RSC month. So I chose to use white or cream scraps with bits of red in them. I'm making each color in groups of four so that I can do this diamond layout later.

My second string block is made after the squares are finished. The remaining strings are cut into 7" lengths and sewn into wonky herringbones. Because the string widths vary, the point of the herringbone wobbles from side to side. When they get long enough, I trim the length to 17" and square up the width to 7.5". Why 17"? Because that's how long the first one ended up back in January! (What color was that? Early 2020 is a complete blur...)

Linking up with Angela at So Scrappy.

Wrap A Smile

Happy Tuesday! Today I'm sharing two recent finishes I made for Wrap A Smile. This charity provides quilts for children undergoing cleft palate repair surgery. I shared this first quilt as a flimsy last month, when the RSC color was bright green.

My own theme for January was food, so this quilt uses some green fabrics with fruits and veggies. I had this backing already pieced for another project last year, so steered the top towards pinks and reds, too, to coordinate. 

For the quilting, I tried a motif that I saw on Cathy's blog, "squiggles and loops."

I didn't get a good photo of my quilting, so go check out hers!

The second quilt was made here in February. The RSC color is orange, and my own theme is cats. 

I pulled all the fun kitty fabrics I could find that had at least a little orange in them.

Then I cut squares of various bright orange blenders and made a simple patchwork design. 

The backing uses a large piece of orange, leftover bits from the front, and this super fun kitties-on-black chunk. Wiggly lines of quilting across the seams and scrappy orange binding finish it up.

And speaking of scrappy binding, I had an AHA! organizing moment recently. I usually cut my binding to 2.25" and then put the leftovers in my string bins by color. That's all well and good, but I also deliberately cut scraps to 2.5" for the string bin, and they are hard to tell apart. Then it occurred to me that I could put all the 2.25" binding pieces together in a single bin and they would always be right there, ready to sew together into scrappy binding. No need to separate by color, since there aren't so many to sort through. It's working really well: I've already made three bindings from the bin! Hooray for using scraps efficiently!

Green green green

It's Saturday and that's when Rainbow Scrap Challenge folks can link up their projects in this month's color. January 2020 is bright green, a hopeful color for folks living in the wintry parts of the world. Here in Florida, there's no shortage of inspiration.

The blocks above are simple "Mendota" 10-inch finished squares for the Sunshine guild. There's a bit of bright green in each one. I'm currently using these as my leader/ender project, so they quietly accumulate in the background.

This year, I'm expanding the RSC for myself, and thinking of it as the Rainbow Stash Challenge. I'm trying to use up more of my fat quarters, and this little top made a small dent in the greens. The lemons and oranges are my favorites! This one is the right size to donate to Wrap a Smile, just 40"x50". I'm hoping to quilt it this month and I'll share more closeups of the fabrics then.

I've also divided my big drawer full of Covered in Love orphan blocks into color batches, and this group was the clear choice for bright green. These blocks were left over from one of Kat's block drives last spring. I'll share more photos after I quilt it up. Meanwhile, Angel makes a rare fabric inspection appearance! 

In addition to RSC, I've challenged myself to use at least one of my theme fabrics per month. DH has volunteered to pull one out of the hat on the first of each month. January's randomly chosen theme is food. These panels of pasta fit the bill! Since the spaghetti panel background is green, I figured I could make it an RSC project, too, adding scrappy green and white checkerboard side borders. We've seen similar tablecloths in Italian restaurants, so it works, right? This one is sized to be a wheelchair quilt, 36"x48". It should quilt up quickly and a green binding will tie it up nicely.

And finally, I thought I'd share this pretty collection of threads I bought recently. Tula Pink curated it and most of the threads are subtly variegated. Doesn't it look like candy? I'm not usually a thread nut, but I keep taking these out and petting them.

Sharing with Angela on So Scrappy. Check out other fun RSC projects there!