Last Orange Saturday of Scraps

Spring is taking it's time around here so I got making my own Spring Tulips. I found the pattern for it at Bee in my Bonnet, it was the last row of her row by row. I just may have to make the whole quilt. I have made many of the butterflies and I love the apples and cores. These are just so cute.  

Next I sewed together some strips in orange. They are 6 1/2" wide. I am thinking they will be great as a boarder on one of these Rainbow quilts.

For more on today's Orange scraps Go see Soscrappy.  And to see more about the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013.

I made five 6" crumb blocks to go with the others. I have trouble stopping these. I get started and there is always more little bits left that could be one more block. Then one more. Hard to stop. 

I still had a little stack of triangles so I made two 8" jack in the box blocks. I am thinking of going back and making a few pink and purple ones too. 

I still have a few strips so why not make a few string blocks. I decided to really make them triangles so that I can mix the colours up. I have no idea how I will really use them but they are more useful now. I went back and did some purple triangle strings too. I am not sure what size these are maybe 8" when two are sewn together. 

We have so much snow. I am thinking I may have to do some snow dying of fabric this week. The snow was so wet and perfect for snow dying yesterday.

Stitching for Customers

I keep machine quilting for my customers and then forget to ask if I can post photos. Well this past weekend David Taylor came to get this Bright and Beautiful Flying Geese quilt of his. And I remembered to ask. I just love this quilt because it is a rainbow of colours. 

A detail of the machine quilting I did. I love what I did on this quilt so much I might had to make one. The inside of the block has this sunshine like pattern and the outside is a few spirals and more flame like stitching. It is all done by free motion so if I look closely I can see small changes with in each block.

I believe David found the pattern for the block on the internet. The block is paper piecing done in four parts. I believe I have seen this pattern but not sure where. I am sure I will find it again.
Edit note I have found the free pattern called Circle of Geese by Beth at Piece by Number.

Orange Scrap Saturday

I found sometime to work on the Orange scrap box again this week. I got two flower blocks done. They finish up to be 8" square blocks. When I did purple ones I thought of them as Pansies, not sure I would call these ones pansies or not. Edit - We will call them Poppies as Brenda suggests. Thanks

When you are done reading here, go check out what others have posted over at Soscrappy. We are all working though our scraps for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013. This month is Orange, January was Pink and Feb was Purple. The other colours of the month are a surprise for each of us. You can join in the fun anytime. 

I have 24 butterflies done in orange. I got this pattern over at Bee in My Bonnet. She has been doing a row by row and this was row 2 back in Sept. She has just finished the quilt. I like some of the other patterns and may have to do more. Heck, I may end up making a whole quilt more. I love the apples and cores and the Spring tulips too. There were mittens but we have so much winter I am not sure I want to make mittens. 

We got snowed in this week. Thur was a mess and we did not plow out till late on Friday. I got my van stuck on Wed. So we are on a forced long weekend. Spring Break is also this week. 

I was surprised how the photos today made my oranges all look the same. So here is a detail so show the details of my prints. I had a number of old orange Jenny Beyer prints because I bought some oranges on clearance 15 years back. I kind of wish I had some of the other colours that never made it one to the clearance shelf.

WIP Wednesday

I have been working on my Easy Street mystery quilt this week. I had a UFO sewing day with the Leduc Black Gold Quilt Patch on Monday. I had these blocks done a few months back but I really did not like the Grey four patches and I changed them to pink four patches. Big improvement, I am much happier with the pink.

The wall also has my orange Sprout blocks on the left. On the bottom right is my Around About. Both of these are part of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013 that I have been following along. One the bottom left you can see the red and green project, that is a Christmas table runner I have quilted it but need to trim and bind still. I did not get it done for Christmas but maybe I can get it done in time of one of the guild quilt shows and the next Christmas.

Here is my box of patches that still need to be sewn into blocks. I have all the out triangles done but need to complete 21 more blocks. If you want to see more about the Easy Street Mystery go see the pattern on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site. The pattern is only going to be there for a few more weeks, as she will take it down and publish the pattern in her next book. 

I have 7 orchid plants flowering now and two more about to pop. This is just one of the plants flowering and it is so perfect today. I hope spring hurries up, it is very much winter here today with blowing snow and drifting. Tonight is the Edmonton guild meeting and I am wondering if I should be out driving in the dark. 

Now back to more machine quilting for my customers. I have a few deadlines for quilts this month. 

I have linked today's post with Freshly Pieced and Needle and Thread Network

Plans for the week

Lily pad I am needle felting

I am home from my dog trial. We did not get any passes but maybe we got the biggest laugh of the day. Lex was up on the A frame and spotted his green stick toy and raced down over two jumps and the ring fence to retrieve his toy. It was kind of cute but we had a incomplete run. We had a few really good parts and some wrong moves in every go today. It was fun and that was Why we do it.

Monday is a UFO stitch day at the Leduc Quilt guild. I am looking forward to going to that. So I worked on Saturday, quilting, so I could take Monday off. I think I will take my Easy Street Mystery from Bonnie Hunter. I have lots left to do.

The lily pad is for a project I hope to finish soon. Then maybe I can show you more.

Orange Scrap Saturday

I have been working on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013 this past week. We are using our Orange scraps for the month of March. To see what other quilters are doing with orange scraps go take a look at Soscrappy.

I first have my sprout blocks done. So far I have been doing five of each of the colours. I am not sure how big this quilt will be or how many blocks I will make. You can find the pattern for the Sprout block.

I did some flying geese this week. They measure 2" by 3 1/2" and will finish to 1 1/2" by 3" when sewn in. I think I could always use some on a boarder or to joint blocks together. We will just see what comes. 

We did Orange last Sept 2012, so I have already done many spools. I found two more orange fabrics to do.  I am trying to do the spool quilt like a charm quilt were the fabrics are not repeated.

I have a dog trial on Sunday. Wish us luck. I hope the roads are not to bad in the morning. We have blowing snow here and there.

Gone to the Dogs

I have signed up for my very first Online course. It is not about quilting but about Dog Training. I have signed up for Susan Garrett's Recaller's 4.0. Wednesday was the first real day but there has been tons of reading and precourse work and dog games. I have spent the last 10 days reading and working with my dog in this new(new for me) way of dog training. I see a few changes in my dog already. I am hoping it will help with our Agility runs. 

 The books in the above photos is only a small part of my reading. The course forum has had lots to read and videos to review. I have had homework to write out like, what are distractions for my dog. What reinforces my dog. I still need to go add more to this lists. 

The blue binder is my book to keep records. I think I may make a fancy quilted cover for the binder. I found this old paper pieced block I designed about 10 or 14 years ago. It is a brown dog sitting and being good. The block is stolen from an old UFO. So I may have to remake it so the old UFO is still complete. 

I really hope to get in some personal sewing in tonight and Friday night after work. I need to get back to my orange scraps or some old UFO projects. 

Punchy Orange Saturday

Around About - three months 

We are go to get a Pineapple Punch tonight. What? We are getting lots of moisture from Hawaii so it means Snow tonight. The bright Orange scraps make me think of the bright colours of Hawaii. Orange is the new colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013. I have added my post to Scraphappy Saturday Orange Oasis today. After you read my post, Go see what others are doing with their orange scraps.

I sewed on my "Around About" last night. I needed to get from purple to Orange. Last month I was lucky to find an old strip set of pink and purple to make the change over. How was I going to make my change from Purple to Orange? Why would anyone have purple and orange left overs partly sewn? Well I dug and dug. Guess what I found? (it helped that I cleaned and took note of old UFO's last weekend).

Orange scraps, list of blocks I need to do and little piles of units needed. 

I found this Purple and Orange lumpy wavy strip set. It was built in a Nancy Crow class maybe back in 2004 or 2005. I have a box of curvy strip sets I built in the class. I spent at least one full day (and night) building about 12 strip sets that are very wonky and measure about 20 inches across. This was one of them. Perfect. Finally using it. 

With the strip sets I have some more curvy cut strings. Many in orange. See how wavy they are. They were cut with a rotary cutter but not a ruler.

I sewed some together. Do you see how lumpy it is. I do not iron it yet. Cut it first.

Cut before you iron. I made it wide so that after it is ironed I can straighten it up again. I am not sure I want "Around About" to be totally wonky. Just a few bits here and there.

I used best press and a very hot dry iron to make those seams behave. It worked. I then trimmed these again to get out edges to be some what straight. I did not want to get into fussy curves on the larger units I am adding.

 I have been interviewing each of the add on before I sew it on. This is the photo before I sewed and in the stage were I thought "Yes I am happy with it".