Thank you all for the tremendous support in linking up to our first Scraptastic Tuesday.  


It has been a relief to learn that Leanne and I are not the only one with scrap mountains and it has been inspirational to see how everyone tackles the problem.  So many lovely scrappy projects are on the go!

So now it's time to award the October link up prizes. Thank you again to our fantastic and generous sponsors:

The prizes and the winners, as drawn using the random number generator, are:

• Fluffy Sheep Quilting - a bundle of beautiful remnant scraps: # 66 Myra from Busy Hands Quilts

• Fat Quarter Shop - a $25 gift certificate: #84 Nepeanquilter from Flickr

• Mad About Patchwork - a $30 gift certificate - # 26 Colleen from Flickr

• Sew me a Song - a $20 gift certificate - #80 Lynley from Lynley Quilts

• Oakshott - a 10" square Autumn Oakshott cotton pack: # 54 Celine from Espritpatch

• Massdrop - a Joel Dewberry Birch Farm fat quarter bundle: #18 Anne via Instagram as limeleaf741

We have sent emails to the winners but if you read it here first, please contact us so we can get the prizes on the way to you.

Thank you for joining us and remember the next link will be the second Tuesday of the month - November 11. Please plan to share a scrappy project finished or in progress or your ideas about how to use or organize or deal with scraps with us then, and feel free to join us at any time in the month. Use the hashtag #scraptastictuesday or add our button to your post.

Scraptastic Tuesday - Friendship Stars and other HST things!

Last day to link up for this month people!   You can do that here!

This week has been about another favourite block of mine, the friendship star!  It is another nine patch design so I have made two 9" and two 6" ones.  Keeping the maths simple as that's the way I like it  ....

For the 9" star - cut five 3.5" squares; and four 4" squares to make four 3.5" HSTs.

For the 6" star - cut five 2.5" squares; and four 3" squares to make four 2.5" HSTs.

Arrange as photo and stitch in rows matching seams. 

Be aware that the stars can either go round in a clockwise or anti-clockwise fashion depending on how you place your HSTs.  Best not to go in both directions as that makes a different block entirely!   

You will notice that I have one of each in each size.   I think this adds to the scrappy look and adds movement to the quilt which I like!  

So here is a group shot of the friendship stars 

Not only that but I have also squeezed in a 10" propeller block:
 made with nine 2.5" squares to make the cross in the middle; and four 5" squares to make four 4.5" HSTs

Five 4" broken dishes : each block is made from four 3" squares, which make four 2.5" HSTs.   Making several means you can mix up the fabrics to make them scrappy.  

Many of you will prefer to sew two squares together and stitch with a quarter inch seam either side of the diagonal centre line.  To get a real scrappy mix I just cut my squares in half before stitching, as it gives me more variety but you do have to treat your cut fabric with respect as this diagonal cut is on the bias and can stretch if you happen to pull it!

And finally one 6" Double X block:  made from three 2.5" squares and six 3" squares to make six 2.5" HSTs 

And that is my group 3 set of blocks complete.

 And here is my sampler so far - my blocks are widely spaced at the moment but I will be filling it all in over the next few weeks

And remember up until midnight today (at Leanne's house which is MST) you can still link a post or picture about your scrap projects, or ideas for using or organizing or working with scraps. Winners will be drawn randomly for the fantastic prizes from our generous sponsors tomorrow and announced on Thursday.

• Fluffy Sheep Quilting - a bundle of beautiful remnant scraps
• Fat Quarter Shop - a $25 gift certificate
• Mad About Patchwork - a $30 gift certificate
• Sew me a Song - a $20 gift certificate
• Oakshott - a 10" square Autumn Oakshott cotton pack
• Massdrop - a Joel Dewberry Birch Farm fat quarter bundle

The next monthly Scraptastic Tuesday link up will be the second Tuesday of November which is Remembrance Day, November 11. From now on the link will be open for just a week, so you will need to be a bit more organized if you are playing along.  

Leanne and I do need your company on this challenge, so I do hope you are joining us!  It could take quite a while to tame my mountains of scraps - not sure about yours!?


Leanne has joined me making my sampler out of solids and Liberty fabric.  Do go and have a look ...

Pushing things along!

I am trying to push a few projects along to get them closer to the finish line as I still have got quite a list of quilts on my Finish Along List!

I have completed my Lazy Bum challenge for October which was to complete the top of my Flowering Snowball quilt - I needed to fill in a few sections where I had straightened off my blocks and add a wide black border.  

I started this quilt, made in gorgeous sparkly Oakshott, as a result of Mary's Flowering Snowball Along.

 

That has been done now and I need to think about backing this one and then quilting it!  A little bit more to do.


I have basted and been quilting my scrappy Dresden background now that I have my Bernina back and can FMQ to my heart's content.   I have been quilting flowers...

And this is it with the Dresdens back in position...

Not attached yet .....a job to look forward to soon....!



And I've been adding some blocks to the scrappy Sibling's Together quilts thanks to the very generous Ayrshire ladies in Sheila's quilting classes!

Five more blocks and I will have three quilts for this very worthwhile charity.

And today and yesterday I spent a bit of time on this!

See I beautifully straightened up the edges!   

And then I remembered that it was supposed to be this way round...

So I now have a diamond shaped quilt!  Oh well I guess I need more Blueberry Park fabric from my lovely friend and beemate Karen who has screen printed most of the beautiful fabric in this project!

Scraptastic Tuesday - Keep on Linking!

One more week to link up and then we can start handing out the prizes!  I must say Leanne and I have been pleased to see so many people linking up already and to see what a range of exciting scrap projects you have on the go!  Maybe we are not alone in having scrap mountain after all!

In the meantime I have been busy making a few more sampler blocks....

These are my group two blocks - lots of nice and easy squares and rectangles!

9" Two by Two - eight 2.75" x 5" rectangles - four from background fabric

8" Four by Two/Rail Fence  - sixteen 1.5" x 4.5" rectangles 

12" Susannah - sixteen 3.5" squares: of which four are background and four are used to form the triangles surrounding the 1 central 6.5" square 

15" and 10" Flying Squares -

15" - five 3.5" squares, four 3.5" x 6.5" rectangles, four 3.5" x 9.5" rectangles.  
10" - five 2.5" squares, four 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles, four 2.5" x 6.5" rectangles.

This block has a partial seam in it but that is so easy you will wonder why people worry about it!  

Join a square to one end of the shorter rectangle and join this unit in turn to the longer rectangle.   Do this four times.  

Take the central fussy cut square and line it up with one of the squares in your rectangle units.  Stitch no more than half the seam - you will finish that seam off at the end. 

 In the diagram you are stitching between the arrows

Now work around the central square adding the rectangle units as in the diagram..

When the fourth unit has been added there is one final seam to finish.   The one you started with though it is now longer of course.  Complete this seam and say after me 'Partial seams are easy - I don't know what the fuss is about!'  


I do like this block a lot and even got around to mocking up a quilt or two on EQ - might choose this for my Siblings Together block next month!  We do like big easy blocks....think this qualifies.

Don't forget you can still link up to last Tuesday's post to win prizes! And Leanne is sharing some of her quilts made from scraps - be sure to have a look.

And feel free to let us know if there is anything you would like to know about working with scraps...? Or anything you would like to share...?

So have a Happy Scrappy week folks!

Star plus finished

I am happy to show you a finish !

But I'm not sure I can claim it as mine.

First of all the pattern is by Claudia @machenundtun.   I met Claudia at the first fat quarterly retreat and not only is she very talented, she is lovely as well!

You can find her pattern here!  Believe me you need to make this fun quilt at least once!

As I decided to make this quilt as a Christmas pressie for my 17 year old son I asked him what colour scheme I should use and he asked for it to be the same as another quilt I made and he seems to have adopted!

So that gave me the black, white, grey and touches of red!

Then after stitching the blocks together I was looking at some quilting that the lovely Kelly aka Jeliquilts was doing - her preferred wiggly line quilting which I love but have not been that tempted to copy till now.

It just so happens that my beloved Bernina needed some surgery before I tackle some FMQ - she was making horrid noises unless I went really slowly and swirly FMQ just wasn't going to happen at that speed.  So very reluctantly I handed her over to my lovely Sewing Machine Surgeon!  Along with my even older Singer ( I reckoned I should have a spare as it feels like my limbs have been cut off if I cannot sew).   Unbeknownst to me the Sewing Machine Surgeon had picked up an old vintage Jones machine from a lady and he offered me the use of this machine in the interim.  

Perhaps he saw the glazed look and nervous tick in the eyes of a true addict!?

Anyway this Jones machine seems to love straight line quilting - eating the quilt out of my hand and asking for more quilt sandwich while making a beautiful even stitch!  My previous attempts have been filled with lots of pushing and neck and shoulders aching!  

I am so happy - everything came together so well - I even had enough of a black white chevron print for the binding!

Happy day and one Christmas present finished (and it is still only October!)

The back...

ScraptasticTuesday - the link up!

Yes the day has arrived when you can link up all your creative scrappy work! 

Leanne and I want to see it all so take photos and write your blog post it doesn't have to be long....

You can link up about a scrappy project you have made already and want to share, or one you are planning; one you are just finishing, or still working on; or some tips about using, storing, controlling or collecting your mountain of scraps. 

Let's share inspiration and tips and maybe we can all learn something and make something pretty and useful !

Just one link per person please - you can save other information and projects for another month. 

You should be able to link to the same linky party from either my blog or Leanne's but it is my first time so I'm a novice and who knows what will happen?

We have rounded up some fantastic sponsors for our first link up. A huge thank you to each of them for the following prizes, which will be awarded randomly:

• Sew me a Song - a $20 gift certificate
• Oakshott - a 10" square Autumn Oakshott cotton pack
• Massdrop - a Joel Dewberry Birch Farm fat quarter bundle
• Fluffy Sheep Quilting - a bundle of beautiful remnant scraps
• Fat Quarter Shop - a $25 gift certificate
• Mad About Patchwork - a $30 gift certificate

The link up will normally be open for just one week but as this is the first time we are allowing you an extra week - so there is lots of time to join in.  The winners will be announced shortly after the link up closes

Now what did I get up to this week...

Well there were scrappy bee blocks, including some log cabins for Catherine in  Bee a Brit Stingy

And Scrappy Trip blocks for Sonia in Siblings Together Quilting Bee using the very generous Bonnie Hunter's tutorial

And a few more Scraptastic sampler blocks too  - here is my photo of Group 1 

And a close up of my 15" Card Trick block

And a close up of the 9" Greek Square block - ok a churndash by another name but this variation is pleasingly quite different looking, don't you think?!  The blue one works better I think as a typical Greek Square.

What unites my Group 1 blocks is that they have elements of a churndash in them....

15" Card Trick Block

four 5.5" HSTs - made from 6" squares

one 5.5" X block in the middle  - made from 5" square and trimmed

four 5.5" - don't know what to call them but half HSTs ? - made from 5" and 6" squares and trimmed very carefully!

9" Greek Squares

four 3.5 " HSTs - made from 4" squares

one 3.5" central square

four half rectangle units - each one made from two 2" x 3.5" rectangles 

If you are having difficulty linking up the most likely thing (so Leanne tells me)  is that after you put in the url of your post/photo, you need to move to the next line before the program connects to the site.

An InLinkz Link-up

Finish Along 2014 the Final List!

Isn't is slightly ominous that this is the last of the FAL lists for 2014 - how did that come about so quickly?

I said I would finish all my UFOs this year (well, I said that I wanted to do it in 2013 too but didn't even get near it!)

This year I have actually finished 16 out of the 20 UFOs I had listed at the beginning of the year and I think that has been a massive achievement!  

This Finish Along, my Lazy Bums group and many cheerleaders and monitors among you lovely people have really helped in this process and I owe you all a huge debt of thanks!

So only four remaining UFOs (for me a UFO is a project one year old or over)  and here they are - at the very least I'm sure I can get two more finished!    The top two don't really need that much more to finish them...

And then I started these projects in Quarter 3 - half the battle in keeping the UFOs down is not starting new projects - it seems that only works for the first six months for me!  Oops!

Now you are wondering what other things I have on my list aren't you?

Well there are these four!  Almost all at the finished (or nearly) quilt top stage

Then in October I started a thing with Leanne @She Can Quilt - #Scraptastic Tuesday.  

Please join in on our blogs, where there will be a linky party for your scrappy projects, large and small, every month on the second Tuesday of the month.  And there will even be prizes from these fabulous sponsors!

So if like us you are drowning in scraps join in and let's see if we can contain them!

I am hoping to use up all my scraps or at least keep up with them.  My first scrappy project is the Dresden quilt in the mosaic above but I am very excited about a new project - a Scraptastic Sampler.  

I will be making easy traditional blocks from my scraps, in various sizes from 4" - 15" with just a few repeats to keep my interest going.  I am liberating my Liberty scraps in this project along with solids and other prints.   Here is my progress to date...

I'm giving dimensions of the units making up my blocks so you can join in if you want to.  I have it all planned out and everything!

And I've also joined two swaps....

IG miniswap 
Trim the Tree Swap 


Of course there are plans for other quilts to join these ones - isn't there always!?

Scraptastic Tuesday sampler quilt!

I am in love with scraps and cannot decide which scrappy quilt to make next.  So I thought I should make them all!  

 Well not really I wouldn't be allowed to would I ?   But the next best thing is to make a sampler.   Once upon a time I didn't really like samplers but having seen Jen Kingwell's Green Tea & Sweet Beans I had a bit of an epiphany and now I love them most of all.   You cannot get bored making a quilt with 31 different blocks, and only a few repetitions in it, can you?

Now the next exciting bit of news is that I'm making a quilt with Liberty fabric - yeah I'm actually cutting up my stash of long hoarded lovelies!  Unfortunately I cannot show it to you yet  - sad face !   But I can show you the leftovers and make blocks with them, so that is what I'll be doing!

So here are my first group - they are similar in construction but different sizes!

A churn dash (12"), a snowball (6") and a shoo fly (6")

Before piecing

All stitched and ready to party

I have two Grecian square blocks to make to add to this group.

Other groups of blocks to come will have a common theme.  

I'll be sneaking in a bit of Liberty, a bit of solids and whatever I have to hand.   They will all be simple blocks, easily constructed and they will be made in these sort of colours.  I already have a plan mapped out of how they will fit together and that is quite organised for me!



Want to join in?  I doubt you will need a proper tutorial for these but I will tell you what to cut to make them the same as mine:

Churndash 12" finished
one 4.5" central square
four 5 " squares - cut in half on the diagonal and pieced to make four 4.5" HSTs
four 2.5" x 4.5" rectangles pieced in pairs 

Shoo Fly/Snowball 6" finished
five 2.5" squares
four 3" squares - cut in half on the diagonal and pieced to make four 2.5" HSTs

Grecian Square next and that will be 4 out of 31 different blocks done!  Several are repeated but no more than four times.  

The quilt will be 72" square but can be adapted to your needs and may get bigger if I feel the need/can't resit adding a few more blocks...

And don't forget to check out what Leanne is up to on the other side of the ocean!

FAL round up

Well another three months have gone....and it is time to own up to how far down the Finish Along list I have got.   Not too shabby given the length of the list I'd say....





Friendship's Garden Quilt - finished!  It only took me 9 years!

Stingy Plus Quilt - finished with help from the fabulous members of Bee A Brit Stingy

Love Heart Quilt - finished!  Pattern from V & Co and red/pink fabrics from the ruby Oakshott bundle and Helen.  This one belongs to my youngest daughter...

Sibling's Together 1 & 2 - both finished and handed over at Fat Quarterly Retreat - helped by the marvellous generosity of Moda and Becca at Sew Me A Song and the talents of the Sibling's Together Quilting Bee - thanks ladies!

Swap Baskets for FQR - finished and swapped

So that was the good news!


I have four UFO's to rollover till next time

Tulip Dance - no progress

Vintage Circles - no progress

Sewing Words - no real progress here

Hexy Big Balls - almost finished piecing the backing 

And here are the four new projects I started this quarter but have yet to finish

Blueberry Park Chevrons - lots of progress 

From this 

To this....

Using a mix of manufactured fabric and those special ones printed by my lovely friend and bee mate Karen!  Chevrons cut by my Sizzix machine.

Clamshells - lots of progress - from these few ...

To this ...

Again cut with the Sizzix machine - thinking of making it bigger yet!
Christmas - now named Nordik Quilt - loads of progress

One of my early blocks...

To this....

Loads of help received from my fabulous Stingy Bee friends again - they are the best! Flowering Snowball, inspired by Mary Dugan, went from this plan on EQ6 and an order of Oakshott

To this - an almost finished quilt top - and I have been challenged by my Lazy Bum mate Lizzie to finish the top in October!

Lots still to do - well you didn't really think I'd finish that list.....did you?