Sew........This Is My Blog: March 2022

Monday, March 28, 2022

March OMG and RSC-Yellow/Gold Goals Met!

Can I say that March has been a complete bust if there are still a few days left in the month? Considering what I have left to do it's pretty clear I'm not going to meet my OMG (One Monthly Goal). Sigh......

The quilt I cut out for Natalie, then put in time out, then decided to make for my March OMG is, umm, not working out so far. I made 436 of these .....

..... and laid them out in stacks by color .....

..... so I could come up with a balanced design.

I tried multiple layouts. I hated them ALL! It seems not every pattern works when you try to make it scrappy. Definitely not the "Doubletime Duet" pattern.

Now I'm in the process of cutting all the strips in half and sewing them together so I end up with 436 of these -

I only have about 400 left to make. I'm fairly certain I won't be finished by the 31st.

The good news is I have my yellow/gold blocks for March's Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC2022) finished. I even found more of the Paddington Bear fabric on Etsy, so I'll have enough to finish all the Star blocks!

Did you notice that I have a new cutting board? The perfect purchase when you have a 60% off coupon from JoAnn's. Also the perfect purchase when your old cutting board looks like this -

I think I got my money's worth from that one!

Linking up with "One Monthly Goal!", RSC-2022, and "Oh Scrap!"

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Sailboats for Captain Ivan

Now that it's been gifted I can tell you all about the baby quilt I've been working on. My newest great-nephew, Ivan, turned three months old last week, so his quilt got to him in plenty of time. Almost record time for me, lately! His mommy chose a nautical theme for his nursery, so I wanted to do a traditional Sailboat Block quilt.

Do you know how many variations of Sailboat quilts there are? A lot! After looking at ideas I sketched one on my handy-dandy graph paper and based the whole thing on 2.5" squares. After I had cut out 306 squares, I realized I could have saved a lot of time by cutting out rectangles for some parts of the blocks.

That's not even a "I can't handle the dreaded math" issue; it's more of a "I wasn't really thinking" issue!

Something else I didn't think through was the fact that when you make HSTs (Half Square Triangles) from striped fabric half will be vertical and half horizontal. Like this.

I wanted all my sails to go in the same direction. The way the wind blows, right? I mean, these are things you really have to think about when making important design decisions. That's why I ended up having to add 60 horizontally striped HSTs to my orphan blocks collection.

Is this the cutest low volume background print? Perfect for this quilt!

Great-nephews/nieces always get hand quilting from their Aunt Sandy. I have to admit all those squares made it easier to decide on echo quilting for the quilting design.

Oops, I didn't get a photo of the "label" after I washed it. Please ignore the pencil marks!

Another happy quilt for another happy baby. "Captain Ivan" loves his quilt.

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

March's "One Monthly Goal" and Stash/Sewing Reports

It's already time to set March goals? How can that be?!!

I only have two nieces left from my (long!) list of nieces and nephews who need new quilts from Aunt Sandy. This one is kinda-sorta a UFO. But not really. Here's the thing. I cut out and started working on a quilt for Natalie then put it in time out, and it ended up on the UFO list. When I took it out last week to see if I wanted it to be my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for March, I decided I don't even really like it! So I cut out a whole new quilt. Still batiks (THAT supply is getting low!), and still contemporary. For this one I'm using the "Doubletime Duet" pattern from Terry Atkinson's Allegro pattern book.

Except for saying that completing this top is my February goal, I don't have much more to say about that unless you want to see my sewing area at our hotel in Clearwater. Hey. It works!