Blue February block

 

My current projects: 1. Hand quilting my vintage style quilt 2. Making monthly rainbow scrap challenge blocks (above), feb is blue 3. Still making triangular blocks for my Thousand Pyramids quilt. 

I decided to do a very large Bear Paw block for this year’s Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I really love these blocks. It’s going to be scraps of Kaffe or Amy Butler or whatever brighter pretty scraps are hanging around, then a coordinating solid. The background fabric is one I found as I cleaned and unpacked my sewing room. It was supposed to go with an animal quilt that I decided not to make. So I have plenty. These are 18” blocks, so I figure I can make one a month for 2025 and I’ll have a bright top for quilting in the winter of 2026.

I’m trying to make a few blocks a day for the pyramid quilt. It’s really fun digging through old fabrics to find 3 that look good together and work with the quilt. Some of these fabrics are REALLY old like that Wamsutta in the photo… might be 90s? There’s also a bunch of shirtings thrown in plus text fabrics, Kaffe stripes, and even Jinny Beyer. Of course it’s mostly Judie Rothermel and Paula Barnes, my favorites!

And this is what I’m hand quilting… I’m not the best at it but it works for me. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be so I’ll be happy just to have it done. I’m taking it on my trip to Florida when I go. It’ll give me a nice project to work on if we have any rainy days.

Current projects

This is my newest quilt start. It's long term ...a hand sewing ( #epp ) project. My last English paper piecing quilt top took 7 years to make and it's taking about 6 months to hand quilt then bind. This one will be faster since it wont be just worked on during car rides and doc appts. I'm doing some blocks each evening. I've hauled out my bin of 30s reproduction prints and vintage fabrics and am sorting in color order. Then I have daughter Jenn finding coordinating light/medium/dark sets for the blocks.

Also, in the evenings or early morning, I'm putting in a bit of time on that first EPP quilt, my 6-point diamond stars. It's getting to the end. This week I flipped the quilt frame around so that I can quilt the last few rows. It should be finished some time in April.

Almost March

It seems like February just started and now it's almost March. Spring is on the way! Of course, here in Michigan we still have a chance of snow until May. Almost every year around Easter, we will get hit with a huge snowstorm. Hopefully not this year. With spring right around the corner I thought I would do some spring cleaning... in my sewing room.

It was a disaster before this. I'm piecing 3 or 4 quilts right now. The main two are on the floor and on the wall. I found old log cabin blocks as I was digging for Civil war fabrics, so I added those to my wall along with a star I had started years ago.

The corners needed to be added to the lone star and then a a border to bring it up to 24-1/2" so that I could insert it in the middle of my log cabin quilt. The two were originally going to be 2 separate quilts but I changed my plan. These old UFOs need to be completed...

This was another UFO that needed some work. Over the last year or so, I've been making hexie flowers...these I applique onto a background square to use as a border on this quilt. I finished up the last hexie flower this past week so I've attached the border and used random leftover blocks as corners. The corner blocks were designed YEARS ago for a quilt that I never made. I loved them and wanted to use them somehow. In the future I may release a pattern using the blocks.

So that's what I'm piecing (along with my monthly rainbow scrap blocks). This is my machine quilting project. I'll be FMQuilting it on my Pfaff....probably starting Monday.

And of course, this gets a litte attention every day. On Instagram, I joined the ladies that are doing #300daysofhandquilting ...This will help keep me working on it a bit all through the spring.