A Return To Spring

I was travelling for work this week, which meant little or no time to play with the design wall and my little grove of improv trees, so I've turned my attention to hand piecing. I picked Danuta's Garden up again over the holidays when I was looking for something that I didn't need to prep or cut and finished off the last dozen or so nine patch blocks and the few remaining Ohio Stars.

All in all there are 72 blocks, which was a pleasant surprise, because sometimes you can feel like little or no progress is being made.

I also finished a third of seven of the long sashing strips and have put together more of the shorter three-block sashing units. I mix it up with making the tiny four patches.

Now I'm back into the rhythm of it. There are still four long strips of sashing to be made and about 24 of the shorter units so it's not like this will be finished any time soon, but it does feel like it might get done this year....M

Sticks & Stars

Remember these improv trees that I was playing with in the fall after Jane and I experimented with them? Well, while she was off to the races and whipping up autumn wall hangings with hers I'm still trying to figure out how mine will come together. While I ponder the possibilities they enjoy the small design wall all to themselves.

All that I have resolved so far is that I want a winter forest feel and I want to include some wonky stars, maybe some subtle HSTs. I suspect that the background with be a scrappy collection of prints, but I don't want that to take away from the trees. And I don't think I want to add more trees, so this could be a small quilt but I'll lay it out on a larger design wall soon and see if that changes.

So, while I ponder, I play. I've been testing out wonky star options - teenie tiny fun! I made the first one with 2 1/2" blocks, which finish up at 6" but I think it's too large for all of them given the size of the trees...

so I changed to 1 1/2" blocks to end up with a 3" star and I like that much better. I think it still needs another size added to the mix so I'll try one or two with  2" blocks so there's lots of variety.

They are in yellows and golds and creams with a little blue, aqua and pink tossed in.

One of the lamps in the sewing room is on the fritz so it's darker in one corner than usual, which means that I've been trying to get a read as to whether they are a good fit in really poor lighting. Today I brought the board upstairs into better light and I think that the next couple of stars also need to be a little stronger. So, I inch along with this one. I guess the next step is to try to figure out the background....M

Looking For A Place To Land

Without those self-imposed Christmas quilt deadlines I'm at a bit of a loss as to which project to land on now - and it's not for a lack of options - so, I'm floating from place to place playing with different projects as the feeling moves me. Red and white HSTs were the first to catch my eye.

There's been a pile of HST trimmings sitting at the far end of my ironing board since I sewed the stars for Nantucket. Originally they were going to be for potholders for the Holly Bazaar but I didn't want to make up too many of the same thing so on the ironing board they sat.

I played with layouts for a bit and had enough to come up with this, along with a scrap of pretty black floral and maybe a touch of gingham. Nice.

They all got trimmed but I kept think that more HSTs would be nice. I also had this nagging feeling that there should be more of them. What to do? A modified dumpster dive, of course!

At the bottom of a pile on the cutting table I came up with about eight more.

And then another pile surfaced in another corner. They were like rabbits!

So now I have this. The black fabric strip is folded so I have almost twice the length that you see, so this could go bigger if I was so inclined. Still pondering. Maybe it's a pillow, maybe it's the centre of a medallion.

I'm lovin' that floral with all the sharp HST corners. Something tells me it was a klepto quilting find while rummaging through Jane's scraps at the cottage.

This is what my design wall looks like and you can see that it's only one little corner, so I've got a few other things that I can turn my attention to while I decide. More about that the next time...M

Springtime Scraps

A rather listless attempt at cleaning up my cutting table and almost any other horizontal surface in my sewing room kept leading me to little piles of scraps that hadn't made it to the scrap bins yet. I was tempted to sort them by colour and put them away, I really was, but there were a few pieces that I picked up that I really liked and knew that this was the very last that I had of them, so I decided to make something with them instead.

My pot holders get a good workout and a couple of mine were starting to look more than a little ratty, so scrappy potholders it would be.

I did quilt-as-you-go piecing with randomly spaced rows of quilting, stitching directly onto a batting. To join the front and back I just added a few more rows of stitching, so from the back the rows are not as dense as they are on the front. Don't you just love that Martha Negley pink/coral daisy print? I think it's my very last little bit of it.

A little pick-me-up-pink for the binding...

and WA-LA! A set of happy little potholders.

One is backed in mauve...

and the second in a green (it seemed in keeping with all the scrappiness that the backs be pseudo scrappy too).

And, they have already been pressed into action in the kitchen, so I am enjoying my little scraps every day....M