Blue Scrap Buster Quilt

In the comments of my last post, T. Holster asked, “Are you missing sewing or not much time to miss it?”  YES, I MISS IT! As the saying goes, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I miss it so much that in my downtime I’m planning quilt projects for next year. I’d rather be sewing, but the sewing room, like the spare bedroom, is currently a dumping ground for everything during painting. So, the next best thing to sewing is making plans to sew.  

As I mentioned in the last post, I need to sort and organize some of the scrap bins.  Since my newly painted living room accent color will be blue, I'll need to make blue quilts.  I've drafted and done the quilty math for two quilts already but that's not enough.  The image below, found on Pinterest is perfect.  A quick and easy quilt that will use up a ton of scraps. Funny how it took an hour of scrolling through Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest to be inspired by the most basic quilt... HAHA! Thirty years of quilting experience, and I’m absolutely floored by this simple beauty.

With the new quilt plan ready, it was time to dive into the three blue scrap bins...light, medium, and dark. For this quilt, the focus is on using medium and dark blue fabrics. I yanked the light fabric bin because I have a bad habit of sneaking rogue colors into places they don’t belong.

 

Digging through scraps is always fun.  I love bright colorful fabrics, they’re so cute, but not for this quilt. It’s time for adult Lea Anne to take charge and tell the little girl to hush, because she can be a bit annoying sometimes.

I also came across a few fabrics (the rogue I mention earlier) that didn’t seem to belong in the blue bins, so I figured I might as well take care of them now. They were hastily tossed into other bins with the promise of one day being neatly folded and stored with their friends.

And then there was this print.  It has a magic trick, pair it with darker blues and, presto, it turns green! I was convinced my aging eyes were pulling a fast one on me, so I snapped a photo just to see if the camera would catch the chameleon act. It did! How strange!

After having about an hour of fun sorting through the fabric bins I have the initial fabric pull.  They will be stored separately from the scrap bins.  Initial because I can't decide if they all will be used in the quilt... 

OR...

Option B - use only solid blue fabrics.

Option C - use only navy blue print fabrics and no solid blues.

Of course, the background fabric is also up in the air.  

Option A - Do I go with solid white from yardage?

Option B - Scraps of solid whites in different shades of white.

Option C - Low volume white and cream prints.

Sigh... All the options will simmer in the brewing pot until I return to the sewing room and start stitching again.

  

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Sewing Room Update ~ No Sewing!

 The sewing room may be freshly painted, but it’s not quite ready for quilting marathons just yet. In the meantime, there’s been an Olympic level amount of fabric sorting, folding, and yes, some affectionate petting. Honestly, this could be my dream job! 

If it weren’t for the holiday season looming over me like a pallet of fabric about to drop on my head, I would have sorted every color from light to dark. For now, I’m in a mad dash to whip the house into shape before the new year hits, because apparently whatever you’re doing on January 1st becomes the year's theme. So, here’s hoping I’m stitching cozy quilts all year long, not stuck repainting walls and playing furniture Tetris.

These Brightroom stackable 6W x 12L x 4H acrylic bins are from Target are perfect for holding fat quarters, half yards and one yard cuts.  They’re sturdy, unlike some I’ve come across in other stores and brands. In the image below, some of the folded fabric appears thicker than others due to the varying sizes of the fabric cuts. One day, I might sort them by size and color, but for now, I’m racing against the calendar.   By the way here's a quick video by Clover and Violet on how to fold the fat quarters to fit these bins. 

You might spot a “new” fabric storage cabinet on the left, new to the sewing room, but definitely not new. This hutch has been with me for about 30 years in the kitchen. When the old, wobbly white cabinet started collapsing, I saw my chance...a buffet upgrade, more counter space, and a perfect excuse to showcase my prettiest fabric stash.  Hopefully someday soon I can replace the other old white cabinet with another hutch or glass front cabinet so I can see even more of my favorite fabrics.  By the way those larger clear bins are 12 x12 and also from Target.

As you all know the old large white cabinet held my not so loved older stash of fabrics.  Well, I did some purging of the sewing room and made room for them in my cutting table.  They are rarely used but they do come in handy from time to time when I work outside of color pallet of choice.

Oh but wait, that's not all the fabric! HAHA!  Let's not forget the scrap bins. Sorting through the scrap bins is something I plan to do someday, but for now, they’ve found a new home under the quilter.  They barely fit tucked up against my treadle machine.  I refuse to part with my treadle sewing machine, when the power goes out, I can still stitch away by the romantic glow of candlelight!

This is also where most of my UFO boxes are stored.  The scrap bins below them used to be stacked, so the wheels had been taken off of the ones stacked on top. I've lost the wheels!  Let's hope I can find some replacements because the different heights is making things a little wonky under here and driving me nuts.

As you can see, it’s still a bit chaotic in here. We’ve had a small setback in the major projects for two reasons, it's hunting season and Mr. Podunk has been helping his 96-year-old mom pack up and move. We live in Indiana.  She’s relocating from Pennsylvania to Ohio, near one of his sister’s homes.  I can install most of the ceiling tiles myself, and when he has the time and the energy, he can handle the electrical work for the ceiling fan and lights.  There's plenty to keep me busy until then.  

I still need to paint the living room and restore the spare bedroom to its former glory. Right now, it’s serving as the official dumping ground for anything and everything that doesn’t have a home while the rest of the house gets its makeover.

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Shaded Four Patch Rabbit Hole

It's been weeks since my last post, and we're still knee-deep in paint and renovations across four rooms. If you missed the chaos, check out the previous blogpost here. I haven't stitched a thing in what feels like FOREVER! To cope, I've been indulging in the next best thing: endless scrolling through the quilty corners of the internet. Naturally, I wanted to make every single quilt I saw, but the one below completely stole my scrap loving heart. It was quickly sketched in EQ8, and the quilt-planning frenzy commenced! Now, I just need to crack the code for quickly making the red-highlighted unit.  

 EQ gives you three choices for making this unit: paper piecing, individual paper templates, and rotary cutting. The first two? Absolutely not happening. Rotary cutting triangles is fine, but let’s be real, I’d prefer a faster, easier method, something like whipping up flying geese or half-square triangles in bulk. And here’s what EQ suggests for rotary cutting.

I painstakingly did all the math and drafted a quilt plan, only to realize afterward that my old Billie Lauder books probably had a shortcut for this quilt unit. Honestly, I should just keep those books on a pedestal in plain sight, think of the time I’d save!

Well, I'll be darned, it's actually in one of them! Who would have guessed they’d call it a shaded four patch? The instructions are decent enough, but oh boy, I’d love to see this magic in action. So, off I went, back to the wild world of the interwebs for some visual enlightenment!

I stumbled upon a video by Deb Tucker.  Same method just oversized so you need to trim them to size. It was surprisingly helpful, though, with some genuinely useful tips sprinkled in.  Click image below to watch or click here to go to the video on YouTube.

Then I stumbled upon this gem from Just Get It Done Quilts. She has instructions for 3 different methods.  She even went the extra mile and cracked the code for making eight at a time! Her 8 at a time method isn’t in the cards for me right now, but it’s comforting to know it’s out there for future quilting emergencies.  Click image below to watch or click here to watch on YouTube.

Now that I've cracked the Shaded Four Patch code, this quilt should be a walk in the park!

 Before I go, let me share a hidden treasure, a video by Billie Lauder herself. Billie passed in 2018, and sadly, her website and most of her videos have vanished into the abyss. After a rabbit hole expedition, I unearthed four of her videos on YouTube, but they were not worth watching.  Then, like a quilting miracle, I found the one I remembered best, the Ultimate Scrappy Four Patch.  It too will be helpful in making my quilt block.  This technique is in one of my Billie books. Watching her video brought a big smile to my face. She's absolutely giddy about four patches! The video is embedded in a Quilted Hugs blog post, so you'll need to visit the blog to watch it. I snapped a screenshot for the image below.  Head over to the blog post, click the video, and don't forget you can make it full screen by hitting the square in the corner. Happy watching!

See you in a day or two for the sewing room update!

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No Quilting For Me

 A huge shoutout to everyone who noticed my vanishing act! It warms my heart to know you’ve been missing the weekly quilty updates. I had grand plans to check in nearly every day these past weeks, but by the time the day ended, I was too pooped to do anything but kick back and chill. Sewing progress? Virtually nonexistent. The last thing I managed to sew was on September 19th.can you believe it? Wow!

Every day, I promise myself I'll get out there, sew a few blocks, or cut fabric for my Yo-Yo quilt, but by the time the day is over, that motivation has packed its bags and left town.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Painting, unfortunately, not the masterpiece kind, but the kind everyone dreads and procrastinates on. We (a.k.a. me, myself, and I) decided it was time to paint the laundry room, kitchen, living room, and sewing studio.   All rooms will be painted the same colors.  Antique white for the walls and White Cotton for the trim.

And as always, painting is never just painting, it’s a scavenger hunt for things that need fixing or upgrading. What started as a two-week painting adventure has now transformed into an epic saga stretching well into the unforeseeable future.  HAHA!  One of upgrades/fixes is this window into the kitchen that is in corner of my sewing room.  We think my sewing room was a carport at one time.  The floor was concrete before Mr. Podunk added the ceramic tile.  The rest of the house has a crawl space an the typical plywood subfloors.

My sweety is a Mr. Fix-it.  There's almost nothing he can't fix.

However he's not real handy with caulk or drywall mud. What you see below is my work after he "tried" his best.

The walls in the sewing room are textured.  Neither of us like it but making the walls smooth is a DIY nightmare we would like to avoid.

All of the fabric has been moved to the spare bedroom.  Well, all except the scrap bins and three project boxes.  My plan was to sew a little each night. LOL!  Silly girl.

The spare bedroom is a chaotic haven of fabric, bursting at the seams with so much color. I can't help but confess that I visit this room daily.  Those clear bins filled with colorful treasures make my little art heart skip a beat! 

For now, everything else from the sewing room has been stored in my fabric cabinets. When it's time to paint this space, all of it will be moved into the living room.

The sewing room has officially retired from stitching and now moonlights as a door-and-trim painting studio, doubling as a cozy storage unit for my painting supplies.

The sewing machine table has turned into a catch-all. It’s a bit disheartening, isn’t it? Stay strong, Lea Anne! They say absence makes the heart grow fonder!

So that's it, my quilting friends. How about weekly updates on the painting saga?

 

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