Goodbye to (dark) Green

There are only a couple more days of May so we're about done with the dark greens for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I'm looking forward to a brighter, happier color for June. Dark greens have their place but I got bored with them in a hurry. Having said that, I have quite a few blocks to share with you!

This batch is the most recent addition to the collection:

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The brighter, more medium greens in the top two blocks are more my style than the truly dark greens. It was the darks that needed to be moved out of the stash however. They've been around far too long. One of my goals in signing up for the RSC this year was to weed out more of my older prints. The Ohio Star in the lower left corner reads more green in person. It's a fun, wild print with a lot of color in it. I'm a bit sad to see it gone.

The blocks below feature some of those older greens from my stash.

I found some purple I hadn't quite used up when we were doing our purple blocks.There are still rust-color scraps to use up too (from the two rusty star tops I've made recently). There may be another whole quilt of rusty blocks eventually!

I'll be linking up with the other RSC bloggers over at SoScrappy. You should check out what the others are doing. There are a lot of fun blocks being made. :- )

Stars In My Eyes

I've got a few more green blocks for my Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

I've also managed to create border strips for the top and bottom of my African Stars flimsy. I wish I could get better pictures of my bigger tops and quilts for you. If you remember, I had this:

And now I have this:

It may be difficult to see the difference. All I did was to add 4" (finished) squares along the top and bottom to get the length I wanted for this quilt. Unfortunately you can't see the bottom at all.

Here's a close up shot of the top border:

I had to take out two patches before I could leave this project alone. One patch in the top and one in the bottom were too light. They stuck out visually like the proverbial sore thumb. It was worth the little bit of effort it took to correct that design flaw. Now all I have to do is come up with or create a backing for this top. It will be the second quilt to fulfill my commitment for the Hands2Help challenge. Whether it gets done by the deadline remains to be seen. ;- )

I'm linking up with the other RSC bloggers over at SoScrappy.

Honestly, sometimes I think if it weren't for the weekly Rainbow Scrap Challenge link parties I wouldn't be blogging at all! Between migraines knocking me down, and then sewing when I feel better, there doesn't seem to be much time (or energy!) left over for sharing my work online.

I managed to find some dark green remnants to cut up for 12" Ohio Stars this past week. After I'd cut the green patches I discovered that I really didn't want to pair most of them up with the white-on-white prints I've been using as background in my other star blocks. So I went hunting for scraps and remnants in other colors to use instead. This is what I made:

My, but those yellows are bold in the photograph! The blocks that look like they have white in them actually feature ivory toned prints. I found a few teal patches to use up too.

Here, piggy piggy!

I seem to be on a low contrast kick lately. Maybe because of the headaches. I pulled out the African print stars I'd sewn up a few weeks ago and finally made sashing strips to go between them. So this...

Became this:

All it needs now is borders to make it a bit longer. At this stage it would finish 60" wide and 72" long. I like to make my comfort quilts 60" x 80" whenever I can so even a tall person can use them. This will be one of the quilts to fulfill my commitment for Hands2Help. This top needs to be finished so it can get to the quilter and back again before the June 12 deadline (which is not as far away as it used to be!).

You can see what everyone else is doing with their scraps this month by clicking over to the link party on SoScrappy's blog.

Finishing Up Purple

I found a couple more remnants in purple to cut up and make into 12" Ohio Stars.

There are some scraps of the prints that went into the two Rusty Stars quilt tops to use up so I made a 9" Ohio Star too.

Here are the six inch blocks I made out of the smallest purple scraps:

They will go into the Parts Department for the time being. But! I came across a few other six inch blocks I'd made a long time ago that, for some reason, didn't make it into the Parts Dept.

These had been stashed with the rest of my collection of Depression-era reproduction prints. Participating in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge this year prompted to get them out and use them up.

Last Saturday I saw a Quilt in a Day episode in which Eleanor Burns demonstrates a technique for making pairs of 9 Patch blocks. I've never been a particular fan of making 9 Patch blocks. Inevitably I end up with too many of the X blocks and not enough O blocks to create a checkerboard effect. With the technique Eleanor demonstrated you're able to make one of each all in one go. Perfect! Look what I did with the purple (lavender) prints in that short stack of fabrics:

That's 20 blocks. I've made 70 blocks this week using this method. My left arm is complaining loudly but I'm thrilled to have a healthy start on a new quilt top. It will be fun to figure out how to combine the 9 Patch blocks with the other miscellaneous 6" blocks I've made up in the Depression-era prints.

I'm linking up with the other RSC players over at SoScrappy today. Now that we're in May our focus will be on green. Angela suggests dividing our green prints into dark and light groups and working with the dark greens this month. I have mixed feelings about this. There are not a lot of dark greens in my stash. The dark greens I prefer don't seem to be available currently so I'm reluctant to use up what I have. I may have to split my greens into yellow-greens vs blue greens instead of light and dark. We'll see what I turn up next Saturday in the Scrappy Saturday post!