Scrap Happy Day in June

 It's the 15th of the month again which means it's also Scrap Happy Day, the day we share something we've made (or are making) out of scraps or repurposed somehow. 

Last month I shared the flying geese I'd been making and the quilt top that resulted. Since then I've decided to make about ten more flights of geese to make the quilt top a bit bigger. I haven't made those geese yet. I got distracted by the 2.5 inch scrap patches that have been accumulating. 

This tin measures about 9" x 11" and is 3" deep. The stacks of squares came right up to the top when I began. Generally I try to make 6" Shoo-fly or Barn Door blocks out of my patches that finish at two inches. After setting up as many of those blocks as I could this is what was left over. I'm still not sure what I'll do with the triangles. After the Double 4 Patch quilt I shared last month four patch units were on my mind. But instead of four patch blocks I chose to make 16 patch blocks.

This is what I have on the design wall at this point. You can see that they are the same size as the star blocks I also make out of scrap fabrics. 

 

This is only the beginning. I also have a stack of strips 2.5" wide from which I can cut more squares. In fact, I've been wondering what to do with those strips. Some version of Log Cabin blocks is an obvious choice but somehow I'd rather cut the strips into patches. So we'll see how much progress I make between now and Scrap Happy Day in July! 

Go have a look at what everyone else has been doing with their scrap materials by clicking on the links below. 😊

Kate, Eva, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Tracy, Jan, 
Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Viv, Karrin,  Alissa,
Hannah and Maggie

 

It's Time for Teal

Teal is the color used for the Trudy Crowley Ovarian Cancer Foundation in Australia. For the last twelve years Kate at talltalesfromchiconia (and our hostess for Scrap Happy Day each month) has been assembling a quilt to be raffled off to raise funds for this organization. She always comes up with a pun for the title of the quilts. This year the quilt is called Tealing All Our Stories. To illustrate that theme she asked for contributions of bookshelf blocks. 

I've made blocks for several of Kate's ovarian cancer quilts and have always been happy to do so. This year was more of a challenge for me. I've never made a bookshelf block. To an experienced quilt maker it shouldn't appear all that difficult. Mostly the books are spines represented by strips of different prints. However, I found this year's brief intimidating. I wandered around online - mostly on Pinterest - to see what other makers had created. For those who applique or paper piece there are a lot of really cool things you can add to your bookshelf. That didn't necessarily help mitigate my intimidation! 

I committed to making two blocks for Kate. I began with something I'm familiar with and that I thought would lighten up a bookshelf: a cat.  

 I was able to fussy-cut the word Friends out of one print to use as a title on one spine. The word London was already on the fabric I cut that spine from. (I did not do a good job photographing these blocks.)

One of the things I like to do with the prints I buy is to fuss-cut bits out of them for specific purposes. In this case, I used portions of prints as the whole spine.

 Kate said she would add titles (names of the makers or people they would like to dedicate their blocks to) on some of the books so I left a couple of blank spaces for that on two of these books. 

Now that I was in the appropriate mindset I decided to try for a couple more blocks. I found a small panel - the interior of each block is only ten inches square - that I thought could either be a framed sign in the shelf or even the very tin standing on it's side on top of a couple of books.

 

 

One final block involved appliqueing labels onto the spines, just to prove I could do it.

 The idea was to use a dark teal for the back of our shelves and as much teal as we could manage for the books. Every block is framed in cream so the quilt top will look something like this (only much better!):

 I encourage you to hop over to Kate's blog to see some of the other blocks she has made or received pictures of so far. They are impressive. 😊