We had a charity Sew Day on 4/2. Often Peggy will provide a pattern, but this time the activity centered around orphan blocks and chunks.
April 2022 Sew Day Design Wall
Maria had been collecting orphan blocks and chunks for awhile. The first thing she did when she arrived was start pinning them to the design wall.
Maria put up a random assortment of blocks and chunks and people took what they wanted and worked on donation tops.
As mentioned, I didn’t really want to do the activity, but others got right into it. Since I made the Missouri Star donation top and brought it, I didn’t feel guilty about it. Nobody said anything to me either.
Sew Day Donation Top in process
After I finished cutting out the Friesan Pouch, I ended up working on a quilt with Mary C and found that it was a fun activity. I prefer to do these types of quilts with someone else.
I decided I needed to get this one finished. All the projects left on my design walls when I put them away were a lot less interesting when I saw them again. I didn’t want to toss them, but I did want them finished.
I started it last year sometime. The first time I talked about it was July, which was right before we dismantled my workroom. I was concerned at that time that I wouldn’t have enough scraps to make a decent sized baby quilt. It’s still a concern as I am piecing tiny scraps together and expect to have no yellow scraps left.
I spent time over the weekend making good progress.
I took some of the made fabric I had assembled for the Yellow Improv donation quilt and made a journal cover.
I felt like I was taking away from the donation quilt, but I’ll be needing a new journal cover soon, so needs must. I figure I have a lot of scraps, so more donation quilts are on the agenda.
This one turned out to be just a smidge small, so I had to stretch it to get it on the journal (Miquelrius 6.5 in. x 8 in**).
Yellow Journal Cover – front and back
I kind of used what I had rather than arranged the scraps because I didn’t think of using the pieces I was working on for a journal cover until I had already made most of the pieces.
I still have quite a few equilateral triangles from the Flower Sugar Hexagon quilt I made a long time ago. I am trying to use them up, but there seems to be a never-ending supply.
Yellow Journal Cover – inside front cover
I am not very enamored with the inside. That corn fabric doesn’t look great outside of the Food quilts. At least it reminds me of the three food quilts I made and the people who received them.
As I may have mentioned, I have stopped adding fabric to the inside and just let the flannel be the other side of the cover. It makes the project go more quickly and makes the cover flatter. Of course, it doesn’t use as much fabric.
Yellow Journal Cover – inside back cover
I think I have one more Miquelrius journal to use after this one, then I will switch completely to the Leuchtturm journals.
**I use affiliate links and may be paid for your purchase of an item when you click on an item link in my post. There is no additional cost to you for clicking or purchasing items I recommend. I appreciate your clicks and purchases as it helps support this blog.
I am still tidying up after all the work in my workroom. One of the things I found was a piece of ‘made’ fabric (improv piecing) that was just the right size for a journal cover. I sat down and made one!
I am still not completely up and running, so it was good to make something that involved, at least, a little piecing.
I just used flannel for the inside. I didn’t add an inside cover. I did that once before and it seems to work fine.
I continue to work on the Yellow Improv. As I work on other projects, I sew bits and pieces together. The piece is almost 20 inches square now. Not big enough yet, but getting there.
Slowly but surely this piece is growing. The top section, which I think of as the main piece, is about 20×20 now. I am working on growing the bottom piece to fit on to the top piece. At the moment the bottom piece is made up of 3 different pieces.
I find that I need triangles in these pieces to add interest. The additional, non-yellow, colors add interest, but I find that if I have too many squares and rectangles the eye doesn’t move around as much. In this piece, however, there isn’t much contrast and that helps the eye not linger on the squares and rectangles.
I learned this from the Green Thing, the first top in this series. Those bars, which aren’t even really green, provide a focal point, but I find that the focal point takes away from the rest of the quilt. Good thing I’ll have enough green scraps to make another!
I don’t think this is my best work. there are a lot of disparate elements. Somehow it works. It kind of looks like buildings surrounding a park to me.
I struggled with this piece, because of the green and orange. I don’t sincerely dislike green, but I don’t make it a main color in any of my quilts except the Improv Color quilts. I also like orange, but somehow this was a struggle on which to work.
Tim’s Improv Donation Back
The back went relatively fast. I took both pieces to Sew Day and gave them to Peggy and the team for quilting.
I am working hard on my Yellow Improv donation top. I am trying to use smaller pieces so I use up ALL of my yellow scraps. It isn’t working 100% of the time, but I’ll keep trying. Perhaps my default will be to make this top as big as the scraps I have?
Over the weekend, I finished the Yellow Strip Donation Top (and back and binding). This is another in my Color Strip Donation series.
I did sort of rush this along, but I was piecing like mad on Scrap Dash, so I couldn’t help it, really.
I had to put Scrap Dash on the back burner briefly to add borders, make a back and a binding.
Since I put on very plain borders so the quilting would show up, I decided the quilt needed a dark binding. I made a gold binding.
Yellow Strip Donation Quilt Back
I am pleased with the back. I didn’t have to piece too much and I got to use up some prints that have been around for awhile.
I don’t use tons of yellow, so these prints have been around awhile. I think they are good choices: fresh and upbeat. I suppose this quilt could be for a boy, but perhaps not with the flowery back.
Since I was zipping along with Scrap Dash, I was also zipping along with the Yellow Strip donation top. Leaders and enders really works.
I decided to use some text prints as the sashing. I had some scraps that were about the right size, so I used as many as I could find in the white drawer and then cut some from fabrics I have bought recently. The quilt is really coming together and I am pleased with how sunshiney it looks.
I am on the fence about how this quilt is looking. I don’t have the exact colors that Tim used, so I am using what I have. I don’t know if it is working.
Improv Checkerboard
When I talked about this quilt before, I had finished sewing the parts Tim gave me to the piece and had just added a strip of my own.
I made this improv checkerboard to add to the sides as the first piece that was all my own. It was kind of fun to play around with different sized strips. The green, however is a little more chartreuse than Tim used. While I like the shape, I am concerned about the colors and how they fit in with what went before.
I plan to put part of the checkerboard on another side perpendicular to the checkerboard I already sewed to the top.
Tim’s Improv Quilt with checkerboard
I don’t think it looks terrible and that might be good enough for a donation quilt. I don’t mean that it is ugly so it is only good enough for a donation quilt, but that it is not too ugly to give as a donation quilt.
I really don’t nee to make it much bigger, but I want it to have a relatively cohesive design without me spending 50 hours on it.
I am continuing to work on the yellow donation blocks. I talked about making another batch a few days ago. I have more progress to show you today.
They look better on my design wall than they do on the photo. Oh well.
I made one with a strip going vertically, because I had two leftover pieces that weren’t wide enough to make a block with horizontal strips. For this version, I am really trying to make all the strips oriented on the horizontal. I have a lot of small pieces of yellow, so I don’t know if it will work. I’ll make as many blocks as I can with horizontal strips, then I will start putting more chucks together into blocks.
Tim made part of a top in a Sherri Lynn Wood class. He didn’t want it hanging around anymore because he didn’t like the class and didn’t think he would finish it. I offered to finish it into a donation top for the guild and get it out of his life.
I sewed a strip Tim gave me to the right of the quilt (the strip with 4 patches). I looked for fabric that would match, but I couldn’t find anything really similar. I chose a more reddish orange and am adding various bits to the piece.
Tim showed me the start of his baby quilt. He is making it loosely based on the Give & Take Quilt by Tara Faughnan. (You’ll have to do a search as there is no good way to link out to her site for a photo). I love his colors much more than in the original.
The blocks that look yellow are actually more of a chartreuse (icky green), which is one of Tim’s go to colors.
He is figuring out how to put this together as he goes along, which I applaud. I told him to tell me if he needed help, which may have been too smug as he is a very competent piecer.
