Happy Birthday

Today is my sister's birthday. Here is a picture of us dressed up for a reason that I don't remember. At first, you might think it is sweet that we are holding hands...but you should look closer to see that my sister is firmly holding my wrist. To be fair, she may have been trying to protect her dress from whatever sticky mess I might have had on my hand. Or maybe I kept running away. 

Meanwhile, I made no noteworthy progress with quilting except for getting revved up for Project Quilting which began today. (This is the quilt version of Project Runway). The last time I attempted this, I started quilts that I had no hope of finishing within the one week timeframe. Given that there are typically no size constraints, my defeat was due to serious conceptual flaws. If you are interested, here is the link that explains the challenge: https://kimlapacek.com/project-quilting. And here is the link to the first challenge: https://kimlapacek.com/2022/01/13-1-all-the-colors-challenge-1-of-project-quilting-season-13.html.

Seeing Red

 The Rainbow Scrappy Challenge is starting the new year with red scraps. And I am starting the year without a plan. Then I made a decision to make bowties...but what size. How about 3 inches finished? But larger scale fabrics like more room to show off...so how about 4 inches finished? How about both?

Cutting 2.5 inch squares will make the 4 inch finished bowties. They also need 1.5 inch squares for the tie part. I estimate I need roughly twenty 4 inch bowties and forty 3 inch bowties. Excellent. There is not better way to start the new year than setting oneself up for failure.

I have the 40 small bowties cut and have finished seventeen. 

And if you are wondering about the microspools, they are being sewn in pairs. In quilting parlance, this is the terrible twos.

Shards Up Against the Wall

The clown blocks are all set up next to the sewing machine to be sewn in pairs. This left the design wall open for the Shards quilt. If you want to see Kaffe Fassett's Shards quilt, you can find it in "Quilts in an English Village." Also, given the quilt is available as a kit, you can easily find it with your favorite search engine. Or you can watch this Free Spirit video of Kaffe presenting the quilts from the book. The Shards quilt is presented at 30:15. 

I'm seeing that when I made blocks using favorite fabrics, I matched fabrics too closely so that they don't have enough contrast. I've already decided to make ten more blocks...and if they have more contrast maybe I can still capture the shimmering look. And given I like making these blocks so much, I could always make two quilts.

Meanwhile, Buddy is hoping that everyone's new year's resolution will be giving up fireworks.

Shard Ending

 Before I began the Clown quilt, I had cut lots of 2.5 inch strips to make the hourglass blocks for this variation of Kaffe Fassett's shards quilt. I was sewing these as I was sewing the clown quilt. Not as organized as leaders and enders. More like two commingled piles.

At this point, I almost have enough blocks for the whole quilt. I want to get it up on the design wall to see how well the various blocks blend together. This will also help me decide what size to make it.

Okay, some of the Shards blocks may have gotten Clown Cooties.

And speaking of clowns...I had to drape Buddy's favorite "Mouse on a Wand" toy over my forehead to get him to look up. 

Clown Convention

 Here are all the blocks completed for the Clown Kaleidoscope. When putting the blocks up on the design wall, I had one rule...no color repeats where the corners meet. Now I have to go back and rearrange the blocks for balance. I can also see that during construction, I began by favoring yellow, then favored pink and red, then finally green. 

And what more could a kitten (here referring to a diva cat with pretensions) want... Last night there was a hummingbird in torpor sitting on the feeder. And no, I did not bring it inside to make Molly and Buddy's dream come true. 

A Holiday Kaleidoscope

Just in case you needed some clown colors to add a bit more merry to your holidays. I am just starting to add the corner triangles to each block.

I do have all the octagons finished and up on the design wall. 

Meanwhile, Molly is working on my list of resolutions for the New Year. As you can tell, it promises to be a very long list.

Hourglass Frenzy

Here are the four latest shard blocks where each block has 16 hourglass units. In my Oct. 11, 2021 post, I show how I make them four at a time from strips and four patches. For this block, I just use two fabrics. But if I vary the four patches, I can make the hourglasses so that each fabric in the unit is different.

And please forgive this photo. Although I am getting better at adjusting the photos in Affinity Photo, there is a huge disparity of how the photo looks within the program and how it is showing up here...in the blogger editing program. Guess I should first check to see how it looks elsewhere on different devices.

And in the Dec. 9, 2021 post, I showed what size strips I need to cut in order to make a particular size hourglass. I was mostly looking at larger sizes, and decided to add some smaller size hourglass blocks. For homework, I will let you show what happens when you use 1 inch strips. (Warning: these reflect how I cut and sew, so your mileage may differ.)

Oh, and here are the hourglass units I made for Part 4 of Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt. As a reminder, I am making an opposite quilt where I use secondary colors instead of primary colors. Where Bonnie calls for neutrals, I am using black and where she is using pink, I am using medium purple. For garnet (dark pink), I am using light purple.