Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Dark Chocolates

This week went fast, there was a lot going on.  Tuesday night was the end of the year volleyball banquet.  Thursday night was last minute shopping for Drama Teen's entry into the Trunk or Treat competition at her old school. The school has a Fun Night, basically a school wide Halloween party, every year as a fundraiser.  DT wanted to be a witch, but after we raided closets that became a gypsy witch because we couldn't come up with a black dress.  The black cloak she's wearing is from one of my Halloween costumes when I was in high school.  I guess that makes it "vintage" clothing? 

Last night was spent getting DT ready for the Trunk or Treat, which after all the effort spent on decorating the car, got moved inside because of the rain.  After  DT sped off to Fun Night, I spent the rest of the evening finishing up a report for work.  Now it's on my boss's electronic desk top and I'm done with the heavy lifting part of the project.  I promised myself a couple of days off work once I finished up that project.  The plan at the moment is to take a long weekend next week as I now have a new project that kicks off the beginning of next week.  

Add in the one evening spent recovering from a blinding headache, and I didn't get much stitching done this week.  So all I have to show for this week's Rainbow Scrap Challenge post is the completion of only one more Twinkle Star.  

Twinkle Stars, Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

I always thought brown was a dreary color, but these deep browns come off as rich rather than drab.  I really like these two Twinkle Stars.  The remaining 4 brown blocks are cut out and are sitting at the sewing machine in various stages of assembly.  It will be next week before the all make it to the design wall.  

All the green scraps went into the Twinkle Stars back in May.  Any lime green got used then.  So I'm going to take a departure from Angela's color plan and spend November with my red violet scraps.  Those will definitely make some bright blocks!  

For more rainbow scrappy goodness, check out Soscrappy.  

Weekend Stitching - Lots of Progress, But It Doesn't Show

It was actually a pretty productive weekend in the sewing room.  But it's the kind of productively that doesn't show up on the design wall.  Back to Square One and it's back are all prepped, pressed, packaged and read to mail to Trudy for quilting.  That doesn't make for a very exciting picture though.  Once that was done, I squared up the Layer Cake Quilt Along quilt and made the label for it.  Next step is to make the binding for it.  Hopefully it will be finished by next weekend.  

There was a one change on the design wall this weekend.  

Wonky Star Block:  QOV Block Drive sponsored by Alycia Quilts (tutorial is here) 

Another two Wonky Stars for Alycia's QOV block drive have joined the constellation that's up on the design wall.  I'm hoping to make another 4 blocks by the end of the week for a total of 10.   

You can see more project progress over at:

Design Board Monday
Main Crush Monday
Monday Design Wall
Monday Making

Stash Report - Week 43 of 2015

There was a package waiting for me when we got home from work last Friday.  My Guy asked me which quilt had I ordered more fabric for.  But as I told him, all the fabric I'd ordered had arrived.  Turns out it was from my sister, who dearly loves the Halloween season.  

My Guy said that I must be the good sister (Is there any wonder why I married the man?).  Alas, there were a number of times growing up where I was the evil sister.  Mom's favorite story dates from my 5th year when I cut off what little hair my sister had.  What can I say, I had a thing for scissors even at that young age.  But there were a few times during our teenage years where it seemed my usually dear sister was channeling Linda Blair from the Exorcist.  Thankfully, she grew out of that stage.  We don't get together often these days, but we have a good time when we do. 

There was a reason why My Guy thought the package was fabric. There have been a few packages showing up the last couple of weeks.  The last which arrived on Monday contained one yard cuts for the Zombies in Paris quilt. 

I wasn't sure the one Paris fabric we'd picked was going to work with the zombie fabric.  I'm not sure these two are going to work either, though after discussing it with DT, the map of Paris is likely to end up on the back.  The other two fabrics I ordered are more likely to end up in the final quilt. 

I need to scan the fabrics and then load them into EQ so I can play with layouts and such. If I use the two black background prints, I'm thinking the colors will be black, grey, pink and white.  That is if we end up sticking with the pattern we've already selected.  

So how did the stash fare after the most recent additions?  Here's the damage:

Used last week:  0.53 yards
Used in October:  8.70 yards
Used year to date:  38.68 yards
Purchased year to date:  24.25 yards
Net used for 2015:  14.43 yards

I'm still in the black, which was my goal for this year.  I've bought less than 25 yards of fabric, which is by far the least I've added to the stash the 5 years I've been keeping records.  So it's still a good year on the stash management front.  Maybe I haven't used a whole lot, but I've not added a bunch either.  

That's it for my stash report.  You can see others over at Patchwork Times.  

Rainbow Scrap Challenge - Finally A Brown Block

It was a rough week and I'm so glad the weekend is finally here.  It's a bit dreary and cool here, perfect sleeping in weather, so I did.  There's nothing pressing this weekend, so I'm considering just taking a day to stitch for a change, rather than be the responsible working mom that cleans the bathrooms on the weekend.  I've not had a sewing day in what feels like forever.  

The new evening routine is starting to pay off and there's been good progress in the sewing room.  The September Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks are finally finished and there's actually a brown one up on the design wall.  

 Twinkle Stars, Tutorial by Andrea Feldbush of Soscrappy

These dark chocolate browns are so rich.  I used to think that brown was a dull color and didn't have a place in a rainbow quilt. Now I know better.  

Here's the all of September's blocks.  

My two favorites are the blocks with the teal and the black star points.  There's a project up on the design wall at the moment or I'd have the whole set of blocks up there.  I'm looking forward to seeing this one come together.  

Just one more week in November.  Hopefully all the brown blocks will get done this week so I can move on to November's color next Sunday.  Linking up with Soscrappy.  Tak a few minutes to check out all the fun going on over there.   

Bloggers Quilt Festival Fall 2015 - An RSC Quilt for the ROYGBIV Category

The temps have cooled down and Quilt Market is coming up so it's time again for the autumn Bloggers Quilt Festival hosted by Amy of Amy's Creative Side.  

My entry for the ROYGBIV category this time around is the quilt that's featured in the header.  It's my first finish from playing along with Angela's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Last year she decided to offer a scrappy sampler project as part of the challenge.  The sampler blocks used up lots of scraps so it wasn't hard to justify starting another project.  

The blocks were constructed using Angela's tutorials, but the final setting was up to me.  The black sashing really made the color in the blocks pop,  but a solid black border seemed a bit bland.  After a bit of searching for some inspiration, the idea to add the chevron blocks to the corners was found in Sunny Steinkuhler's book on "Blocks, Borders, Quilts!"  

The color progression in the chevrons is the same as the color progression across the quilt.  The 4 strips added enough color to perk up those bland borders.  

Trudy Lindemann did a wonderful job with the quilting.  She matched the thread color to the block colors and used black in the borders.

Drama Teen wanted something swirly for the quilting and Trudy nailed it.  

Deciding on a color for the binding wasn't going real well. It was hard to pick just one color.  Then I found some yardage left over from backing Drama Teen's first rainbow quilt.  

The rainbow stripe really framed the black while echoing the colors in the blocks.  

Before I could finish adding the binding, the quilt needed a name. Naming quilts is always hard for me and this quilt was no exception.  Drama Teen came to the rescue, she'd just finished a lab in chemistry where they used a flame to identify substances by their color.  You can get just about every color in the rainbow from burning the various elements in the periodic table.  So the name Flame Test seemed appropriate.  I had a lot of fun with the label.  

When I finished photographing the quilt, Drama Teen immediately whisked it away to be her couch quilt.  As you can see in the header picture, Flame Test is already in use and well loved. I've already been informed that it's going to college with her.  

I'm looking forward to checking out all of this year's entries. The rainbow quilts can be found here, while the main festival post is here.   There really is something for everyone.  Thanks for checking out my entry.