Whatever Wednesday

Here's my Wednesday report on random projects:

This crumb quilt is nearly ready for quilting. It's a baby quilt for a friend. It needs a border, and the backing needs a patchwork insert to bring it up to size. I'm planning on black-and-white striped binding.

 

All 32 of my 25-patch blocks are ready, and all 31 of my neutral "made fabric" (a.k.a. "scrap vortex") blocks are ready. I'm starting to assemble them! It should make a twin-size quilt.

  

 

The Pumpkins quilt top is done -- I love the look of it with the borders on! Next up, I need to tweak the backing so it's the right size, and then ... quilting!

  

In knitting news, I realized I haven't yet posted a picture of the finished purple socks.

 And, since early May, I've been working on a new pair of socks.

And, in the "whatever" category, I've been trying to add some color to my flowerbeds, so these clearance items from Lowe's should help!

  

I'm linking this post to this week's Whatever Wednesday at Jo's Country Junction.

Whatever Wednesday ... on Thursday ... Whatever!

One of my favorite blogs has a link party to report progress on projects. It used to be just for quilts ("UFO Challenge"); now it's for whatever sorts of projects are in progress ("Whatever Wednesday"). The link party is a great reminder to keep little bits of progress happening!!

I'm late posting, since it's no longer Wednesday, but here goes:

I've been trying to finish some quilting projects. This is good, because I'm constantly brainstorming new ways to use up fabric scraps (read: I'm constantly starting new projects!).

This week, I finally finished quilting the 1008 Squares quilt. 

I even cut binding for it yesterday, and put the binding on today! 

 

I started this one a long time ago. 

I blogged about starting it over three years ago. 

It quickly progressed to being a quilt top. 

More recently, it finally got borders. 

And, and it feels good to be getting it done. I'm loving the striped binding!

Also, in the past few days, I finished assembling the pumpkins part of the Pumpkins quilt top.

(The Pumpkins quilt was previously blogged here and  here.) The first border is on. Next up: the patchwork border! 

To make this a reversible quilt, my super-scrappy rendition of "Connect Four" (blogged here) is ready to be the quilt back. It still needs a plain border to bring it up to size. 

And, in my neverending quest to sew up some of my fabric, I started some 25-patches in muted colors. Lots of little squares!

 

So, that's my quick rundown of (some of) what I've been working on.

I'm linking this post to this week's "Whatever Wednesday" at Jo's Country Junction. 

UFO Challenge

I'm working to finish some projects, so this started happening last weekend: 

Quilting on the Hopscotch Butterscotch quilt ... I made the pieced back for it last week.

In the interest of full disclosure, some of this happened, too! Oops.

In other news, I'm working on the back for my pumpkins quilt. 

I had sewn a little a few weeks ago, working lots of scraps (and leftovers from another project -- see the end of this post) into my plan.

Got that quilt back done!

(Inspiration: "Connect Four" quilt pattern from the book "Country Girl Modern" by Jo Kramer and Kelli Hanken ... I changed it up a lot, to use the scraps and sizes I have, but the concept is similar, and their design was my inspiration for this one.)

As I work on my UnFinished Objects, it's a great help to have a weekly link party as a check-in -- it keeps me motivated to have something to share, and it's fun to see what other quilters are working on.

My post is a little late (meant to post on Wednesday), but I'm linking it anyway -- to this week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction.

UFO Progress this week

This past weekend, I made some progress on another elaborate quilt back. Lately, in an effort to use what I have instead of buying more, I've been coming up with some really fun quilt backs.

Actually, by piecing a quilt front AND piecing a quilt back: both will be interesting, and both will use LOTS of scraps!

So, here's what's going on with this one. I've been needing fabric for a back to my pumpkins quilt. My favorite thrift store has recently had a "Free" box outside in front of the store. Occasionally, there's free FABRIC in that box, which is pretty awesome.

When this plain brown fabric was there for free (5 yards!?), I was delighted. Even though I thought of having a plain, solid brown quilt back, that felt boring. Besides, I've got lots of scraps.

ALSO - I've been wanting to try a quilt from this book: Country Girl Modern (written by Jo and Kelli from Jo's Country Junction!) ... See the quilt in the upper-right hand corner of the book cover? That one.

The quilt design is called Connect Four. Since I needed big blocks with small scraps, I changed up the size/construction of the blocks to work with the scrappy pieces I mentioned at the end of this post. Similar idea to Jo's design, though, and it's my inspiration. 

In other news, I'm making progress on the latest sock-knitting!

So, that's my UFO report for the week. I'm linking this post to the weekly UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction.

Background work

Often, when I have a few minutes to sew, I can either stitch, or cut out fabric, but not both.

Thursday, I stitched ... Lots of "crumbs" foundation-pieced onto skinny paper tape (like these ones I made).

I also stitched some pink and white T-Shirt squares ... Made most of the "twosies" into four-patches.

Friday I cut backgrounds ... for the pumpkin quilt and for the crumb quilts.

The pumpkins ...

So, I've got about 50 of these pumpkins started ... All the orange is done.

I'm working on background now. 

I've got backgrounds on a dozen or twenty pumpkins so far.

So far, so good!

Pumpkins!

Because I really have a lot of fabric, I started another project! (Shocking, I know!)

I loved the pumpkins quilt that Jo's Country Junction recently posted about, based on a Bonnie Hunter pattern. I don't have the pattern, but I love the idea, and it seems simple enough. The quilt quickly went on my mental list to make someday. (It also went on my {huge} Pinterest list of Quilt & Sewing ideas -- see this Pin!)

Without pressure to worry about whether I finish this this fall or next fall, I got started on some string pieces. I'm foundation-piecing big strings onto paper that's cut at 8.5" x 7". My blocks will be bigger than the pattern, but that's a good thing. 

I cut my scraps into usable strings that are a variety of widths. So far, I'm liking the variety, and it's fun to see, with scrap projects, how different each piece turns out.

 

I've got quite a few orange scraps to use; we'll see how long the variety holds out. The first day I worked on them, I got 9 pumpkin sections done; the next time, I added 18 more. 

I'm not sure how many blocks I'll make; the pattern had 49 small blocks (+ borders) for a lap-size quilt. If I do 49 big blocks, I may have nearly a twin-size, which is nice. But I'll probably just see how long my orange scraps hold out, and let that guide my number-of-blocks.

I have no definite plans for a background fabric. So. We shall see. It's a fun start!