Hello Yellow

Lots going on in the sewing room these days. Five active projects and I'm about to start another one. I'll be joining Pat Sloan for a Quilt-A-Long over the next 9 weeks. This will be an adventure for me as it will be my first ever QAL. I'm mostly using stash fabric though I had to hit the LQS for some background fabric and a couple additional pieces. Most of the fabric I'll be using is stuff I bought because I loved it though I had no plan in mind for it. Some of it I've been hanging onto for many years. Time to use it! I just hope I like the blocks as much as I love the fabric. This project starts on Wednesday, if you want to join you can click Pat Sloan QAL to find the project on Pat's page. 

I'm also continuing to quilt the large Magic Stars quilt and to piece the small version of the same quilt with the fabric left over from the large one. I'm using the small version as a leader/ender project and making very good progress on it. I'm at the point where I need to do some cutting on it and then can go on with more piecing. I'm nearly finished quilting the large version, but have decided that because it is so heavy and hurts my arm and shoulder if I work on it for too long that I can expand my focus and work on other projects too. I usually tend to focus on one project at a time but this quilt is curing me of that. There have however always been occasional squirrels that get me off track from my focus project. That happened last weekend.

SQUIRREL! I'm so glad I decided to chase this squirrel. It did not confine itself to the sewing room either, but ran across the house to the bedroom where I have one of Flo's collages on the wall. I decided I wanted a little quilt on top of the bookshelf that's under the collage. So I spent quite a bit of time dragging various fabric scraps into the bedroom to see how they worked color wise with the collage. Sadly a couple of my first choices didn't work out, and I only realized it after making about 40 HSTs that I just couldn't use. Squirrels can be finicky. So more chasing the little critter from sewing room to bedroom and back. It took a few days but I caught the little thing and am so happy I did. It won't get quilted until I'm done with the Magic Stars quilt but it's a good motivator to keep me going on that project so I can finish this one. 

Hello Yellow! I've also wanted for some time to try my hand at doing a string quilt. I chose pink and yellow for this project and think I have plenty enough scraps to make a fair size quilt. I also have lots of leftover white curtain lining that I used to cover the boards of my design wall. I've cut those into 5.5" squares and am using them as the base for the blocks. I'm doing 4 or 5 blocks each morning before I get into my other projects. I wasn't sure I was going to like it, but I think I really do, it's coming along nicely. It's using up a good bit of my pink scraps, not so much of the yellow as I'm only using yellow in the center. 

It's also gotten me to minimize my actual working space to just the small corner around my sewing desk. I used to work like this when I only had a corner of the living room to sew in, but got away from the practice as I got more space to work in. Having everything right next to me, including my ironing board, is much more efficient. I have some of the tables from Flo's studio in my sewing room and use two of them together as a large pressing table - wonderful for ironing yardage after washing it. I use another two together for my cutting table and that works well too because there is space to spread out. But at the moment when I'm still in the midst of quilting a large quilt I have the tables in a different arrangement and have my pressing mat hanging on the back of the sewing room door. I have a small cutting mat right on my sewing desk and my box of scrap fabrics right behind me on the floor. My rotary cutter, rulers, and scrap basket are right at hand too. I can press fabrics that need it before adding them to the block, press after each addition to the block, and trim the block right there as soon as it's done. My design wall is right behind me so I can put each block up as I finish without having to leave my little corner. It's saving me lots of time. 

A second row of nine patch stars is another current project. These blocks are all scrappy as were those in the first row. This time I have an orange center block and yellow blocks on either side of the center,  and I've switched the teal and green blocks to opposite ends from the first row. These star blocks were also a Pat Sloan QAL but I didn't know about it when she was doing it. I saw the nearly complete top done on her design wall and thought the blocks were just so cute I wanted to try them. I followed her link to another blog for the pattern, and then found later that she had done a tutorial on her own blog as part of her QAL for the project. Think I will link up my project to her space when it's finished even though her QAL was designed to get folks to do a larger quilt. 

Here is the layout for the nine patch centers for each block. Once I've made up my mind about the layout of the pieces in each block I take a picture of them. I rely on the photos to help me keep things in the order I've chosen. If I didn't have them I'd get lost as soon as I started stitching. I do the same thing with each step in the piecing process. 

I've also started a project outside the sewing room. I am crocheting a lap blanket for a new chair we got for the living room last year. I have a number of red accents in the living room so think that a red and gray blanket will work well on that chair even though its fabric colors are somewhat different from that. It's a simple zig zag pattern of single crochet stitches. That's about my speed with crochet. I just want something simple to do while I'm resting between sewing projects and household duties during the day. I've begun with the gray and am ready to add in the red at this point but won't be working on that for a while yet. The cat painting on the wall is one of my favorites of Flo's. It's of Pepper who was Dan's dad's cat, a very big and very sweet boy. 

I'm linking up with Angela at So Scrappy for the 2020 RSC - have actually used a lot of YELLOW scraps this week. 😊 I'm also linking up with Judy of Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday,  with Cynthia at Quilting is More Fun than Housework for Oh, Scrap, Beth at Love, Laugh, Quilt for Monday Making, and Kathy at Kathy's Quilts for Slow Sunday Stitching.

I hope your weekend is good and that you get to sew! 

Stay safe and be well.