RSC Orange and an update

Haven't been up to much lately

We took a vacation to visit family for the first time since the plague.

A cross country road trip from Washington to Colorado to LaCrosse and wandered slowly back, through S.Dakta and Montana looking at stuff we usually would have blown past going home.

Gotta say, I'm loving the Hyundai Ionic hybrid we bought back in January of '19. It handled hills, and 106* heat in South Dakota & Montana, like a champ! Paying $340 in gas for the entire round trip

doesn't suck either!

Home is always good to get back to.

Augusts RSC color was orange I got a lot done before we left 

I wasn't able to post them before we left 

After we got back there is the inevitable post-trip tidying that needs to be done

But here we are finally back to a semblance of normal before 

Family stuff takes over between now and October

I got nothing done for September so 

maybe I'll get a double helping done but later

I need to get some chores done first.

I found pictures of this poor old thing when it was new

I really need to make a new one! 

That said this one has had 12 years of hard use.

It's crossed the continent more than once and gone international as well so  

It may be lumpy and worn

and not the best construction but

Boy! Has it held up!

Fooling around with watercolors

there is a lot of doodling one must do 

with watercolor paints to get them to work right

There is also a lot of brushwork 

and water distribution

It's that last part that has been giving me the most trouble

to little and the paint skitters over the paper

 leaving skid marks and empty spots

To much and it leaves puddles of color in odd places

that pool and dry with hard edges

to much water will also thin out the pigment 

to almost invisibility 

in an already transparent medium

Then there is the paper itself to worry about

mixed media paper is good to practice brush strokes

and color mixology, which is completely different than color theory 

and your initial water retention on

 

but not good enough for actual pictures

because the paper will suck the water right out of your brush  till it gets pilly and weird

and any attempt at finesse will go right out the window

the leaning curve between too much water and not enough is

proving difficult 

But rewarding

and it tickles my colorbone

I will leave you with a cat 

or two

RSC Purple birds and geese

2 " Hst

I make my baby HST's with the left over  corners of the larger HST's from  the Birds 

as you can see there are a lot of them

I have found the easiest way to get them is 

after you sew the seam for the birds down the center of your square is to take another seam 1/4" toward one corner to get the smaller HST

All the bird hst squares end up being 2" 

from an original square of 2 1/2"

and the leftover hst's are 1 1/2" or so

sizes will vary depending on your level of OCD ;)

And here are some gees to round off what I have so far in the purples spools are to come later today maybe, I was busy the first half of this month with some friends in town visiting, doing the tourist guide thing and so forth

I will get back to stitching again 

eventually
 

Rainbow scrap challenge

 I have enjoyed the Rainbow scrap challenge from afar for the last 3(?) years or so vicariously through Cathy over at Crazy by Design  

I've even taken a stab at organizing and sewing a color-of-the-month block here and there.

I get distracted by all the other colors I have to play with, It will be a big challenge to keep to one color for a whole month. 

And who says I can't pay attention to one color for a whole month anyway?

Who says it has to be for a whole month?

To join or not to join..........

I do love a good challenge......

Rainbow quilts are so pretty....

I adore making scrap quilts anyway...

There is at least one gypsy quilt in the leftover block basket..

So what am I waiting for?

It's not like the scrap pile is getting any smaller.

So here it goes first up a few spinning spools. 

They are 4.5 x 6ish. These are nice and quick and use up just a little of the 1"-1 1/4" strips I have laying around. 

I may even shake it up and use more angular bits, after all, who's thread drawer is this neat? 

I will be making as many of these as I can stand over this year.

Its strange, I have this dearth of red in my may piles of scrap, 

I like red and thought for sure I would have had more.

Even after I made a red scrappy basket out of the little pieces!

It could be this is why I have washed out over the years

Because I have made a few scrap baskets, for my scraps in years past. 

These are great for all the little pieces you get after a big project 

and they are squishy enough you can nest them if they aren't too full, 

but boy do they chew up time in the making!

I only did one side on this one and it took a few hours of crumb catching, 

and if you are forcing yourself to sew something,

ANYTHING!

it will put one off making them for a while.

I also made some birdies with red breasts or wings or breasts and wings. 

These are fun little critters to make, but are really fiddly and have many moving parts to them.

In order for me to enjoy making them, I had to figure out a system to streamline the process, 

so I broke it down into 3 piles 

of breast and back wing, 

head and tail, 

and front wing

Then sew it together 4x4 and so on.

From there it got really simple and fun to mix and match, 

so I can make them as colorful or as tonal as I want!

As long as you have enough 2" squares to make them.....

some fresh white fat quarters were sacrificed to make these babies.

Viva la white fat quarters!