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!

A little brown Jacobean

 I had so much fun on my first fore into jacobean embroidery 

I thought I would try again,

on something smaller this time.

I had this nice size scrap of
8" x 12" brown pulled silk in my stash

just big enough for a wall hanging or something

I'm using several different kinds of left over threads for this

the kind you have small twists of 5-6 strands of at the bottom of your basket that never get used 

because there isn't enough left of them or you got the color and it just wasn't right...

You will notice I ran out of one on that big blue heart and just used up another that "kind of" matched.

looking at this my satin stitch is still lumpy, poo!

Skelly #2 done!

Once done with all that beading I needed to decide how to mount the piece on a backing, 

so after staring at it for a day or two, decided on an oval. 

Cardboard boxes are endlessly accommodating!

I also decided to add some quick embroidery to the seams

The CQ around the edges looked really empty.

So I slapped on some simple seams in plain black size 8 DMC just enough to be there but not enough to distract from the rest

With all the busy, busy of about a bazillion black charlotte's  and all the flowers, how could you tell? 

Idunno, I just could.

I also needed to place the sre flowers and beads

I had fun with this part

All of the silk ribbon flowers are put on individually  

each one is made on single 1" bits of  light non-woven interfacing (NWI) 

I do this by placing a lager piece of NWI in a small hoop, tacking down a 1" square and sewing the individual silk ribbon flower to that 

This makes it easier for me to handle than each individual 1"sq piece free hand

You can then cut them out of the hoop and cut away or fold  the edges under and sew them down more precisely.

Here are both my Skellies together for the first time!

I will probably have this one framed eventually also

But I think she came out well.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Skelly #2 more progress

Almost There

 

I'm Theeisss close!

It might look like progress!

          

Start the music!

You know the one I mean,

the one that starts with the brass section and the drums

At 4 or so beads at a time this is going to take a while

So I'm allowed to have a sense of humor about it

Anyway I had an epiphany of sorts, while in mega circular hell

That if I didn't want to work on this thing 

because sewing one large concentric circle 

is boring as fuck. 

Not only is it boring to work on

It's boring to look at

 So................You know

Maybe, don't do that?

So here I am not doing that

Because what could be less boring than one LARGE concentric circle?

A zillion smaller ones!

Ok so maybe not a Zillion

There are like 30, 

Yes I counted. 

I'm already counting beads 4 at a time, so why not?

I'ts not going to make me any crazier..................Right?

And what do you know!

Not boring any more!

Projects in flight

 Sounds more elegant than UFO's doesn't it?

whelp skelly is moving along, 4 beads at a time. So this is going to take a while.

I put up on the long arm, for picking & pulling, The log cabin scrap quilt my maternal grandparents made 40 years ago, before my grandad died at 88, . 

I need to pull out all the old matted ties, made from that fuzzy poly ribbon we used to put in our hair in the 70's.

Pick out the shredded and patchy bits and sew in new ones, then quilt it as I go along. 

This one is fun I can see a clear delineation between my grandmothers fabric style and my mother's. they both used old cloths for the scraps so I recognize a piece of dress here and a square of shirt there. Now I get to add my own layer to it.

It's slow going on this one too but I stand to do it, so if I combine it with skelly 

where I sit for hours otherwise, I should be good. 

there's a new fancy Jacobean embroidery to outline. It's mUch smaller than the first one I did but that one turned out so well I couldn't resist starting another.

I'm on block 14 of the farmers wife, which I really should try to make one or two a day until that is done, or I will never finish it, and because sOmeone got me the other book It means I will be making a bigger piece than I expected.

The applique I started this summer on a trip to ocean shores in June, I really recommend going in the off season, we went the week before the 4th and had it all to ourselves.

4-5 quilts to bind (ungh) I hate binding but I can do it on the other machine which is not being used just now so......yeah. 

then there are the  4-5 quilts to samich and long arm, which will give me yet more binding, to let sit around for a couple of years before I get to them.

There is also a luscious pile of fabulous new cotton and linen fabric to make dresses and stuff out of. 

But first I must clean off my sewing table because I picked up a nasty leather working hobby, in the meantime and it's full of scraps of leather, tools and rivets. whew! 

I am not showing you a picture of that, everywhere else is a simple mess, that table is a disaster!

Now that I've made a list I realize, I have a VERY short attention span! 

No wonder it seems like I get nothing done.

Skelly 2

When You start a project with no clear idea of what you are going to do with it 

You tend to go back to it and wonder "What was I thinking?"

I started Skellie 2 over a year ago and got the sudden urge to work on it again.

So I set up a frame, found the parts, discovered I need more beads for it, Again.

Really looked at it 

aaand ripped a bunch of it out.

I decided to put in an actual zipper with teeth so accommodations must be made.

So now I have a plan.........

A plannie plan, to plan, a plan, planingly....

OK

I've got nothing

But I'm making progress!

It's an ellephant! Meet Ellie

right side

Here she is sewn all together, before stuffing

One thing I will do differently next time I make one of these 

Make the trunk a bit bigger 

This was almost too thin to turn

Left side

I might also pay more attention to where the ears are placed

Because they will obscure some of your stitching

Pink silk bottom

I did add a lozenge shaped panel to the bottom once she was stuffed

Don't forget to clip the corners!

top back

Over all I am quite pleased at how she turned out

Front

no pun intended

You also may want to couch down any long stitches a bit more if tyour critter of choice will be handled a lot.

That spider web might get snagged at some point

Here she is all put together with ears and everything!

Oops, she still needs a tail!

Peek-A-Boo!

I see you!

 

I made a basket OR what you can do with your extra hexies

I had these extra hexies laying around gathering dust

What to do?

Make a thing!

A useful thing!

These are all hexies I made teaching others how to Crazy quilt

I already have a medium large wall hanging that

Yes, I could add to, But that would be boring.

So I put 4 together to make a sewing basket.

I First I measured all the hexies and squared ( or as straight as you can make a hexie) up the edges

cut 4-1" smaller out of thin card stock, I Recycled some envelopes from the mail

4-2" larger for the lining on the back

I then mounted the cq pieces on the card stock

then sewing the back to the other side with a whip stitch

Then you whip stitch them all together to form a box

 because of the shape this is difficult  but not impossible, with lots of pins and a good thimble.

and patience, don't forget your patience!

Whip stitch the bottom to help it keep its shape 

or it gets all wobbly on you

Also using whip stitch, sew on trim 
(I used a gold braid) to hide all those wonky stitches 

and the odd dot of blood because yeah that happened a lot.

4 - 7" hexies make a pretty big basket!

 Having finished this project, things I would have don differently.

Made the middle corners rounder because turning that corner and pinning, was difficult, It kept wanting to spring apart.

I may still make a lid for it

Also may make another one!

 

Ellie is one sided

 One side of Ellie is done! 

The fuchsias turned out so nice and blousey

I wonder if the trellis would look better with more beads...

Everything looks better with beads.

Ack! I sewed the initial stems to close together so this motif looks crowded

Note #3987 to self; accommodate spacing for the silk

I love how the blue shows up on the purple velvet

I don't know why but these wheat sheaves just seemed appropriate here

Probably has something to do with scale, contrast and echoing

Now on to the other side and her back