Planned Scrappy Projects

I've been sorting through my purple scraps so that I can get some of them used up.  Have been cutting squares from them for the puppies quilt that I showed a couple of days ago.

In the sorting I found two different fabrics that I have a large amount of scraps of.  These had to be ones that I bought at some point but I couldn't tell you where now.  

the one on the left has a metallic cold print on top of the purple.   Both of them have enough to do the background of some of the critter quilts that I have planned out, well at least this first plan, and I think the second one.  =)

Will probably pull bright colors for the cats.   Out to make a couple of cute quilts.

Gratitudes:

1. It's a new work week and I still have a job.

2. It's the middle of the summer.

Weekend doings

Progress has been made on my row-by-row quilt.  5 rows are now complete and sewn together.  I have also started the quilting process, and have the top two rows quilted.

Backing fabric was from my stash.  2nd picture shows the quilt draped over my little cutting table.  It is 36" wide so the quilt doesn't quite fit on it.   But it has not been hard to work with.

Approximate count of different fabrics in the quilt so far is over 50.  =)




Rows 3 & 4 are now pinned and ready for quilting.  Will wait on pinning row 5 until after rows 6 & 7 are completed and attached.

After all the rows are on and quilted then I will be adding a black border down each side the same size as the sashing in between the rows.   Am debating whether to add a border after that or not.

Am going to try to see if I can get it finished up this week and turned in.

Gratitudes:
1. Many of the fabrics have come from my stash of scraps, love working with them.

2. For being able to find fabric for skies to use in this years rows as well as in the AZ rows that I have collected for a quilt for my bed.

Weekend Hop

Wend by two more quilt stores for rows on Saturday.  First store was Texas Quiltworks and there I picked up their row pattern and a license plate for my friend Susan who blocks here.

I was disappointed in the shop, they are discontinuing carrying fabric and going only to selling and servicing Bernina machines.   So their fabric selection is minimal, and mainly older civil war repro's.   No winner turned in here, but then again I wouldn't want any of their fabrics...lol.








Next up was Blue Ribbon Quilt Shoppe.  I picked up their row kit because I'd love to do this one for myself at some point and I wanted the figure for in the car.  =)  However, I also do intend to make it for my row quilt but will need to scrounge through my novelty prints to find some other figure for the car.   Am hoping I have something that will work.

They did not have a winner yet that I saw so it is a possibility for turning it in.   there are still a couple of other stores closer that I haven't seen with winners posted yet, but will  have to call when I have my quilt finished.

Bottom pic shows the figure I picked.

Gratitudes:
1. Safe driving on my travels Saturday.

2. No rain while I was driving.  =)

 

Scrap Happy Fifteenth - Scrappy Pups

I finally decided I'd use some of my purple scraps because I have two big bags of them - a full 2-gallon sized one and a 3/4's full 1-gallon sized one and it is getting hard to close the tote that they are in.  (Yes I need to do something with more than just the purple ones!)    Might be time to use them......lol.

This will be the first quilt from the purple scraps.   My aim is to comfortably get them back into one bag (albeit a 2 gallon one)!  It will take at least a couple of quilts approximately 40" by 60" to actually get to that point and possibly more.



The next scrappy quilt that I'll be working on is this one featuring two pups.    I 'll be making it with 3" finished squares.  Bodies will either be light or medium purples, ears - dark purples and noses black.  The heart will most likely be pink.







For today's post I'm linking up with Kate who blogs at https://talltalesfromchiconia.wordpress.com



Gratitudes:

1. For all of the opportunities that have been given to me.

2. For the friends in my life.

Rows 4 & 5

Two more rows are in various stages of progress for the 2017 Row-by-Row.

The top row is from Minding My P's & Q's in Denton.  bottom row is from Cabbage Rose Quilting and Embroidery in Fort Worth.  The bottom row still needs to be stitched down and the wagon wheels embroidered.  Scraps were used for the design elements.

The last two pics show the two rows as they were done by the stores.

Gratitudes:

1. No rain this week so far.  =)

2. Almost to the weekend.

Row-Hopping, Day 3

Made it to 6 stores this past Saturday in the NW part of the metroplex - only 110 or so miles of driving this time!

In order, the first store I stopped at was The Old Craft Store in Carrolton.   Lots of wonderful fabric, although it was a little bit of a pain to get to because of construction.  Their row has this cute quilter's train on it.

Found another sky fabric and two lovely batiks for block backgrounds.   The two upper fabrics were in the clearance fabrics.  The alphabet one will go with my alphabet fabrics to be used in making kits to sell and the other is a batik.  Might use a bit of that for binding on the flamingo quilt, although I'm not fond of hand sewing batik binding down.











Store #2 was "Minding My P's & Q's" up in Denton.   Not a huge store, but a decent selection of fabric.   They were celebrating the store's 2nd birthday so had lots of sales going on.

Fabrics were buy 2 yds, get one free - So I ended up with part of the tan one for free.   The scrap bag is the size of a typical pattern bag and yes I stuffed it full - but managed to get it closed w/o it popping open.  =)

Smaller scraps here - precut triangles of the same fabric line in the red and blue on the left.  The green and yellow in the middle were just 8" and 7" by WOF, and then some squares and smaller scraps on the right.

The striped piece on top of the pile on the right is earmarked for the flags in this row that I got at Cabbage Rose Quilting.

Next into the scrap bag went this panel featuring different scenes from Texas.

And the last item that I managed to get into the scrap bag was this panel.  The print is by Jim Shore and there's nothing wrong with the panel that I can see.  This panel alone was worth more than the cost of the scrap bag ($5).   Can you tell that most stores who sell their scrap bags don't make money off of me?

Will take and finish this and then sell the quilt.

Store #3 was "Material Girl" which is also in Denton.  It is about 4 miles or so east of the previous one.  Their row was this cute one featuring a family of chickens.

Picked up two 1/3 yd pieces there for teddy bears.














Store #4 was "Quilt Country" in Lewisville.   I loved this store and would be happy living closer to it....ok maybe I don't need to given the size of my stash, but still.....lol.    Close to half of the fabrics that they have are batiks which I drooled over.  There was also a good selection of all the others that are on the market these days.

They also have 4 APQS long-arms that people can rent time on at a reasonable price.....just gotta take the $150 class to learn how to use them first.   Very tempting thought for me as I have some bigger quilts to get quilted coming up.  Their row features sail boats because the town is between two different lakes (aka reservoirs).  I'll probably put this one in my row quilt, but instead of having 'Quilt Country' on the building I'll put either "Bait" or "Marina".

Found a cute little wall-hanging and bought the kit because it was a reasonable price.  Alto got water fabric for the row, a scrap bag (prefilled) with more fabics that will work for the sky in rows, and a FQ that I'm may use in a row with Balloons if I can find something with city buildings on it.








Store #5 was "Must Love Fabric" in Grapevine.  Small store with an ok selection of fabric.    Google maps did not want to route me to the right place for the store so I ended up wandering trying to find it for 15 minutes initially.   Finally made it though.

Picked up another batik for block backgrounds, a blue for skies and blackberries for potholders (planned gifts).   And got a cute little key chain as a gift as well.

Store # 6 was "Quilter's Dream" in Colleyville.  Store was a decent size in square footage, but has a tiny selection of fabric.   There might have been 150 bolts all total of fabric - far less than what is in my stash!  One room was a classroom, and there was another room that I didn't see into that has her long-arm.  Given how little fabric was there I suspect that is what the owner makes a living on doing.  

She also had a room set up as a 'Quilter's garage sale'.  Quilters from the area (or her?) can sell their unwanted fabrics, books, patterns, etc there on commission.  Did find three pieces in there that I bought.

The grey on the right is one that I've had a piece of for years - the grey swirly print makes great fur, santa's beards, etc.  Middle one is a piece of Fairy Frost in a color I hadn't seen before, and then the pink/blue one I thought might make a good border for the flamingo or maybe binding.  Haven't laid it out with the quilt yet so don't know if it'll work or not.

The day of shop-hopping wrapped up with me getting caught in a horrible thunder storm  on the way home (or as I posted on FB - a "bad, bad, ugly bad" storm.....lol).   The best way to describe it is that if you take a blizzard with white-out conditions and then raise the temp so that you are dealing with rain instead of snow, you've got what I was trying to drive in.  I ended up pulling off the road twice because the rain was so heavy I couldn't see to drive.    Was finally able to drive again after about 30 minutes of combined waiting and within 5 miles had driven out of the rain. Texas storms can be so hit-or-miss to say the least.

Gratitudes:
1. Safe travels in the storm I was in on Saturday

2. As bad as it was, there was no tornadoes associated with the storm.