Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2019/20

 This years final RSC colour was yellow and I completed my yellow Dresden on Thursday. Then came the fun part of getting out my 20 Dresdens and playing around with them - fortunately we had dry grass yesterday so I was able to lay them out in the garden. And here they are all machined together.

It rained last night so it had to be the bed for todays photo. I am very happy with how these are all looking.

Fortunately I have enough of the grey fabric to make a decent size border so I plan to spend 2021/2 making little hexadens to dance around.

I will need to source some yellow spot fabric for the centres though as I have used up all that I had.

I am linking up with Angela at Soscrappy  - thank you Angela for your inspiration.

Treated myself to these gorgeous cyclamen at the market yesterday - perfect for brightening up the garden at this time of year.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Friday Night with Friends and Rainbow Scrap Challenge for October

Many thanks to Cheryll for getting us back together again on the first Friday of the month. Pop over to Cheryll's blog here to see what everyone was working on.

On Thursday evening I completed my RSC block for October. The colour this month was 'darks'! brown, black or grey. I chose brown so pulled out my brown box from the back of the cupboard and found some lovely browns! Anyway back to FNwF and my first job on Friday was to photograph my RSC block.

I am very happy with this. In fact I am very happy with all my blocks. I allowed myself the treat of putting them all together to see how they looked.

It's not the best photograph I am afraid - it was wet out so I had to do it on the sitting room floor. My aim is for 20 blocks altogether so another year of RSC to go.

I have been thinking about getting my 1797 revisited out again so next up I pulled out my fabrics to see which colour to go for next.

I have decided to reverse the colours back to the centre from the green row so searched my supply of mixed turquoise and emerald for the next row.

Not quite enough so then I searched through my supply of white recycled fabrics for suitable pieces to dye and enough for the next turquoise row. That will be my next job after finishing this post.

After popping out for a couple of hours to visit a friend who is recovering from an op, by the evening I just wanted some quiet hand stitching to work on while we caught up with a few TV programmes.
I decided to crack on with my Advent calendar and added all the red and silver cross stitches separating the numbers.

Which means that I am now ready to add the backing fabric. Maybe a job for later this week.

I am very happy with my progress yesterday - thank you all for your company.

FNSI, catching up and another goodbye!

Many thanks to Wendy for getting us together again despite internet problems - pop over to Wendy's Blog to see what everyone was working on.

My first Friday task was to complete my TAST sample for the week. I decided a few weeks back to resurrect my TAST sampler and have added a few new stitches to it. This weeks stitch is Woven Detached Chain and I decided that a few would be perfect to finish off the Beaded Barb stitch sample that I worked on a couple of weeks back.

I enjoyed working these and am especially pleased with the longer ones as they take on a bit of a curve adding some life to the arrangement.

Next up was this weeks block in Jenny of Elefantz Scrappy Vintage Kitchen stitch along. I have three of these blocks completed so far. 

To join the stitcheries I decided to pull out some of my 'vintage' ie circa 1980 Laura Ashley fabrics which I think are going to make quite a bold statement when this mini quilt is finished!!

Anyway, I got as far as tracing out the new design onto my linen fabric in between blitzing the house ahead of next weeks visitors.

We then met up with friends for Fish and Chips and by the time we got home I was not in the mood for stitching! So that will become tonight's project.

This months colour for the RSC is Light and Bright blues. I have had to double up on at least one of my fabrics for this as we have already done blues and aquas. Hopefully no more blue to come!

And my swap hexies are winging their way to Australia.

We said goodbye to Mum last week.

It was a lovely service in Mum's beautiful Parish Church with hymns and music chosen by Mum.

 RIP Mum

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

This months colour for the RSC is pink!

 Fortunately it seems to be a colour I have plenty of scraps of. Here is my Dresden for the month.

We have lots of tree frogs around at the moment as it is hot and dry. This one - The King of all he surveys! - was having a good look around this morning.

Linking up with Angela at SoScrappy for Scrap Happy Saturday.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge

A very quick post to link up with Angela's husband at soscrappy as Angela is out of town! The RSC colour for June is blue so here is my blue Dresden block.

I have bought some new fuchsias this year and these two are particularly gorgeous!

I love the pink and orange skirt in the bottom picture.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Its been a busy week...

….not least for the pair of blue tits nesting in our bird box, who are constantly in and out all day with food for their chicks!

The box is on the pillar holding up our terrasse roof and is somewhere that we are constantly passing or working near by - they get very agitated if we hang around too long!

We had what should be the last frosts of season last weekend so we spent a couple of days putting out summer vegetable plants and potting up pots and window boxes. We then had a few showery days which was good as it means all those new young plants have had a good watering. Meanwhile we have an enormous crop of broad beans this year and I have been busy podding and blanching beans for the freezer. Our tax returns have to be in next week and we have had a couple of visits to the tax office trying to decipher the forms Thankfully all done now for another year.

I have managed to fit in some sewing too and some play in one of my sketchbooks.

My Rainbow Scrap Challenge block is complete for the month - orange.

And my swap hexies are winging their way down under!

 

The quilting of the blocks in the Mystery Quilt is now complete and I have made a start on the borders.

 

 

This is nice, easy quilting to do so I shall enjoy finishing this quilt off.

Well I think that is me up to date for now - have a good week.

May's Friday Night with Friends

It's a month since my last post and that month has whizzed by so quickly! We spent two weeks in UK over Easter which was lovely especially as there was exceptionally good weather over the Easter weekend.

Many thanks to Cheryll for hosting our FNwF's especially as she is only just back from a trip herself. We were a select group - you can see what everyone got up to here.

My first job was to cut out my Dresden pieces for this months RSC block. There is very little orange in my stash so I had to supplement what I had with some golden yellows.

I got the borders attached to this QAYG sampler this week. Looking at it now maybe it would have been better balanced with the spools and the log cabin swapped around! Too late now.

My patchwork group have all been working on the same project and so it will be good to see their projects with borders on next week. As soon as they are all finished I will post pictures because it is so interesting to see how different they all are with different fabric choices.
Anyway, I now need to complete the quilting on the blocks and I am adding ditch quilting around the outside edge of each block to make the sashing stand out. Then I will have to quilt the border.
Last night I was working on the ship block - just the cloud to quilt now.

I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else was working on.

Also this week I have completed another round of my 1797 revisited quilt.

 

Two more complete rounds to do, then I can start squaring it off.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2019

For some time now I have a hankering to work on some Dresdens but was not sure what to do. There is a plan in my head for a medallion quilt using a giant Dresden in the middle but that is not about to happen any time soon. But when I was looking for an RSC project for this year I realised that Dresdens would be a great use of some of my scraps.
So here are my first four blocks bringing me right up to date.

I found aqua to be a very elusive colour in my scrap box although it does not look too bad in this photograph. The yellow spot that I am using for the centre of all my Dresdens is much yellower than the picture shows though. I am aiming for 20 blocks - they will be 9" finished - so two years of RSC. Am feeling very pleased that all the grey blocks and centre circles are cut and ready to go.
Now I need a plan for the blocks I made last year and so far I am not feeling very inspired! No doubt something will come to me.