Friday, August 12, 2016

A Good Start

Under this dish towel is a new start.
Specifically, this is a new sourdough starter.  It works with just flour and water.  I add a little of each every day for six days, and then bake the bread on the seventh day.  Then I store the starter in the frig and make bread, rolls, etc. whenever.  I had kind of gotten out of the habit of doing this, but I want to get back to it again.
Here's the link to the recipe:  Mary Janes farm sourdough starter

There should have been a label on that bag of vintage scraps I bought recently.  It should have said something like Warning!  Quilt Starter!  If you feed it, quilts will come!

It was just a gallon zip lock bag, stuffed with relatively small scraps mostly from the 1930s.  Once I got the triangles cut out, here's what happened.
I used the equilateral triangles to make these blocks:
I'm calling them Pyramids.  The block is a simplification of an old block called Sugar Loaf.  Adding the white made the print triangles go farther, and of course so did adding the yellow.
I didn't have to worry about putting two of the same print next to each other.  Very few of the scraps were repeats. 
I'm up to 14 rows of blocks, and I think that will do.  They're sewn in sets of two rows each here, and they'll wait on the bed in the spare room until I figure out how I'm going to quilt them and what I'm going to do about a border.
What would you do?  Would you use a solid color?  If so, what color?  The yellow is a darker shade, and the triangles are every color under the sun.  What do you think--green?  blue?  purple?

In the meantime ...
I also cut half square triangles (LOTS of them!).  I'm pairing them with white to make
these little blocks.
This block, Brackman #1689a, has several names, including Double X #1 and Three and Six.  I'm opting for Three and Six.  I needed a block that would look okay with multiple scrap pieces.  Most of the scraps were only big enough to cut one triangle, so nothing matches.  Again the white will help.

But wait!  There's more!
Some of the pieces weren't big enough for triangles, but worked okay as short narrow strips.  These pieces were cut 2 in. x 5 in.  Three of them sewn together make a 4.5 in. finished Rail Fence square.

I'm thinking of setting them in a different way.  We'll see if I get that far this week.
Here are even more pieces!  These rectangles were either too short or too narrow to work for the Rail Fence blocks.  The closer stack is of pieces cut 2 in. x 4 in., and I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. (Any suggestions?)  The other stack has pieces 1.5 in. wide.  String blocks may work for them.
Believe it or not, there is still this big pile of leftover pieces!!!  How does this happen?  This looks like more than I had to start with! Maybe they can be crumbs?  They're too small for the pieces I was cutting, but just too neat to throw away.
If you're wondering why I'm only blogging every other week, here's the reason!  Captain Adorable and his older brother need lots of attention, and I am happy to give it to them.  I'm the luckiest grandma ever.

I had lots of fun cutting and sewing this week.  I didn't get anything finished, of course.  But I did make a good start.

Wishing you perfect tension and flying bobbins.













6 comments:

  1. How about flying geese for the 2x4 pieces? They'd look great with white corners.

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  2. Wow, Sylvia, what a treasure trove! I really love your triangle quilt, and I think a bright royal blue border would really make it all pop. Now you make me want to dig into my box of feedsack scraps and see what I can come up with! Whoop whoop!!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Sarah! I was kind of thinking about a blue border. Blue always goes so well with yellow. I would love to see what you do with your feedsack scraps.

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  3. wowww so awesome and nice idea. very creative

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  4. gertrude@mail.postmanllc.net

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading! Post a comment--I want to know what you think!