New Month, New Color, New Goal

Have you heard?  May is orange month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  My trusty Singer treadle and I are happily piecing stacks of orange triangles.

My orange scraps are pairing up with light scraps to make squares...

to eventually become two more zigzag rows.  There is some really fun stuff here!  I love novelty prints (can you tell?).

That's a start for this year's orange Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks.

What about last year?

I'm reorganizing my sewing room, little by little, and as I do I'm sorting projects.  Elm Street Quilts OMG (One Monthly Goal) is really a great motivator for getting UFOs out of the bins and on toward the finish line.
One of my bins contains my remaining RSC blocks from last year, specifically these:

The pattern for these blocks is Fly Away Home, by Kate Henderson, from her book Strip Savvy.

(Great book, BTW.)

It's a two-block quilt, as you can see.  I've laid out the orange square blocks from last year, with some of the flying geese blocks, just to see what it will look like.  When I do this for real, I will mix up the colors.

OMG:  One Monthly Goal for May 2019
My goal this month is to turn these blocks into a top.
Simple, right?  I just have to decide on a layout, keep the cat off the blocks while I think about it, and then sew them up.  Oh, and add border(s), as needed.
This should keep me out of trouble this month.

Lastly, here's a little orange from last year's garden.  No flowers yet this year, but the raspberry vines are looking healthy as they leaf out.  Little Buddy has been helping Grandpa put out grass seed.

Have a lovely week, everybody.
Cheers for reading this,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches

Linking up with:
Angela at Soscrappy
Myra at Busy Hands Quilts
Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Patty at Elm Street Quilts (May OMG)
Cynthia at Oh Scrap 

Keep 'Em Flying!

Keep 'Em Flying! was a slogan in World War II.  Average citizens were helping the war effort in all sorts of ways, including buying war bonds to fund airplanes, ships, and materiel.  No, I'm not old enough to actually remember this history (but my mother is!)

I was thinking of this slogan when I was making my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks this week.  I'm not doing anything as serious as fighting the Nazis, of course.  But I still want to keep 'em flying.

Flying geese, that is.

Here are my Fly Away Home red blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge in July.
I am making lots and lots of flying geese for the RSC this year, and I thought I'd share how I do it.

First, I'm sort of curmudgeonly.  I don't like drawing lines on fabric.  Okay, I CAN'T STAND drawing lines.  I will only do it grudgingly, if I have to.  So I need a method that doesn't involve drawing those @#$% lines.

Also, I'm a fabric miser.  I hate methods that waste fabric.  And I find that I don't use those "bonus" units if they're too small.  It's a lot of work to press and trim them, if you're making lots of geese.  And it's hard to plan what size these bonus units will be. 

Some methods make more than one flying geese unit at a time.  That's great, if you need identical units, but I often don't.  So then I've got another unit to put somewhere.

Another pet peeve is needing two different sizes of strips/squares to make the flying geese units.  I've already got enough odd-sized scraps. 

So, with all those personal idiosyncrasies to deal with, I've ended up with this method.

I use two rulers, the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle.  I've had them for years, and even wore the markings off of one and had to replace it.  
First, I cut the two smaller triangles from the background strip with the Easy Angle.

Next, I cut the "goose" triangle (AKA quarter square triangle) from the print strip with the Companion Angle.

Did you notice the placement of the ruler?  I move it in from the end of the strip.  Then when I've cut the "goose" triangle, I also have another half-square triangle cut.

After I cut the goose triangle, I use the Easy Angle to make the end of the strip square again.  This gives me another half square triangle to use in a different project.  Sometimes I plan and cut both projects at once.   These half square triangles are very useful, and I know just what size they are because of the size of the strip (in this case, 2.5 in. unfinished).

All that's left to do is sew!  First one side:

 Then, press gently, and add the second white triangle on the other side.

Ta-da!  Flying geese unit!

We are so lucky to live now, when there are so many new methods and such great ways of communicating.  There are really no wrong ways to make flying geese, or any other units.  We all get to choose what works for us.

When I'm not making blocks, I'm enjoying the summer with Little Buddy and his big brother Big Buddy.

Here's Little Buddy, just in from the garden.  His face and shirt are covered with raspberries, and he's holding cherry tomatoes.  How's this for red?

These three jokers were playing on the living room floor.  Bella keeps giving them doggie kisses.  Yuck!

Life is, after all, a bowl of cherries.  I will be very sad when cherry season is over.

Til next week, Keep 'Em Flying!

Linking up with So Scrappy
and Oh Scrap.

Bright Yellow Sunshine

This was a good week for family times, but not so great for sewing.  My only finishes this week are my blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
Yellow--what a good color for April!  It may not be warm here yet (high of 36 F today) but the sun is shining and my yellow/gold blocks are done for the month.
Above, Mr. Biddy checks out my piecing on my Wagon Trail blocks, which are using up the 1800s reproduction scraps.

I had some pretty good yellow fabrics this time, but it was hard to decide on the second print.  It needs to contrast with the yellow and the plain background, but seem harmonious.  Hmm.  I'll keep trying.

When it came to making the Mary's Basket blocks, I decided the yellows needed another color to play with.  Red and blue were naturals, and the golden brown worked out, too.

I admit it, I have a favorite!  The yellow center in the blue block above has been in my stash forever.  It can finally find a good home.

Now for the bright scraps!  I made 6 of the easy blocks and 5 of the flying geese ones for my Fly Away Home quilt.  Biddy is checking out the bug print block in case any of the bugs try to run away.

Nope, all the spiders and beetles are accounted for.
I have had a couple of quilts to lay out, but my usual space in my husband's office was taken.

Hubby set up all the train sets in there!  It was so much fun for the grand kids this week.  Big brother was home from school for spring break, and the cousins came on Tuesday.  Little brother (above) starts every day wanting to go see the choo choos.  I don't know if Grandpa is going to be able to take the trains down any time soon.
In the meantime, I'll lay out quilts on the bed or in the family room and count myself lucky to have such a wonderful family.
I hope it's warm and happy wherever you are.
Have a great week!
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts, So Scrappy,  and Crazy Mom Quilts.

Green Grow the Quilt Blocks

Hello and welcome!  This is my week for making Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks, in this month's color of green. 
The blocks I've been working on since January are Mary's Baskets and Wagon Trail, in 1800s reproduction fabrics.  I'm trying to make a dent in my repro scraps.  What a hope.
Here are the green Mary's Baskets:

and the Wagon Trail blocks:

Do you see the odd one in the lower right corner?  I found another purple strip, so I added it in.  You can never have enough purple.
This was all I was planning to do with the RSC this year.  Last year was so much fun.  I really looked forward to each new month.  And it did help tame down my scraps a little.
But last year I had two projects with two different kinds of scraps--1930s repros and bright colors.  I was really missing the bright colors this year.
So I started yet another quilt!

It's called Fly Away Home, by Kate Henderson, from her book Strip Savvy.

It's a cute book, with lots of good ideas.
Fly Away Home is a two block quilt.  Block A is this simple one:

Since I didn't start this quilt at the beginning of the year, I'm catching up on 3 months worth.  I've got January's light blue, February's purple, and March's green blocks done.
The alternate block is this one:

It's a cute little flying geese block, which gives the quilt its name.  I only put one block together, since I don't want to have all of the blocks with the same colors.  As the months go by, I'll make more flying geese and add them into blocks.
So much fun, so little time.
The only things I finished this week are two pillowcases.

My little buddy went with me to drop them off at the quilt shop, where volunteers were hard at work making lots of pillowcases for National Quilting Day.  (You can see photos of the ladies sewing and cutting as soon as I get them up on the Ties That Bind blog.)
This is my third year of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and for me it just keeps getting better.  I can't thank Angela enough for hosting it!
Have a wonderful rainbow-filled week.
Cheers,
Sylvia@Treadlestitches
I'm linking up (late!) with So Scrappy, Busy Hands Quilts, and Can I Get A Whoop Whoop.