Scrappy Bargello is going together quickly — when I actually sit down and sew. I think I spent about an hour at my sewing machine last night. I don’t have anything on my plate for this evening, so I hope I can finish the center. There’s one more set of strips to sew together. When that’s done I’ll audition fabric for a border.
It’s late Thursday afternoon. I received a call Wednesday from my LQS asking me to cut more shop hop block kits, so that’s all I did yesterday, but prior to that I was working in my 2 1/2″ scraps. I contained my strips, then started in on my bricks and squares. I really thought I had a “ton” and needed to find a pattern to use them up. (No, I have not finished Scrappy Bargello).
After separating the squares from the rectangles it’s not as overwhelming, but none the less, I’ve found two patterns.
The first the potato chip block. All rectangles. I started pulling the light rectangles. I need 180 light rectangles and I only have 90. I’ve bagged them, putting them and the pattern in the box for later.
I regrouped, and looked at my squares. This is a take on a free Fat Quarter Shop table runner. I’ve pulled yardage for the background and stared sorting the squares by color. As I needed to clear the tables to work on the shop hop blocks, I have no idea if I have enough squares precut. For now, I’ve put the pattern in the box and the yardage back on the shelf.
Which brings me back to Scrappy Bargello. The shop hop blocks are kitted and will be taken to the shop in the morning, so this evening I plan on working on this quilt and continuing Rivianna as my leader/ender. Who knows, I might even get Eclipse bound this weekend.
This Handwork Tuesday I added a few neutral hexies to this section
and prepped the blue hexies for the next row.
I didn’t get more done as I was corralling my 2 1/2 inch strips and bits. The strips are all pressed so they now fit into the bin. I carefully folded the pile and placed it on the bottom of the bin, the topped it off with the bags and bundles of strips. At some point, I’ll return to the box to sort by color and roll them up.
The pile in the lower left corner of the picture are those bits which are less than 10″ long. At some point I’ll trim them into squares and rectangles, but I need to tackle the shoebox of squares and rectangles – pressing them flat and sorting by color. Once that’s done I think I need another quilt using 2 1/2″ squares and 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ rectangles. But first I need to finish Scrappy Bargello, Disappearing Hourglass, and get the binding on Eclipse.
Last night at the guild meeting a woman brought in 4 or 5 tubs of fabric her mother no longer wanted. It was my intent to not bring any home. That did not happen. I brought home a length of muslin since my stash is running low and I brought home this 4 yard length of people in “native” costume. It may become the back of my current quilt.
Yesterday I searched Bonnie’s free patterns and found Scrappy Bargello. It uses 2 1/2″ strips. The size I’m making needs 128 strips and I pulled 128 unique fabrics from my strip bin to make this quilt. I started sewing after I got home from the guild meeting and got this first panel assembled.
This morning I woke up about 5 AM and got up to see if I could see the eclipse. Since I was up I started the second panel.
Of course the boxes of strips got stirred and it doesn’t look like I took anything out — although they do close. My intent is to press the strips and sort them by color. Everything fits better when it is neatly folded.
In one of my Facebook quilting groups, the February challenge was doing something with your scraps. My goal was to clear the pile of scraps my sister left me and clear the treadle machine. I processed some of the scraps using Bonnie Hunter’s Scrap Users System, then simple packed the rest away in a box.
That top box contains the scraps from the the treadle, along with a couple of bundles of FQs. I don’t have space in my FQ boxes, so I just threw them in with the scraps. The Amazon box and crate are the scraps I cleared off the tables in January before my sister arrived.
Here are more scraps. This box is under the front of my longarm. It looks like there are a couple of pieces yardage in this box.
Under the longarm on the back side are these two crates.
Then there are these. In theory these are my precut scraps. There are a couple of boxes of shirt scraps. Some of these boxes barely close. I can’t really ‘process’ more scraps until I use some of them. So I need a scrappy quilt in my future. I just need to find a pattern.
My quilting goals for March start with binding Eclipse. This was on my February list, but I ran out of time.
The quilt of the month is my Disappearing Hourglass. I would love to have it finished by the 16th.
The 2026 Brandon Quilters President Challenge is pillowcases. I’ve had these cut out since 2018 and haven’t got them put together. Now is the time.
While I’m piecing on the machine, I’ll move Riviana forward as my Leader/Ender project.
Handwork Tuesday will continue.
One hoop of redwork – I didn’t realized how far along I was on this panel until I folded it to take this picture.
I have 9 stars cut out, ready to go. I’d love to get 10 stitched for my Star a Day quilt.
On my hexie project, I need to finish the neutral row, add a row of blue hexies then attach it to the center.
4th Saturday BOM
The goal is to get the next block done and attach this section to the first section.
5th Sunday/Monday
This month there’s an “extra” Sunday and Monday. As near as I can tell, I just have this Ribbon Star block to piece then the center star before I can start assembling the quilt.
It’s a lot, but I will be going to a 2 day retreat, so I don’t think it is impossible. But first – I’ve got to make some binding!
On this 4th Saturday I continue working on my Just Takes Two quilt. I actually started on the block yesterday while Eclipse was being quilted. My plan was to use interfacing to turn the Hawaiian block since I do not applique. It might have worked, but I picked a very light weight interfacing and my tools tore it. So my next attempt was the block in the lower right corner with a heavier interfacing. It turned well, but came out too small. So I tried again. This time too big. At that point I said to heck with it and just traced directly on the fabric then did a small zig-zag along the edges. Since that worked, I attempted the crescent moon and star. Finally I tackled the Hawaiian block. Next up is a paper pieced star, then this section will be complete.
As this is also the last day of the month how about a up date on my February goals. There were 5.
February Stash Report
Tomorrow I post my goals for March.
The idea behind Star A Day is piece one star a day and at the end of the year you have enough stars when alternated with a background square to have a quilt top. Great idea in theory. In practice it’s not worked for me. Something about an 8 year hiatus. The star on the left took me a week to do. The one on the right less than an hour – maybe 45 minutes. If I aim for my 65th birthday I need to make 10 stars every month.
I did not include this month in that calculation as there are still 2 things on my February To-Do list – Finish, quilt and bind Eclipse and at least 1 blocks on Just Takes Two. There’s 2 more days this month and I have Friday off, so I might just get it all done if I focus.
First a Handwork Tuesday update. I stitched a few more hexies. I should have been working on my Star-A-Day. I still have a few days to get this month’s star completed.
No, I do not have the border on Eclipse. This is not hard, but I got distracted by the Disappearing Hourglass.
This year’s continuing segment is disappearing blocks. In February I presented the Disappearing Hourglass. My sample blocks used 6″ squares cut from scraps, but I have a 28-piece layer cake that I want to use.
I bought 2 1/2 yards of Grunge in Paper White to use for the background and an inner border and made my first block last night.
I followed the Missouri Star tutorial which mean all my edges are on the bias. I just have to be careful not to stretch the blocks when I’m handling them. This block came out at 11 1/2″.
My final report is that Riviana is being assembled. I made “thousands” of HST as my leader/ender project starting in August 2022. I can’t remember If I finished making them the end of 2023 or 2024. but I knew I had misplaced 60 HST. which put a damper on things. Apparently I’ve made extra HST, as still have enough to finish the quilt. So now I’m using the split 9-patches as my leader/ender. This could take a while.
My stamina is not was it was before surgery, so every thing is taking twice as long. Before, these 2 quilts would have been done by mid-week, but it was late Saturday before I completed them.
Along those same lines, Eclipse would have been done, but I just didn’t have the energy to mess with them. Maybe tonight. There has however been a lot of hand work happening. That bottom section, along with prepping the hexies has been my go-to project with my feet up.
