very little blogging, but lots of scrappy sewing!

i'm a horrible procrastinator when it comes to snapping a picture, and blogging about my RSC blocks.  even i don't know why... it doesn't make any sense, i know! 

here, in no particular order (because that's how blogger grabbed the pictures off my desktop...) are the RSC19 blocks i made in greens for March. 

there are 76 crumb blocks- cut at 6½", will finish at 6 inches in a quilt. and to think that my crumb jar is still half full! sometime we'll have to talk about that phenomenon...

15 9 patch blocks in light/dark colorway. i was inspired by the Carolina Chain quilt i saw on Blue Elephant Stitches.  (all the squares are cut at 3", will finish at 2½" in the quilt) 

and 6 "rail fence" like blocks- (again, squares are cut at 3")

thanks for stopping! thanks for reading! be sure to visit Angela's blog for some more green inspiration! 

somebody to love me...

for a RSC18 (or 17?) project, i started these holiday patchwork forest blocks. after a few months, my enthusiasm petered out. 

i had even entertained the thought/intention of making 6 of these (in red/green/white) for my children as a Christmas gift. (!)

sadly, that never happened, and i can see that these blocks, while i like them a lot, i don't honestly like them enough to see them into a completed quilt top.

so, for the first time ever, i'm participating in Cynthia's Quilty Orphan Adoption. (and please don't think it's because i don't have any other orphans/UFOs. that's not the case!)

there are 26 of these Christmas trees: they're about 8" X 10". Free mailing within the USA. you can finish them for yourself, a gift, or for charity- any finish is great! (please share a picture of the completed quilt- i'd love to see it!!!) if more than one person wants to give this {potential} quilt a loving home, we'll draw a name randomly on Monday, March 25. make sure i can contact you! 

a brief tutorial on isosceles triangles- how to sew them, not how to spell them!

a new RSC19 project for me this year is to make a monthly donation quilt, using the color of the month, and a complimentary fabric for the alternate triangle. 

after a couple bumpy months of trial and error, the math behind the isosceles triangles finally hit home, and my quilts are turning out the correct size now, rather than bafflingly too large. (you can read about my geometry revelation here.) 

i did have a few questions about the triangle quilts, so thought it would be "fun" to do a tutorial. i'm just going to try and hit the high points, and make things a bit less fuzzy, should you decide to do one of your own. (i say "less fuzzy" because i'm sure it won't be crystal clear at the end...) 

first, i cut my strips (light and dark) in preparation for cutting the triangles. i usually put a new blade in my rotary cutter at the beginning of the month. here, I've cut strips 6½" wide- conveniently the width of my main ruler. (if i had a wider ruler, i'd probably cut my strips wider, too..) 

then, i'll use my isosceles ruler, and line up the strips with the 6½" line, and cut the triangles across the WOF, flipping the ruler up and down as i go. if i remember correctly, i get 4 sets across, giving me 8 triangles from each strip.

here is a ruler similar to what i'm using, just a bit bigger. (not an affiliate link) nextly, i use the leftover bits on the end to cut my side triangles. the only difference here is to line up the straight edges of the triangle, allowing for the seam allowance. 

hopefully you've figured out your math correctly, and cut out the right amount of triangles and side pieces the first time. 

the ruler gives a nice cut off point, making it easy to line up and sew, without getting all those annoying and bulky dog ears on the back of the quilt. 

now it's time to sew! (and i do find it super helpful to have the schematic of the quilt to refer to...) i like to sew all the rows together so the straight of grain (SOG= WHITE ARROW) is running parallel with the rows. this will make it easier to tie/quilt it, without the quilt getting all stretched out and wonky. also, i always keep the color of the month pointing up. (in this case, the green, which is actually upside down in this picture. oops!) 

now it's time to flip the triangles right side together in preparation for sewing. the SOG = WHITE ARROWS, the BIAS/SEWING LINE = YELLOW ARROWS. use an accurate ¼" seam allowance throughout. although- if you use any consistent seam allowance, it will be fine... 

here the 2 triangles are sewn together, and the arrows show the orientation of the bias and straight grain. continue sewing your triangles together until you have enough for the width of your quilt, then add the half-triangles on the ends of each row.

my isosceles quilt has 13 rows as designed, but it would probably be better with 14 rows. (you can see A's embroidery project keeping my 1st row company on my design wall. she's making 12 of these animal blocks, and now has 8 of them done. each is "sashed" with Kona cotton solids, and i'm really excited to see it done! it's going to be a fantastic quilt!) 

and here we have the classic "receding rectangle" picture of the completed quilt top. it will be tied at one of our next Scraps2Wraps meetings, and then passed along for a local need, or donation overseas. 

so: i hope my little tutorial helps make the waters a bit less muddy! questions? ask away in the comments, and i'll answer as best i can!

someone to love it...

my normal morning routine is to make my cup of coffee, and browse through some quilty blogs while i'm staring and sipping... one of my favorites is Sarah, at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

and as my regular reader(s) will know, i'm an avid participant in Angie's RainbowScrapChallenge. this year is my 6th year working through my scraps color-by-color, and i'm not tired of it yet! i've managed to make MANY quilts, and a great deal of them are scrappy and/or made from 3" squares. 

i don't have a lot of IRL quilting friends, so i really enjoy the camaraderie, companionship and inspiration of the quilting/blogging/Instagram community. 

this scrappy pinwheel quilt was started as part of RSC15 (!) and was completed in June of 2017. it's a big'un, (101" X 117") so it's been in my quilting closet ever since... many of my quilts go for charity donation- mainly MCC, but when i saw that one of the Hands2Help charities this year, the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project was specifically looking for larger quilts, it was a match made in heaven!

i was matched with a long-arm quilter, Sally F, in WI, and after getting the backing pieced, it's ready to mail off to her today.

you might remember (but probably don't!) that i often do a Great Quilt Gifting when my children gather together for a holiday or special occasion. we've done that a couple times. originally, B (my youngest) had chosen this Pinwheel Quilt in December of 2017. 

when i told her about the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project, she was happy (and generous!) to swap out the Pinwheel Quilt for my recently completed Growing Up Odd quilt. 

so now 2 LARGE quilts will have happy homes, and i'm super thrilled about that!

the yellow is fading in the distance...

i'm such a terrible blogger these days! you certainly wouldn't know it by my blogging schedule, but i'm actually pretty dedicated and on top of the whole RSC19 thing. but it seems to be such a pain uploading and posting about it, that i guess updating and catching up is one of those things that i end up procrastinating about! 

my isosceles triangle quilt of the month {yellow} is actually done. my plan is to piece one a month for our church sewing group. i finished the top on Wednesday, but forgot to take a picture. i have lots {AND LOTS} of green in my stash, so i complemented the yellow with green. 

something you probably can't tell from the picture: i re-formatted the layout to accurately reflect the ACTUAL size of the triangles, not the size i mistakenly ASSUMED they were. an isosceles triangle has 3 equal sides.  they're cut at 6½" high. i thought they were also 6½" wide at the base. (math is really not my thing...) 

both the red isosceles quilt and the yellow one turned out MUCH WIDER than my design on EQ5 indicated they would. hmm... (apparently i'm also a slow learner, since it took two quilts for the light bulb to go off in my head...) i enlisted the help of my trusty tape measure, and an isosceles triangle that is 6½" high is 7¼" at the base. problem solved!  

and again, the blogger can be heard saying incredulously in the background "why, i didn't realize i had so much yellow!"

or am i the only one who says that every month? nearly 60 crumb blocks to add to the stack, as well as the crumb blocks left over from RSC17.

trimmed at 6½", will finish at 6" in a project...

be sure to click on over to Angela's on Saturday morning, where you can see what everyone else is working on, and what the color of the month is for March. 

nothing says I LOVE YOU like a rainbow!

with 2 little girls still at home Valentine's Day can kind of be a big deal...

we try to make it special for them, and what's more special than a rainbow quilt from mom? i had the brainstorm a couple weeks ago to save and gift these quilts to them for Valentine's Day.

needless to say, both A (with the 9 patch kona indigo quilt) and B (with the Kona RSC16 column-along) were thrilled. 

both quilts have been used *almost* constantly since Thursday morning, and that's a great thing! i'm thrilled, too, to spread the love and quilts to my 2 youngest daughters!

go see what everyone else is stitching up this chilly February Saturday!

edited to add: the RSCsquared quilt was also #1 on my UFO list from Judy's blog. linking up to join in the fun! (I've actually made a bit of progress on some other UFOs, too, but just haven't caught up with the blogging of them...) 

adding some cheer to the drear...

some sewing time this week (after my taxes were done *insert happy dance*!!!)

6 16 patch "rail fences" were added to my stack...

and also a total of 14 9 patches, too. (all blocks made from 3" squares).

an equal amount of light and dark 9 patches. although this layout doesn't look too great with only the yellows, i can tell i'm going to really like this quilt as it moves further along...

go see all the other yellow sunshine blocks over at Angie's! also: follow me on instagram @ jlcap69.  (i post more frequently over there) and: i still have some red scraps i'd love to share! just give me a holler... 

Show me the {Kona} LOVE!

I'm excited with Angie's choice of yellow for such a dreary (and cold!) month! and yellow works well for a short month, too, as i don't have a lot of yellow in my stash. (but maybe I say that every month...)

I laid out *all* my yellow 3" squares for the picture above, and got 81. with all the lonely (only 1 of) squares, i'll have nearly 100 different yellows to work with. 

on a different note- it's *weird* how the cheddars, which are clearly in the yellow camp, can so quickly dessert and head over to the orange side- making the division of colors a bit stressful for monochromatic quilters like me... 

this week is all about the Konas- Kona Cotton Solids, that is!

my RSC16 column-along is DONE! like: quilted, bound (in indigo), washed and nice and crinkly done!

i made 2 of these RSC16 column-alongs. one was gifted to my oldest daughter, M and her husband K last Christmas.  i made 2 of these because I was sure I would love it too much to part with it- and I was right. This quilt is the smaller of the 2- it finished at about 56" square. 

when I first completed it this week, I wasn't too happy with how it turned out. I had done a poor & lazy job of pressing the top upon completion, and it wasn't laying as flat as it should have been. however, i determinedly and courageously (and carefully) pressed on, and managed to finish quilting loopys on the top with no wrinkles or puckers. 

the stripe fabric is a Moda/Jen Kingwell fabric that i had purchased awhile back with this quilt in mind. i pieced it so the pink was not twice in the back. after a round of washing and drying, the quilt is officially finished, and i'm pleased with the small amount of shrinkage. not only did it improve my quilting, now instead of being of the frame of mind "finished is better than perfect", i'm very happy with how it turned out with no regrets. 

the weather here in northern PA has been absolutely frigid this week (literally!) and it was too cold and windy to go outside to take a picture...  but: 

i finished my Kona 16 patch from RSC18 into a top! the sun did come out and contribute some cheeriness to the colors as we were taking this picture, but still- the picture doesn't do this quilt justice. 

this 16 patch kona/indigo is the big sister to the kona/9 patch that i also pieced during RSC18. (all squares are 3")

this quilt top seems to be glowing! i used indigo for the alternate blocks, and arranged the colors into rows. this top finished at 80" X 100". i plan to use it on my bed, and there is plenty of overhang on the sides to allow sharing with a cover hog. *ahem*.  as the weather improves, i'll take a better photo. 

linking up with Angie and the other RSC19 creators!