It has been a wildly productive month for producing blocks. Tiny 2.5” blocks will do that. I also did not count any of my Rhododendron blocks in 2021 as I didn’t know where we were going.
It was another good week for hand stitching. I finished two more small flowers after stitching every day. There was plenty of hurry up and wait this week!
I refolded my stash this week. It looks splendid all neatly stacked, and I found a few more pieces of fabric I will never use. (I did not fold the hand dyes, although I clearly need to. There is a bag of scraps I don’t want to distribute among the rest until I know whether or not I need them for my hexagon project.). Another spool was exhausted in sewing together my Rhododendron Mystery, for 4 gone for the year already. Hopefully I can sew a little bit bigger blocks and not average a spool a week all year!
Recording the stash also reminds me I do NOT need to go shopping. I don’t need to order anything for quite a while. I do know, however, that I am nearly out of neutrals with texture. I have plenty of solids, but the interesting ones will be gone soon. Next time I’m online browsing, hopefully I’ll remember that and not choose any colors!
And just like that, we’re almost to the end of January. Since we spent five days this week waiting for Covid test results, it was a very, very long week. The test was negative. Is it bad that I’m not convinced? Fortunately, no one else is sick.
This week was rather poor for red sewing. I spent most of my available time working on my Rhododendron Mystery, which now only needs its outer flying geese borders sewn together.
This month still saw plenty of progress for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Nine more farm blocks. I’m out of red! With only 16 blocks to go, I’m very happy with this.
My hand stitching is going quite well. I finished my large red hexagon star as well as a green flower this week. So far, in this seemingly endless month of January, I’ve stitched 22 of 22 days in 2022.
As to my stash report, while I headed in the wrong direction with my birthday and an order or two, I find it easier this year to destash a bit. There are fabrics I always pass over - never the right color, the fabric feels wrong, the design makes it hard to use. Rather than keep it and ignore it, I’ll donate it and someone else can have a chance to make something splendid with it. I’m also moving in the right direction.
I’m late! I have been slogging away at assembling my Rhododendron Mystery quilt and forgot to write my stash report yesterday.
I remembered to hand stitch every day or evening this week, so I have a perfect record, 15 of 15, for 2022.
My stash report looks like it didn’t move, but that’s not quite true. I ordered fabric from Vicki Welsh (I love gradients) as well as some neutrals (I am LOW on neutrals and was afraid I needed more for the mystery). I also cleared more yardage from my stash for donation and exhausted another spool of thread. Unfortunately, my numbers are the opposite of what I would like, but I have the Rhododendron mystery that should be finished in February, so my numbers will be less unbalanced.
Despite the chaos of sick days (not me, not the rona), school being cancelled due to high case numbers, and a birthday (JoJo is 9!), I managed ample sewing time.
So far this month, I have seven blocks. The last one is not yet pressed. Alas, not all are red, but I’ve run out of the red fabric from this line. This is a good problem, as I don’t need oodles of leftovers after I finish the quilt. If I can remember their names… Haystack, strawberry jam, water wheel, camera, spring star?, and sewing basket. 17 small blocks and one large block left. It’s exciting!
Every year I wonder if I’m going to get tired of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. This year, I can cheerfully tell you that no, I’m not tired of it!
15 minutes was a breeze this week, so I’ve stitched 8 of 8 days for 2022.
My birthday occurred this week, and my mom picked out a yard of repro fabric for me on one of her travels and I ordered some fabric for myself. DH does not, even after knowing me for 22 years, have any idea what to buy me for a birthday gift. It makes me laugh. I also found a few small pieces of fabric to donate.
This week has been a bit scattered with back to school, bitter cold, a long appointment for BJ’s Covid shot, and trying to get organized for the new semester.
I cut a pile of tshirts for a customer quilt, sewed and cut miles of pieces for the Rhododendron Mystery, and tried to focus on my scrap quilts for 2022! For red, I’m making a variety of hearts. They are, perhaps, not the most glamorous or coordinated, but they look just about how I want them to look. They are mixed with pinks and purples, and the effort is to make everything from my scrap boxes as much as possible. I need between 60 and 70 blocks in total, so I hope to sew up 20 this month.
I’m not quite sure how my farm blocks are going to situate themselves within the framework of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but I managed to sew together three this week. A few more are cut.
The Rhododendron Mystery is muddling my plans by requiring so much focus and time. I still like the quilt at this point, and I know it won’t last for too much longer. I intended to sew up more triangles this week. While the box is quite full of sewn pieces, the bag of triangles is not yet empty.
Goals? Plans? Hopes and dreams?
2021 is over. How did I do on my stash goals? Poorly, in fact, but as I still used more fabric than I purchased or received, I feel fine about that. I purchased more than the 20 yards I planned, as well as receiving plenty of beautiful gifts, so my net usage was about 1/3 what I had hoped. I did finish one more quilt in 2021 to boost my numbers a little.
I used up 26 spools of thread.
I made 60 masks.
I worked on my hand stitching for 15 minutes a day for 354 of 365 days. Wow!
Happy Saturday! We currently have sleet and falling temperatures. It’s a lovely way to start the year: take good care of the animals, hustle, and hibernate inside for the day.
I only finished one of my main Rainbow Scrap Challenge projects in 2021, Modern Vintage. My hand pieced hexagons and farm quilt are still in progress.
I have half the large stars pieced (not counting the partial ones). Delightfully, I have 40 of the 50 flowers done, so after I finished those ten (roughly ten weeks of work), I will return to the brown rounds. It’s always exciting to see progress.
The farm quilt needs 24 small blocks and 1 large. Hurrah!
This year, I plan to work of the hexagons, farm quilt, and my mass of triangles on a monthly basis. Each month will have its own quilt as well: pink, red, and purple are for a Valentine’s quilt. Today I have some sorting to do. I know by the end I’ll be sorry I started this out of the box (for me) project, but as I’m enthusiastic about it today and have been thinking about it for months, I’m making it happen. I dyed a backing over the summer, picked binding, printed some templates, searched for a variety of heart blocks, and here we go.
