Scrappiness is Happiness: Weeks 1-3

It's Week 3 of the 32 week Scrappiness is Happiness Quilt Along hosted by Fat Quarter Shop using Lori Holt's book. The free finishing pattern provides fabric allotments and the setting instructions. Check out #ScrappinessIsHappinessQAL on Instagram to see everyone's blocks.

Today I'll be sharing the blocks I've created so far. I'm using an assortment of Alison Glass fabrics. Kimberly of FQS is sewing with Prairie by Lori Holt for Riley Blake Designs, including the Prairie Fat Quarter Bundle, Teal Fiddle for background and borders, Coral Homespun for binding, and Coral Dress Heirloom for backing.

Week 1 was Buzzy Bee. I organized my pieces with Alphabitties and tiny clothespins from the dollar store.

For the Buzz Bee block, check page 14 of Scrappiness is Happiness and viewLori's video below.

Week 2 featured the Large and Small Calico Mushroom Blocks on page 20. Here are my cut pieces.

Week 3 brought forth the Chex Mix block. Not in a mood to cut and reassemble 25 1.5" squares, I constructed the block using strip sets. I cut five 1.5" by 5"+ rectangles of each color (A&B). I made ABABA and BABAB strip sets. Those were crosscut at 1.5". I took the 2 strips of one set and 3 strips of the other, alternated them, and sewed the checkerboard pattern together. 

Fat Quarter Shop is offering prizes at the conclusion of the QAL so remember to follow @fatquartershop and @beelori1on Instagram and tag your blocks with #ScrappinessIsHappinessQAL. Add the button to your social media if you are joining in the fun.

Right-click the image to download and share on social media so everyone knows you’ll be sewing along!

Scrappiness is Happiness: Week 1

The Scrappiness is Happiness Quilt Along has begun, and I'll be quilting along with Lori Holt and the Fat Quarter Shop for the next 32 weeks. 

This week's block is Buzzy Bee. I'm using my collection of Alison Glass fabrics, and even finagled some thematic fussy cutting.

To keep myself sorted, I'm labeling the cut pieces with Alphabitties and tiny clothespins from the dollar store.

If you want to spare yourself some serious FOMO (fear of missing out), I recommend you join along. 

We'll be doing a block each week, from Scrappiness is Happiness by Lori Holt of Bee in My Bonnet Co. so you'll need to secure a copy to get your instructions. 

Also, download the finishing pattern for fabric allotments and the setting instructions. If you want to use the same Lori Holt fabrics as Kimberly or Fat Quarter Shop, you will need:

• Lori Holt’s Scrappy Happy Starter Fat Quarter Bundle
• Lori Holt’s Scrappy Backgrounds Fat Quarter Bundle
• Lori Holt 20″ x 108″ Sew-in Interfacing by Lori Holt of Bee in my Bonnet
  • This is optional and only needed for one of the blocks.

Kimberly will be sewing with Prairie by Lori Holt for Riley Blake Designs, including the Prairie Fat Quarter Bundle, Teal Fiddle for background and borders, Coral Homespun for binding, and Coral Dress Heirloom for backing.

For the Buzz Bee block, check page 14 of Scrappiness is Happiness and view the following video.

For extra fun, Fat Quarter Shop is offering prizes. Follow @fatquartershop and @beelori1on Instagram and tag your blocks with #ScrappinessIsHappinessQAL. Add the button to your social media.

Right-click the image to download and share on social media so everyone knows you’ll be sewing along!

Let me know in the comments if you'll be joining along.

Quilt Con 2022 Favorites Part II

I'm back (finally) with more glorious quilts from QuiltCon.

Pride and Joy by Veruschka Zarate is a phenomenal foundation paper-pieced self-portrait composed of 2,359 shapes and 20 Moda Bella solids, and took 4 months to create. Veruschka was going to a modern, impressionistic look.

Pride and Joy by Veruschka Zarate @prideandjoyquilting

Pride and Joy by Veruschka Zarate @prideandjoyquilting

Bit Flip is Christine Perrigo's hommage to her former career as a software engineer. The darker green represents a bit flip (where a 1 is changed to a 0, or vice versa, in binary code. A hexadecimal number for "panic" is incorporated into the quilting, and the binding contains a hidden bit. While this convergence of analog and digital goes oner my head, I do love the varied dark hues and improvisation style of this personal work.

Bit Flip by Christine Perrigo @ccpquilt

There's something so soothing about the tones in Sealights by Paola Machetta. The piece was inspired by abstract features existing within an Italian seascape.

Sealights by Paola Machetta @thecultofquilt

The Big Fib, a whimsical take on the Fibonacci Swirl, is a introspective look at Imposter Syndrome. Brandy Maslowski gies a visual representation of her leap from art to modern quilter in this piece.

The Big Fib by Brandy Maslowski @QuilteronFire, Quilted by Sam Alberts of Quilting Curve Studio

The Big Fib by Brandy Maslowski @QuilteronFire, Quilted by Sam Alberts of Quilting Curve Studio

Falling Folds by Claire Victor depicts pieces of folded origami paper. Domestic machine shadow quilting repeats the English Paper Pieced design within the background.

Falling Folds by Claire Victor @cvquilts

Caroline Hadley based Sketch off a design from a series she draws weekly to share on social media. She paper-pieced the triangles, and made sure the striped print went the same direction in every triangle.

Sketch by Caroline Hadley @geometriquilt, Quilted by Valerie Cooper of Sweet Gum Quilting

Little Snippets is Abigail Sheridan de Graaff's personal challenge to insert the skinniest strips possible while maintaining consistent width, using only two solid colors. The design was improvised with just a simple line drawing. The quilting is meant to compliment the piecing using ghost shapes.

Little Snippets by Abigail Sheridan de Graaff @cutandalter

So do you have any plans to attend shows this season or next. things appear to be back up and running, but hotel rooms are in short supply, so I'm up in the air at the moment.

Mini Charm Chiffon

Today I introduce Mini Charm Chiffon to you. It has an organized randomness to it that works well for a scrappy look, but makes use of mini charms.

Pick up your free pattern for this quick and pretty 36.5" square project. It requires four mini charm packs (140 squares), 1 yard of background and 1/2 yard of binding. Fat Quarter Shop has a Quilt Kit available in Love Lily by April Rosenthal for Moda. 

Check out Kimberly's YouTube video.

I used Sunprint 2021 Day Trinket for the background and a charm pack of Sunprint 2021 cut into quarters in place of the mini charm packs. I set aside the white and black prints to edit the selection into a cheery rainbow.

For the quilting, I did diagonal lines 3/4" apart only on the background.

I bound and backed this with Alison Glass Sunprint 2021 Cosmo Tuesday.

What have you been making lately?

Traffic Cone Quilt

Today's finish is a traffic cone quilt that I designed specifically because the Dear Stella fabric demanded it.

I made strip sets and put the angle lines on my ruler to good use. The first cut was 15 degrees.

The following cuts were 30 degrees.

I filled in the right and left sides with the background and trimmed to the desired block size.

The bottom of the block is a large rectangle of orange with blue rectangles pieced on either side.

I arranged six blocks in a circle.

I went overboard making strip sets, so I decided to use the extras for seminole-pieced top and bottom borders. There's a great YouTube video for that if you're interested.

I quilted the background with a straight-lined modification of loop-de-loops.

In the Project Linus stash, I found a brown fabric with traffic cones and construction things, so I chose that for binding.

Here's the final result! It'll be off to Project Linus tomorrow.

Have you ever had a fabric that cried out for a certain design?