"Chickadees" for a quick finish!

Challenge 11.4 was announced for week four of Project Quilting and I thought I had a great plan...

...when I realized I needed one more fabric at minimum and a LOT more than a week. This project is being saved for another day because now it has direction due to the Birds in the Air block. 

Back to the drawing board. I wanted to stick with making the block because if you make one, you truly have the makings for two. Now to decide if I want a mini, mugrug, or something else? Looking at my stash, I found the perfect fabrics for a pair of bird themed mugrugs and got to work. 

I got all my fabrics starched and cut.

Then I worked on the very quick and easy assembly of each block.

Next was sandwiching for a simple stich-in-the-ditch quilting.

Finally, I trimmed, squared and added the binding for final touches. 

While I love these, this fabric was always gotten with the intent to make something as a gift for a certain someone in my life. There is plenty of fabric left to make more variations for a set of mugrugs to be made and sent as that gift I always intended. Win-win!

These mugrugs are called "Chickadees", made in Arlington, WI, and measure 6 1/2" × 6 1/2" each. I am looking forward to playing with this block more in the future. Thanks for the wonderful challenge Kim & Trisha!

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

"Scattered Heart" for PQ Challenge 11 week 3!

Scattered Heart

This week's challenge for Project Quilting is "Put a Heart on It". So many ideas absolutely overwhelmed me from this theme that I almost walked away from the challenge for the week. It was important to get through my work week, and then see where my mind and creative flow would take me. Early Saturday brought part of a plan for something too large to complete in the time left. I decided to sleep on it (day sleeper because I work 3rd shift) and come back to it Saturday night.

I dug out my bags of small scraps...

...and started making fabric.

I cut my new fabric into 1 1/2" strips making sure to get a variety of colors. Then I grabbed what I call my bag of "shade" scraps to decide what will be the background, binding and backing for this project. A glittery white was chosen for the background and binding. Blacks and dark greys were chosen for the backing.

After some fun piecing, the top was ready for my newest mugrug.

I love the scrappy look with those 1" strips!! The glitter on the white is pretty great, too. 

Now it's time to sandwich the layers, quilt, and bind. When doing small projects like this (it will finish at 8"×8"), I will use up small pieces of batting. It is a great opportunity to reduce my waste, so I will save pieces as small as 3"×7" and combine them with other small pieces to get the size I need. Due to using them in mugrugs, I slightly overlap and also make sure that I am quilting the project enough in all the right directions to keep it all in place. After quilting, I trim everything up and put on the binding. 

Say hello to "Scattered Heart"! I am naming it this after such a scattered week of ideas to get this fun finish. 

First we have the top:

And the back:

"Scattered Heart" finishes at 8"×8" and was created in Arlington, WI for Project Quilting Season 11, Week 3 - Put a Heart on It.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn

New Month, New Block Color

February is off to a wonderful start. If you haven't been sewing along with Jen's 2020 Monthly Color Challenge, now is a great time to start! You will see me blogging about this challenge throughout the year. These first few months will be as a participant like everyone else. Later in the year I will be a host blogger. Yay! 

This post is all about catching up on January's block, as well as completing February's. I have chosen to make all my blocks for this year's challenge using batiks. This made choosing fabrics fun and challenging. I was looking to stay within my stash as much as possible. That was accomplished with January's block (goldfinch inspired)...

and February's block (indigo bunting inspired).

I enjoyed making both blocks. So easy and so fun! Jen always has great tips in her posts for the blocks, so head to the link above and join us if you feel inspired.

As always, keep quilting!

Fawn