Scrap Happy New Year

~ myquiltprojects ~ 5 Comments

Happy New Year! It is that time again where we all share our scrap progress. My favorite time each month is when we all link our websites and share all the scrap glory!!! Before I get into those specifics, a little explanation.

The fabrics you will see in this post were all won by my daughter playing fat quarter bingo. You may be asking yourself “what is fat quarter bingo?” The game is played just like regular bingo but you gamble a fat quarter for each card. All the antes are collected. The first person to get bingo, wins all the fat quarters. There are really no rules associated with what kind of fabric you win. It is a mystery. Today I am going to take the mystery out of it LOL.

You may end up with Christmas Santa fabric, there might be dog bone fabric, toss in some Easter bunnies, and some Autumn, and there you have a gob of fabric that really comes no where close to matching, lacking cohesive vibes. Well, what does one do when you attempt to marry all these scraps together? Well, you get a scrap tornado. That is what I am calling this. I will post more about this when I have time to explain the specifics on how this was sewn together.

To commemorate the fat quarter bingo, I have selected 36 fabrics to swirl in thew quilt. There were actually two pieces of fabric that were not cotton (SMH), someone anted poly blends….so those are getting eliminated. I still have about 8 more fabrics that I will have to figure out how to incorporate in to the fat quarter bingo quilt. The quality of the fabric varies greatly. Some are paper thin, some are dated from the 70s, and some are really nice moda cottons. Glad I am well versed for scrap usage or I may have given up on this.

While this is not he prettiest scrap quilt I have ever seen, it will hold a very nice memory for my daughter. And it will be completely hers and usable!!! Sometimes scrap quilts have a humbleness about them to really makes me like them more than the modern 40 fabric lines that come together in the jelly roll, layer cake, and charm packs.

I am going to have to scale down the amount of pictures I use on the site because WordPress is saying I have used more than 3 gig. And it was true. Last year they tricked me into a 50 dollar subscription to keep the blog going. I am refusing to do this for 2026, As most months I only post once a month. So for the quilt alongs and free patterns that I have put out there, they will eventually be deleted. I deleted most of my older posts from 2014-2019 completely. If you have a good idea of a work around on this, please drop that in the comments.

The red floral you see in the photo, funny story, that red used to be in my stash. I donated it to the guild. And one of the quild members cut it up into fat quarter bits and played with that fabric. It came full circle. That red was given to me by a coworkers mother who was downsizing. The real dated stuff I passed on. Glad I did, they found a perfect use for it. They figured out how to get it back into many peoples stash LOL.

Make sure you visit the scrap happy goodness linked below, I am always in awe at the things people make with their scraps! A special thanks to Kate and Gun who host the marvelous monthly makes!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog!

Done with 2025, and ready for a good year.

~ myquiltprojects ~ 3 Comments

2025 started out poorly for me. You may recall I rung in the 2025 new year with a broken foot. That resolved itself. Then my aunt died. Then my mom started having AFIB. Then we had a tornado and mom had surgery the same day as the tornado….. No power in the month of June in Texas is quite miserable. (Mom is healed and that all worked out!). With many people retiring at work, it left me holding many bags. Bags of knowledge and people started leaning heavily on me, and that was a gob of stress. Then, in Nov I hit a deer and messed up the car, let’s just say, glad 2025 is behind me.

I counted up the quilts for the year. I had 8 quilts I finished, plus two elaborate pin cushions, a shirt, and a wall hanging. I felt like I was really going slow in 2025. But considering the plans life had, I think I had a better outcome and was probably being too hard on myself.

So during my prolonged time off for the holidays, I took it easy. Rested. Made sure that I did not over do things. Tried to get out of the stress mode that I have been in all year. And I needed that. I needed to quilt at the longarm, I needed stress reduction.

While trying to make content for YouTube, I realized I was lining the pockets of the big guys while my fortune to be made was let free (no fortune yet). So the YouTube suffered. That compounded my stress. I decided for the quilt I have been working on since the middle of October to not post anything of it on social media until I was almost done. And you know what, I learned something. I was losing the joy of what I was doing by trying to create content that may or may not be liked.

So 2026 is going to be a bit different. I am going to sew for me. I am not going to even try to appease the complainers for the channel. Yes, I have people with little comments that really bothered me. Maybe I was thinking too deeply about those comments. It made me realize I pander to no one. I should do what I enjoy. So screw off to those that complain LOL. 2026 content is going to be what I want and what I like, and I now understand I do not need a tutorial for every block, or a pattern/template for all the blocks that I do. If someone does not like my change of routine, I cannot make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. Wasted effort in trying.

So in the fall I decided to splurge and get a kit. I started working the kit mid October. Every bit of spare time in the evenings, or on the weekends, or meet ups with the local guild, I was sewing this kit.

Dec 19th rolled around which was my last work day for the year, and I was just enjoying sewing the bits and bobs. Dec 20th the guild met, I sewed that morning from about 5 am till I moved the sewing to the senior center at 9:30, and then quit at 2:00. That is the longest marathon of sewing I have done in ages, and it felt good!

Christmas Day I sewed oodles of spare time and by golly the fabric book I was working out of let me know that I was getting close to having all the pattern pieces with fabric attached. I started building the blocks and then the quadrants, and tearing off the foundation paper. This was oodles of work. Oodles of enjoyment, and I am happy to say it’s completion also made me happy!

The headlight was murder. The paper removal was very tedious, but I built a car in my living room! I can’t wait to get this in the garage and quilt it hahahahaha!

Thanks for stopping by and reading the blog!

Scrap Happy Nov 2025

~ myquiltprojects ~ 6 Comments

Jeez Louise, I say this every month, but time is flying at a very fast rate.

How have I been using my scraps? First, I have one loaded on the longarm. We went into a cold snap, so it will be bit before I can get back to it. I am actually quilting this with a panto medallion from the front of the machine, just moved my laser up front and, it is way easier!

Each block with get this coxcomb motif. The border has a border coxcomb motif (which is done from the back. Once I get the top middle and bottom quilted, I will then turn the quilt and proceed to quilt the two sides. I had no idea how I was going to quilt this one, but this works for me!

Also, I have worked another quilt top into completion in about 2 weeks. This one was easy. I went to my brown bin which I never quite remember to use. I used up some great variety of browns, tans, beige, white, ecru, of white, and pink. Sorry this was after I folded it up and moved it to the ironing board. I will have to find a backing for cheap. This hobby is getting more expensive by the day. Hopefully there is something in my stash already.

Some of the pink triangles were leftovers from my shark bite quilt a few months back. Glad to take that out of the scrap bin and use the rest of the bolt to get this homogenized.

If you are interested in this scrappy process please view my freebie video by clicking here.

Please click below and be prepared to be amazed on other creator scrap genius.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

And thank you for reading my blog!

Scrap Happy “Hotumn” October 2025

~ myquiltprojects ~ 6 Comments

Greetings quilting friends. Yet another month has flown by. My scrappy juices have a completion. Sometimes, I like to squeeze a quilt plan into something out of my comfort zone. Much like making orange juice, you can just purchase the pre-squeezed juice, or you can make orange juice from scratch. While this quilt took me a couple of months, I like how I squeezed the oranges out of my stash.

I used 9 yards of scraps, 9! Almost three of those yards were from orange. (disclaimer, I probably made more scraps in the process, but I will kick that can down the road and worry not about that now haha). If you are interested in the free pattern, make sure to click here. This will also allow you to see quiltingwithtamara.com site with her quilt reveal!

When I started this, I was worried that the orange would overpower (it is the background of the quilt). The yellow, red, and orange blends and boldly stands out at the same time, making this a little bit of an optical illusion in person. The reds almost look like burgundy. Some of the yellows/golds, are so close in color to the orange, and some of the reds, are close in color to the orange, it makes this somewhat sparkle. While I am not a huge fan of orange, nor have I ever meant to make an autumn quilt, I know have an autumn quilt top for the future autumns in life. That brief two weeks where it is not quite so hot, and not quite so cold, like goldilocks, it’s just right. My favorite time of the year!

The play of words in the title, in Texas, we usually have a brief period of autumn, followed by a tad a winter. Usually our autumn is very hot. So, I combined hot with autumn, Hotumn is the name of this quilt.

After that, I moved to my mini bug pack pattern to make a couple miniature backpacks, one for me and one for my daughter. These are so fun to make!

These used less than a 10 inch square for the outer and lining, and the vinyl used were just small scraps. One I put the pocket on the front. My daughter picked out all that from the stash, nothing matches, kind of punky Brewster like. I like it! And the sewing themed one including the zipper pull, that one I picked out. It makes me smile.

After all this squeeze of juice, I am ready for a palette cleanser of something NOT scraps! haha

If you want great ideas for scraps, make sure to head on over to Gun and Kates post as they host Scrap Happy each month. And don’t forget to visit all the links below, prepare to be amazed:

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

Have fun with all those scraps, and thank you for reading my blog!

Scrap Happy Sept 2025 WIP

~ myquiltprojects ~ 8 Comments

Welcome to the blog, my name is Dawn and today is all about scraps. This is my monthly scrap happy post where all of us scrappers come together and link each other up! Thank you to Kate and Gun for being our hosts of the scrap happy blog links. Make sure to click on the blog posts all linked below to see someone else’s scrappy adventure.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

I have been in a mood lately. I am very dissatisfied with my career, with YouTube, with inflation, with politics, with my partner. Menopause sucks. My give a care bone is broken, my responsibilities never let up. I also think that I have too many irons in my fire. And as I approach my (end of life) burning fire, I think it is burning at both ends, ready to burn out. So scaling back on social media it is. I have been doing this for about a month now. Although, mindset has not improved, perhaps that break will realign my planets with time. This mood has created a no sew funk. That part of my mood has improved. I actually started sewing this over the Labor Day weekend.

I decided to do something for myself, using someone else’s pattern for a change. I wanted to do Laundry Basket Quilts current quilt along, but am not sure of the colorway of scraps I would go with, I will wait till the reveal and decide. By that time, the idea of a mystery quilt could be completely out of my system.

I went into Pinterest and searched for Mystery Quilt 2025 and come up with something that is right up my alley. I decided I would use a color I don’t normally play with, orange. I wanted black in the quilt, I have plenty of red, and I wanted yellow. So I hopped onto the blog post on quiltingwithtamara.com and her mystery quilt. It had already been revealed so I thought I was pretty safe in proceeding with my color decision. I have linked the mystery quilt at her website above.

All of these sub blocks above are 2 1/2 inch squares. And Just as I would finish one clue, onto the next, as you can see this totally filled my workspace, so I had to resort to other measures. Since the clues were all released I could sort them by their names, and then sew them into the 10 inch blocks.

The 4 blocks on the right, I actually got a little worried with my color choice, but continued on. As more yellow was introduced I knew trusting my gut with my scraps was a win.

Pardon the tote and batting (and flag), these were contents from my deceased aunt. Much of my grandparents items are in this tote. I have white and blue wool sailors uniform from WW2 when grandpa was in the navy. I am keeping them very close by. Afraid to put the tote in storage for fear of mice or what ever other things that could happen. So my grandparents stuff is photo bombing my pic, LOL. I am ok with that. Eventually I will figure that tote out, in the meantime it is with me in my sewing space. Lots of memories in my sewing space.

I did make a couple pattern changes to this mystery. I am going with black instead of yellow for the mini stars in the sassing. Also, where the black stars meet the black borders, I went yellow. Some of those stars are supposed to be friendship stars, but I decided to make all the stars the same. I may modify the 5 inch orange squares that are a very negative space. I needs something there, not sure what. If you have a suggestions, I will gladly hear them. (After thinking about this for 24 hours, those empty blocks may look good with an autumn leaf chenille motif?, hmmmm….) I was not going for an autumn quilt, but that is exactly how it is turning out. A happy accident. I really like the red next to the black, it plays tricks on your eyes and creates a maroon color from across the room.

I have used up quite a bit of orange in my bin. If you are interested in making this with your scraps, I would suggest changing out the orange for white and maybe a different color than yellow, I supposed you could swap the light and medium light colors. On each clue I had to go write the colors in so I would not get confused. And I post noted everything so I could do easy assembly later. And the instructions clearly have you mark your blocks as QST1 for example.

Last months scrap happy showed you these:

The star top is sewn, although I did not snap a pic. And the quilting is coming along on the second picture. I have a good majority of the white all quilted.

I wonder what scrap adventure awaits next month? Stay tuned to find out, and thank you for reading my blog!

ScrapHappy August 2025

~ myquiltprojects ~ 2 Comments

Every month when I manage to make a scrap project happen, I always comment how I cannot believe it is already, in this case, August. My goodness I wonder if I did not work 40 hours a week if my week would slow down any? Time is just flying!

I have made good progress with my scraps. Last month I showed you my shark tooth scraps. While that came together fast and used oodles of 2 1/2 inch squares, eventually my variety died out, so the shark tooth blocks stopped. So I decided to work a different scrap.

I have gathered strings for a very long time. Previous string projects kind of left me turning my nose up at the idea of using them. So I got them out, and they played nicely with me LOL. I grew out the shark tooth, and trimmed it down to form a center square. Imagine this trimmed LOL!

Because I have not touched my strings in over a year and half, I had ample variety. And those strings and shark teeth became this star.

I am finding that most of my stash is less than one yard of fabric, so I got out all the yardage I had and the fabrics auditioned themselves. As much as I wanted to use the effervescence on the right, it was just too busy, and the back was more of a border print, and did not match what is showing here. This part of the quilt took 3 yards.

This is now a top, and all the little bits I trimmed off while making the flying geese, will become a super scrappy binding.

You know, I actually crunched numbers ithe quilt above to see if the amount of scraps I used, vs the amount of scraps I created. And surprisingly, those flying geese created a gob of scraps darn it. But after calculating, and subtracting the new scraps this only used 2 1/4 yds of scraps (because I had so much pink background to add back to the scrap pile). I came out ahead, but not as far as I wanted to darn it.

This was the last quilt I quilted on the longarm before I broke my foot. It has just sat there, while I simmered what I was going to do. I could proceed to binding, but here is the thing. While at the back of my machine using a gentle wave panto, the darn foot of the longarm got cock-eyed. Which caused the hoping foot to drag the fabric. I was planning on entering this in quilt con and was so disappointed this happened. I wanted it to be perfect, and it was NOT. So, all this time it has kind of been nagging me. The day before prime day, I was watching a hand quilting frame/hoop. It went to like 60% off, so I managed to snag it for a little over $30. So I have decided I am going to hand quilt this in between the gentle wave, and rip out the longarm quilting. Originally when quilting this, I wanted to run neutral thread thru the neutral area, and then change thread to red in the hourglass. But doing a panto made that next to impossible. So now, I am hand quilting this, I can do it the way I originally wanted to do it.

My stitches are not nice and even, I am still learning. I am thinking I need to get a thimble with a rim cap on it to help me. I am enjoying trying something new, and getting my way with the original thread concept I had.

See how there looks to be puckers in the longarming? Hopefully that will disappear when I rip it out. First though I am hand quilting in between since this is kind of stabilized well.

I also got out my Lori Holt Farm Girl Vintage books as well as Summer Moon and wanted to make some blocks and taper the blocks from small the large, and then I thought, why should I sew new blocks? Let me go to my box of orphans and see if I can get the same affect I am looking for. And I am liking this layout! Many orphans are coming out to play in the graduated columns, it works!

I have a couple really big Lori Holt blocks at the very bottom that cannot be seen, and they will all sew in wonderfully. Taking the same size orphan block and turning it on point, grows and graduates the column. As you can see I have oodles of 9 patches that I will need to sew together to make it a bigger block, but gosh, that box of orphans diminished. I only have a few left. This option is much better than making a gob of potholders.

I got best of show ribbon with my favorite scrap project to date shown below.

And this has already been put into use! I cannot wait to wash this for the first time! My daughter latched onto it (I think because of the ribbon).

If you are interested in any of the quilts you see in this post, you can visit my YouTube channel, or visit my blog post for the all the hourglass blocks.

And we had our local show of quilts. I love it when my quilts get to hang where I can get a full picture of them. Here is a slide show I prepared of all the quilts. There are antique quilts, and plenty of scrappy inspriations.

Make sure to check out all the ScrapHappy bloggers! Once a month all of us, if we can, post about how we are using our tidbits of scraps. It can be any medium, not just fabric. Very interesting and clever people, check them out! Thank you Kate and Gun for making this possible.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

And thank you for reading my blog!

SharkWeek Scrap Happy July

~ myquiltprojects ~ 2 Comments

Welcome to my version of Shark Week haha. If TV can do it, so can I. But first, my latest top.

My favorite thing about this quilt is the borders! I estimate I used over 8 yds of scraps. It feels good to get rid of some of these lingering in the stash for 20 years!

Now onto the shark week part of the scrap happy post. I think I invented a new way for the periwinkle/hummingbird/kite block, figuring out a new way only using squares and no specialty ruler. This can also be a 4 blade Dresden. As you can imagine my enthusiasm is high because I really feel that my scraps a getting double used with my “invention” or new technique. Please watch the last half of the video for the demo, and the first half tickling the funny bone! I am calling the new block shark tooth.

You can see it behind me in the thumbnail. For every square in the quilt, it uses two squares. Each square is a shark’s tooth LOL.

And now I have gotten into my string bin and am growing this into a square. This is kind of improv scrappy quilt, so I am not quite sure where it will take me or where it will end up.

And here are my strings laid out for the final corner.

I have made a huge mess on my ironing board and work table, but I have momentum. I am not going to let a little bit of mess interfere with my scrapin fun! For more wonderful blogposts all about scraps please visit my blog friend links below for Scrap Happy July 2025 edition.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

The summer scrap quilt project

~ myquiltprojects ~ Leave a comment

For those of you followers of the blog, know that I am knee deep in my all summer scrap project. But then, someone planted a seed. I was in the app called QuiltSpace, a very friendly quilting forum all about quilting posts of makes, pictures, videos, questions, and giveaways. That forum is wholesome and wonderful. If you are wanting an ad free, no cost place to see what other quilters all over the world are making, be sure to download that free app in the App Store.

It went from this:

To this. I decided on point would complicate my scrappy summer life haha.

I posted a picture of the geese and chains quilt I am working in the app, and someone asked, what will you do for the border? I responded the quilt will be large enough it will not need a border, but then I came across this in my random Pinterest pursuits.

This newspaper clipping was from the Kansas City Star Newspaper I believe and this is actually posted on Barbara Brackmen’s website. I loved this for a quilt idea and went down THAT rabbit hole for days trying to find a pattern freebie out there.

I found this on the website called badskirt.com. However the link to the free pattern expired/disappeared. It showed this as a border option, and my lightbulb planted a new seed!!!

Here it is drawn out by badskirt.com as a unique border. Now, I am not gonna lie, I do not want to sew curved piecing. I want a relaxing sew, not a stressful sew, so I had to plan this out. How can I achieve this, with no pattern? Misty fuse. I am going to apply misty fuse to some scraps and just trace around the template pieces created in EQ8. As much as I want to share this, the Mac book had an update and for the life of me I cannot get the export pdf feature to work correctly. It is sending the file somewhere, but I cannot find it! Finally got that resolved, and now it is not sending pdf files anywhere, I cannot even select a pdf printer to export it to. *sigh*. As soon as this function starts working for me I will gladly share.

I did take the black and white sketch of the block and mocked it up in EQ8. And after a couple attempts finally figured out how to arch and follow the sketch.

For curiosity sake I did mock this up with some fabric glue (I have to find my misty fuse, that might be an archeology dig in itself haha).

Raw edge appliqué it is! No curves. And I can use some fancy machine stitches if I so chose.

Right now I have blocks sewn for the inside of the quilt that would make this 70 by 70. If I add a border all the way around it becomes 82 by 82. This does not math correctly so there is some head scratching to do for the corners. If you notice, the way this is mocked up, that will leave me with something to put in the corners I have not yet figured out. I still have much sewing to do before I worry about that.

And this little scrap project has really been working down my bins of squares (insert a celebration dance here). And I am glad to blow threw them. I hope you enjoyed this post and thank you for reading my blog.

Scrap Fabrics Unite, ScrapHappy June!

~ myquiltprojects ~ 6 Comments

I am using some of my stash. If you saw my last post, you know I am working some Kettle Chip Geese blocks. As my quilting journey ages with time, I tend to like one aspect of quilting better than other aspects.

Like when I get some new starch, let’s say best press, I adore ironing and pressing. Or if I get a new ruler, I am in love with cutting again. But the main stay for eons has been my adoration for picking fabrics for the quilt.

In the beginning I was horrible at it. As those mistakes were made and lessons learned, to grab two fabrics and marry them together, I am just in awe of the union!

The blocks above, make me wish I had a bolt of each color. The first block with the light paisley back ground has me oohing and aaahing over those two colors coming together. They perfectly compliment one another while also giving great encouragement to contrast. Using loud neutrals is only fun with the right fabrics. The pink plaid background can be tricky with alignment of grid. But the homey-ness of that plaid and its piece imperfections reminds me of old quilts with odd pairings, love it! And let’s not forget fabric with sayings. I have oodles of muscle car fabrics that I have been dying to incorporate into something, but nothing seems to go with what I am doing, until now.

I have been playing with these geese in EQ8 and want to grow this quilt idea over the summer, I want this a usable size. Numbers for the blog, numbers for YouTube are way down, so why not slow down and enjoy the scraps all summer long?

Currently I have the geese butted up against one another, but what if I set them on point? hmmm..

This setting would use oodles of scraps, most of which are already in a tub of precut squares.

The center 9 patch is 2 inch squares. The outer is 2 1/4 by 5, and the outer squares are 2 1/4, which would just be trimming down some charm squares and some 2 1/2 in squares from my bins. The lashings would use up 2 1/2 inch strips and squares, woot woot!

I hesitate because I am not certain this will work with scrappy background and look as good as the mock up. I do not want to go to all this work and the marriage of scraps becomes muddy. I will have to be careful with the loud fabrics lol.

In measuring my 8 inch finished blocks from corner to corner they will register shy of 12 inches. In counting them in the grid, this would be a ginormous usable quilt. And this helps with my personal schedule too. I am currently working overtime (boooo), and so time with the sewing machine is suffering. This might be just the perfect time to take this on. No hurry or rush. Being at piece/peace with my scraps.

Make sure to click the links to see what everyone in the ScrapHappy group is working on!

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Dawn, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, 
Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti,
Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo, Alissa, 
Lynn, Tierney and Hannah

This concludes this ScrapHappy post. Thanks for stopping by and reading the blog!

Kettle Chip Flying Geese

~ myquiltprojects ~ 5 Comments

Hello and happy quilting from Texas. Summer has begun, and the geese have already headed north for the summer! I have created a pattern using Potato chip blocks with a modification to turn into flying geese.

You are probably wondering, this looks nothing like a kettle or any potato chip block, but hang on. Bear with me while I get to the specifics of building these blocks. I am giving three different methods. Scroll and choose the one that works for you.

Foundation blocks or FPP

First is foundation paper. This will be the method that is most precise. Here is the foundation paper download. I am not giving FPP instructions. I recommend if you have never done FPP use solids or batiks in your construction.

UntitledDownload

Make sure when this prints, your printed copy goose measures 2 1/2 by 4 1/2. You will need 4 prints for each block.

Easy Angle and Companion Angle method

Using both of these rulers you only need to cut 2 1/2 inch strips.

From your 2 1/2 inch neutral strips subcut, cut 8 total pieces . These are your wingtips

From your neutral 2 1/2 inch strip you will need to cut 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch bars. There is the potato chip in the block. Cut 4.

Now you will need to grab a scrap of color to pair with the neutrals. You will need your companion angle as well as a color strip 2 1/2 inches. Cut 4.

One corner at a time, I start on the left of the color, I sew a wing. Press toward the wing. Do the same for the right side, press towards the wing. To reduce bulk scissor trim the dog ear at the top of the wing. If dog ears are present on the sides, those will get trimmed in a later step.

Repeat this for the right side wing. You will then need to trim down all the flying geese for accuracy to 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches.

Notice the alignment of either the points or the flat spot on the wings. They key to accuracy with this method is first aligning the bottom edges of the goose and the wing, then align the 45 degree angle of both pieces. Do not fuss with alignment at the top.

And now you have the main component for your block. There are qty 4. Sew those to the potato chip blocks. Goose up and potato chip below. Now your sub blocks need to be sewn into a four patch.

Notice I pressed my geese blocks towards the neutral bar. I have played with pressing of the seams all different ways to prevent bulk up. It cannot be avoided. Press as you wish.

These 4 sub units are to be sewn together like a 4 patch. I have opted to spin my seams. This will allow for all of the seams next to this in the quilt to all nest. That step is optional. I do find spinning my seams allows joining of the rows easier as those nested seams snug right into one another.

Covered Corners method

And lastly the good ole covered corners method. The cutting instructions for this are using potato chips and squares.

Using a 2 1/2 inch strip, sub cut by 4 1/2 inches. Cut 4.

Repeat this step with your neutral 2 1/2 inch strip.

From that same strip cut eight 2 1/2 inch squares. Draw a line from corner to corner for all 8 pieces.

Place on one end of color bar piece. Sew a thread distance from the line so when the geese wing is folded over, it folds on the line you drew.

Trim away unused portion of folded corner and discard. This method has the most waste. Repeat this on the opposite end of the color bar ensuring the angle makes a peak like a mountain. You will make 4.

Both sides of the flying geese press towards the wings. And the picture above is not showing it trimmed, but the excess wing will get trimmed again. And now you will trim down to 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 to ensure accuracy and easy of assembling the blocks. Make 4.

Now bringing the neutrals bars, place a neutral bar under the goose block and sew. Make 4. You are now ready to make the kettle of geese. Press as you wish.

This simple 4 patch style block is an easy way to use your scraps. Now some of you may be scratching your head why I am calling this Kettle Chip Geese. In trying to name this, Since the geese are in a circle, I looked up what the word is called when birds circle above. A group of birds circling in the sky is called a kettle. Chip is from the potato chip bars used. And of course the geese. This blocks will finish at 8 inches in the quilt and should measure 8 1/2 inches by themselves. A great way to bust those scraps or use your precut stash.

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