Scrappy Saturday - more border fabric auditions

I was going to sew this afternoon, but I ran into a roadblock - a furry one.  So decided to do an early blog posting instead.

Guess who is fast asleep (and snoring) in the sunny puddle under my sewing chair?  He's been sickly for the last week, favouring his arthritic legs, and uncharacteristically morose.  And, feeling sorry for him, I decided to do something else until he wakes up and moves on his own.  That should be fairly soon.  If he doesn't wake on his own, I'll start cooking something and that will get him to move fairly quickly into the kitchen.

Remember the big pile of ironed scraps from my huge scrap bin on wheels?

This is what it looks like now.

I found some more scraps today that will work in my Modern Monday sampler.  Hooray.

I also found a wide strip of the little floral I'm using in my Traditional Tuesday Sampler.  I don't know whose scrap bin it came from originally, but they have great taste.

Here's a pic of the scraps I've piled up with just 15 minutes a day of scrap trimming so far.  When I come across a chunk the size of a fat quarter I just fold that into the yardage stash.  A couple of days ago, I came across a stack of strips 4" wide of all the same Thimbleberries golden neutral (at least a yard's worth) - those went into the stash bin with brown and tan yardage without being cut further.  So far, the biggest pile is 1.5" strips, followed by 2.5" x 4.5" bricks and 2.5" squares.  All in all, it's a very respectable showing for the trimming to date.  There's some bigger chunks of fabric at the top of my pile now, so I may be able to get some larger squares in the next few days.

I starched my foundation fabric for six more string blocks (if I can get to my machine).  This is all I have left in the smaller than 1.5" strings.

The bag of strings smaller than 1" that I separated out for my experiment with fabric knitting or crocheting... I tucked this bag away in the UFO bin for that future day when I'm bored with everything I have going and just feel like experimenting.  I have some serious doubts about the attempt.  Let me put it this way, I'm not saving this size string in my scrap trimming under the mistaken delusion that I'm going to take up crocheting fabric rag rugs.

Pulled out the 1.5" strip box for today's string piecing session...  Lucas is still asleep.  If it wasn't for the snoring, I'd have to check to see if he's breathing.

I discovered that the dark blue I used in my sashing and laid out as the final border of my Shady Lanes quilt is down to the last half yard - not enough to border a queen size quilt.  I used to have so much yardage of that fabric (I loved it so).  So I pulled out some other fabrics to audition.  Absolutely hated all the browns I tried.  Looked for more blues to audition.  This bright blue floral with the red and yellow wasn't bad in person but I don't like it in the pic below.  There's quite a bit of red and yellow in the scrap patches.  Yeah - I'm trying to hard to make it work.

Rejected the blue/green/silver paisley, yet again.  I've got enough yardage to back two quilts with this fabric.  It's really pretty but doesn't seem to play nicely with anything else.

This large floral on black wasn't bad.  The red still worked with it.  There is some black in the blue half square triangles.  Definitely worth considering...

But this vintage floral on cream was just waaaaay too light.

I'm thinking the floral on black and the dark red zinger may be the winner.

Lucas is still sleeping... think I'll make myself something to eat.

Or maybe I'll indulge in a nap myself.

Shady Lanes - now for the borders

All the blocks and rows are joined making a 72" x 72" top and the bulky seams pressed into submission with a heavy hot iron and a little elbow grease.  Now I'm auditioning fabrics for some simple borders.  It's too big for my design wall, so I laid it out on the kitchen table.

I tried a plain dark border next to the blocks and didn't like it.  Then I remembered the 288 bonus half square triangles and threw in a few for a sawtooth effect.  Liked that a little better but thought it needed lightening up a little so added in a strip of the neutral between the quilt blocks and the sawteeth.  Ahhh.  I liked that much better.  But it all felt a little blah and dark.

Then I remembered that Grace of City Mouse Quilter Blog suggested a red zinger.  So I pulled out some different red hues to see if I like the effect.

The brighter red I tried first didn't do a thing for me.

Neither did this one.

I auditioned a red/pink remnant.  I  have just enough for a narrow frame around the entire quilt and wouldn't mind using this up because it's been in my stash forever and has been used a lot of projects. There's a lot of pink and purples in the scrap squares so this one surprised me by playing really nicely - much more so than a pic of just this much quilt can properly display.

I also liked this darker red very much.

I've narrowed it down to the last two and will leave it all laid out on the kitchen table and walk past it a few dozen times while I mull it over.  Adding this many borders is going to make this one queen size in width, so I'll need to add in a row of something to increase the length - maybe a row of sawtooth stars that use up more 4 patches and bonus HSTs.  Sometimes the quilt top dictates how it wants to be finished and this one seems to want to be queen size.  Amazing how those little four patches I randomly pieced from 2" strips grew up to be something so big.

Auditioning Fabric for the Samplers

I've decided to join in on making the samplers hosted by Jenifer Dick on her blog Forty-Two Quilts
The first blocks for Modern Monday and Traditional Tuesday have already been posted, so I need to get moving on this before I fall behind.

I spent a bit of time digging through stash yardage and auditioning fabric.  I don't have any solid orange or solid grey.  Grey?!!!  No insult intended to anyone who likes the look, but yuck.  Who got to decide that the go-to colours for modern should be orange and grey?  I've got some yellowish orange, some peachy-orange, some cheddar orange, some floral orange.... no, not these.

There's the oranges, yellow and turquoise I just bought... I could add to these from my stash of brights... I'm just not ready to use these new ones just yet.

Then I found these...

And some 10" squares of blacks and oranges.  Aha!  I'm going to make my modern in Hallowe'en colours.  Tomorrow, I'll dig around in the strip bins and see what else I can pull that will go with all of these.

I also found another large Christmassy floral - don't know what it was doing in with the orange and black.  Maybe I should double check my fabric stash for other misplaced yardage....  This is definitely a good candidate for the pillowcase sew-in I'm going to be hosting in October.  I just have to put it somewhere I won't forget it again.

For the Traditional sampler, I'm leaning towards browns and pinks.  I definitely have enough yardage and scraps and strips to make that work for me.

Tomorrow, I think I'll make some blocks.  Oh yeah...and the 9 patch - I definitely am going to finish that 9 patch.