Missing U Finish

The Missing U blocks have been assembled into a flimsy. It's about 66 x 83 inches or so. It has been renamed "From Manchester to Memphis" as it will be going home with Julie. I'm happy with it.

Violet

Here's the Violet scrap bin.  From the bits in this bin...

I've sewn pieces together into pairs, and then joined those together until...

 I have a piece big enough to sew to one side of the white fabric.

And I keep adding pieces

 Until I get something the right size.

Then I trim it down to about 16" square

This is another block from the "Missing U" quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts.

I am looking forward to making more of these "Missing U" blocks. My little scrap bins are ready and waiting.

Missing U

 

I have already started making slabs. Here is the first one. White with dots. It's about 14 inches, and it needs to be bigger. But that's OK. I have lots of fabric.

This is the second one. It is White with Black.

This is the third one. It is White with Colors. It is about 16 - 17" or so. I will trim it down whenever I figure out how big I want the blocks to be.

These are fun. Not a lot of thinking involved!

I made a Missing U quilt years ago and called it MHT2MEM because I gave it to my pal Julie. The title refers to the airport name for the Manchester NH airport (MHT) and MEM, which is the designation for Memphis TN, where Julie lives. The 2 ought to be understood. The quilt went from MHT to MEM.

You can read about it here and here.

Black and White Missing U Blocks

As part of the cleanup from the Triangle Dance quilt, I decided to use the scraps to make some Missing U blocks. I like these and think there is a lot of potential here.

Here's another white block. Yes, I think this has a lot of potential...

Inspiration

The next colored Missing U block will be....

Have I told you how much I love lemons?

A Little Break

I've been working on my wordy project intensely since October 21, and while I haven't avoided the sewing studio completely, I was getting itchy to do a bit of sewing, so I gave in and sewed up a block of light blue fabrics. I've always liked the "Missing U" quilt in Sunday Morning Quilts. Since I want to make a quilt for a little fairy nephew of mine, I thought making a block was a nice way to satisfy my sewing urge.

I'll make a block now and then, and we'll see what happens. The Christmas Random Plank quilt has been on my design wall for a while, and the more I looked at it the more I knew it was going to get cut up somehow. Oddly enough it fell off the design wall on its own this morning!

 I don't know if Millie had something to do with it, but if she did, then she knows what she's doing. That little cat has changed my life in so many ways.

Green & Blue

 Here's a blue Missing U block.

Here's a green one.

These blocks are based on fabrics with the color or design on a white background, so that's why there aren't blocks that are more vivid or intense. Naturally there are a few exceptions, but that's what you do when you have to "make it work." That term is meant to be "make it work with what you already HAVE."

I have long felt that having limited options forces you to be more creative. Hell, the Yellow Ribbons Zebra quilt came about because I wanted to make it work with the fabrics I had already cut. I was not going to cut one more damn thing, so I HAD to figure it out.

Oh Oh Orange!

This is another "missing U" block from Sunday Morning Quilts.  In the last block, I built around the white piece. When I made this one, I just pulled pieces out of my little orange scrap bin.

See? I wasn't kidding. Little orange scrap bin.

I pulled scraps out of the bin and sewed pieces together. Essentially I was making "made" fabric. Then I sewed them around the white block.

Autumn House Top Block #2

Remember the Christmas Random Plank quilt I made two years ago?  In the end, I decided it would be a table topper.

Well, in my family I cook Thanksgiving Dinner. When my Mother had her 75th birthday I decided it was time to relieve her of the burden of cooking the big bird, so I've hosted the dinner ever since. This year it will be a large family gathering, and my big dining room table will be expanded to its full length - 108 inches. I liked the Christmas Random Plank table topper so much I decided I had to make one for autumn, and for the Thanksgiving table in particular.

Moving to the new house put a real kink in the plans, but if I make one block a day there's a real chance I can have a flimsy by the big day. The design was finalized during a conversation with my pal Julie the other night. I did NOT want to make another Random Plank, for two reasons.

1. Been there, done that.
2. A flimsy built that way is very difficult to manage. It's big and unwieldy, and no fun to wrestle with day after day.

I considered doing a "Missing U" version, but again, been there, done that. Julie suggested an oversized House Top version of a quarter log cabin block. We measured the table full size, and I'll need 18 18-inch blocks. The flimsy would be about 54 x 108 inches.  I want to use fabric I already have, and I want to have a little fun with the blocks. The block in the photo above is block # 2, and I'm happy with it. Although the first two blocks use the same fabric in the first square, the blocks won't all use that same fabric. I'll keep the same general color and tone, but there will be variations. This is a scrap quilt, after all. The only constant is the fabrics are the colors of Autumn in New England: greens, golds, reds, oranges and browns.



***update: Holy Toledo! This is this blog's 1500th post!

Color Blocks

It's fun to think all these blocks have come from the little scrap bins. I like this, and will need at least a dozen more blocks to make this big enough.

Even though the "Missing U" quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts has blocks made from only primary colors, I'll make a brown block and some blocks with only black and white fabrics, and I might even make a black block. It's fun to make these.

More Missing U blocks

These are easy to make and a lot of fun to play with.

Yellow

Here is the Yellow block for the Missing U Quilt. My son asked for a yellow quilt a few years ago, and I bought a lot of yellow gold fabrics for it. Many of them are in this block.

VeeV asked yesterday if I liked lemons or the FLAVOR of Lemon. Both, actually.  I think Lemon is my most favorite flavor...

Lemon juice in ice water!!
Lemon curd between layers of a white cake!!
Lemon curd, actually, any way, shape or how.
Lemon juice on fresh green beans.
or Asparagus, Zucchini, Carrots...
Caesar Salad

Lemon juice on cooked fish
Lemon juice on cooked chicken
Chicken Piccata (with Lemon!)
Lemon drops (the hard candies)
Lemon sorbet
...

You can enjoy the flavor of lemon in every meal, and I usually do. It is a crisis in my house if there are no fresh lemons.

The Rules for Tonya

While I was making "The Rules" for Helen, I sent Tonya some pictures of the quilt in progress. She was "blown away" and asked if I would make a "Rules" quilt top with brightly colored letters on a white background in the same "font" for her to display on her website.

Who was I to say no?
I didn't want to do just that. I wanted to push the envelope a little. I liked making letters with different fabrics, so I wanted to do more of that. But I wanted to "ease" into it.

So the "IF YOU OBEY ALL" was pretty straightforward. One (fairly boring) fabric per letter, except for the little cats that popped in unexpectedly.

"THE" of course, in black and white, was made that way to alert you "something important" was coming up. The word "RULES" obviously pokes fun at the concept of rules in the word itself, with two letters made up of rulers. Since Tonya had lived in Paris, adding a cat wearing a beret was de rigueur. I simply had to use that Laurel Burch fabric full of cats somewhere, and the letter "U" seemed to be the perfect spot. A sedate "L" leading up to a freaked out "E" and then one of my favorite fabrics in one of my favorite letters to sew, "S."

Then all hell starts to break loose.

The second "YOU" has letters made up of multiple fabrics. For the word "MISS" I really wanted the word to get lost, because you are missing something. I love the "M" with four fabrics. I really racked my brain to do something creative with the "I". Searching through my bin of leftover bits, I found some Jane Sassaman fabric and I thought, "this could work if it were trimmed just right." Then the two wonky "S's" with the cat hiding in one.

The next "ALL THE" simply had to be made from multiple fabrics, and here I started adding slightly different colors and variations to each letter. I made no effort to disguise the fact that these letters were made from different fabrics.

I am all about readability though, so the letters don't stray too far. I love the little cat hiding in the "E."

Then, the riot of the word "FUN." How, I wondered, could I break apart the letters in a unique way, using multiple fabrics and colors in each, yet maintain readability. I confess I drew out the letters first. Then I hit the fabric stash, tossing fabrics around and arranging them. I love the "U" although I think the "N" looks pretty good too.

The original quote by Katharine Hepburn does not include an exclamation point. The phrase ends in a period (full stop). To me the feeling of the quote required an exclamation point. In Helen's quilt, I had used an image of a red-haired woman in the "dot."
For Tonya's, I knew I would add one of her cats. But when I examined this Timeless Treasures fabric I had, I realized I could include all four of Tonya's cats. But how? "FUN!!!!" with four exclamation points after it seemed a bit ordinary... so I broke with tradition (and the rules) and put two on each side of the word "FUN." A green sharpie helped me with Lily's eyes. The rest, I think, are pretty obvious, but for me, the pièce de résistance was adding the dancing skeletons for Howler's mark.

Halloween is Tonya's favorite holiday!