Red First

 

While waiting for the orange fabric to arrive, I had time to make more slabs, so I decided to go through the bins and bring out Red fabric pieces.

Before I could make slabs, I had to sort and press the pieces.

Then I sewed the pieces into pairs.

Then I was able to cut the slabs into triangles.

I was able to cut over 90 red triangles. I didn't get through ALL the red fabric, but that's OK. I can do this kind of work any time.

I have a LOT of fabric to sort through, and it will take a while, so I will work on it in "little bites."

What's really nice is that I have a big collection of scrap slab triangles from which I can pull when I want to make the next scrap slab triangle quilt. And there will be at least one other. The average scrap slab triangle quilt needs 120 triangles. As you can see in the photo above, I have enough for at least three quilts already.

Teal & Orange

 

Here is the Teal block.

And here is the Orange one. I really had to search through my stash and bins to find light orange fabrics, or fabrics that would "read" as light orange.

Here they all are together, in no particular order. As you can see they are all different sizes. At some point I will need to trim them down, but not yet.

I have removed the bright one because it overpowered the others, and also the dotted one, which didn't hold its own among these.  I have fabrics set aside for a red one, and that's up next.

I'll have to go through my stash to see if there are any colors I have missed. I might be able to do a light brown (or beige?) one, and maybe a gray one, but I don't know yet. Maybe I can make a white with colors if I don't use fabrics that are as bold as the original one.

At any rate, if I need to make another yellow or green or blue or pink block, I'll do it. I don't need this quilt to have only one block of each color.

I do like the irregular shapes of these too. We'll see what happens. It's so nice not to have to fuss.

Pink

 

Here's the light pink block.

I'm not generally a pastel fan but these blocks are so pretty. When I envisioned making a quilt of mostly light fabrics, I'm not quite sure I had something like this in mind.

Here are all the blocks together. Clearly the bright colored block doesn't fit, but neither does the black and white one or the white one with the dots. And nothing has been trimmed down to a particular size.

I kinda like these as big rectangles. We'll see. Regular readers know I like to see what happens on the design wall and go from there. I'm just going to keep going and see where this takes me.

Eagle Eyes

 To Cherie who pointed out that the "new" blue block was the same as the original one...

OOPS! I uploaded the wrong photo.

The Yellow block was tricky. I didn't want to make a bright yellow block, and I really had to search my stash and scrap bins to find enough "pale" yellows to make this work. 

Hey, whatever works!

I figured I could rely on the wrong side of some fabrics if I really couldn't figure it out, but I did not have to do that.

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.

How Do You Eat a Whale?

 

This is the big pile of fabric that I have to sort through. I emptied all the big bins on the floor. This is what I have to sort through.

So, to answer the question... How do you eat a whale? 

One bite at a time. I grab a pile of fabric, move it to my worktable so I don't have to grab it off the floor, and sort through it, tossing the fabric into the appropriate bin.

This is after about an hour of sorting I had this. The bings were filling up and the pile on the floor was getting smaller.

This is after three and a half hours.

I had to take a break and eat and get dressed. But after a break, I got it finished.

It looks good!

I'm going to start by making slabs of the fabrics in the Lights bin. I'm going to make slabs of fabrics with a white background, but I'm going to have some fun. 

The Stack

Making slabs is a lot more fun than folding fabric and sorting it. Sunday night while I "watched" TV (after the crushing final play of the Patriots game), I cut triangles from the green slabs.

No, I don't know how many there are.

This many! LOL!

I have a lot of green scrap slab triangles, and I have a lot of purples and I have a lot of pinks. Ought to be a really pretty quilt. I guess that's up next.

I picked up a lot of the fabric scraps that were all over the floor and folded and put away some fabric. It's not as clean as I want it to be and I still do have to fold and put fabric away (as well as replenish my green fabric stash) but it's a start.

CHERIE... You are hilarious!

Cleaning Up the Green

I used virtually every piece of green fabric I had in my Early Autumn quilt and made an epic mess in my studio.

 I had a lot of pieces left over, and a lot of triangles that never made it ino trees.

Rather than fold all the little scraps and put them away, I decided to make slabs and cut them into triangles.

This is a much more fun way to clean the studio.

My Dad came over and put the molding back up in the kitchen, so the fridge move is now officially complete.

Busy Weekend

This is my pal Kathy French, one of the SSOBB members, who visited me on Saturday. She and her husband stopped by on their way home from Vermont. We had a nice visit. Isn't the color of her jacket terrific?

I sewed a few of my scrappy triangle blocks together. The bottom photo is back side of the block.  All the backs of my quilts look like this. Neat, with no straggly threads.

My sewing machine has to go back to the shop. It doesn't cut the threads consistently and it makes a noise when I sew like two pieces of metal are banging against each other. Bummer. The guy opens and closes within my normal work day and isn't open any evenings, so it means a Saturday visit and a week without my machine. Argh.


I spent a lot of the rest of the weekend organizing a calendar of my quilts for 2017, doing a bit of online shopping, paying bills and reconciling the checkbook. I've been neglecting the avalanche of paper on my desk, and at least now I've made a dent in it. The shredder will be getting a workout soon.

Oh, and whoever asked about making "slabs," here's a link to a blog post where I talk about how I do it.

Triangle Scrap Slab Magic

OK, so you have scraps, and you sew them into slabs.

 And you lay your template on it, and you say, "DAMMIT." But fear not, just remember these words:

 "If it's too big, cut it off, and if it's too small, just add to it." Here I've lopped a chunk off the top and added it to the side.

 And see those extra triangular bits on each side? You can put those to good use too.

although you may have to hunt for them...

YES!!! OMG, am I having fun with these! Not only is it great fun clearing out the little scrap bins, but making these scrappy triangles is fun.

Red Slab Triangles

Oh. I am having FUN with these!  When I am done sewing the binding on the two quilts I am working on, I am really going to go to town with these. It's fun to empty out the little scrap bins and put things together.

Scrap Slabs

 It's fun to get inspired by your friends. I love this quilt that Julie made.

Turns out I have templates for the same pattern, so I cut these from my white with black scraps. (These are pairs, rights and lefts.)

  I got home from work last night and made a few slab blocks. This is one of them.

Then I cut some triangles from them. I think I'm going to like this a lot.

After dinner I sat down to watch Nature and Nova on PBS while I sewed the binding on the Bright Slashed Squares quilt. I'm halfway around.

Whee!