Scrap Happy April 2026

~ myquiltprojects ~ 3 Comments

Greetings scrap enthusiasts, welcome to scrap happy. I would like to thank Kate and Gun for hosting this event where scrap enthusiasts come together and share for inspiration and show some scrap genius! Make sure to click all the links to see what we have been 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

So I have been struggling. I am purposely slowing down because I have so many quilts. And while many of you would suggest me to give them to charity, I cannot part with them just yet. They are like my children, some of them taking 9 months to make or longer. I am not ready yet to donate. I have filled family members houses to the point of them not accepting anymore because they do not have room.

I liked my momentum and my rhythm. I find slowing down very hard. I mean naturally as I age I get slower, and it is very frustrating. For years I also think this burned a lot of extra calories not relaxing and worrying. And now I have relaxed that, and find that those extra calories I burned, I am no longer burning and have gotten quite the tummy. So todays scrap happy post I have taken an old pair of jeans that I had cut off for shorts (that don’t fit no more) and have used that fabric to enlarge my waist. I have seen this done at the sides of the waist band. But I did mine at the front. To my knowledge my behind did not grow in the same proportion as my tummy. I will wear these as you read this. So hopefully while I am at work I will not have a wardrobe malfunction!

And to be clear these jeans are becoming threadbare but this is practice so I can accomplish on my newer, less worn out jeans.

And I had been working on my 250th anniversary quilt of America. And this has been stalled for a couple of months. I just was not sure how to proceed. And this weekend while just staring at it across the room (the design wall can somewhat intimidate when you are stuck), I realized I can put it on point, grow the quilt, and then just figure out one more border.

The corners will be half triangles. And then my remaining border will not be on point. I am glad I waited because I had planned on a very intensive star border which probably would’ve been too busy.

The plan. Applique for the win. This quilt is using up my larger red and blue scraps with a bit of ecru thrown in. This quilt also had the problem of red white and blue, where I was already using white for the background. I have overcome the struggle and look forward to progress.

And this picture is half mocked up because I could not figure out how to snap the blocks to the grid that was not on point, so only did half, the other half will match and it will be a square quilt. I may elongate the length so it is more of a standard bed size. This one will be big! I am making this one when I have not even quilted the other patriotic quilt on the longarm. Slow and steady guilt free. Why do people guilt others in this hobby for too much fabric, or taking too long, or just the harassment of “who is that for?”. I hate that question. The person asking, obviously not them!

Also, I am hand quilting my pyramids quilt. I think I am about 60% done. The center is done, now I am down to the edges. As I get close to the edge I may have to take it out of the hoop to finish as that part is pretty fiddly. I have failed to upload a picture. I do have some on instagram, but WordPress is different with scaling images, And I have added a dangerous 3 to this post so my database is filling. Perhaps in May I will be able to show you an almost complete quilt.

I seem to have thrown out my back. I think it was from hand quilting with horrible posture on a seat that probably needs to go to the dump (I need new furniture). I have ordered a new arrow chair just for quilting. I will let you know how I like it soon.

Thanks for stopping in and seeing my scrappy projects and reading my blog!

ScrapHappy March 2026 ~ Bitsy Blocks

~ myquiltprojects ~ 13 Comments

Hello and welcome again to my rendition of scrap happy where we work bits of scraps into a project. So lately I have been struggling. My reasoning skills are kicking in. One can only have so many quilts before it becomes too much. I have put all but about 10 quilts into storage, yet I make more. While I know there are perfectly good charitable organizations to take such, I just cannot let go of quilts because that represents my precious time, and if I just giveaway my precious time and money, as hard as times are right now, well, my logic cannot comprehend what I should do. So I stall. So I start a brand new project, and then I stall, and then I start a brand new project, and then I stall. It is obvious I need to slow down and take more time making quilts. So this involves staying away from the easy quick projects. But easy and quick is what readers and quilters want. My mind is boggled.

I have a great patriotic quilt going getting ready for the 250 American anniversary of our country. My struggle with this project is that America integrity is kind of in the toilet, so if I celebrate it, I would be celebrating some stupidity. But then I think of all the history leading up to this point and all the great men and women who have made this country what it once was and I am struggling with that.

I think it is just me, because I am struggling at work to have patience with coworkers (maybe this is the change of life), I work my butt off and see others have the freedom to never be rushed, and never even ask to be rushed, and have such a chip on their shoulder of being offended if they are asked to rush.

My mind is in disbelief, and usually quilting is a relief. I think I have become a serial killer of fabric. I cut it up into a million pieces and then just place them in a bin and hide the fabric murder away. I have filled all my bins. My scrap bins are overflowing which caused me to want to hyper fixate on a particular color of quilt. But then my all of my spoons are taken up with family, work, just commuting, and I am finding I have no spoons left at the end of the day. I am now finding even the weekend spoon count is low, not feeling very productive. And with all the quilts I have I suppose that is ok. I am my worst enemy and slowing myself down I guess. I figure this will present itself with a name soon….gah. Forgive me, too many personal details, you are here to see my scraps.

Out of shame how large my neutral scrap bin is, I have started on a neutral scrappy background of little itsy bitsy blocks. I have opted to go with small pieces so this will be a slow process. I think these small blocks will make a marvelous quilt, I hope I stick with it.

Here are some 4 1/2 inch Cake Stand blocks. If I manage a useable size quilt, this will take me a very long time. It will be well worth the wait. While I was going thru my neutral bin, I am thinking I need to relieve some of that to the local quilt guild. But gosh fabric costs so much. At the same time, some of these fabric are downright hard to use.

Here are my scrappy blocks.

The black one is the first block I made for practice, made lots of mistakes and seam ripping happened. I am thinking I will be making these basket style blocks and change them up a bit and go for different handle configuration and perhaps a row quilt will happen. I am only this many blocks in, so who knows the directions the scraps will take me to.

Make sure to check out all the marvelous use of scraps with the scrap happy post links below!

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 am also doing hand quilting. I have failed to take a picture of that, but I am about a 1/3 of the way done and I am thrilled. Hand quilting is another way to slow down the making of quilts hahah! Maybe that will be featured in my next scrap happy post.

If any of you are interested in the method of making these blocks I have found using my easy angle ruler and cutting small strips is perfect for this little block. The large HST finishes at 2 inches, all the small HSTs finish at 1 inch. Reach out if you want more info with cutting and I can certainly help with that.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!

Scrap Happy Feb 2026

~ myquiltprojects ~ 3 Comments

Hi quilting enthusiasts! My name is Dawn and today I bring you a monthly post called Scrap Happy. Scrap Happy is where us bloggers get together and share links to some pretty and amazing scrap projects. Not all of these are limited to quilting, they can be yarn, thread, metal, all kinds of media. A special thanks to Kate and Gun for hosting this wonderful collaboration of scrap crafting! Please visit the links to see all the scrap glory!

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

So I have been in a funk. I get my fabric out and play with it, and sew blocks and then I just lose my joy in the project. I have abandoned 3 new projects already this year. This is a let down to myself, but I am not sure what to do. Nothing speaks to me. And I have a nagging sensation of all of the quilts that need to be quilted that I can’t because it is too cold. I think I need to longarm to snap me out of my funk. So in the meantime, l started looking for a project that would pull me out.

While in search of an easy project (one that I might be less likely to abandon), I came across Diabolical Jane. This is an old textile in a museum that someone wrote a free pattern using that as the base. While I started with purple and turquoise and orange, I found that those fabrics played well together, it seemed way too scrappy, and there was no one spot to rest the eyes. So I stuck with purple or variation of, gray and neutrals. After laying this out several times I think I am there. I do need to cut a couple more neutral fabrics. While I used to dread cutting and pressing fabrics, I must say I am really liking it now. I guess having the right tools that work for me make all the difference. For those of you who dread a particular part of quilting but push thru, try a different way, you may be shocked to realize you like the worst part. It took me years to realize this.

As my scraps decrease in size, this was hard to get fabrics that played well together and I had enough yardage of. Each of these colors takes 12 inches by WOF. If you are interested to learn more about this pattern you can visit the pattern designer here, completely free. The modern quilt guild had many members make this quilt and the variety of how the fabrics play together is amazing. Make sure to check that out here. You can go on Pinterest or google this pattern by name and pull up magnificent quilts. Sometimes simplicity makes the prettiest quilts. While I have used my stash and not made any purchases towards this, I would eliminate the purple gray just past the gradient stripe and insert a better purple fabric. That fabric was passed to me and is probably from the 80s. Thrilled to finally use it!

This is also a wonderful way to use up fabrics that you cannot categorize by color. If a fabric has many colors, this quilt is perfect to incorporate that! While this is not the prettiest quilt in the making, it will be usable and will serve its purpose nicely. Crossing my fingers I stick with it.

Thanks for reading my blog!

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!