Sewing away....

It's a muggy, blustery and showery day - perfect for a bit of sewing and now some computer time for a blogpost :-)
Last year I really enjoyed the Rainbow Scrap Challenge with Anglea at soscrappy - the scrappy stars quilt (top) was a fun and rewarding sew ..... but you know how it is, the moment your back is turned, the scraps multiply. In spite of all my best efforts my scrap buckets are still overflowing so I've decided to sew along with Angela and the Rainbow Scrap Challenge again this year.
Each month she chooses a colour for us to make scrap blocks with...we can choose to sew up the sampler quilt she has designed, or do our own thing. I'm doing my own thing this time round. In some quiet moments in the last week I've rummaged around and played with my Blues.

One more cat block to add to the two I made last year.
An ongoing scrap project which uses very small pieces :-)
Pattern available on the ohfrannson blog.

And I have started a new scrap project. These stars are from the book 'S is for Scraps' by Gayle Bong. I wanted a project I could set up at the start of the year and not have to re-think every month. The quilt is called Box Boy Stars but I'm thinking of a name change; at the moment Honey Bucket Stars is calling - explanation *here*.

Cute 7 1/2"  blocks which use strips, I seem to have plenty of them.

I'm not big on using specialty rulers, I've had the Easy Angle for a while but never really sorted out how to use it. I now have it sussed for this block....wow what a difference a simple ruler makes! 

Easy cutting of the trapezoid for the star block.
And it worked great for the triangle too. 

The January block for this year's soscrappy quilt is the Twinkler Star.... while I'm not making the quilt, I was intrigued by the star. So now I have this year's first orphan block!!

It's quite a cool block, imagine swapping the colours out to create different effects.
To get to the tutorial for this, click *here*.
Colours aren't too good sorry, that's actually a red in the centre with blue spikes!

This block used another ruler, the tri-recs ruler, one I don't have, but I figured out that the spikes were cut at 60' so I made the block using my standard ruler... I can see though that that would be another ruler that would be useful to have! (Oh dear, I think I'm becoming converted!)

And while I was at it, a few more bonus Half Square Triangles to add to my pile.
I must find a project for these!

Other sewing recently, I put some borders onto this month's OMG project; simple quilting coming up :-)

In the evenings I've been making my way through the last of the Calendar Bears project and have finished up to the end of November —

— and December is nearly done ♥

Isn't the November bear a character - love those sunnies!

It does seem like I am doing lots of random -bits and pieces- sewing but I know that any day I'll be up to my elbows in fabric, sewing for The Country Yard (where I work part-time) as we prepare for our New Year's Launch next month. In the meantime I potter.

See you next time - happy sewing!

  

PS Great excitement - I registered for Paducah classes/lectures the other day - woohoo, roll on April!