My Not-So-Scrappy Celebrations Quilt Top is Finished!

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday!  I managed to sew those (S)Crappy Celebration quilt blocks into a completed quilt top over the last couple days.  The quilt top measures exactly 54 1/2" x 63 1/2" with even edges and it's smooth and flat, so it should be a fast and easy one to quilt up with an edge to edge design on my long arm machine.  According to the guidelines on the Project Linus Metrolina Chapter web site, their greatest need is for "Teen" sized blankets and this quilt will fit those parameters perfectly.  Much better for this to be a finished quilt wrapped around a young person facing difficult life circumstances than for it to be an unfinished collection of blocks hidden away in a storage container in my closet.

Sidebar: Interesting that, at least for my local chapter, the greatest need is for Teen size quilts, as I always associated Project Linus with baby quilt donations.  Now, as I look at this very girly quilt I'm making for donation, I'm remembering hearing that quilting charities are usually short on quilts that are appropriate for boys and men.  I ought to post up the size guidelines for all of my local quilt donation organizations (Charlotte Quilters Guild, Project Linus, Lutheran World Relief, Sleep In Heavenly Peace) and make a deliberate effort from the start to make these "sidetrack, detour" projects in sizes and fabrics tailored to filling areas of greatest need.

54 1/2 x 63 1/2 Scrappy Celebration Quilt Top Finished

And now, let's recap what I learned from this project, starting with the photos I saw of Lissa Alexander's original Scrappy Celebration quilt:

Original Scrappy Celebrations Quilt by Lissa Alexander

Lissa Alexander's Scrappy Celebrations Quilt, AP&Q Cover Quilt in April 2023

(S)Crappy Celebration: Meh? + Stonefields Prep + Pineapple Log Cabin UFO

UGH.  You guys, I am sick of working on this project again!  I finished the blocks I was working on last week but it was such a chore coming up with a layout.  I really hate that I made 5 or 6 versions of each block in the exact same, or nearly the same fabrics, even though I thought that was a feature of the inspiration quilt that I liked and deliberately wanted to replicate when I was starting out.  I have begun mixing some stash fabrics in with the matchy-matchy Tilda prints, but it's not making me love it or anything.  

I find myself wishing this was two (or more) separate quilts.  I love a double 9-patch quilt with a white background and it would be pretty to have a rainbow version with each block a different dominant color.  The other blocks where I didn't use any white fabric, or very little white fabric, have a much heavier feel.  But I've made 42 of these 9" blocks already, enough for a 54" x 63" throw quilt with a 6x7 layout, and I feel like enough already.  Time to wrap this up and move on!

This is the best I could do on the layout, trying not to put identical blocks too close together if I could help it (sometimes I couldn't) and trying to balance out white background, lacy 9-patch blocks with the darker, not-enough-contrast blob blocks as best I could.  This is what we are dealing with:

54 x 63 (S)Crappy Celebration Layout

Checking value distribution in gray scale just to be sure:

Same Photo, in Gray Scale

Then I went to my EQ8 software to see whether adding sashing and cornerstones would improve the quilt at all:

Patchwork Progressing Faster Than Home Renovations

Good Morning and Happy Wednesday, my lovelies!  I'll answer your top questions right off the bat:

1. YES, I'm still here.
2. NO, our home renovations aren't finished yet.
3. YES, I'm still sewing.
4. NO, I don't have much to show for it, though!

I'm still mostly on a break from the delightful-yet-challenging-and-tedious Stonefields sampler quilt, in that I haven't mustered up the creative energy to start prepping the next applique blocks.  I am, however, still stitching up hexagon rosettes for the outer border in the evenings.  Here's one of the latest finished rosettes:

No. 41 of 168 Rosettes Needed for Stonefields Outer Border

I've sewn 41 of the 168 hexagon rosettes for the Stonefields outer border so far, so I'm nearly 25% finished.  Slow going for sure, but I'm getting better at English paper piecing through the repetition and I don't need to think about what I'm doing nearly so much now as I did in the beginning, so it's perfect for keeping fidgety fingers busy in front of the television in the evenings.

Meanwhile, I've been making 9" 9-patch and 4-patch variations for that quilt based on Scrappy Celebrations.  When I abandoned this WIP (Work In Progress) over a year ago, I was feeling like it was burning up too much "good fabric" on a not-very-exciting project.  Now that I've been wasting investing such enormous amounts of time but very little fabric into each of those fiddly Stonefields blocks, it actually feels GOOD to burn up a little more yardage with simpler blocks that go together so much faster.  As in, six of these Scrappy Celebration blocks completed in a single day, compared to two or three weeks to complete just one or two of some of the more complex Stonefields blocks.  The projects balance one another out.  

Here are the completed Scrappy Celebration blocks on the design wall today:

37 Completed Scrappy Celebration Blocks (Out of ??)

I also have the next five blocks in progress at the sewing machine for chain piecing.  And yes, I am aware that I could have sped this up by strip piecing the 3" 9-patch units but I hate pressing strips open and didn't feel like doing the math to figure out how many strips to cut, etc.  

Detour: Scrappy Celebrations Sprung Out of Prison, Back On the Design Wall

Hello, and Happy 250th Anniversary Independence Day to all of my friends here in the United States.  I have been hanging out alone in my studio all day,  fiddling around with bits of fabric and trying not to dwell on memories of past Independence Days when we would take our young sons to my parents' house for a family cookout by the pool, with my mom and the boys splashing around in the water while my dad cooked burgers on the grill and played patriotic music on his outdoor speakers, wrapping up with neighborhood fireworks once it got dark.  I miss my parents, and I miss having family holiday celebrations even though we never did anything fancy.  Ah, well -- gotta enjoy the seasons we're in while we're in them, as this too shall pass and then I'll be missing when I used to be able to have a whole day all to myself in my sewing room, right?  Bernie has been traveling all week and I always get the blues when he's gone, but he'll be back by tomorrow night.  I get to go sing in church tomorrow morning, too, which always puts me in a good mood.  

So, after all of the annoyance and frustration of the last two appliqué blocks for my Stonefields sampler quilt project (left side of the design wall below), I decided I needed a palate cleanser with some instant gratification.  I remembered the Scrappy Celebrations project I abandoned a little over a year ago (read about that here) -- just what the doctor ordered.

Stonefields on Left, Scrappy Celebration on Right

I made eleven new 9" blocks for this quilt today, six of them four-patch with plusses:

Chain Piecing Six Blocks at Once

Deceptively Simple: Stonefields Blocks 28 + 29 "Paper Flowers"

 Alright, y'all -- I finally finished those two little appliqué blocks for my Stonefields quilt that I was prepping at the end of May, and good riddance to them!  Behold, my design wall displaying meager progress:

29 Blocks Completed for Stonefields Sampler Quilt by Susan Smith

Stitching the stems was fine, but needle turning these flower shapes was a wretched and miserable stitching plan that I regretted almost immediately.