Year of Scraps, so far

I have a not-very-rigid goal of making two tops a month out of my scraps. By the end of January I had two tops complete, made entirely from scraps:

Year of Scraps no. 2 - 3 3/4" log cabin blocks, cool colors group

Year of Scraps no. 3 - 3 3/4" log cabins blocks, warm colors group

Next up - tackling a big box of 2" squares that I've accumulated over time. I pulled out the pinks, yellows, and orange squares and started out making these units:

I was originally planning to lay them out as shown above, but decided that I liked the idea of columns of color rather than chunks of color, so now that I've got some of the rectangular units pieced, they are getting laid out like this:

I quickly ran out of squares from the 2" squares box, and moved on to pulling larger scraps and remnants and cutting 2" squares from those. I'll be able to get all the pink and yellow I need for a nap quilt out of the scrap bins and boxes, but for orange I will have to add pieces from yardage. I thought about just making this a project that I work on over time, as more scraps get generated, but decided that the goal of the year is to use up scraps, not to make tops that are made exclusively from scraps. So tonight I will pull some orange prints from the yardage shelves and cut 2" strips off them to get more orange squares to work with.

I want it to look as though the patches are going into the segments randomly, but I'm actually laying out each 24-patch segment quite carefully to make sure I get colors/scales of prints somewhat balanced... which means I have to pay attention to order of squares as I am piecing. I think it will take me the rest of the month to get this top pieced and then I will be away from my sewing machine for 5 weeks, so I think the goal of two tops per month is blown. But that's OK, I am making progress getting through the bins of small scraps. And perhaps I will catch up later in the year when I move from working with tiny strips and 2" squares to working with bigger pieces. I can hope, anyway!

Play Date

Janet and I went to Quiltworks Northwest in Bellevue last fall to go to the Okan Arts yukata trunk show and stayed to do some shopping, then decided to make a day of it with a stop for lunch and a visit to Del Teet, a more-high-end-than-I-am-used to furniture store. The dubious pleasure of looking at furniture we could not possibly afford aside, we had such a good time that we decided to put a (more-or-less) quarterly date on the calendar to do it again. The next date would have been in late January, but the weather was cold, wet, sucky and generally uninspiring so we shifted the trip date to today. Which turned out to be very windy at times and very wet at times, but not too cold and not sucky, so all in all better than January. (Except for the fact that Jaye and I have birthdays in January, almost anytime in Seattle is better than January. February is not usually so great, either, but it's shorter and March awaits on the other side, and March in Seattle is the Beginning of Spring.)

At any rate, we set out yesterday morning after a brief episode of Show and Tell, and had a nice time at Quiltworks Northwest. I wasn't as blown away with the selection as I was the last time I went, feeling that I had seen the collections they had on the up-front displays already; that was a good thing, as it enabled me to wander around the store without feeling overwhelmed with fabric lust. I have been working on Year of Scraps #4, which is using 2" squares of particular shades of pink, orange and yellow, and I have been confronted with the dearth of orange in my fabric collection, so I focused on orange/peach in my shopping.

I'm perfectly happy to do random shopping (see below re: West Seattle Fabric Company) but focused shopping does usually minimize the likelihood of buyer's remorse once I get the fabric home. I am a little bit puzzled as to why that indigo and white fabric appeals to me so strongly but it does, so I have no buyer's remorse about that, despite a near total absence of ideas about what to do with indigo and white fabric.

We had lunch at a Thai restaurant around the corner from Quiltworks Northwest, where I learned once again that it is best to be cautious when asked how hot to have one's food made in a Thai restaurant. The pain of learning that lesson was balanced by the fact that after eating my "medium spicy" green papaya salad I could actually breathe freely, which had not been happening up to that point in the day.

We were done with Bellevue earlier than planned, so decided to add a second stop to the fabric shopping trip, this time over in West Seattle, home of the very new West Seattle Fabric Company. West Seattle is relatively easy to get to from my neighborhood, since the bus I take to downtown Seattle frequently transitions to being a bus that heads on to West Seattle after it gets through downtown, but it's not a short trip, so I've made it over there only infrequently, and never to the area where WSFC is located. That is likely to change. It's a charming little shop -- 3 or 4 bright and cheerful rooms filled with contemporary fabric and really pleasant people. The prices are reasonable, and wonder of wonders, the fat quarters are priced according to the price of the yardage. (A pet peeve of mine is quilt shop pricing of fat quarters -- most stores in this area price them at the equivalent of $12/yard, as though they expect me to believe that they need to somehow recoup the cost of cutting them, when in fact they just have staff cut them/bundle them when there are no customers in the store. LQS, I'm happy to support you, but not when you try to gouge me that way.)

I chatted with the WSFC owner, Monica Skov, for awhile; I must say it is a pleasure to talk to someone who is happy in her work! Although the shop is mostly stocked with quiltweight cottons, Monica is not a quilter -- she just loves fabric - a woman after my own heart! She does carry some home decor weight fabrics, and lots of notions and supplies for both quiltmaking and garment making. She's going to be holding classes, too, including basic sewing classes. It's probably a good thing that it's a trek for car-less me to get there, because I am sure I would bust my fabric budget regularly if it was within easy reach.

I have a thing going for gray fabrics at the moment, and added the group below to the growing collection. (The paprika red Alexander Henry floral -- Farmdale Collection -- is an example of pure random shopping. Nothing to do with any project in progress or under contemplation.)
More random shopping: dots, and the spring green scrolls. After a couple of years when large scale prints have dominated the fabric lines, it's nice to see smaller prints/blenders re-appearing. The blue and blue-green fabrics at the bottom are going to be backgrounds for a scrappy checkerboard top.

After the fabric shopping, Janet and I headed south on California SW and spent a little time browsing the shops in one of the main West Seattle commercial areas, until the wet-and-windy aspect of the day prevailed and drove us back into the car and home. I really like the way West Seattle feels as though everything you need for life is right there: not just groceries and a Bartell, but home furnishings stores, used bookstores, little restaurants, fabulous baked goods. We actually couldn't get into Bakery Nouveau because it was too crowded, so settled for Cupcake Royale, which was nice, too. The only problem with West Seattle is that living there would mean more time on Metro that I am willing to spend, so it will just have to remain a nice place to visit, and a scheduled stop on the quarterly Jeanne-and-Janet play dates. To which I am already looking forward with anticipation!