The Last Saturday of January Purple!

Joining the Rainbow Scrap Challenge hosted by superscrappy.blogspot.com is the best thing I have done since moving to Washington! I am having such a fun time, and I am getting so much sewing done...AND...I have also conjured up enough energy to start really going at my reorganization of my sewing room. As I have been sewing, I have formulated in my mind what would work more efficiently for me. Friday I worked on it and got some furniture moved around so my room mate could fix my old (really) shabby chic cabinet to the wall so it's good and sturdy. Then I will have lots more space to stash my goodies.

This month flew by in one way and in another it didn't. I love purple, love it so much everything I buy for the critters outside (buckets, pooper scoopers, lead ropes, etc.) are purple. Always have loved it and always will. BUT...I think I have had my fill of purple for now!

I can't wait to see what our next color will be in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge!

I have to say again how much I am enjoying this process. I am learning a lot of stuff! About me, about my machine and about new ways to do things. Can I say thank you big enough to Angela for facilitating this challenge? It has gotten me in touch with my machine and my fabrics, and I needed this gentle shove in the right direction.

What have I learned? Well, I believe the most important lesson is to take a deep breath and think about what it is I am about to do. I broke a needle and bent one and thought I had broken my machine, because I was just in too much of a hurry.

I went through my machine feet to see if I could find the right 1/4" foot. Yep, I did say the right one. I thought I had it, but my blocks were not very accurate at all. The foot I ended up with was indeed the actual 1/4" foot I should have had to begin with. That one came with the "no time to be in a hurry" lesson. I have to make sure that my needle is in the center position in order to save my needles. Twice...twice I forget to put the needle in the proper position when I turned on my machine. I now have a note as big as life under the presser foot to remind me that I need to change the settings.

Another lesson was the "shrug my shoulders and say oh well" a lot, or get out the seam ripper and think about what I am doing, while I'm ripping out the same seam over and over. GAH!!! Oh yeah, and have fun!!!

The magazine where I found the boot quilt came in handy. I did start on the boot blocks in purple. I was saying eek a lot when I was making this. I loved how they turned out, they are so dang cute! There is some foundation piecing that goes along with this block and that is something I have never done before. In fact, I never knew what foundation piecing was going in. So another lesson learned and another technique learned. I have a lot of practicing to do with that to be honest. I've done okay with it, but boy does my brain get turned around a lot in the process! Egads! I'm sure after watching a few more videos and some snipping and ripping I will get it down. This is where Smitty over at CatPatch is a good teacher...Smitty says, "Furrst, you should read over all of the instructions before beginning."  I made a few tries before I actually found the instructions I thought were missing. Can you say Frustration?

So, I have gone on long enough...here are the blocks I made this week:

These are the rest of the purple blocks I did from Tula Pink's book. Lots and lots of the same fabrics, but those were the scraps I had. I used half a shoe box sized tote full of scraps. I'm really pleased with how they turned out for the most part, but like I said earlier, the blocks are definitely not accurately sewn, I will have to do some finagling to get them sewn together with future blocks. Oh well, I am looking at this as a learning thing.

These are my first blocks from the boot pattern in the magazine I am so smitten with. I just love how these turned out. I can't wait to get all the blocks done and set together and into a quilt sammich! I may gift this to my horsey daughter...or I may keep it myself, we'll see at the end of this journey.

Thanks for reading this far. I know I can go on and on sometimes, but it's generally when I am super excited about something.