What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

When I last posted about my new scrappy project, my block units looked like this:

Despite the fact that I have been working from home for four months as of tomorrow, that has not translated at all into extra sewing time. It's mostly translated into sleeping more and loading and unloading the dishwasher more. And we may or may not have made it through the entire Marvel movie series in that time. 

With a bunch of friends having babies in 2020, it's time to start making baby quilts!

The first quilt I have on my list is for a baby girl that's due in July. I made my baby sized Daisy Chain quilt for her older sister two years ago so I thought it would be a perfect choice to make the new baby the same quilt in different colors!

I pulled out a bag of fabrics left over from a quilt that I made last year (that I haven't gotten to show off yet!) that was a mish-mash ...

Today I am making good on the promise I made last week to share an easy tutorial on how I make my Rainbow Snippet Blocks. These are relatively free-wheeling, choose-your-own-adventure type blocks that can be adapted to any sized finished block.

What you need:

Scraps -- Separated into "strings" and "snippets" (see notes below)
Paper foundation -- I have an old phone book

What are my definitions of "strings" and "snippets"?

For me (and for making these blocks), a "string" is any scrap at least an inch wide and at least 7" long. Since I am trimming my blocks down to 6 ...

I have been in a "purge, purge, purge" mood since we painted my sewing room in January. It's been good to finish things up, use up scraps, and try to be more organized. Now, at this exact moment, my sewing room looks like a bomb went off, but I am kind of in the middle of pulling things out and putting things away more organized, so it will get better shortly.

In an effort to use up scraps, especially my snippet scraps, I did allow myself to start one Quarantine Project -- but just one! I have too many other ...

Today I am doing a happy dance -- I have finally finished the last six blocks for my Frolic mystery quilt top!

As I have mentioned in some of my recent posts, working from home has not been a boon for sewing time for me. I still am working full time -- just at my kitchen table. I have managed to sneak in sewing time here and there (and quite a bit this past weekend!) and the first thing on the list was to finish up these six blocks.

I think, perhaps, that I am starting to see the end of the tunnel with my Frolic mystery quilt!

Since last I posted, I have finished these five dark teal blocks:

Yes, another finish to share today!

When I was working on my Hattie's Choice quilt that I showed off yesterday, I also prepared the binding for and sewed the binding onto my already quilted Rail Fence baby quilt.

For this quilt, I used red solid cotton for the binding since I have almost no fabric left from this bundle!

When last I posted about this quilt, I thought that I would be adding a border -- and then I started digging through my Island Batik stash only to realize that I only had one half yard of purple and no other pink or purple to use to finish this quilt! Oops! So instead, I decided to quilt this quilt as is -- a bitty baby quilt -- and use a neutral dot batik for the backing.

As an Island Batik Ambassador, I am provided with samples of various lines of Island Batik fabrics, Aurifil thread, Accuquilt products, and Hobbs Batting to use ...

Just a quick post with a teeny tiny update on my Frolic mystery quilt.

Since last I posted, I finished two blocks. For these dark teal blocks, I have been doing them in smaller batches broken up by which fabric they feature for the aqua secondary background. These two blocks used some leftover Bonnie and Camille April Showers fabric.

My COVID quarantine is not necessarily the boon for sewing time as it seems to be for many of the people that I follow on Instagram. I still have to work full time from home, I'm trying to exercise every day (at bare minimum, taking a walk in my neighborhood), and spend some quality time with my husband. I'm definitely not sewing every day, but a little bit most days.

But I did quilt a little something this weekend. It's not bound yet, but it is at least quilted.

Back in October, I used the scraps left ...

A happy Friday to all -- catching up today with a late afternoon post!

Maybe my plans to enlarge my Frolic quilt were misguided because this is continuing to be a long, slow process of making blocks! The last time I posted about my Frolic progress was exactly a month ago! Then I had just finished up my navy blocks and I had started working on my dark teal blocks.

When I posted about this project last week, I showed off by first block:

I am still slowly (so slowly) but surely making little bits of progress on my Frolic mystery quilt.

Last year I finished the top of my Good Fortune quilt top on (or about) February 13th. Now, I did do a half-ished sized quilt last year and I am doing the full quilt this year in addition to this being a much more complicated quilt and not feeling my normal motivation in December and January.

However, I have completed all of my navy blocks!

After posting my last Frolic update, the first thing that I did was to fix the block that had the mistake. It took prepping that blog post to realize there was even a corner unit twisted around -- oops!

After a fairly productive few days of sewing, I am now up to a total of 17 blocks. I snapped a pic of the first 16 together before I finished number 17.

I am so excited today to show some real, tangible progress on my blocks for Frolic!

To refresh, I am planning to make all of the block sets into full blocks to make a bigger quilt and not make the half blocks. I have all of the units made for over half of the full blocks (these are featuring my navy fabrics) but I will need to go back and make flying geese and HSTs for my dark teal fabric blocks.

I now have 9 blocks completed! And of course, now that I am posting this picture, I am realizing ...

The good thing about being behind on Frolic is that I can see how other people's quilts are coming together! I have been enjoying seeing all of the blocks people are putting together on Instagram and I am very jealous of those who have had the time/patience/ability to get their quilt tops finished!

The bad thing about being behind is that it seems like somewhat of an insurmountable task! I'm making some progress, most certainly. I've found that it is kind of hard to get to a stopping point with this project because I just ...

Today I am participating in the Winter Blues blog hop hosted by Carla at Creatin' in the Sticks...

After a long delay, I have finally finished Clue #4 for my Frolic mystery quilt! While the final reveal came out today, I am not as behind as I thought I might be.

To finish up Clue #4, I made all of the necessary sets of HSTs in navy, dark teal, and aqua.

I split up my aquas so that I used half of the different prints to make the aqua/navy HSTs and the other half of the prints to make the aqua/dark teal HSTs.

Slowly but surely I am making tiny bits of progress on my Frolic mystery quilt. I was able to dig deep in my stash to find two fat quarters to finish the cutting for Clue #4!