May is for Red

Why is Red for May? because that is the color that JudyL pulled for our monochromatic challenge for May. and you know i had red selvages...right? so it was a no brainer.

This turned out to be 60x90"...i was planning on making it wider but ran out of red selvages....imagine that. LOL  in fact, some of this has red strips in it.

But it is still a good size for snuggling on the couch.

It seems these days that i like the scrap and selvage quilts better than a patterned one. maybe because i am trying to get rid of all my selvages and scraps.....a huge undertaking to be sure.

The back is something that i had enough of....a stripe that i had gotten from my friend Marilea at her $1 a yard summer sale.

It's more of an orange/brown color .... but, hey....there was enough of it and it works for me.

Now i am off to load the second challenge quilt for this month on the frame...#9...the North Pole Village. it is queen size and will take a few days.

I wonder what happened to spring here in Missouri. the heater is back on....it is rainy, windy and chilly. no garden is planted. grass needs to be cut again...but it is too wet and muddy. Mother Nature is playing some sort of joke on us and so far i don't get it. where's my warmth of the sun so my arthritic joints don't creak. i suppose i should be happy there's not a tornado or flood or something equally devastating.

Wonder what color June will be....perhaps blue for the sky or green for the grass. we'll see

The box is empty!

Yea!!  the box is empty....

That is the box that held 195  6 inch string blocks. it was the #10 challenge box for Judy L's 2011 challenge. it took me 2 weeks to get it all put together.

There were days i didn't think i was going to make it. but once i got down to only 5 more rows to go...then i was on a mission and worked on it late into the night.

It is 14 blocks x 14 blocks ( i had to make one more to have 196). it was a bear to wrestle around and get those 'sashings' on to tie it all together. and this one doesn't have a selvage in it....all string blocks.

I thought i had worn out my little Janome...the feed dogs just wouldn't pull anymore. it was going through 8 layers of fabric at times and batting.

But i figured out this morning that the machine is fine....it just needed major cleaning from all that crud.

Here is the back

And you know it took me most of the quilt (9 rows) to figure out how to do the sashings easier. I was adding the sashings to the big part of the quilt after i added each row. finally figured out it was much simpler to add the sashing to the row itself before adding that row to the large part of the quilt. much easier to handle.

And i figured out the reason i had 195 blocks was that i ran out of that backing fabric. i needed to make 1 more block to get the last row to work out. i was in the studio late last night...in my pj's....searching for another 6" piece of that fabric. i found a few scraps that i seamed together...about 5" worth. so the last block has other fabric in it to make it 6".

So that monster is finished and i figured it cleared 11 yards of fabric from my stash to do it all. and i still have enough strings in a HUGE tub to do another couple dozen string quilts.

So, come on Judy....i'm ready for March....Bring it ON!!!!

hahahahahahahahaha