Super Summer Snippy Challenge!

I always think of May 21 as the first day of summer, even tho that honor belongs to June 20 -- the third weekend in May is when most gardeners in Canada want to get their gardens cleaned up and planted -- fear of frost has usually ended...

The last few days have been quite full -- full of things to do - I did work on my little container garden) and full of world news that many of us have taken notice of...

Quilters were busy across the internet visiting the Quilt Bloggers Festival which was a Link-Up "party" at Amy's Creative Side (and you can still check out some links by clicking on the button on my side bar).  

Those of you who listened (and still do) to music from the 1960's and 70's are today missing and probably thinking of Robin Gibb who sang for us so many meaningful words.   And Charles and Camila arrived in Canada yesterday and fans of royalty were treated? to a rather long report of their arrival on CBC news.

As for myself, I have spent every extra minute working on a self imposed challenge for the summerand even gave it a name!

 The Super Summer Snippy Challenge.

  Lately I have really taken notice at how fabrics prints and colours have changed in the last couple of years.   I have been watching the "ideas" of the MODERN QUILT GUILD and how it has been growing across the country! 

One of the things I really noticed is that I have ALOT of older fabrics -- infact some date back to the mid nineteen eighties!   Now, I do not have "too much" fabric, at least in my mind I don't!  The concept of amount of any collection is of course relative depending upon how much you LOVE your collection!   I think I do have too much fabric when it comes to being out dated, or perhaps I could consider myself a collector of Vintage fabrics?  I think, though that the cure for outdated fabric is to become a scrap quilt expert!

So, I have pulled every fabric I have that is less than 1 meter and have started cutting!   I am mostly cutting 3.5 inch squares, but I am also cutting 3.5 x 6.5 rectangles, 3.5 x 9.5 rectangles and 3.5 x 12.5 rectangles... All cut sizes that can be combined in various ways...

When this weekend started I was aiming at cutting 1000 squares by the 21st of May -- I have reached that goal quite easily!   And I still have a rather large stack of fabrics to cut!  Today I plan to put some of those fabrics together and hopefully create a quilt top.   How long does it take to sew together squares to make a quilt? 

Well, to begin, one must first sew, 3.5 inch squares together into 2's then 4 patches, then I think into 16 patch blocks.   I have a few ideas for creating different settings and placements to make up scrap quilts or at least quilt tops over the next few months of the summer.   My CHALLENGE is that I am setting a goal of 10 quilt tops before the Autumn ( the second tuesday in September, because that is my quilt guild's meeting day).

I do not plan to make completed quilts, tho I may just get a few of the tops I make into complete quilts with batting, backing, binding and quilting.  I am aiming at 10 lap sized quilt tops all scrappy and they will be destined for donation to my guilds charity program.

My guild will help with the batting and backing for the quilts that I can finish completely, and if I only do quilt tops, the co ordinator of the charitable group will arrange to pass the top onto another member who can do the layering and quilting...

My first planned quilt top will be 12 random 16 patch blocks with sashing and cornerstones...  So as numbers go that means

12 - 16 patch blocks = 192  3.5 inch square.
sashing = 31 - 3.5 x 12.5 inch strips
cornerstones = 20 3.5 inch squares

and that should make a lap size quilt that measures about 63 x 48 inches.  I donot plan to make quilts that are much larger than that and may do some that are simply crib sized.

Considering I already have 1000 squares cut, this planned top, barely makes a dent!  1000 squares should easily make 5 quilt tops!