A New Year Means New Projects

2019 has arrived and I'm trying not to jump onto too many sew-a-longs. We all say that and then something happens -- we get sucked in! Ugh!

This year's sewing trend seems to me to be string quilts. Bonnie Hunter adores string quilts and recently came out with a new book called "String Frenzy". Tons of string quilts. Her  blog includes several free patterns for different string quilts as well. Then Moda Fabrics announced that a group of their designers were starting their own string quilts and that it would be a loose group with no real deadlines. I was thinking I'd join in and scoured Bonnie's patterns -- yes, I would make a String-X quilt and give a string quilt a go. I'm currently hooked in with Lori at Humble Quilts and others. Care to join us?

Earlier last year I saw quilters joining a group called RSC (Rainbow Scrap Challenge) where a color is nominated for the month and everyone digs into their scraps to make blocks and at the end of the year you have a beautiful quilt. Sounds like a good plan to me since Heaven knows I have scraps. January's color is red. I figured I could tie the two groups together -- a String-X quilt that has blocks made in the colors chosen by RSC. Perfect! So far I have two of the four string strips done.

The only problem is: I thought RSC merely chose the colors and it was up to us to decide on what block(s) we wanted to make. Wrong! There's actually a quilt that we can make together. This year's RSC Sampler Quilt is composed of small, 4 1/2" blocks, one per week. Half the blocks are set straight and the other half are set diagonally. It's a really cute lap quilt. Tempting .... And wouldn't you know the very first block is a string block!!! Yes, I jumped on this one too and here's my block for the week.

The dotty fabric is going to be my background fabric. We need 3 1/2 yards so I dove into my stash and came up with this. Great! No trip to the fabric store for background fabric.

Gone Stitchin', another blogger, put out that she would like to start a Lori Holt's Bloom QAL and was anyone else interested. I like Lori's quilts and I've been wanting to try one of her quilts using her applique technique. Yup, jumped on this one too! My templates arrived in the mail today. I dug into my stash and came up with these fabrics. I think it'll be a good start. I love these feedsack fabrics!

Getting back to last year's projects, I did have a productive (for me) week regarding the Dresden Quilt Workshop quilt. I completed three churn dash blocks. I need to get going on some flying geese and obviously more dresden plates. Hey! I'm getting there! Here are my blocks.

Suzn Quilts (designer of the Dresden Quilt Workshop quilt) recently posted a picture of a new quilt. It's a Christmas quilt that has these Dresdent blocks again in but also words and embroidery. It's beautiful! She's considering making this a workshop quilt and you KNOW I'll be joining in. I hope it's not until later in the year. I seem to have enough projects going again and this is after I was trying to be strong and not start anything more.

I did finish the embroidery on Kathy Schmidtz's Spring. I'll need to press it and sew on the borders. There's also a little mini quilt that hangs in the middle that I need to sew. Will probably work on this during an upcoming retreat if I can find some coordinating fabric.

The background fabric is actually white. We've been very cloudy lately so the picture is muddied.

Linking up with:

• Gone Stitchin' today
• Humble Quilts
• So Scrappy
• Movin' It Monday

Table Runner Club meets Tuesday morning. Better get that project wrapped up today!