Pop Stars and Pineapples

 This year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks for me will be 8" "Pop Stars" (a Missouri Quilt Co. pattern) and 6" pineapples.  The color of the month is yellow, and I found out I don't have a lot of true yellow in my stash.  I have a lot of gold which I didn't want to use for these blocks.  The Pop Stars blocks have triangles to cut off and discard, but I have occasionally been making smaller blocks out of them.  Who knows how I'll use them?  Maybe on the border of the Pop Stars quilt.

I'm making the pineapples using convenient, pre-printed papers from the Fat Quarter Shop.  I'll take the papers out tonight while watching TV.  That is the part of the process I'm not wild about, but I think paper piecing is really the only way to make pineapple blocks.

I envision two quilts by the end of the year even though both sets of blocks have various shades of gray as backgrounds.  While working on these blocks, I got to thinking that I start a lot of quilts at the beginning of the year, after Christmas.  I guess I just love to make blocks.  By summer and certainly in the fall, I put the blocks together, and then in winter, I either quilt them or break down and ask Marie to long arm quilt them.  My cousin was surprised that I finished three projects in the last week, but there was a long stretch of time when I didn't finish much except small projects for Christmas.

My mom already has an "order" in for a Christmas tree skirt.  After many years of not having one, she and my sister Jenny have been putting a real one up, digging into the long-stored ornaments.   Guess I'll work on that this summer.