Some finished quilts

As a new season of quilting starts up it is time to clear the decks a bit.  Several small projects that were made as class samples have been quilted and bound over the summer and are on their way to the regional hospital for use in the preemie ward.

Starting with a square and adding frames is a process with lots of possibilities.  This little quilt used strips made of random sized scraps for the frames.  Using one fabric for all the light areas adds a bit of unity.

Making framed squares and then cutting them into quarter blocks leads to the popular Bento Box pattern.  Perhaps the pattern gets lost a bit with all those fabrics, but it is definitely cheery.

After all the scrappy fabrics in the previous two quilts it was time to make a top using only three fabrics.  The blue was the middle band in each block and that gave the opportunity to create a path through the yellow and butterscotch squares.

The bin of flannel scraps never seems to end.  It took only a few strips to piece a backing.

Fancy four-patches

A stack of 4-inch squares came to hand and the thought crossed my mind that I should USE them instead of simply shuffling them to another place.  Since the group is working on 4-patch projects right now, that seemed an obvious place to start.  What if I made big blocks out of them and set them all together with some kind of sashing?

Cursory play in Electric Quilt gave me a general layout 

and number of blocks to achieve a useful size.  

Looked simple enough!

Things got a bit complicated, however, when I began putting my fabrics up on the wall.  I chose to add a 4th value.  And this meant I had two different kinds of blocks, plus the natural issues that come with using scraps and not wanting adjacent pieces matching, etc.

I had trouble keeping my diagonal set lined up nicely on the wall!

 I found a vintage piece of orange-y rust that makes a nice complement to the blues.  I like the way those narrow rust lines tie the design together.  But this was what I would call a "nasty" fabric -- not 100% cotton and rather hard to handle.  It required me to approach cautiously with the iron and in spite of being a bit stiff it wasn't very stable on either the horizontal or the vertical grain.  (Once the top was completed I was pleased to drop the last few scraps of this one into the trash!)

Diagonally set quilts always have a tendency to skew out of shape.  I spent the best part of an afternoon measuring, cutting, and pinning to get those borders on the way I wanted them.  And even so I can see a couple of spots that will require some attention during the quilting to ensure a nice flat end product.

I am very pleased with the completed top.

And did this project use up that original pile of squares?  Of course not!  Some of those pieces were the wrong colour or wrong value.  Actually that pile is now larger than when I began --  with the addition of pieces from other fabrics that were auditioned and didn't make the cut!

In the Pink

Some of the scraps in my sewing room are sorted by colour.  This is what the Pink and Purple drawer looks like:

Drawer of odd pieces of pink and purple that don't have homes anywhere else.

This is a collection of odd bits.  Anything larger than a FQ, or anything that has been cut into one of my favourite useful sizes is not in this drawer.  And this is how full the drawer is now, AFTER a couple of projects that were done specifically to use some of this!

I spent a happy afternoon picking out squares (and cutting out more squares from some of the bigger pieces) to make this pink and green quilt.

Lap-sized quilt will be used as a Prayer Quilt by my church group.

And I've just finished a quilt  top that will be a gift for a new baby girl. (Since the picture was taken quilting has been done.  Pink binding has been added and is being stitched down as we speak!)

Baby quilt from 2" squares and triangles.

I can't imagine how many more quilt tops could be lurking in just this one drawer of scraps.  Isn't it a wonderful thing that we have such riches of fabric resources that we never need to worry about running out!

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks #14

A new edition of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks comes out this week! It looks like this:

Volume 14 -- on newsstands about November 15

So, why am I so excited about this, you ask?  Because I have a block in this issue, that's why!  And not only that, my block is on the cover!  Right there, first block at the very top!  

Let me know when you see this magazine out there!  (And if you buy the magazine, you get directions for not only my block (see page 38), but 99 other blocks that are nearly as wonderful as this one.)

Pondering the scraps

Lots of things I SHOULD be doing in the sewing room, but this week the overflowing box of plaids caught my eye again.  I decided to work on "just the small bits" and try to get rid of the messy part of the collection.

I cut strips 6 1/2" long and assembled strips of "piano keys".

I made a pile of strips like this -- and most of the plaid pieces were cut a little straighter than this lot!

.

Then I cut triangles from the strips until I had a good pile. 

I added light coloured triangles to pieced triangles to make blocks.  

There are lots of possibilities for these blocks, and I'm still playing with them to see what they might become.  But I know I don't have quite enough of that gold fabric for all my blocks.  What to do? -- make a smaller quilt?  choose another background and make some blocks with each?  or pull out all the possibilities and go scrappy?  The last choice is what I'm inclined to do, but I need fairly large pieces.  Around here, 8" strips count as yardage, not scrap!

Here are a few of the fabrics that came to light on the first look through the stash.  (These are all a bit darker than the photo would suggest -- the fabric I've used in the blocks already is third from the right.)

One great thing about quilting is that there are really no "wrong answers" -- at the end of the process I'll have a quilt and it will be fine.  I just don't know yet what it might look like!

Meanwhile, here is a project that actually did get finished!

Tiny zigzags.  Blocks are 2" finished.  It didn't use up much fabric, but it is done!!

Worth making again

Quilters know that there are so many wonderful quilts out there that we will not be able in one lifetime to make them all.  But even so, some quilts really are worth making a second time.

Bonnie Hunter's Star Struck (find it among the free patterns at Quiltville.com) is one pattern I keep returning to.  This summer I realized it was time to bring out the plaids once again and cut the pieces for more of those stars.

This uses assorted plaids for the stars, assorted lights for the background stars, a constant red for the little hourglass units.

I love the gentle look of the plaids, many of them from recycled shirts.  I enjoy letting my eyes wander around the quilt to see how the various fabrics interact in the different combinations.  A motley variety of background fabrics was used here, but even the busy ones seem to settle down and blend in with the others once it is all put together.

This quilt will be donated to one of my favourite Good Causes.

Back to the never-ending scraps

This is what is on my wall today:

Auditioning units to make Woodland Clover blocks.

The pattern is based on the cover quilt from Pat Speth's More Nickel Quilts book.

I say "based on" because would I follow the author's instructions and start with a nice pile of neat 5" squares?  Of course not! Instead I dived into scrap bins and pulled out strips and odd bits of various sizes.  Surely this will be the quilt that finally uses up all those pieces!

When all the cutting was done I had enough pieces to make 20 blocks -- enough for a small quilt that will be donated to a Good Cause.  (The cutting took a long time because there was all that finding and measuring and trimming that wouldn't have been necessary if I'd started with squares.)

This is what a stack of pieces for 20 blocks looks like.
 This may not make a discernible impact on the scrap pile!

As I was pressing my units I noticed this:

Some of these patches have been around the block a few times already -- can you see the tell-tale creases that show seams have been unpicked?

Makes me wonder how many times I will re-use a piece before it is finally gone!

One of these days I might actually go the Main Stash and start with larger pieces of fabric, but at the moment I'm having too much fun in the scrap heap.

Butterflies

I've had in my stash for many years a length of fabric with big bright butterflies all over it.  Pretty and bright, but hard to use -- I like piecing, and this isn't the kind of fabric that cuts up very well.  I cut out and appliqued a butterfly onto a bag once, and I did manage to use a good chunk of it to back a baby blanket recently, but another piece was left.  It had been put into the give away pile a few times but always got pulled back -- it was just too pretty!

The other day I came across it again and decided that NOW was the time to get this used up!  I cut out as many 6 1/2" squares as I could -- there were 20 -- perfect!  I found a striped fabric that used the same colours for the sashing and some scrappy yellow squares for cornerstones.  Great!  This is the beginning of a child-sized quilt.

Butterfly blocks on my design wall ready to become a quilt top.

And I picked up the rest of the fabric and dropped it into the trash!  

Gone!  That's the end of that fabric!

However, if you went into the sewing room later you might have seen this:

Maybe someone needed to "rescue" a couple of butterflies and a few two-inch squares
and some 2 1/2" triangles...