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!

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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.

A Quilter's Dozen

Every summer a group of quilting friends meets for a day of show-and-tell, visiting, and lunching out. We have an annual challenge and enjoy seeing how each person has dealt with the theme.

This year's theme was A Quilter's Dozen.  My interpretation of the challenge used a dozen Wildflower blocks (my block that is included in the current issue of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks magazine.)  I made my blocks (twelve inch blocks, of course!) with a dozen fabrics which I carefully rotated through the various fabric placement positions in the block.  This resulted in some block colorations that I would NEVER have selected by any other method.

I was really pleased with the red and the orange in this block.

My original idea had been to make a quilt that was predominantly blue and gray, but along the way it seems that a lot of orange and red had slipped in. So when the twelve blocks were finished I chose elements from the block for the borders and the centre motif, and I used more of the cooler hues there to push the quilt back into the blue range.

Then I put the quilt on my longarm and quilted feathers and pebbles and spirals until I had filled the surface.

The most difficult part of the project was getting a decent picture!  Finally a day arrived when the sun shone and the wind did not blow too wildly.

Mail call

Many things in life are going digital now and it seems like we find fewer items in the snail mail all the time.  But today it was worth the walk down to the mailbox -- I found treasure there!

Advance copy of the September issue of Quilts from Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks

Of course, I turned to my own quilt first!

My quilt looks pretty good in its "glamour shot", don't you think!

I've had time now to look at the rest of this issue, and I can see some lovely designs, everything from a table topper to a baby quilt, to lap quilts and larger bed quilts.   There is plenty of inspiration here to keep a quilter happily quilting for a long time.

You'll be able to pick up your very own copy of this magazine in a week or two -- so watch for it on your newsstand.

Another try at Celtic Solstice

I pulled out THAT project again -- the one from December of 2013 when Bonnie Hunter began the Celtic Solstice mystery quilt.  This time I made some good progress.

Both sets of blocks are completed at last.  (I've made a few changes in the star block to make the green chains run across the quilt in both directions.) 

Here are a few of the blocks laid out as they will be sewn. I find myself second guessing my colour choices, but all in all, I think I like the way it works!

For now all the blocks are back in their bag, and I was able to return the extra fabric to the stash bins. One of these days I'll take this to a group Sew Day.  Sewing all the blocks together to make the top will be the perfect project to work on while sewing with friends.

Quilter Power

A few weeks ago we received a request for a quilt for a local fundraiser event.  The timeline was tight -- only a week until the event was to occur.  We put out a request to local quilters for a quilt or a top.  Almost immediately a top was offered -- and of course, the colours were perfect.

Within 48 hours we had it backed, batted, quilted, bound.  It was completed in time for the fund-raiser where it helped raise  money for Honour House in New Westminster.  And the event organizer has signed up for our next beginning quilter's class!  (But she may find that not every quilt comes together quite as quickly as this one did!)

Disappearing 9-Patch quilt donated to Honour House fundraiser.

Chinese Coins Strip Quilt

My friend Kim does wonderful things with colour.  When she brought this little top to show-and-tell I fell in love with it.  I just might have put it into my bag at the end of the session and brought it home with me because Kim has a reputation as a serial "topper" and I couldn't bear the thought of this piece languishing in a trunk.   And it just might have been languishing in my sewing room for quite a while (I looked it up -- we were working on strippy quilts four years ago.)

I rediscovered it the other day and put it on the quilting machine. I have been quilting edge-to-edge designs on "quick quilts" recently so I changed the pace a bit and indulged in some more complex designs on this one.  I love the way the feather quilting curls through the pieced strips.

This quilt needs to find its way home to Kim soon, but I'm going to leave it on the living room floor where it catches the light just right for just a few more days.