On the Design Wall

 

I’ve been working on “use ‘em up” type scrappy projects for the last few weeks, and it’s time to do something else.  Remembering my vow to start using “the good stuff” in my stash I pulled out a bin of lovely shweshwe fabrics from South Africa. 

Not much sewing done yet, but I’ve constructed two blocks.    I’m using the directions for Smoothing Iron as found in Gayle Bong’s book Trouble Free Triangles.

The rest of the time I’ve been busy with cutting and counting the pieces I’ll need.  I have a couple of days lined up to sew with friends in the not-too-distant future, and I’m looking forward to pulling out my pieces and doing a lot of stitching.

I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday over at Patchwork Times – so hop over and be inspired by what other quilters are doing this week. 

 

Technorati Tags: Design Wall Shweshwe fabrics

Tumbling along

 

Quilts made with tumbler shapes have been around for many years, but lately they seem to be cropping up everywhere in wonderful fabric combinations. 

The current Sew Scrappy Club project is based on these shapes.  I had great fun making up samples. 

Of course, the Tumblers can be cut any size one wishes.  But this video from the Gourmet Quilter shows a wonderfully simple method which worked perfectly for the fabrics I had on hand. 

First I dug into that big box of plaids and shirtings, added a blue print for sashing strips and came up with a twin-sized throw (60” x 80”)

Somehow there were plaid tumblers left over, so I put them together into a smaller top.  Still needs borders, may be donated to our Prayer Quilts group.

Then I pulled out the charm squares I had won at Eleanor’s last Quilt-Till-You-Wilt-Day.  These are some Red Hat fabrics and they worked up quickly into this table runner. 

Now I’m eyeing that basket of batiks……

Technorati Tags: Tumbler quilt charm squares Sew Scrappy Club

Rotation

I belong to a group that meets annually to share a challenge project.  This year we worked from a set of photographs.  The challenge was to base a quilt on one of them.  I chose a photograph by Keith Henderson of the sculpture called “Jaguar” by John Henry that stands in Vancouver. 

I imported the photo into my Electric Quilt software program and traced it, simplifying and eliminating portions until there were only a few shapes left.  Then I rotated the image to form a pinwheel-like design.

I repeated the trapezoid shape in the borders.  Quilting began with stitch-in-the-ditch around the design elements to make them stand out and was followed with a zig-zag meander in the gray background to make it recede.

More Very-Scrappy-Ninepatch quilts

 

Here are two more quilts made from nine-patch blocks from our Sew Scrappy Day last month.  These finish 36” square and will be added to the pile for preemies in the NICU at the regional hospital. 

Technorati Tags: preemie quilt,scrappy,9-patch quilt

Log cabin variations

 

I love the way a simple change in placement of values in a quilt design can produce such interesting results.  Here are two examples of my Log Cabins and Stars quilt.  I made the Christmas version and a friend made the summery one.

Technorati Tags: Log Cabin,Ohio Stars

Using the scraps

Scrappy Club members recently had a Sew Day.  We had fun starting with 6” squares and making Very Scrappy Nine-Patch blocks.  We ended up with a nice stack of bright blocks.  This is the first quilt made from those blocks.

And this is the back of the quilt.

The yellow fabric used for the setting squares, the green border and binding fabric, and the flannel pieces on the back all came from the Stuff-to-be-Used-Up pile. 

I continue to marvel at how much pleasure can be had from working with leftovers and making something useful!

Technorati Tags: preemie quilt,scraps

Scrappy Stitching

I really like this Quilty Quote from Quiltmaker magazine!!

 

 

 

 

A couple of Scrappy projects were finished up recently.  These were both samples from our recent Carpenter’s Star session at Scrappy Club.

 

This small blue and green quilt was made with units that finished to 4” square.  It will be given to a preemie at the regional hospital. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The units in this one finish 5” square resulting in a quilt about 65” by 80”.  This has been donated to a local Good Cause.

 

 

I don’t seem to see any noticeable reduction in the piles of blue and green or plaid scraps.  Odd how that works!