Scraps, Scraps and More Scraps

I think my kitty hates when my sewing table is messy as much as I do. He just doesn't know where to lie down. Sometimes he just plops himself right in the middle of all the piles of scrap but he usually doesn't like to do that.

I know how he feels. Even though I absolutely must dig through scraps when I'm assembling a scrap quilt, I just do not like the aftermath. I have little piles of small pieces and other piles of fat quarters that I've cut into pieces. It's an absolute disaster area.

I must admit that it is fun to dig through the scraps though. Digging out colors to create something new is so enjoyable that I forget all about the mess I create. It's all part of the end result and I have to get over it. Maybe it will help give me some incentive to make more quilted scrap baskets to sort everything by color which will make it all so much easier to manage.

My Small World Quilt WIP

I have decided to stick to the color palette found in the Alice by Angela Pingel fabric collection. The colors are outside the box for me. I've never been a fan of blue fabrics, especially navy blue and it is a part of this fabric line.

The first instruction in the pattern book states to make 527 squares for sky so I started to cut those out. I had forgotten how messy my sewing studio gets when digging through scraps. I will have to get over that. I decided to put them in a jar to keep them neat since they will be used sporadically as I build each section of the quilt.

The first blocks in the book are hourglass blocks and each one of them goes in a different section of the quilt. I want these sections to all be differentiated from each other so that means that I will end up with two of each block. I think I will use the extras on the back, so I will set them aside. I hope I can give my version of this quilt a modern yet whimsical look. I'm not that fond of planning things way in advance so we shall see how this goes.

The Solstice Project

The 182-day solstice challenge blocks are driving me crazy. I guess I just don't like unfinished projects. I know how hypocritical that sounds since I have many, many unfinished projects. I decided to make my own rules for this project. First of all, if the blocks are larger than 12 and a half square I will skip them. Second of all, if there is applique to be done, I might skip them depending on how much applique.

With that said, I am finished with the blocks up to week 11. And yes, I skipped week 8 and 12, modified week 9 and am considering making week 14 because the applique part looks pretty simple. I also have to complete week 13's block which looks pretty.

Here is my modified week 9 block and my completed week 11 block:

Orange Strip Quilt for Kids Quilt WIP

I was so inspired at this month's Quilts for Kids sew day that I am making a few more charity quilts. We get all this wonderful fabric donated to us yet sometimes I find it difficult to turn the fabric into something cute. Some of the fabrics come in a variety of sizes and the pieces can be challenging to make into a decent sized quilt.

For instance, this red-orange fabric collection came in a variety of lengths but all the pieces were 12 and 3/4 inches wide. So I decided to cut all the pieces into 4 and 1/4 inch strips. Then I took all the strips and just sewed them into long columns. Once I finished sewing all the pieces into columns of the same length, I wasn't sure what to do with them after that.

I left the long strips on my sewing table overnight. Then next morning I looked at the strips and they were sitting on top of some orange fabric I had left over from another project. I couldn't believe how well it matched my strips! Of course, the rest was history. I cut long strips of the orange and sewed them in-between the prints. How quick and easy this all went together. So today I am quilting it and hopefully getting the binding done as well.

'Lil Twister Table Topper

I finished the 'Lil Twister tabletopper today. I do like the results however, I would do things a little differently if I make another.

First thing, I placed some tangerine print charms next to the border and when I cut the pinwheels out, it the prints got lost in the border. The instructions stated to place the charms in a random pattern. I will be less random next time.

I took out all the solid charm squares. I only needed 35 of the 42 charms from the pack, so it worked out great that there were 7 solids. Now that this project is complete, I see that when I cut the twister pinwheels, it really looks quite busy. I think if I would have left the solids in, it would tone things down a bit.

I like the end result and it will look nice on my kitchen table throughout this spring.

Animal Print Quilts for Kids Quilt Completed

I've had this fabric for a while. It was donated to Quilts for Kids and I thought it would be easy to make a nice quilt out of it. It was not as easy as I thought. I think it's the colors. Even though they are nice primary colors, the background makes it a little difficult to turn into something sweet and soft.

So I found some chambray fabric in my stash and I put it next to the fabric. It seem to soften it a little. I decided to make sashing out of the chambray and put it between blocks of the animal print. That was the animal print could still be a focus fabric and the blue chambray matches some of the color in the print.

I quilted the quilt in large meandering swirls which took no time at all. Then I found this cute bug fabric to set off the animal print and I used that for binding. It may not be the cutest quilt ever, but it does have a bit of whimsy in it after all.

'Lil Twister Table Topper WIP

I borrowed my friend, Sue's 'Lil Twister template to make a tabletopper. I couldn't wait to give it a whirl. I used 35 charm squares to make a panel with a 3" border. Using the template, I cut out all the "twist" blocks and sewed them together. It really look quite cute.

It was a bit of a challenge to cut the blocks out without cutting too far around the template. There's a little wiggle-room, but not much. I ended up with some waste in the form of little squares in-between all the cuts.

When I put the new blocks together, there was a bit of stretch in the fabric since the blocks were now on the bias. It did make it easy to nest the seams when sewing the rows together.

Now I just have to add another border, quilt and bind this sweet little tabletopper.

Quilts for Kids Frog Quilt Completed

I finished another Quilts for Kids quilts today. At last month's meeting I discovered the joy of attaching binding by machine.

Bonnie, one of the volunteers was demonstrating how to sew binding on using a long-arm machine. Her technique included stitching the binding on by starting from the back then folding it over towards the front.

I felt more confident to try it after watching Bonnie complete a quilt in no time at all. It was so quick and easy and the mitered corners came out very nicely. I can't believe I didn't try it years ago. I probably won't use this technique on some of my better quilts until I build up my confidence but for now I will do all my donated quilts this way. Now I can finish my quilts at a faster pace which means I can make more sooner. :-)