Mushy scraps

I finally came up with a layout I'm somewhat happy with for this project.  I sewed up the rest of my scraps into a few small blocks and played around with them for a center.  It's still a mushy quilt and I guess always was going to be. Lesson learned, when it comes to buying/picking fabric for a project.

When I posted my original photos of this project, I received a couple of suggestions about recutting the blocks or sashing them. I decided not to recut any, because I was trying to stretch this into a 50x70" donation quilt top, so I didn't want to lose any additional size in more seams.  The triangles which I used along the 2 sides were already cut (setting triangles from the original attempt) - I had placed them into squares in the first photo thinking I'd sew them together, but I decided I liked this idea of sewing them into strips along the edges more.

The quilt is now about 40x50", and I am completely out of the batiks I was using. So I'm going to have to do something for a border to stretch it out.   A few of my options are stuck on the wall here.  The two light greys are too light I think, so they are out. I like the red stripe - but it would be really cool as a binding so I might save it for that.  I'm leaning towards a grey inner border (larger on the top and bottom, to get the length I need) and a red outer border to finish it off.

Jar Quilt

At guild one day, someone dropped off a pile of vegetable fabric on the donation table. No one picked it up, so I snagged it at the end of the meeting, planning to make a jar quilt from it.  I picked a size, figured out how big the lid and background fabrics needed to be and made a bunch of jars at a retreat last fall.  Halfway through, I ran out of my background fabric, and my lid fabric (good planning, right?). So it sat around for a few months. I finally pulled some new fabric for background and lids, and dug up something suitable for sashing. This went to my retreat last month and turned itself into a quilt top.

It was pretty popular - all my remaining fabric went to two other quilters who wanted to make their own jar quilts.  That's a pretty good way to ensure you don't have any leftover bits hanging around :)  This time, however, I was smart enough to cut my binding strips first, so that is ready to go.

Woven Lattice quilt

In an effort to catch up on some UFO quilting, and take advantage of a long holiday weekend for myself, I pulled this quilt out of the closet last week. It was completed as a top back in April 2013, so only 4 years in the waiting :)

I had set aside a backing for it, but wasn't really happy with it when I pulled it out. I had the perfect colour flannel available, but wasn't sure there was going to be enough. So I washed and dried it, measured, and it was 1.5" larger than my note said the top was.  Not great, but I can deal with that, I thought.  So I loaded it up on the longarm, laid out the batting, and dropped the quilt top on top of it.  And it was about 2" wider than the backing :( 

I hated the thought of removing the whole thing from the frame, so I thought about it a bit, remembered that I had a similar colour flannel in a different pattern somewhere, and went hunting.  What I found was of course that I had used that flannel on another project.  But I had a 5" strip, 80" long left over - perfect!  I stitched it onto the side, layered everything up again and went to town with my quilting.

Fortunately, I had thought to save some fabric with the quilt top for making binding. So I joined the strips and got the binding onto the quilt right away.

This poor quilt is finally out of the 'to be quilted' pile and into the 'to be bound' pile. Hopefully it won't spend another 4 years there.

Design Wall Monday

My design wall today is a bit confused. These blocks are leftover from one of my mystery quilts. I was trying to change it up, but ended up not liking the new option. So that went back to the original, and I now have all these blocks and a few scrips and scraps left of this fabric. I have no idea what to put with it that won't look completely out of place, so I thought I'd try to see just how many blocks of various designs I can make from the bits and pieces I have left.  They will either become a quilt, or a pile of orphan blocks.

Hop over to PatchworkTimes to see what everyone else is up to today.

Scrappy Pineapple

I've been working on this top for quite some time. I bought a pineapple ruler on a whim one day, because I always wanted to make a pineapple quilt and it seemed like a good way to start. I was using it as a leader-ender project for a  while, because making 24 pineapple blocks all at once was just too repetitive for me.  But evetually I just wanted it finished so I moved to the top of the list and found another leader/ender to go with it.

24 blocks were finished and I thought it was done. Then I realized that the blocks finish at 10", not 12", so the top was going to be a bit short of donation size. I set it aside for a while, but it lept into my retreat bag last month and I tossed some border options in with it. Assembled and bordered, it's now ready for quilting.

I like the result, and hopefully the recipient will like bright colours :)  But I have confirmed one thing - the 10" ruler is about 2 rounds short of making a really good pineapple block. I would have liked the white sections to be a bit more prominent and I think 2 extra rounds might have done that for me. So my next pineapple quilt (yah, right) would be done differently.

Triangle Madness

I started this project a week or so ago, trying to use up some leftover triangles from an earlier adventure.  The top is now complete, and sized perfectly for a donation to Victoria's Quilts, once I get it quilted and bound.  I used a few of the additional leftovers to make the pocket for the presentation bag, and I think my triangle collection is now empty and I can move on :)

Disappearing Dresden

I took a class earlier this year, to make a "Disappearing Dresden" wall hanging. The class was a lot of fun, and I got to use some of my favourite pretty fabrics.  In retrospect, I wish I had used a couple of different background pieces to allow the dresdens to pop a bit more,  But this will make a lovely spring display for my front window.

It is finally finished and bound and off the sewing room floor, which is a big achievement in itself :)

Starry Beginnings - done!

The binding is on, just in time!  I finished this quilt - which I have decided to call "Starry Beginnings" - in the nick of time to submit for our quilt show.  And then I waited (somewhat) patiently.  And I just found out - it's IN!! So, if you are heading to the CQA show in Toronto in June, my quilt will be part of the Modern Guild exhibit, hosted by the Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild.

I pulled one of my usual stunts - when I put the quilt together I used every inch of fabric I had for the background. In fact, I sized the final pieces to do just that.  And then I looked at it and realized I had not reserved anything for binding.  So that took some thinking.

I decided to continue the 'unfinished' theme, by binding two edges, and putting a facing on the other two.  If you look closely, you can see that in this photo.  I considered using a different colour for binding, but could not find anything I liked, so I made due with the scraps I had left of the background fabric.  Fortunately I had a few partial strips which were just wide enough to work for the binding. I think I had 6" leftover when I was done.

Flying Geese

Awhile back I made a quilt from some ombre fabric, with a lot of flying geese. I had a few leftover, plus a lot of the fabric which I ended up not needing for that quilt. It has been sitting in a nice little pile since then, and last weekend I pulled it out.  I had a vision, of making flying geese curving across the quilt, so I decided to make up the rest of the fabric as geese and see what I could do.

First, I made the green circle seen here, thinking that I would make 2 or 3 of these in various sizes. Well, starting with finished flying geese and trying to place them into a circle was a less-than-optimal idea.  It took a lot of time, and a lot of piecing of background fabric, to make this work. So I decided there will be one circle only.

I tried a few swoops of flying geese for the rest (in this first photo, the geese are still attached in pairs, from the "4-at-a-time" flying goose method). I'm not sure I'm thrilled with the end result.  The second photo has all the geese trimmed at various angles to make the swoops. But I'm not getting the feeling I was hoping for from this. So I packed it all up and I'll get it up on my design wall later and see what I can do with it.

The idea here was the geese flying into the circle. But I think I'll scrap that idea and try for general swoops across the fabric around the circle next time I pull it out.

Recipe Wall Hanging

 I was playing around with a panel I bought a few years ago. It was printed fabric, with a number of recipes on it. When I first bought the fabric, I tried out a couple of the recipes and realized that they are real - and delicious. So I decided that I wanted to make a wall hanging from it for my kitchen. A collection of recipes in fabric.  Later, another Christmas panel came out with different recipes, so I added them to the pile.

I finally cut out the recipes - the challenge was figuring out how to get each recipe with enough seam allowance, since they were set very close together in the fabric. A half-yard turned out to be just enough fabric.

Then I framed them all with red, from the same collection. The next challenge was how to set them.

Each recipe was a different size, and I wanted the frame to be the same size on all (1/2").  So I played around with layouts, and finally came up with something I liked. I didn't want the wall hanging to be too big, so my initial thought of adding some random blocks in the spaces between recipes was scrapped, and I went with a simple white fill.

A friend nicely provided a red fabric for the binding, and I think that will finish this up nicely.

Next project

Continuing my desire to use up some scraps and leftovers from previous projects, I pulled out some triangles that I had used in a project back in April 2015.  So that's not bad - I guess these scraps are only 2 years old. I cut a few (many) additional triangles from my stash (the grey and dark orange).

Unfortunately, I had a brain freeze. If you look closely, the top 2 rows are short 1 triangle each.  So after I put them together and measured - to make sure the quilt was sized correctly for dontation - I thought I'd miscalculated and my quilt was too small. So I cut another 12 triangles and exteneded each row.

Then I assembled row 3, and realized that I was right initially, and it was the first row that was wrong. So, I took away all those extra triangles, added one to each of the top 2 rows, and all should be good now.

Except - I have 12 leftover triangles.  So now I have another quilt to make from the scraps, but 12 isn't enough, so I need to cut some - you see where I'm going with this I'm sure. I will be more careful this time, and make a much smaller quilt (baby quilt), so I don't end up with even more leftovers.

I'm linking up with Judy's design wall Monday today.  Drop by to see what everyone else is up to.

150 Canadian Women

I spent a day last weekend trying to get caught up on my 150 Canadian Women quilt blocks.  17 completed, after redoing the badly sized block here . I seem to be continuously behind in this endeavor, but I will continue to plug along and hope I don't lose steam before week 50.

These blocks are definitely getting more complex. I can't wait to have a chance to start playing with them on my design wall. Until then, I'm not adding any sashing since I don't know which blocks are on the outside edges.

Star Quilt

I quilted my little heart out, and got this top all done, in time for the quilt show. I hope it gets accepted.

I solicited lots of advice from a couple of online quilting boards (one of which I just discovered) and came up with something I love.  Warning - lots of photos ahead.

The colour in this first one is off, because I was trying to get the quilting lines to show up, but it does give the overall picture of the quilt design and the quilting. There is a swirl border along 2 edges (top and right).  Some peacock features and pebbles for background fill.  And way more straight lines than I wanted to quilt, for the star.

A closeup of the feathers in the background. I love this fill, partly because it's really quick and easy, but gives a great texture to the quilt.

This picture shows the 4 different sections of the background quilting.  Swirl border, with straight lines on the outside. Then some pebbles to fill the spaces between the swirls and peacock feathers.

 If you expand this photo,you can see the details of the star points.

And the star center.

This photo shows the corner, with all the background fill.

The binding plan is to continue the "unfinished" theme - I'll bind the 2 edges near the swirl border, and face the other 2 to give them an unfinished look.

MIni Quilt

This little quilt - 12" square - is my entry for our Modern Guild linen challenge this year.  The background is linen, the flower and sunbeams are regular cotton. I wish I was a bit more creative and could have done something fancier for the design, but when I put the background together it said "rain" to me. So I decided some sunbeams shining through the clouds onto a flower would be an interesting arrangment.  I call it "Rainy Days and Sun Days", although I guess the song is actually "Rainy Days and Mondays".