When I decided to bust all my flannel last year, I had no idea how long that would take. After all, I didn't have that much flannel, so I thought. Also, most of these are just baby quilts, since the colors I had were mostly baby or juvenile. Baby quilts don't use that much fabric, and since none of flannel pieces were big, I am using regular cotton for the borders, and later for the backs. For the top quilt, I used all of the 4 1/2" (unfinished) blocks I had, mixing four patches with paddle wheel blocks. I only have a 2 1/2" strip left of the border fabric :-)
Now I am down to 4" squares, and I am making real progress on those, but the more quilts I make, the more creative I am having to be to combine them. These fabrics weren't bought to go together, and I only ever bought flannels from thrift stores or remnant bins, so I didn't usually have very large pieces to start with. I like the Trip Around the World pattern with the pinks and greens, but I had a horrible time finding a border fabric. I finally decided the Easter egg fabric had all the colors I wanted, and nothing else in my stash did, so I went for it!
This quilt top I finished this evening. It will be the last of just flannel squares. I'm going to go back to mixing flannel and denim for the rest. On this diagonal set quilt I was laying it out based on how many squares of each fabric I had, only two, it goes there, seven squares so it can go here. It's a crazy way to lay out quilts. If I had a bigger variety of flannels I would have tried for an anything goes quilt, but I just don't have the variety I'd need to be happy with that approach.
This has been a crazy year for quilting for me. It is March already and I don't have a quilt finish for the year :-( I really need to spend some time cutting this week. I have to make a quilt, 72 rally bags, and 40 cool ties for DH's scooter rally in eight weeks. Nothing like sewing under pressure, huh? I have my cutting plan for the quilt written out, and once I get everything cut, piecing it shouldn't be bad. I didn't pick anything very complicated. I'm going for a medallion quilt this time, and I've never made one of those so it should be fun. I was hoping to get some cutting done today, but I ended up babysitting instead.
My flannel is slowly but surely coming to an end. I think that mixed with denim squares, I'll end up with three more baby quilts, but then it should be gone. I know I'll end up with more flannel scraps later on, I do have people request flannel quilts, but for now, I'm close to finishing.
One thing I really have noticed? I am noticing dents in my my one yard and under sections. I've been looking through those first when deciding on borders for these baby quilts. I only need 4 WOF strips to border the quilts the size I'm making them, so on several of these, I'm just measuring the fabric and dividing by four to pick border size. I'm completely used up several fabrics making these little quilts. Maybe when I have my grand quilting spree later in the year, I'll notice some dents in yardage as I back all of these quilt tops I've been making!
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