It's amazing how fast I can finish quilts when they are all basted and ready to quilt!
This quilt was up on the design wall in February, when we hosted a family reunion. One of the cousins saw it and really liked it. She jokingly told the others that I was making her a quilt. She wasn't serious, and she wasn't asking for it, but she did genuinely like the quilt. I decided that when it was finished I'd send it to her. I got her address from her mom, who never gave her any idea it was coming. I finally finished the quilt last weekend, and we mailed it off on Monday. I've already gotten a thank you message from her, she was so surprised, and that made it really fun for me!
I originally thought to put a border on the quilt, though I never planned on the designer's pieced border. When I got the center together, I decided it was large enough for the couch quilt I had planned, so I skipped the border entirely. The piecing is all done with men's shirts. I felt like this design was really busy, so I wanted to use calmer setting triangles, and I had just enough of a shirting fabric to get oversized setting triangles cut. If the center is busy, I like using oversized setting triangles to "float" the blocks a bit.
Now that I got the baby quilt and this gift quilt finished, I'm just quilting my way down the pile of basted quilts, since none of the rest have deadlines.
This was the next in the stack, and I got it quilted this week, and I sewed on the binding this morning. That's finish # 28 for the year. The next couple in the stack are smaller, so they should finish up quickly.
I was supposed to babysit this week, but that got cancelled do to the family having a stomach bug (SO glad they didn't expose me!) I'm supposed to be hosting a birthday dinner for DD#2 this Sunday, but we'll see if everyone is healthy. With those two things going on, I decided to hold off on the Christmas sewing for another week.
So what did I work on instead? I finished sewing up the blocks I was making with Bonus HST's, and I've got the quilt on the design wall almost assembled. I also started looking through a box of scraps I was given.
Earlier this year, I was given a bunch of scrap fabric by a family friend. She's close to my mom's age, and I cracked up when I saw they had some of the same fabrics. I've had a really busy year, so after washing all the fabric, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I just tossed all the wrinkled fabric in some cube storage bins. I didn't sort it, didn't iron it, just tossed it in the bins. To clarify, I tossed all the scraps in the bins, she also gave me some yardage, and THAT I put away correctly.
Fast forward to this month, where someone else, also about my mom's age, also gave me box of scrap fabrics. Again, she had a few fabrics I've seen in my mom's stash. This fabric was much more quilter oriented, in fact, there was a quilt kit in there. I've never seen a quilt kit like this before. The price tag tells me it was purchased at the quilt shop closest to me, but I have NO idea when. The kit was in a large zipper bag, and it had an OLD quilt book in it, probably from the 1980's, primitive style. A page in the book was marked, and there were fabric amounts for that particular quilt in the book. They were labeled, sashing fabric, border fabric, etc... I've only ever seen quilt kits with individual patterns, never wrapped up with a whole book before.
I looked up the quilt pattern, which I didn't care for, but I do like the fabric. It's all autumn colors, which are my favorite. I'm donating the book since none of the patterns inspired me, but I'm keeping the fabric. There was also a bundle of plaids, and another bundle of bright blenders, , plus several red and white prints. The box the fabric was in was really dirty, so I washed all the fabric, so now I have about two laundry baskets worth of other peoples scraps, all wrinkly and a mess. What to do with these? I don't want them languishing, and as long as they are a wrinkled mess, that's exactly what they will do, just sit there. I decided to take out all the scraps I was given earlier this year, and see if any of those scraps would play nicely with the new scraps I was given.
I have all these plaids, mostly 1/4-1/3 yard pieces. A lot of them are pastels. I also have a bunch of solid scraps, most of which are really narrow. HMMM...I saw a YouTube tutorial the other day that might work really well with these scraps. I rewatched the video, and now I'm cutting up all of these scraps to go with that pattern. I need 1" strips of the solids, and 5" squares of the plaids. If I run short of the plaids, I'll raid my men's shirt stash, and I'll look through my 2" strip bins for more solids which I can easily cut down into 1" strips.
As I go through the combined scraps, I'm seeing more color combinations.
Most of the bright blenders are fat 1/8ths. I saw a jelly roll pattern, also on YouTube, that I think I can make work with the bright scraps along with some white yardage from stash. Next to the bright scraps are quite a few red and white prints, I may have to add some stash to that, but perhaps that can go into a red, white, and black quilt. I'm still mulling over a pattern for that. between both sets of scraps there are a lot of blues. I always have a ton of blue scraps, so I'm thinking I'll do a blue scrap quilt, and combine these scraps with mine for more variety. Again, I haven't chosen a pattern yet for the blues.
See the big pile of scraps in the back, it has all the cream colored fabrics, along with anything that could possibly be autumn colors. Between both sets of scraps, there were quite a few fabrics I could toss in this pile, along with the whole quilt kit worth of fabrics. In the first set of scraps I was given, I had most of an applique panel.
These are autumn colors, and I even have some of the ones that were cut out loose in the fabrics. I think I'll use fusible raw edge applique, fuse these onto the cream fabrics I have in the scraps, and then alternate the applique blocks with 16 patches, or 25 patches or whichever size blocks I need. If I cut all the autumn colored scraps into 2.5" strips, I can make the pieced blocks easily, if I have a lot leftover, I could do a piano key border on the quilt, and anything left after that would easily mix in with my scraps.
I still have some scraps left that don't fit into any of these categories, but by grouping what I have a lot of, I've got it sorted into several projects. I'll start by cutting these projects now, and they can be my leader/ender projects for next year. Once I've gotten all of these scraps cut for specific projects, I can much more easily tackle the remaining scraps and cut them up to go into my scrap user system. The amount of scraps that don't fit into these categories is much more manageable now, and not overwhelming. I really did sort most of the scraps into these piles.
I've seen amazing quilts made from scraps, really amazing show stoppers. I've also learned that not all quilts are meant to be show stoppers. It's a lot of fun to play in other people's scraps, and I'm blessed to have been given them. That said, I was given these scraps because people knew I would USE them. If I choose some simpler patterns but get them sewn up into quilts sooner rather than later, I think I'm doing what the women who gave them to me wanted. There will be at least five quilts going to charity from these scraps, maybe more. The important thing is that they are used, not that they are intricately pieced. By mostly sticking with sizes that work with my scrap user system, any leftovers can easily integrate into my scrap stash.
Now that I've got a scrap plan, I'm pressing fabrics during breaks during the day, and I'm cutting fabrics at night while DH and I watch TV. I'm making myself some fun pre-cut quilt kits, that I can work on next year. Taking the time to make a plan can really bring you from being overwhelmed, to productive and excited!
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