Two Finishes for July!

 I took a tip from my June quilting, and worked on two quilts that could be quilted with the same color of thread, and bound the same as well. 

I really love these super bright batiks I was given. I did add some of my own batiks to the mix, but I made three quilt tops from the fabrics I was given. This is the first one finished, and quilt number 13 for the year. It's a larger throw. The other two are not the same pattern.

You've seen these blocks before! I made three quilt tops from these black/neutral log cabin blocks. The other two are twin sized, and I may or may not have finished those, I honestly can't remember. At any rate, I do remember this is the smallest of the three, it's a large baby sized or kid quilt. 

I used a black thread on both of these quilts, and just did a simple meander. The black thread was very fine, so it doesn't show up much, even on the light areas. 

July is the seventh month, and I've got 14 quilts done, so right on target. I'm actually hoping the second half of the year is even more productive, because I've got so much prepped and ready to go. I've still got 9 quilts basted, I've got multiple quilts cut out, and how's this for leader/enders?

This tote is completely filled with blocks that are easy to use as leader/enders. All Civil War reproduction fabrics, so it's going towards my busting those fabrics goal too! 

I took these fabric scraps from my latest basting spree and processed those before they even hit my scrap bin. My scrap user system is outgrowing its designated area again, so when I get a few of the projects I have cut out sewn, I'll be looking for an idea to use up some of those strips. The thing about sewing a lot is, the more you sew, the more scraps you have, so you sew more scraps, but make more scraps. Good thing I enjoy working with scraps! I had a bunch of bird fabric scraps, so I'm thinking I'll make a bird quilt (or two), and I had a very large scale print of African animals, that I used most of on the back of a quilt, but I think I have enough left to be the focus in another quilt. The bird fabrics and the animal fabrics were not all cut to the same sizes. I've been wanting to do something more improv lately, and if I go through my orphan blocks and scraps to make more units, I think I can add to the multi-sized blocks and come up with some fun quilts. I haven't done anything like that for a while, and it sounds like fun!

Sticker Shock or My Guide to Cheaper Quilting

 Quilting supplies, like almost everything else these days are going up. I look around at my stash, and I know I wouldn't have most of this if I had to start over at today's prices. Sure, I would have what was given to me by sewists who could no longer sew, but what I've purchased? I wouldn't have bought much at today's prices. 

This is a great example, I bought a small fat quarter bundle (six fat quarters) three years ago for $7.49. The same company still sells the exact same bundle. Price? $21.59 It's the exact same bundle! Somehow, three years later the same company thinks the outdated bundle is worth three times the price??? This isn't a new line of fabric, it's not made differently than what I bought three years ago, and I suspect what they are selling now came in three years ago and just hasn't sold. 

It doesn't help that the options of where to buy supplies are dwindling. I remember always checking out the remnants at Hancock's Fabrics (not to be confused with Hancock's of Paducah, which is different), because they marked all the remnants down to $2 a yard, no matter what kind of fabric it was. The Hancock's chain went out of business. I used to find great deals on batting at Ben Franklin stores, until they went under too. We had a great local fabric shop. They sold every kind of fabric, from chiffon to leather, and all kinds of trims and notions. They went out of business too. Then, of course, we lost JoAnn fabrics too. My favorite quilt shop closed, though I thankfully live in a large enough place that there are a few more of those. 

My sister and I have a "sister date" once a week. I'm a quilter, she does all the other crafts, so a stop by a craft store is a regular for us. We've just been blown away by the change in prices. It seems like the prices change every week. Places that used to offer coupons, often don't now. Remnants that used to be half off or more, now aren't being marked down as much. We wonder what it must be like to want to start quilting in today's world. 

We raised five kids on one income, and I homeschooled as well. One thing I learned to do well is shop, not because I enjoy shopping, because I don't. I learned to shop well because we always had to make the budget stretch. I know young people say it's harder now, and that may be true, but it wasn't easy then either. 

If you are a beginner quilter, or a quilter who is struggling financially, I'm going to give you some tips on how to stretch the crafting budget, if there are any quilt police reading this, turn away now, you've been warned. 

Sewing Machine

Let's say you don't have a sewing machine, I'm here to tell you that lots of quilts have been made without one. In fact, some quilts, like one that is all small hexagons, are easier to hand sew than to sew with a sewing machine. If I were a mom who has to sit in the school pick up line every day, I'd be hand piecing during the wait. 

What if you want a sewing machine? If you have a very tight budget, my advice is to skip Walmart and go vintage.

I bought this Singer 201 at a thrift shop. It cost me $50 and had just been serviced. Sure, it's straight stitch only, but for quilting, that's all you need. The space between the needle and vertical of the machine is much larger than you find in a cheap plastic machine, which really comes in handy if you quilt your own quilts. More advantages to vintage? Watch a few YouTube videos and you can do a lot of servicing yourself, and this machine will still be sewing 50 years from now, where my new computerized machines will be in a landfill. I love to piece on a vintage machine, straight stitch only machines sew the most accurate 1/4" seams.

Fabric

A large portion of my fabric has been purchased at thrift stores, some of it as just fabric, sometimes a bag of scraps, but even whole bolts of fabric. Some of the fabric is upcycled from sheets, clothes, curtains, duvet covers. I prefer 100% cotton, but I have made quilts from other materials as well. 

This quilt was made from all men's shirts that I thrifted.

The purple background and borders of this quilt are from a duvet cover.

The focus fabric from this quilt are from some curtains I made, then when we were done with them, I turned them into a quilt. 

Some other things to look for at thrift stores? Fleece blankets, they make great backings and you can skip the batting if you want. Any blanket can be batting, as well as mattress pads. I've found thread at thrift stores too. I've seen people use towels as batting in table runner. No one will know what's on the inside of a quilt.

If you are lucky enough to have a Goodwill Outlet anywhere within day trip range, it's worth the trip. My sister and I just went there, and these are the current prices at ours.

So you can pick up clothes for $1.89 a pound, and that's any clothes, want to make a denim quilt, grab a bunch of jeans. Do you enjoy making t-shirt quilts? Look for any interesting ones. I usually stick with 100% woven cotton, usually men's shirts, but I've also picked up womens skirts, pajama pants, even a hospital gown that looked new. 

And the 99 cents a pound for linens? That's your sheets, which I've used for backgrounds, as well as backings, and duvet covers, and curtains, and blankets etc... I've even found yardage in the linen bins.

Maybe you don't have any local options for thrift stores, did you know Goodwill has an online auction site? You can bid on boxes full of fabrics, thread, or sewing machines. Have you been wanting a fabric die cutter? You can snag an Accuquilt die cutter with dies for a fraction of what it costs new. You can also try Etsy or eBay, though professional resellers are jacking up prices there.

I'm a big proponent of buying things secondhand. I think it's easier on the environment and on the wallet. Remember you can check out yard sales, estate sales, local auctions, Facebook Marketplace, Freecycle and local "buy nothing" groups. Just think of how many people bought the supplies for a project and never got around to making it because life got in the way. There's a lot of perfectly good supplies already out there. 

Prefer to buy new? Every quilt shop I've ever been in has a sale section. Big box stores that sell fabric have remnant bins. Check out the clearance section in the linens department. Don't have any local options?

For novelty fabrics, you can't beat 4my3boyz.com. She's got some $1 fat quarters! Lots of fabric panels too, and a fabric panel is the cheapest way to make a themed quilt. Buy a panel, surround it with blocks made from fabrics you already have in complementary colors, and you've got it! 

For every type of quilting fabric and batting, my go to is Marshall Dry Goods. Their quilting basics run about $5 per yard, but if you buy the same fabric by the bolt, you can get it for around $3 a yard on the wholesale side of their site. You do not need to be a business to buy wholesale, you just have to be willing to buy bulk.

If you really love pre-cuts, check out jellyrollfabric.net

Thread

I've found lots of thread at thrift shops, including brand new thread in the wrapper. My vintage machines will usually sew with any thread I've tried. Modern machines can be picky, and in my experience, the more expensive the machine, the pickier it seems to be. Most of my machines will sew with most threads if I'm piecing or walking foot quilting. I may have to adjust tension, but I can make it work. FMQ is where preferences really show up. The biggest area I've seen preferences in is fiber content. I have machines that only want to FMQ with cotton and never poly, no matter which brand, and I have machines that only want to FMQ with poly, never cotton, no matter which brand. Sometimes I do encounter brand preferences, one of my Bernina 440's will sew with anything, one absolutely will not sew with Gutterman, and if it's Auriful it needs to be 40 wt, 50 wt just breaks. Since I have two of the exact same machine, I am very familiar with adjusting tension on the top and bobbin, but one is just pickier than the other. 

If you are blessed to have a machine that is not picky, the cheapest place I know of to buy thread is Thread Art. This is Chinese thread, not European fine threads. Would I quilt a quilt for a quilt show with it, absolutely not. Would I make a quilt for a five year old with it? Absolutely. They have all kinds of thread, and I've had pretty good luck with it. Since I don't make quilts for quilt shows, I'll use just about any of their threads in most quilts. My favorite thread is Aurifil, and for a queen sized or larger quilt, that's what I'm likely to use, but for almost everything else, these work fine as long as my machine likes it. I have a few other brands of thread I like too, but I only buy thread on sale, including my beloved Aurifil. 

Patterns

I'm going to be pretty ruthless here. If you are struggling financially, don't buy patterns, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of free patterns online. You can also check out quilting books from your local library. 

Notions

The best advice I can give on notions is watch for sales. Buy sewing machine needles in bulk, you'd be shocked at the cost per needle in a 100 pack versus a five pack. Rulers have really gone up in price, and this is one thing I wouldn't buy used. A well used ruler is likely not that accurate anymore. They do wear out. Buy brand name rulers from reputable sellers. I know Amazon has had a lot of problems with pirated rulers that aren't accurate. Rotary blades I've had good luck with on Amazon. Did you know that if you go to the google home page, you can put in a specific item and press the shopping tab under the search bar, and they will do comparison shopping for you? Also, make sure to go back to google if you are going to make an online purchase, type in the name of the shop you are buying from along with the words coupon code, for example, Connecting Threads coupon code. You might find coupon codes for free shipping or percentage off coupons, but either way, it's worth a quick search. Local quilt shops have sales too, and they need business to stay open. 

Learn to Finish Your Own Quilts

I was chatting with a woman at a quilt shop, and she was shocked I quilt my own quilts. She has always used a longarmer. Longarmers are great, and I have had a few quilts finished that way. I could not make nearly as many quilts as I do if I paid a longarmer to quilt them all. My first quilts were tied. (Try a curved needle for this, it's easier) You can easily look up how to do that. My kids still used quilts I tied over 20 years ago, and they are holding up just fine! 

I went from tying quilts to using a walking foot, and I still use a walking foot now and then to do some simple crosshatching on a quilt. Pair a vintage sewing machine and a walking foot and you can quilt a king sized quilt. There are lots of books (think library here) and YouTube videos on some incredible quilting with a walking foot. 

I learned to FMQ because I wanted to, not because I had to. There is nothing wrong with tying a quilt, and there are some great walking foot quilting designs you can do. That said, YouTube and library books can get you started if you want to learn to FMQ. 

I know the quilting snobs likely haven't made it this far through the blog post. I've heard all of the, "you should only ever use quilt shop quality fabric and brand X of thread, and brand Y batting is all I'd ever use" comments I'd ever care to hear. The first two bed quilts I made for two of my daughters were made from our families old jeans, and backed with a set of sheets I bought in the clearance section at Kmart. DD#2 still uses that quilt, and if she's sick it's her favorite. 

The argument I really don't get it the your quilt won't last 50 or even 100 years if you don't use such and such. I would rather have a kid drag around a quilt I made them, and have them wear it out in five years making blanket forts and wrapping the dog in it, than have it sit in a closet unused because no one wants it to get ruined. The kid that wears out a quilt has memories with that quilt. Sure, the quilt may have worn out, but the memory of it won't. The quilt in the closet may be pristine, but no one cares about it, no one has memories of it, that, in my mind, is a waste of fabric and time. As long as I'm alive and able, wear out the quilt, I'll make you another one. 

Proof of Concept- Part 2

 If you made last week's blocks, or if you are thinking about it, and you want to know what the rest of the story is before you commit, here it is!

Before I show you, I want to let you in on a secret. If your quilt only has one block, what size they finish at doesn't matter. What does matter, is that they are all the same size! 

Last week's big block measured 18" finished, made up of four 9" finished block quarters. Today we'll be using those bonus HST's to make a different quilt. Now, when I used the specialty ruler for the sew and flip corners, I did not trim up the bonus HST's, I simply sewed a 1/4" seam on the diagonal. Each of these bonus HST's are a block quarter for our new quilt. You'll get two block quarters for quilt two, from each block quarter from block one. Remember we did two sew and flip corners on each block quarter? That really comes into play here, because out new blocks will be smaller than last week's, but you'll get two of them for each big block from last week.

And our new block is....

Four bonus HST's give you this block, and mine is measuring 10 7/8 unfinished. so it will be 10 3/8 finished. Is it a weird size? Yes, it is. Do I care? No I don't, because all my blocks measure this, and I'm not adding any other units to the quilt. 

How do a bunch of these look together?

It's a completely different look compared to the last quilt, but I still like it quite well. You can turn the blocks quarters differently to make a different block, and you can in the first quilt as well, but I liked the versions I did best. Both of these are now sewn into quilt tops and I'm not adding borders, I think a good contrasting binding will be a fine finish. 

It did not take me long to make both of these quilt tops. If you need two quilts in a hurry, this would be a good option. Although I think it could work in a lot of fabric combinations, the fact it looks good in men's shirts made me think this would be a great way to make two memory quilts from a loved ones clothes. You don't need a lot of extra fabric, and you get two quilt tops fast. Quilt #1 is larger, but not by a huge amount.

The only fabric waste is the dog ears from the bonus HST's. 

Will I try it in novelty prints? Maybe, but because the blocks get turned directional fabrics could be tricky, also, you'd really have to watch scale of the prints because not all the pieces end up being large. 

I think the next time I play around with this idea, I'm going to go much smaller, so there are a lot more repeats over the surface of the quilt. Changing the width of the framing strips will also change the quilts pretty drastically. I have some neon green fabric, and lot of black and white prints. What if I used the green for the framing strips and the black and white fabrics for the squares????

There's my concept and the resulting blocks on the design wall. It's probably been done before by someone, but not that I've seen. I did figure out how to make quilt #1 without bonus HST's, so there would be no quilt #2, but by doing it this way, the cutting is really easy, the sewing is easy, and you get an extra quilt. That's a huge win in my book!

Proof of Concept-Part 1

It's my birthday week, and to celebrate, I want to give you something. This is actually first of a two part idea.

I don't know about you, but I do a lot of google image searches for quilts. If someone asks me for a specific kind of quilt, I'm going to do a google image search to help me decide how I might want to tackle their request. Sometimes I come across new techniques, and sometimes a photo will spark a new idea in my mind. For example, I saw a photo of Migrating Geese, and when I looked at the technique, I came up with a way to do it that appealed to me more. You can find that post here. Notice that my version gives me bonus HST's. I never consider these waste, they are a bonus. This is important for the direction I'm going now.

I saw a random photo of a quilt online, and I didn't save the photo, I don't know where I found it. The quilt had a lot of movement in it, and I have no idea how close my quilt is to the original, because it was months between when I saw the photo, and when I tried to come up with a plan, that would result in two different quilts from one technique. I did not see a quilt like the second quilt you'll get.

Now when I'm experimenting, I don't want to use my best fabrics. Time to turn to my men's shirts stash. I also needed an accent fabric, and I just grabbed a cream solid, because I had a bolt of it.

This is more of a technique than a pattern, but I'll give you the sizes I used for my experiment. 

I cut a bunch of men's shirts into 6.5" squares. Why that size? Because I cut my novelty scraps into that size, and I thought that I might someday try this with novelty prints. The size of the square doesn't matter. In fact, I think I might do this again with 3.5" squares. For each block quarter, you need three squares, so 12 squares for one big block.

Now we need to frame the square.

Here's where that accent fabric came in, each square gets framed with the SAME accent fabric. What width your frame is can vary to your taste, since this was my first attempt, I just decided to cut two pieces 2 x 6.5", and two pieces 2 x 9.5" Since each of these is a quarter of a block, the big blocks finish at 18". 

Now we need to add some sew and flip corners, just two per square. I'm going to be honest here, for these you do NOT want to overcut and trim everything. Accuracy does matter, but it's not hard. I do a LOT of sew and flip corners, and I used to draw lines, and that will totally work here. If you want to draw diagonal lines to do your sew and flip corners, you need to draw two lines, one corner to the opposite diagonal corner, and one 1/2" away from that. These need to be accurate, because we won't be trimming.

I did not draw lines for these. I used this ruler.

I also have the Folded Corner Clipper Ruler which I love, but it was too small for 6 inch squares.  If you are unfamiliar with these type of rulers, here is one video of many that show you how to use them. In this particular video, she doesn't cut as accurately as you should for this project, because we will absolutely be making the bonus HST's. If the video doesn't make sense to you, the blog post I linked above above migrating geese a use the Folded Corner Clipper Ruler and gave step by step photos, and you use it the same way you use the Simple Folded Corners ruler.

One thing I prefer about using these rulers, is when piecing, I prefer to use a screw in seam guide on the bed of my machine. If I'm following a diagonal line, I can't use a screw in seam guide, because it would bunch up the fabric and make it inaccurate. Once you cut with this ruler, you are simply sewing a 1/4 inch seam on the main block, then grabbing the part you cut off, and sewing a 1/4" seam on that bonus HST too. 

When I said we are doing two sew and flip corners, this is what I meant -opposite diagonal corners. We want to sew opposite diagonal corners on each quarter block. Remember, we are only using one size of square here, so since my main square was cut 6.5", so are my corner squares. Each time I sewed the diagonal on the main sew and flip corner, I would immediately sew the diagonal on the bonus HST we cut off. You'll get less shifting if you just sew it all right away. 

I want you to put the bonus HST's aside, we'll deal with those next week. Right now we are making the main block. 

Four quarter blocks can be turned to make this big block. I want you to notice where the point that we are matching actually is. Where the sew and flip corners come together, are actually the inside point of the star that is created when we sew four block quarters together. If you do some aggressive trimming, the odds of trimming every block exactly the same are slim, and that point is not at the halfway point so to would be hard to trim exactly and have the points match up. So basically, unlike a lot of blocks that may need trimming, in this case if you trim you are MORE likely to lose your points. 

What happens if you start putting these big blocks together?

The stars come out! You end up with a quilt with a great diagonal lattice, a field of stars, and you didn't do any difficult sewing! I want to try this again with 3.5" squares, and either 1.5" or 1" wide framing strips. 1" wide would finish at 1/2", so they would be tiny stars! 

This is quilt #1, and next week we'll make quilt number two. 

Cotton Frankenbatting and Two Finishes!

 I was pretty sure I could sew up all the cotton batting scraps in a day, and I did! I pieced two twin/full battings, and two large throws. My SIL wants a table runner for a 10 foot table, and I pieced two battings for that, plus I pieced all the shorter strips with table runners in mind, since I use two layers of cotton batting in every table runner. 

Lest you think I haven't done any quilting, I have two finishes to show you! 

The quilt I was basting a couple weeks ago is finished. I used a cream colored thread to quilt it, and I realized I had another quilt where cream would work nicely, so rather than binding this quilt immediately, I put it aside, and quilted this one.

When both quilts were quilted, then I sewed the binding on both in a day! My two finishes for June were finished on the same day! 

The quilt in autumn colors at the top of this post, DD#1 wants me to put aside for her country store. She'll take all the table runners I care to make too, for the store as well. Her store isn't open yet, right now they are doing farmers markets instead, but the goal is to rehab an old store on their property, and make it into a store once again. I'm glad they aren't ready to open it yet, because it gives me time to just make things for the store now and then, in between other projects. When they are ready, I'll bring her whatever I have made, and we'll work out the details. 

Tackling the Cotton Batting Scraps

I don't have nearly as many cotton batting scraps as I had poly batting scraps. It's definitely not because I use cotton batting less, I actually use cotton batting more often. I don't mind piecing cotton batting scraps, and I use a lot of the scraps up in small project like potholders or table runners. In fact, I had a few table runners started, and I put them up on my design wall to evaluate which needed borders, and how much cotton batting I needed to make them, I wanted to only use scraps. 

I had six table runners started, I ended up adding borders to four of these. The brown ones I left as is, the rest got borders. 

The first thing I did with the cotton batting scraps is pull out my largest scraps. When I want to make heat resistant table runners, I use two layers of cotton batting and one layer of Insulbrite. Is that overkill, maybe, but I don't want to tell someone -yes, they can put hot pans from the oven on it, then have great-granny's antique table damaged. We want to protect the table at all costs, and three layers of batting works. 

I ended up having large enough scraps that I basted five of the runners without piecing any batting, even though I had made four of these larger with borders. For the sixth runner, I took the odd sized smaller scraps, and pieced those together. So now all the runners are basted and ready to quilt.

Next I pulled out the strips of batting that were 4" wide or less. If any scrap is narrower than 2.5" it goes into the trash immediately, and never goes into my batting scraps. All of these strips I cut into 2.5" wide, and rolled them up like a Bosal batting roll. I can use them for jelly roll rugs, baskets, or any other project that uses that technique. Oftentimes, my sister does projects like that, so I give them to her if she needs them before I do.

I ended up with three good sized rolls of 2.5" wide batting strips. 

Next I cut the sides of all the larger scraps straight. I just piled them up on my ironing station. These are folded multiple times so it looks like more than it is. 

Now they are all sorted roughly by length. I do have some shorter strips off to the side, that you can't see, but I'll deal with those last, because depending how these sew up, I may sew the shorter strips end to end to make longer strips, or I might sew them next to each other with another table runner in mind. The seams to sew these together will be long, but cotton batting is easy to work with. I've got a lot of plates spinning right now, so I think it will likely take me two or three days to piece all this, but honestly, if I dedicated one day and only did this, I could probably finish in a day. It might be a long day, but I think I could.

I still do have some pins left, because I've been reclaiming pins during my one hour per day of FMQ, but I haven't decided if I'm going to be matching these battings to quilt tops right away, or if I'll just label each Frankenbatting with the size it finished at and use them later. I still have a big stack of stuff basted, so I'm leaning towards just labeling the cotton Frankenbattings and dealing with them a little later, when I'm not quite so busy with other things. 

Managing a Large Fabric Stash

 Are you like me and read all the blog posts talking about scrap management, or how people store their stash of fabric? I watch all the YouTube videos on those subjects as well. YouTube quilt studio tours, I watch every one I can find! 

At this point, I've been a serious quilter for almost 20 years, and I've tried a lot of different methods for sorting my stash. Over those 20 years, I've not always had a dedicated sewing room. In fact, over those 20 years my sewing room has been in six different rooms in our house, with multiple times where I had no sewing room at all. It always depended on how many people were living with us at the time. Before I started seriously quilting, I was sewing on commision, and I never had a sewing room at that time, I didn't even have a sewing table, I had to do everything on the kitchen table, then move it all for meals and homeschooling. 

The times I didn't have a sewing room, my fabric was always in totes, usually stuffed into a closet somewhere. At one point, all the totes were under a bed. I think totes are one of the worst ways to store fabric to keep it usable, but you do what you have to do at the time. The reason I don't like totes is even if you are diligent about keeping you fabrics divided, say knits in one tote, and wovens in another, you have to dig through the tote every time you need fabric, and when it's hard to find, and hard to look through, you forget what you have. 

Now that we are empty nesters, I actually have a fabric room, that has my fabric, a huge cutting table and an ironing station, and I have a sewing room, where I have three sewing machines set up at all times. The sewing room is where my design wall is. I'm spoiled, and I know it. I also know that someday we are likely to move and I'll have to downsize my sewing area again, but being the planner I am, I'm already considering how I would do that. We have a tri-level house, so eventually, we are likely to move to single story. 

For those of you who are interesting in stash management, this post is for you, and I'm not only going to go over how I store each stage of fabric in my stash, but I'm also going to tell you why. What I do may not work for you, but my stash management absolutely works for me. 

If you are new to the blog, know that I am a dedicated pre-cutter when it comes to scraps. I can totally understand why someone with a small stash or someone who does a lot of applique may prefer to sort scraps by color and not pre-cut, but with a large stash if I don't pre-cut, there is always a larger piece of fabric that is easier to use than digging through a bin of misc scraps. If I'm going to actually use my my scraps, they need to be easy to grab and use. 

I'm going to start with the scraps first. Why? Because when I am starting a new quilt, my rule is to always use the smallest piece of fabric that will work. If I need a bunch of 2" squares, I'm going to go to my 2" squares, If I need a bunch of 2.5" strips, I'm going to go to my 2.5" strips. 

Since my cutting table is made from cube storage pieces, I've found these type of containers work well for storing strips and squares. 

I store both strips and squares sorted by color, and I store them on end their end so I can flip through them like an index file. Stacks don't work as well for me, because stacks fall over, and pulling something out of a stack messes up the whole stack. By storing the strips like this, I can easily flip through them all, and pull out the strips I want. My squares are stored similarly, but I have them in rows in the same style container. If we ever downsize, my scraps come with me, because my scraps give me the greatest variety of fabrics to play with. 

My next category of fabric is fat quarters. If I cut into a fat quarter for a quilt, anything left gets cut into my Scrap User System sizes, so I have nothing between fat quarters and pre-cut scraps. Fat quarters are my favorite pre-cut, hands down. Now that my goal is to reduce stash, if I find a fabric I really love at a quilt shop, and I just can't pass it by, I usually ask if they'll cut me a fat quarter, and most shops will. My fat quarters are stored in drawers by color. 

I lucked out and found these drawer kitchen cabinets at a building supply resale shop. I love that the drawers pull all the way out. I have a couple drawers full of fat quarters, all sorted by color. Again, if we were to downsize, most of the fat quarters would go with me, for the same reason as the scraps, variety. 

My next category of fabric is one I rarely see people use. I keep fabrics larger than a fat quarter (or 12" WOF) to 1 yard pieces separate. If a fabric is under 12" WOF, I cut it for my Scrap User System. Now I'm going to tell you why this category makes sense to me. Fat quarters are great for variety, and I like my quilts to have a lot of variety, but unless it's a really small project, one fat quarter isn't usually enough to make something. It might be large enough to provide cornerstones for sashing, but probably not enough for the sashing. It's not enough for binding, it's not enough to be a focus of a quilt. But, when we start dealing with half yard to one yard pieces, now we are talking enough fabric for a pillowcase, enough for sashing, enough for a focus fabric on a throw sized quilt, enough for binding. These are the drawers I go to when I need to make a backing just a bit wider, and I need a couple 10" WOF pieced to piece into a strip in the middle of a length of fabric. I store the fat quarter+ to one yard pieces separately, because to me, they are used differently. If I need a backing for a table runner, this is the category, if I'm making pillowcases, this is where I look. Sashing? I look here to see if something here will work. Remember, my cardinal rule on fabric management is to always use the smallest piece that will work. 

The drawers I keep the fat quarter-one yard pieces in aren't as nice as my fat quarter drawers, but they work. Since I fold all the fabric the same, it's pretty easy to see which pieces are likely one yard pieces, by the thickness of the bit you can see. Just like with my fat quarters, and even my scrap strips and squares, there are no stacks here, I can easily flip through the fabrics and see what I've got. If we were to downsize, I'd likely try to reduce this part of my stash by at least 50%, only keeping what I really love. 

Anything over 1 yard I consider yardage and that goes on my IKEA Billy bookcases.

All of this is normal width yardage, anything over 1 yard. All my mini-bolts are wrapped on corrugated plastic DH cut to size for me. I joke with DH that yardage is for backings. Of course, yardage is also for backgrounds and borders, and on the rare occasion I'm only using a few fabrics in a quilt top. Again, no stacks, I can easily find and grab any fabric I've got. This is where I'd be ruthless if we downsized, I'd try to get it down by 75%. I'd hope to keep half the bookshelves, but if we downsized, I'd need to get rid of more than half of this fabric so I could move the solids I have on bolts to minibolts, as well as have space for the widebacks I have. 

I'm in no hurry to downsize. We are debating a move to the midwest, the region most of our kids live in, but as long as DD#2 lives here in town, we'll likely stay here. If she and her family were to move, we would definitely move. If we are all still in town ten years from now, we'll likely move to to a single story house, but for now, I'll enjoy the space I have, and the stash I have. At today's prices I'd never be able to have what I've got, even after inheriting several people's stashes. 

Now, why do I think my stash management system works for me? 

1) I can find what I'm looking for easily.

2) My fabric is stored in categories that work for the way I think and quilt. 

3) By always using the smallest piece of fabric that works, I am keeping the smaller pieces moving out, so when I'm under a yard from the yardage shelves, I have space in the drawers for the smaller piece, or when I'm cutting for the Scrap User System, I can put things away immediately. Everything may have looked full, but there is squishing room. 😉

4) I've successfully kept my system going for years. I currently have a stack of empty mini-bolt plastics that are available for any new yardage. This morning I cut a piece of yardage I needed, the remainder was less than one yard, so it went into the fat quarter-one yard drawers. Yesterday I used a piece from those drawers, had less than 12" WOF left, so I cut it into strips and put it into the strip containers. My stash is moving through the system, working for me, not against me. 

I do have a few more categories. I keep my fabric panels together, I have a bin of 1930's repro fabrics, precuts are together, and my steampunk fabrics are together. My 6.5" novelty squares are in their own drawer. I usually break up fat quarter bundles as soon as I get them. I plan by color, not designer, and I don't like quilts that are too matchy. I do have a few quilt kits, stored in bins in my cube storage cutting table. I have strings sorted by color in a 9" cube storage unit, and I have crumbs sorted by color in color coded small bins. I think everyone has those misc. things that they want separate. I know most people do that with holiday fabric, but I don't really buy that, the little I have was likely given to me and it's just mixed in the stash by color. Of course, most people probably don't have a steampunk fabric collection, but I love it so....

Hopefully this post helps someone. If anyone would like a post on how I store other quilting items, just ask and I'll see what I can do. 

Revisiting the Poly Batting Scraps

 Normally when I am making Frankenbatting, I am very careful to only use very similar weights of batting together. Of course I sort by fiber content as well, but I like to use low loft with low loft, and high loft with high loft as well. 

When I finished basting the last poly Frankenbatt that had been matched with a quilt top, I went through the remaining poly batting scraps again. I had the baby sized batting I had pieced but had no quilt top for, could I make it a bit larger and match it with a quilt top? I dug out every poly batting scrap I still had, including the pieces I had cut off from the Frankenbatts I had made after the quilts were basted, and a scrap left from the last piece of my poly batting roll. Did you catch that? The LAST piece from my poly batting roll! I am in no way short on batting right now, I have a full roll of Warm and Natural, along with a partial roll of the same (almost gone). I also have a mostly full roll of Hobbs 80/20, but as far as 100% poly is concerned, aside from a couple of prepackaged battings, I am out of poly batting. 

The fact that I'm not going to be having a steady stream of poly batting scraps coming in for a while, made me feel like keeping any poly batting scraps right now would be silly. With the decision to not save any poly batting scraps right now, I looked at what I had left differently. If I ignored loft, I could not only make the baby batting into a throw, I could also make a second throw sized batting. Sure, it was more piecing than I normally like to do with poly batting, but to get two more donation quilts finished with batting scraps? It's a win in my book.

I basted one of those, and, yes, I could feel the difference in loft while basting. I'm hoping it's less noticeable once its quilted. Would I mix lofts from now on? Probably not, but for right now, when I have no plans to buy more poly batting, and I just want to use what I have, finishing two more quilts is worth the variance. 

The last poly Frankenbatt turned out larger than I expected, but these scraps are going to be tossed after I baste it and trim the edges. I like to only have about an inch of the backing and batting hanging past the quilt top when it comes time to quilt it. I'll trim it exactly after quilting. Those batting scraps will be tossed, guilt free. Since I just opened a roll of Hobbs 80/20, I'll use the hamper I had been using for poly batting scraps for the 80/20 scraps instead. 

The to-be-quilted pile is growing, but so far the quilt top stash doesn't seem to be going down much. I have WAY too many quilt tops right now, so finishing needs to be my focus for a long while. 

Basting Spree with Frankenbatting

 Before I tackle my cotton batting scraps, I wanted to baste all the poly Frankenbattings I had matched up with quilt tops. As you can see, I have one quilt laid out ready to baste. The pile under the window holds nine basted quilts. Next to the big pile of basted quilts is one more quilt to be basted, after I piece a backing for it, and I have yet another quilt that I basted in the sewing room on my quilting table. I've been quilting too, so I am repurposing pins as soon as I take them out of whatever I'm quilting at the time. 

I think I have enough larger pieces of batting scraps that I might be able to make the batting that I hadn't matched up with a top large enough to match a quilt top. The smallest poly batting scraps I'm saving for a pillow form, the heavily pieced scraps I'm tossing guilt free. At some point it needs to hit the end of the line. 

One thing I did before I tackled the poly batting scraps at all, was to go through my fabric shelves and pull out any yardage I wanted out of my stash. A lot of those are novelty fabrics left from the scrub top days, when I was making them on commission. I'm at the point where if no one in my immediate family is interested in whatever is on the novelty fabric, and I don't like it well enough to make a quilt based on it, even for donation, I want it out of the house. I knew I could make a bunch of pillowcases from those fabrics and donate those, and that still may happen, but right now, I've been using as many as those fabrics as I can in the quilt backings I've been piecing. 

A lot of my donation quilts are scrappy, most are color controlled in some manner. For example, the one on the table to be basted is autumn colors. If there is a fabric in my stack of unwanted fabrics that matches the front at all, I'm using it for a backing. I'm still having to add more fabric to make the backings wide enough, so I'm going into my under 1 yard drawers looking for anything I can add to the main fabric to add a center strip of contrasting fabric to the backing. All in all, it's stashbusting at it's finest. Scrap quilt tops, frankenbatting, and fabrics I want out of the stash for the backings. The fabrics I'm using aren't ugly or sub-par in quality, they just aren't fabrics I'm excited about making a focus. When I was buying fabrics for scrub tops, I usually purchased 2.5 yards, so if it's a small throw, I can sometimes piece the whole backing from the fabric, but mostly I'm adding to them. 

My pile of scraps from the new backings is piling up, so I'll have to tackle cutting scraps again, but it's definitely manageable right now. I'd like to baste until I'm out of pins, so once that happens, I'll tackle the backing scraps. I'm not using any widebacks for these quilts, my personal rule of thumb is that if the quilt top isn't at least a twin sized, I would prefer piecing yardage rather than wasting wideback on it. I have more than enough pins to baste these two poly Frankenbatt quilts, so perhaps I'll be basting things made with cotton Frankenbatts soon, I'll be on my last jar of pins by then, so we'll see. Out of my four jars of pins, I've got one full jar left, and less than half of another. Depending on how it works out with quilting new quilts and reclaiming pins, and when I actually start with the cotton batting, could go several ways. 

Baby Sunflower Quilt- Finish #10

 I am actually keeping up with my goal of finishing two quilts per month!  This is my latest finish.

I had leftover bits from the big sunflower quilt I made. I managed to use them up in this baby quilt. I've got a great niece or nephew on the way, and I already had a baby boy quilt set aside for that baby, then I started thinking girl, so I finished this one. Now when they have the gender reveal, I'll be ready either way! 

I quilted the same freeform sunflowers I quilted on the larger quilt. I even used the same thread color because I was happy with how it looked on the big quilt. 

I sewed a crochet hook roll for one of my granddaughters, but I was in such a hurry to get it in the mail for her birthday, I completely forgot to take a photo. If you are in need of one of those, I used this tutorial, which was easy to follow. 

Civil War Progress

 All of my Civil War reproduction fabrics are now cut into strips, for the patterns I'm currently cutting. Most of the strips are normal sizes, only the 1.25" strips are odd for me. If this is too much fabric for what I am making, no worries, with these sizes of strips I have a lot of options. Since my goal is to bust all of this fabric this year, I may as well cut it into strips. 

The 1.25" strips were turned into four patches.

For the Trail Mix quilt, one of the blocks needed these tiny four patches, and another needed the tiny four patches plus 3" nine patches.

I lost count and have a few extra of both of those, but I never worry about extra units, they all get used eventually, and I already know I need to make a table runner from these fabrics, so extra units will likely end up there. 

As I'm cutting for the second two quilts, I'm clipping everything for each block together, and putting the fabrics in the tote bag. Trail Mix uses five different blocks, but the third quilt I'm making is repeats of one of those blocks, I'm almost done cutting Trail Mix, then I'll just be cutting the last block until I'm out of the correct sized strips for it. 

I've already put my 2.5" and 1.5" strips downstairs for now. I've used all I needed from them for now, so these will become another project. These strip sizes play together nicely, so no worries on that front. When I decide what I want to do with them, I may go ahead and cut the project, or I might just make notes and cut it later. I've got several leader/ender projects cut right now. so until I make progress on those, these strips can wait. 

As far as the Civil War Sampler quilt for DD#1 goes, I've finished sewing the scrappy sashing and scrappy cornerstones. The purple in the bottom of that basket will be the setting triangles. The pattern shows scrappy setting triangles, but I usually prefer them to match, so I bought some yardage.

I've got ten of the sampler blocks done now. I'd like to have this done for Christmas, but we'll see. It's not my main project, I'm doing it as leader/enders as much as possible. 

Now that I've used the 1.25" strips, and I put aside the remaining 2.5" and 1.5" strips, I'm only working with 2" and 3.5" strips. I'll keep cutting until I'm out of these strips. I'm sure I'll have a stack of squares of each size leftover, but I plan on cutting as efficiently as I can to get the most blocks as I can. Not all of the Sampler quilt blocks will be good leader/enders, but the blocks I'm cutting now will all work quite well in that role. 

Even if I don't show this project for a bit, know that it's being sewn in the background. 

Finish #9

 Things are moving along here. I needed to make another scooter quilt, because DH added another scooter rally to his business trip. I had one cut out, and now it's finished. 

I really like doing split borders on Attic Windows quilts. I feel like it really brings the interior design to the border. 

I've been doing a lot of non-quilting related stuff too. DD#2 and I have been been splitting produce boxes from a no food waste program. You get 70 pounds of produce for $20. You don't get a choice of produce, it just whatever there is excess from at restaurants and grocery stores that donate. 

We did it two weeks in a row, so we had 70 pounds of produce each over the two weeks, even splitting boxes. Since the produce needs to used immediately, we've both been meal planning around what's in the boxes, but there's still too much to be used right away. Good thing I'm an old pro at freezing produce. Needless to say, there's been a lot of blanching, ice baths, and chopping of stuff around here.

I made a big batch of salsa verde from the tomatillos I got, and last night we had Salsa Verde chicken made in the slow cooker. Today I froze the remaining salsa verde, some in an ice cube tray so we'd have small amounts for eggs, and the rest in the amount I need for salsa verde chicken. DH wants salsa verde chicken burritos next time, last night I served it over cilantro lime rice. Burritos are tricky since he's gluten-free. So many of the GF tortillas fall apart. I'm thinking I might try making an enchilada casserole type thing with the salsa verde chicken. I've got enough salsa verde in the freezer to make it several times, so I can experiment a bit. 

I tried making a raw Brussel Sprout slaw, and it's pretty good, the recipe I used called for dried cherries, but I subbed cherry flavored craisins because they were half the price. I had the sliced almonds the recipe called for, so no problem there. Usually I roast Brussel sprouts, but we had a bunch of those last week, so I wanted something different. 

I froze some tomatoes to use in sauce later on, and I actually tried freezing cucumbers in a sugar brine, which I had never tried before. I froze some green beans that I'll cook up on Mother's Day, they wouldn't have lasted a week in the fridge. I also froze a bunch of bell peppers, some sliced for slow cooker fajitas, and some diced for our frequent Cajun dishes. DH and I like our food spicy, so Cajun and Mexican foods are a regular around here. 

Tonight or tomorrow night I'm going to turn a stuffed acorn squash recipe into more of a casserole. I've always found eating stuffed vegetables fiddly, so I'll take the same ingredients, but cut them up and layer them. I'm using Italian sausage and spinach with the acorn squash, and I think it will be delicious. 

I've been reverse meal planning for a while now, always looking at what food we have in the house, and basing our meals on that instead of deciding on a menu and buying all the stuff for that. Reverse meal planning saves us a lot of money, and it keeps us from wasting food that we already paid for. By meal planning in reverse and freezing extra meals I can usually skip the grocery shopping one week a month, which again, helps us save money. Having meals in the freezer also gives me more sewing time, which is another win! 

Finish #8

 Here we are, the end of April, and I'm going to show you finish number 8 for 2026! So far I'm keeping up with my goal of averaging two quilt finishes per month.

This quilt top has been hanging in the quilt closet for quite a while. It wasn't hanging there because I didn't like it, quite the opposite. This quilt is one I designed, and I like it a lot, so I wanted to make sure this went to a special person. I finally decided on a recipient, so it was time for it to move to to the front of the quilting queue. 

The sunflower fabric was actually what was left from some table runners I made for a wedding several years ago. To cut the table runners to the size we needed, I ended up with about a nine inch long narrow strip down the length of the several yards of fabric leftover. I cut the very long narrow strip into 8.5" squares, then played around in EQ to find an alternate block I liked. The edges were a bit tricky, because using full blocks to the edge left the design feeling unfinished. I opted to make modified half blocks along the edges to fix that issue to my satisfaction.

Choosing a thread color was tricky. The border and some of the fabrics are dark, but the cream background is very light. I auditioned a cream, several yellows, and a light green that had a hint of blue. The cream and yellows showed up way too much on the dark colors, and the teal was stark on the cream. The light green worked best for what I wanted on this quilt. Sometimes I purposely go for a lot of contrast, but that wasn't what I wanted on this quilt. 

I really wanted to quilt sunflowers on this quilt, and I've never quilted sunflowers before, but that's never stopped me before. I used a 90" wide minky for the backing, so I knew the quilting. was really going to show on the back. It's not perfect, I kept changing how I travelled to put a new sunflower where I wanted it. By the time I was finished the quilting, I had settled on which method I preferred to travel with this design, but if the recipient looks closely, they'll see variances in different sections of the quilt.

You can see the light green wasn't too harsh against either the dark or the light areas. 

My sunflowers got pretty stylized trying to fill the space, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how the quilting came out! Sometimes I stop and think that if my past self that was just learning to FMQ, could see what I can do now, she'd be pretty happy that my quilting journey has progressed as well as it has. I'm not great at drawing, I've only ever been a doodler, but FMQ skills do build on each other, and by turning the rounded daisy design I've quilted several times into more flame shaped leaves (I've quilted flames several times as well), I think it made for a decent sunflower design. Could someone else have done better? Absolutely, but others may not have done as well. I don't think I'll ever feel like I am advanced as far as FMQ goes, but I'm not really a beginner either. What I am is perfectly capable of quilting my own quilts, and that was my goal all along. 

Just an FYI, the fabrics in the quilt and the backing minky are teal, a teal that is more green than blue. The photos make it look more blue than it reads in person. The sunflower fabrics have green and blue in the background, it's really a pretty even mix.