Finish #4

 The fourth quilt of 2026 is done! It's queen sized, and since I don't have an immediate recipient for this one it's hanging on the huge quilt rack in my living room. I've made several quilts from this line of fabric, but this is the end of the line. I may have random bits left in the scrap system, but overall, this line of fabric is out of my stash. 

You can see the quilting better on the back. I used a lavender thread, because I didn't want a dark color on all the white on the front, but it shows up a lot on the back. 

I've got the grandkids this weekend, which will be great! It won't allow much time for quilting, which is fine. I've been really productive this month, taking the time in January to clean up my quilting areas made a big difference. 

For March I really want to dive into the batting scraps, but I need to assemble a couple more quilt tops before my remaining quilt blocks will fit into just one tote. Considering I had quilt blocks everywhere, getting them into one tote is a huge win. I haven't kept count of how many quilt tops I've made in the last month or so, but it's a LOT! I don't like assembling quilt tops in the summer, but I've got a plan for most of the quilt blocks in the tote and when I dig it out again in the fall or winter, I'm hoping to be able to get the blocks into a smaller tote. There are a lot of random units in the tote as well, besides quilt blocks. I have a growing pile of orphan blocks in there too. I may go into the tote if I need a bit of extra width or length for a quilt backing. Making a row or column of orphan blocks can be a fun way to make a backing a little larger. I'm almost out of basted quilts, so a basting spree is on my mind, but I want to piece some batting first, so I use the Frankenbattings during the basting spree instead of storing them. I feel like I'm cleaning up the quilting area the really slow way. Sure, it looks tidier now, but It's not until I have a bit more breathing room that I'll feel like it's really working. 

Slow Going

Things are progressing around here, albeit slowly. I haven't done any FMQ in a week. We've had more going on lately than I was thinking we'd have, and I get off track when I can't keep to a schedule.

I'm still assembling quilt tops from blocks that were already made. I found SO many quilt blocks in the January declutter, that I don't want to stop assembling quilts until I can get all the remaining quilt blocks into ONE tote. I'm not down to one tote yet, so I keep making quilt tops. Most of these quilt tops will be donation quilts, and I'll likely do simple quilting on them to get them done. 

I had set aside the first quarter of the year to work on whatever I wanted to work on. I did the decluttering and cleanup in January, and I thought I'd be working on Frankenbatting in February, but I think that's going to wait until March. I've got several more quilt tops ready for assembly, and I'll spend the rest of February working on that. 

One thing that's been going amazingly well, is my dealing with my scraps. I've been cutting scraps almost every evening, and since I had so many scraps from quilt backings, It's really been well timed  to use scraps in the quilt tops I'm currently making. When scraps are 108" long, even narrower strips go a long ways. 

I used leftover backing fabric for the sashing on a couple more Dancing Nine Patch quilts. 

I've been making a bunch of hourglass blocks to alternate with scrappy nine patches. I love hourglass blocks as alternating blocks because it makes the quilt look on point when it's only straight set. The number of hourglass blocks I get from my scraps determines the size of the quilt. If I have quite a bit of one fabric all in odd sized pieces I don't want to stash, I cut them into either sashing or blocks, then I use what I cut the evening before as my leader/enders while I'm assembling a quilt. By the time I'm done assembling the first quilt, I often have the alternate blocks sewn up for the next quilt. By using backing scraps four my hourglass blocks or sashing, I'm making quilts from 100% scraps, since the blocks I'm setting are scrappy too. 

Some of the sewing I'm doing is also using up cut pieces I found while cleaning up. They may be pieces leftover from a finished project, or cut for a project I never made.

I had a stack of 2.5x6.5 cut pieces with white and cream backgrounds. I had some narrow backing scraps in blue that I could cut into 2.5" strips, and this quilt top was born. 

I've still got way too many 6" scrappy blocks to set, but I wanted a break from working with that size.

I put two quilts on my design wall, one with 12" blocks, one with 8" blocks.

I don't mind these blocks set right next to each other, but I only have 18 blocks. I could set it 4x4 and have two blocks left over, but I don't want leftovers, I want to bust these blocks. I went to the scrap basket, and cut out two more blocks. I hope to get those blocks sewn up tomorrow. 

On the other side of my design wall, I put up some 8" blocks. I have 35 blocks, so I can set it 5x7 with no blocks left. I don't like these set right next to each other, and I don't have enough of any more scraps to use scraps for the sashing. I grabbed a slate blue from stash, and I'll cut both sashing and borders from it. There's enough different prints in there already, that I think just a plain sashing and border will calm it down a bit.

Lately when I make scrap quilts I've been more intentional with my color choices, and I make a lot of two color scrap quilts or stick with a more cohesive esthetic. Most of these blocks are left from my kitchen sink days, and I still love those everything goes quilts. In fact, I've started a new
kitchen sink scrap quilt since my 3.5" squares overflowed their allotted space. I'm making a big checkerboard quilt, alternating dark and light but using all the colors. I'll run out of light colored squares first, but by then I'll be able to fit the 3.5" squares left into their correct bin.

Since I'm mostly working with finished blocks, I'm not having to sew that much to get quilt tops done. I've had more Nana time than sewing time lately. I had grandkids for the weekend, and I'm watching a couple of the grands tonight too. Tomorrow will be a day trip with the grands. The weather has been fantastic lately, and around here, you try to do as many outdoor things as you can before it gets too hot. It's been a very warm February so far, which doesn't bode well for summer. I don't like assembling quilts in summer, but don't mind FMQ in summer. I've got so many quilt tops made I'll be good for a couple summers at least! 

My scrap basket is just over half full, when it was overflowing stacked twice as high as the basket. Basically, I've processed about 70% of what I started with. I've gone through what's still in the basket, and I found leftover masks cut out in 2020. If anything, I found that encouraging, because it let me know I do actually process my scraps, I'd have had a lot more scraps than that over the last six years than this. I think the basket mostly fills up when I have to make the fabric room look presentable in a hurry, like if we are hosting a big event, or we are getting ready to leave town and I don't want to come home to a mess. That's when the scraps get tossed on the basket instead of dealt with. I'm hoping to have the basket empty by the end of March at the latest, but I might be able to do it before then. Most of what's left needs to be pressed before I can cut it, where the stuff on top was less wrinkled. I'm making good progress anyway, and the end is in sight, even if I can't finish this month. 

Scrap Square Rail Fence

As I was going through my sewing room, I found so many things I had cut with the best of intentions, but somehow got set aside. Most of it, I knew exactly what I had planned, but some of those, I no longer wanted to go along with my original plan. Some of those I using in other projects that I am more excited to do.

I had a stack of 3.5x15.5" cut gray rectangles. I knew I had cut them for a hashtag quilt, but I've already got at least two hashtag quilts going, where the blocks are done but I need to assemble the quilt top. I could have cut those rectangles down into other sizes, but I looked around for scraps I already cut that could work with them. I had a big box of 3.5" cut squares. Five of those sewn together would be the same length. I started playing around with EQ8.

I could make columns of just alternating strips and blocks, and flip every other column over. This quilt would be 50% scraps, 50% background. 

I could make rail fence blocks with 5 rails, every other rail being blocks. If I make rails 1,3, and 5 from my scrap squares for every block, I end up with this.

With all the rail blocks made the same way, the quilt is 60% scrap squares, and 40% background.

Would it look better if I made half the blocks with rails 1,3 and 5 scrappy, and the other half the blocks rails 2 and 4 scrappy? It would be 50% scraps, 50% background.

All of them were valid options, but I liked the idea of busting more scrappy squares, so I chose option 2.

Here is just one block...

...and here's a quilt set 4x5 on the design wall. With those big 15" blocks, a 20 block quilt will be 60x75 without borders. When DH saw the quilt on my design wall, he said, "It looks like a maze quilt, but it isn't." I agreed, and told him it was much easier to sew than a maze quilt. The designs it makes to me looks like vertical and horizonal belt buckles. 

I'm sure I'm not the first to make this block, but I did not get it from a pattern, it was just what I came up with to use the rectangles I had cut, with the scrap squares I had cut. I have a lot of squares in my scrap user system that I could make this block with. If you use squares cut from 2.5" jelly roll strips, the finished block size would be 10" Use 2" cut squares, and your finished block size would be 7.5", 1.5" cut squares, and you'd have 5" finished blocks. My preference when busting scraps is to have less than 50% background, so making every block the same and only having 40% background fits that goal better. 

I'm going to end up with 2 quilts from these blocks, plus a couple orphan blocks that will likely make their way into a quilt backing. That's fine with me, I busted those strips without going into any yardage at all. I always try to use scraps first, otherwise they never go down!