Batting Cage

What do you do with your batting scraps? I know a lot of people toss them, and if they are really skinny I  do too. I have heard of people using them for Swiffer cloths, or only piecing them for small projects but not large ones. 

My batting scraps? Well first of all, I store all the scraps in a pop up hamper, thus caging it. You can stuff a LOT of batting scraps in a pop up hamper, trust me on this! When it's full, it's time to deal with the mess. I divide the batting by type, cotton, polyester, or wool. 

Once it's divided, I cut each length into even strips. My personal limit is 2" wide strips for cotton batting, and 3" wide strips for polyester or wool batting. If it's any smaller than that, it should have been tossed in the trash instead of the batting hamper. I do cut the strips as wide as I can get from the scrap, but since most have been cut with scissors when I trimmed a quilt, it's usually uneven. 

Here are my polyester batting scraps cut into strips. At this point, any uneven bits get tossed. I'm not into making dog beds or stuffed animals, so out it goes. 

This week, I started with my cotton batting scraps, and I ended up with two throw sized battings. I love Warm and Natural batting precisely because it's so easy to piece the scraps together. I feel like I get to use every bit of it. 

I haven't started piecing my polyester batting scraps yet, I just got them all trimmed today. The narrower pieces I will piece into batting for some placemats I'm making, and the larger pieces will get pieced into larger battings. 

I've seen lots of different ways to piece batting together. There are fusibles you can use, but I'm cheap and don't want to spend money on fusibles to piece batting. I've seen people cut wavy lines so you can't find the edges in the finished project. Let me tell you a little secret. I've pieced dozens of battings, all with straight edges, and I have never, ever been able to feel the stitching in the finished project! I wouldn't use a pieced batting for a tied project, but if it will be quilted, nothing should shift, and the zig zag I piece it with should have no strain on it after quilting. 

I've tried overlapping edges, which I know some people like, but I don't prefer that, I prefer just butting the edges together, and using a zig zag stitch to sew the strips together. I use cheap thread to do this, no need to be wasting high quality thread on this project. 

This is my presser foot of choice for joining batting scraps. It's the Bernina #5 foot, but if you don't have a Bernina, just check to see if you can get a Blind Hem Foot, since that's what this is. I'm not doing a blind hem, but if you notice that "blade" of sorts running down the center of the foot, that's what I butt the batting up to, one piece on each side, and then it zig zags over each side equally. 

With the presser foot flipped around, you can see the "blade" goes back a little bit, and the stitches are actually formed over that section. This is perfect for joining batting because you'll likely want to use a wide zigzag, and because the stitches are formed over that bar, they are a little looser and you'll get no puckers or pulling!

Tomorrow I'll be starting to piece all these polyester batting scraps. I'm going to have the tackle the wool scraps at another time, because I need to get these placemats done, but I'll have time to deal with all the polyester scraps first. It doesn't really take that long to piece up some battings from scraps, and how cool is it to end up with what feels like free batting???

Here is Mr LJ, snuggling with a bear my mom made for him. He had been fussing, and DD#2 said he calmed right down when she gave him the bear. He must have known it was made with love by his great-grandmother! 

First Finish of 2017!!!

This was seeming to be the quilt that never ends. It wasn't really the quilt's fault, it was more the interruptions that never end. At any rate, it's finally finished!

This quilt is for my youngest granddaughter, and her mom and I were debating binding color. I had planned on purple, but grabbed some yellow on a whim, and I prefer the yellow. 

You can see I went askew when I laid out the backing for  pinbasting. No harm, no foul in my book, I had enough excess backing that I didn't run into problems, so I'm not going to fret over it. No photos do these fabrics justice, the colors are stunning in person. I had some border fabric from this line, and since I changed my plans on the front of the quilt, I decided the backing was a great place to use that border fabric up. A large scale border fabric like this was likely to languish in my stash, and it's better used than stashed indefinitely. 

Although I have a bunch of quilts to make, I'm going to be working on some small projects for a bit. I have several things in the mending pile, and I hope to tackle all those in the next day or so. Then I'll be making some simple placemats and potholders for DD#1 so she'll have some when they move out. The placemats are already cut out, I'm just using rectangles of novelty fabrics. I was hoping to use up some batting scraps on the placemats, so I'll have to piece some batting together to use with those. 

I'm hoping getting some small projects done will get me back in the swing of things. There are still lots of interruptions around here, both daily stuff and bigger things. I'm planning a bridal shower for April, and a big birthday party for May. There will be people moving out, a wedding, work on the house, then someone moving in all in the next couple months! Never a dull moment around here!

STRESS

I know I haven't blogged in almost a month, but I like to keep this mainly on quilting, and I have been too stressed to sew. It's pretty bad when you are so stressed, you can't do the thing that is most likely to relieve some stress.

BUT...yesterday I made myself do some sewing. I STILL haven't finished quilting Miss A's fairy quilt, and the quilting on it is simple. I was bound and determined to get some quilting on it, and then I spread it out to get a feel how it's looking.

You can see the only basting pins left are along the bottom. I finished quilting the top yesterday.

I tried to get a good angle on the quilting, so you can see how much texture that giant spiral adds, as compared to the unquilted section. I used a washable wool batting, and I am always so impressed with wool batting. The quilt still feels pretty soft, even with this dense quilting on it.

Now that I can see how much/little there is left to quilt, I'm hoping I can get the quilting finished this week. I know if I got a quilt finished, it would give me a much needed boost.

Love Is in the Air Shopping Spree

I have been trying so hard to keep quilty purchases to a minimum! Well, I blew that in a big way, but everything has a purpose, so I'm not going to fret over it. 

DD#3 is newly engaged. I still haven't managed to make DS the elder's wedding quilt, but I'll just use DD#3's wedding quilt as the leader/ender for his. I bought the fabrics for DD#3's quilt, but I'll add a couple from stash.

I'll be adding in a couple of lighter shades, but she wants the quilt pretty dark, and all jewel tones. 

This is the pattern I'm planning for those fabrics. It's a radiant nine patch.

One of my niece's just got married in December. I had no heads up on that one. She did a funky urban wedding photo shoot, and it gave me an idea for a modern quilt for her. I found this fat quarter bundle that will be great for it.

Another of my niece's just announced her engagement, and after talking with her, I decided on a bargello quilt, and I found the fabrics for her quilt as well.

She wanted green and red, and I was trying to avoid it looking too Christmas-y. Hopefully when it's done I'll be happy with it. This will be my first bargello quilt, and I picked an easy version of one.

I now have a pretty full quilting schedule for 2017, and I STILL haven't finished the quilt I was working on! It's been crazy around here, and right now DS the Elder is visiting with his wife and son, so it's extra busy. Meals for 13 take a lot of time!

I plan on sewing DS the Elder and DD#3's wedding quilts as leaders/enders for each other, and I'll likely do the same for my two niece's quilts. I'm not sure how well a bargello will work as a leader/ender, but the modern quilt will be a good one to use as a leader/ender project. 

DH is still hoping I get a quilt made for our bed soon, but we'll have to see how things go. One of our close friends just got married too, so five wedding quilts, plus a quilt for our bed is a LOT! I'm thinking I'll have more sewing time the second half of this year, but for now, it's hard to come by. In some ways, it's not bad that three of the couples got married with no notice. Since they are already married, the quilt is already late, and in that case the pressure is off a bit. In cases like that, I usually aim for the second anniversary. 

I know it's been a month since I blogged, but what a month it's been! Our furnace broke, and even here in Southern Arizona, the house temp was down to 48F. Our furnace and air conditioner unit were both old, so we had them both replaced, but now we need to replace the ductwork too. We're still waiting on estimates for that job. 

As if that wasn't enough going on, our washing machine broke too, but thankfully it was still under warranty. Our washing machine has probably done more laundry in the last four years than most people's ever do. I can't really complain about the washer having parts wear out. 

That's some of what's been going on in my life. It certainly hasn't been boring!

Round and Round She Goes!

Since my soft books were finished, I started actually quilting a quilt! There was one deadline quilt from 2016 I didn't get finished, but it was pin-basted and ready to quilt, so that's what I chose to work on next. 

It is a quilt for my youngest granddaughter, Miss A, the red-headed wonder! I knew I wanted to use silver thread to quilt it, and I had that, so no problem, but I was struggling to choose a quilting design. I didn't want to meander, but it's pretty chaotic in the house right now, so I needed something pretty easy. I've been seeing quilts with one big spiral quilted on them, and I wanted to try that, so that's what I chose.

I chose the star this fairy is looking at as my center, and I started the spiral free motion. Once I had a few rounds I switched to a walking foot. LOTS of turning the quilt, though as I work my way out that is easier. It's actually a perfect design to quilt when you are stressed. When I'm FMQ I do best if I have a block of time to quilt, and I get in the groove of quilting whatever design I'm stitching out. With this design, I'm just using the edge of my walking foot as my guide, and I can switch on the machine, stitch for 5 minutes or an hour, whatever time I've got, and switch the machine off.

It's pretty fun watching the spiral grow, and I'm now getting close to the edges on the side. Once I get to the edges, I'll just be working on the top and bottom of the quilt separately, and eventually just in each corner. I'm happy with how it's coming out, and I'll definitely be quilting a spiral again. 

I was a little worried about quilting a quilt with my new sewing set up. I normally put my sewing cabinet in a corner of a room so the back of the cabinet and the left hand side are up against walls. I find quilting a large quilt on my DSM much easier if I don't have the quilt falling off the edges of my sewing cabinet causing drag. With our new bedroom, the only way I could place the sewing cabinet in my preferred orientation would have blocked a doorway. DH was strongly opposed to blocking a doorway, so I needed a different solution. 

I ended up buying a set of shelves with nine cubbyholes. Three of those are stuck behind my ironing station, but that's OK, because I stuck things in them I'm not likely to need very often. I purposely bought shelves taller than my sewing cabinet, but not wider, because I didn't want them sticking out into the room, I just wanted them to stop the quilt from falling off the sewing cabinet. 

So far, so good, and it's working like I hoped it would. It won't be really tested until I quilt a really large quilt, but this one is about a full sized quilt, (twin bedspread) and it's doing fine.

It could take a couple more weeks to finish the quilting, I don't always have much sewing time available, but the big spiral is a great option when you can only quilt a few minutes at a time. 

Of course, I could have a extra time to sew if my washing machine isn't easily fixable. It's making an awful high pitched whine, and the repairman couldn't come until Friday. It's under warranty, so I'm not too worried about it. Over the phone their guess was the bearings are going out. Our washer and dryer are over four years old, and they've already done more laundry than some washer/dryers ever do. I'm hoping they can fix it Friday, but we'll see. I'm babying it along right now, doing some small loads, and waiting on whatever can wait. 

My goal for 2017 is to quilt one UFO for every deadline quilt. All my current quilts are technically UFO's since they were started in an earlier year, but I'm counting Miss A's quilt as a deadline quilt. I've already chosen the next quilt to quilt, which is a UFO, and is already pin-basted. I am really hoping to stick with the deadline quilt/UFO/deadline quilt/UFO pattern. I'm fine having a few UFO's, but I'm not comfortable with how many I have right now, so concentrating on catching up now is a good idea. I won't finish my UFO's this year, but if I can finish 2017 with less than I have now, I'll count that as a win!