Playing with Leftovers

In my last post I mentioned I was assembling other quilts as leaders/enders, while working on my deadline quilts. I got a couple quilt tops finished today, that were made entirely as leaders/enders until the borders. They both started out as some misc. leftovers from other quilts.

This center started out as bonus HST's from other quilts. I sewed the HST's into square in a square units, then assembled it from there. I was in a hurry, and didn't realize the border fabric had a misprint in it, see that blue blotch in the bottom right corner? I don't have time to fix it right now, but I pinned a replacement piece of fabric to the top when I hung it in the closet, so I can repair it later.

Of all the quilts I've been working on, I was most excited to do the next one. I had just a few extra chevron pieces leftover from the border of the pineapple quilt. I started playing with them, got an idea, and I was really excited to try it. I've had a remnant in my stash for a couple years that I loved, but it was less than a yard, and a large enough print I didn't want to cut it too small. I knew it would work in this project.

I had to make more chevron units to make this little quilt, but I think it was worth it. The fabric between the pieced rows was the remnant I loved so much. I'm a sucker for anything with paisley. Of all the quilts I've worked on lately, this one is my favorite. I like it because it's my design, I got to use all of a piece from stash that I loved, and I think it's showcased well.

Two more quilt tops assembled means that much less stuff hanging around my sewing room. This is the slow, but efficient way to clean up the sewing room. 

As far as the wedding quilt goes, the center is together, and I cut the borders today. I finally measured the fabric I wanted to use for the backing, and as I expected, I was four yards short. It's funny, I looked for more of that fabric for months, and I never found any.  I knew it was out of print. I was stuck on what to do to make the backing large enough, because for this quilt, the backing is actually what brings it all together. On a whim, I decided to check both ebay and etsy, and I actually found enough fabric to piece the backing with all the same fabric! No one had more than a yard of it, so I had to buy multiple listings to get enough, but I am pretty happy. Sometimes a scrappy backing works great for me, but in this case, I wanted the same fabric for the whole backing. Yes, I bought more fabric, but considering I'll be piecing it into a backing as soon as it gets here, I'm OK with that. It's a wedding quilt, it's OK if I splurged a little. Besides, the the quilt top was from stash, aside from the outer border. I only bought a border fabric and part of a backing for a king sized quilt, that is WIN!

Tomorrow I'll be pin-basting the pineapple quilt. If I get really motivated, and my arm holds out, I might try to get one of my other deadline quilts basted too. If not, maybe I can get the borders on the wedding quilt. We'll see!