Memory Rag Quilt #1

I finished the rag quilt for my nephew made from flannel and my late sister's clothes.

My sister had two favorite colors, red and purple. My nephew thinks of red when he thinks of his mom, and my niece thinks of purple. I'm making them both rag quilts from her clothes, but when I was buying the flannel to go with her clothes, I opted to use colors they associate with their mom. The red was showing through the light colored shirts, so I made the middle layer white flannel on my nephew's quilt. I working on my niece's quilt now, and I used two shades of purple flannel for hers. I didn't divide the shirt pieces evenly. They both have at least one square of each printed top my sister had, but the extra squares and solids were divided differently. I added more solid purple to my nephew's quilt to work that into his, and I added the solid red to my niece's quilt, so they both have a good combination of her favorite colors.

I like how the quilt looks finished, but I admit I did NOT enjoy sewing the squares together with the fringe already cut. I won't be using the rag die again, and although I'm sure there are more rag quilts in my future, I'll be clipping the seams with scissors afterwards. My niece's quilt is already cut with the rag die, so I have to deal with it for one more quilt. Hopefully I learned enough on the first one to have less problems with hers.

I did more tweaking on what is being stored on my new cutting table. All the containers with the purple handles were in my sewing room closet, and they fit OK ( not perfectly) in the cubes. I am glad that worked out, because I've been wanting to move a big set of shelves I had in the sewing room closet out, and now I did!

Now I can hang things the whole length of the closet, so besides my quilt tops, I chose to hang all the wide backings I have. Most of the wide backings I have are for specific quilts that aren't finished yet. I do have a couple that I bought for a specific quilt, then ended up using something different. There are actually a couple inches between each hanging item, so there isn't as much hanging as it looks like. The packaged batting in the back is all king sized, anything smaller I use the rolled batting. The rolled fabric is all fleece which I use for weighted blankets, backings, and such. The seven quillows I am making right now will all be backed with fleece, busting a chunk of this. 

I usually use skirt hangers to hang my quilt tops, but for king sized quilt tops the weight of the top is too heavy for those, and the wide quilt backs were too heavy as well. While looking for heavy duty hangers, I stumbled across blanket hangers, which I had never heard of before!

These blanket hangers work great for the heavy tops and wide backings! I'm so glad I came across them, they were just what I needed!

I've got the blocks done for five of the seven quillows I need to make now, and here's how far I've gotten with the green.

All of these 1.5" strips are sewn into pairs, and now I need to press them before I do any more sewing on these. I had a LOT of really short strips, which won't work for the 6" blocks I use in my quillows, but that's OK, because I decided to go in a completely different direction with the next baby quilt. 

I've moved so much stuff in my sewing and fabric rooms, is it any wonder I misplaced the pattern I planned on using for the next baby quilt? The baby shower is November 7th, so I am in a serious time crunch. I bought a really cute backing for the baby quilt, but had planned on using stash for the top, with the pattern I purchased. The theme for the nursery is woodland animals. While I was sewing so many really short strips together, I thought I could use the short strips to make some scrappy trees, which got me thinking in a completely different direction for the baby quilt. Now, instead of using a pattern, I'm going to improvise the whole top, to match the backing I bought. I did buy some coordinating fabric to supplement what I had, so some of the top will be from stash, some just scraps,  some will be new. I still really like the pattern I bought, so I'm sure someday I'll make it (after I find it) but I'm thinking maybe the pattern was supposed to be misplaced, because what I have in mind now seems more "right" for this baby. Hopefully my execution will be half as nice as what I'm picturing in my head. I'm pretty excited about starting it though!

So how am I balancing so many projects? Well, during school hours I'm sewing on the quillow blocks, It's mindless sewing, and easily interrupted so I can check on the grandkids doing distance learning. I do whatever pressing I need to do at night when I'm too tired to sew, but can press while I'm "watching" (more listening) to a movie or TV show.  

I'm assembling the rag quilts mostly on the weekends when the grandkids are elsewhere. I want to get as much of the last rag quilt as I can assembled this weekend, then I'll figure out how to add in working on the baby quilt. Since it will mostly be improvisational piecing, I'll be cutting a lot, so I'd rather work on it in the basement so my new cutting station can be close by. Working in the basement doesn't work during school hours, so I may be working on it upstairs and down, we'll see.