Graduation Season

There are several HS graduates in my life this year. Top of my list is my son, who requested Christopher Florence's Labyrinth Walk Quilt (pattern available many places including here). I finished the top last month, but now it is quilted and ready for his dorm bed. I used three different quilting designs, one for each colored area of the quilt.

I found this awesome Northcott triangle wave fabric for the backing several years ago, fortunately I had just enough.

My nephew will be attending Purdue University in the fall, so I used Purdue Boilermaker printed focal fabric in the center of each block. This pattern is Square Dance from Missouri Star. I finished the quilt with an all over swirl design with banana colored thread.

Finally, one of my son's very good friends will be attending Duke University in the fall. I was unable to find "Duke" fabric anywhere, so I purchased a printed chef's apron and cut it up for the focal fabric. Not the most economical way to buy fabric, but it was 100% cotton and it worked! Everything else came out of my stash, including some light blue for the backing. I thought I might have to go shopping, but when I started pulling blues out of my drawer, I was embarrassed to find I had more than enough for this quilt (and several more). The pattern is inspired by several jelly roll patterns I've seen, but since I was working with odd shaped Duke logos, the square blocks finished at 8" x 8", and the rectangle blocks finished in sizes ranging from 8" x 13" to 8" x 16". Some of the columns needed a little "fill-in" piece to even them out.

Linking up with other scrappy projects at Oh Scrap!

Hands2Help - Quilts On Their Way

I am participating in Hands2Help 2019 and mailed two quilts this morning.

This quilt came from my green scrap bin with lots of wonky rectangles and 4 dancing stars. I quilted with an edge-to-edge ripple-type design, and added a simple label. It is going to Quilty Hugs.

This second quilt was finished a while ago, but needed a good home. When I was the comfort quilt chair for our guild, I made lots of kits for guild members to finish. I sometimes saw fabrics that I just "had" to save a bit of, and collected a pile of favorites. I made these 8.5" cracker blocks out of those fabrics. I quilted several different designs in the light areas between the blocks, and quilted each of the cracker blocks with the same wishbone and loop design. The finished quilt is 75" x 93" and fits nicely on a full size bed, so I donated it to the Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.

Fun pieced backings are my favorite!

Thank you to Sarah for organizing this great charity quilt drive! It's so fun to see the wonderful quilts everyone is making and donating to very worthy causes.

Catching Up

I'm keeping up with the Aqua Tiny Tuesday blocks (thanks, Angela!), but my aqua scrap bag is not very full and I have other projects in the works.

My son is heading off to college this fall and he chose the Labyrinth Walk quilt (pattern by The Guilty Quilter) for his dorm. I finished the center panel, but will adjust the border sizing a bit so it fits a twin extra long bed. I usually don't follow a pattern (or use only 4 fabrics in a quilt), but the look is wonderful and the instructions were clear and easy to follow.

Meanwhile, on the scrap busting front, I made another wonky rail quilt using only blacks, browns, grays and prints with black backgrounds. I thought the quilt would be a bit dull, but there is a lot going on and I like how it turned out. I threw in a few rainbow prints which add a pop. I squared up my wonky blocks to 8", making this a nice sized 56" x 72".

I found a place for some bigger pieces on the back, glad to have these out of my stash. This quilt will be donated.

Check out the Saturday RSC to see wonderful aqua scrappy creations!

Green Owls and other things

I had much fun making this week's Tiny Tuesday block! I have lots of polka dot fabrics, so it was easy to find the perfect owl eyes in my stash.

I put together last week's green bars and 16-patch stars for a scrappy top. The dark green border pulls it all together. The 16-patch stars kind-of disappear in all the scrapiness, but they add a little interest when the quilt is viewed up close. I will get this one quilted up soon for donation.

Last month I attacked my 1930 reproduction fabric bin and put together two staggered rectangle quilts. Ten years ago I made several 1930's quilts, but few of the fabrics had been used since then. The rectangles finish at 4" x 8", so this pattern is a good stash buster. The design was inspired by this blog post. This one I quilted with a flower and loop meander, I thought it suited the dainty prints. Both will be donated to my guild. 

Check out lot of other green quilty creations at RSC!

Many, many green rectangles

My green dancing stars are still waiting to be sewn together, but I felt the need to attack my large bag of green strips and strings. I've made two quilts lately with scrappy rail blocks, but I decided to try the long rows of rectangles demonstrated in the Rockin' Rectangles On Line tutorial. I cut my strips 9 - 9.5" long and then squared up the rows to 8.5" wide. My definition of green is pretty broad, any green component to the print counts in my book. I like the wide range of shades I found in my scraps. I think I will insert these 4 green-in-neutral dancing stars in between the rows. Making five strips of green rectangles finally made a good dent in my green scraps!

Some of these greens are from projects long, long ago!

This plus quilt is another recent finish. Almost all of the fabrics are left over from last year's college quilts. Many are fabrics I used on the backs, and some from the front. I cut the 3.5" x 9.5" rectangles and 3.5" squares over a year ago and kept adding to them as I finished projects and had backing edges. It was fun to pull out the bin and have enough to almost finish the quilt, just had to cut a few more. It ended up 45" x 57", a nice size for the kids at the camp where our guild donates. The camper fabric on the back I found on sale and I just love the cute look it adds to the back!

Check out the other wonderful green creations at the RSC!

Green: One becomes Twenty

I jumped in with enthusiasm using some of my green scraps. I was inspired by The Academic Quilter's  rainbow Dancing Stars and pulled some 3.5" green squares from my pre-cut scraps. The bright pink star with the green made me smile and think of spring, even though the ground has been covered with snow this week.

Not wanting to stop with just one, I kept going. I used some old, old, old fabric squares I inherited from my step-mother, their dated look disappeared among the other greens. I cut more squares from scraps and small pieces in my green drawer. I planned for 12 blocks, a nice comfort quilt size. However, I still was enjoying the process and the results, so I ended up with 20 blocks and made a good dent in some of my greens. I'm not sure this quilt is going to comfort quilts any longer, I'll see what I end up doing for sashing and borders.

Other recent finishes include this Wedge Star quilt from this Missouri Star tutorial. The bright batik fabrics printed with squares are all from the same line, samples donated to our comfort quilt program. I cut them into 10" squares to follow along with the layer cake required by the tutorial. Only a little extra fabric from my stash was required to finish the border.

Finally, another monochromatic star quilt with crumb blocks. I was happy to use a nice piece of fleece on the back which was leftover from a jacket I made 10 years ago!

Check the Rainbow Scrap Challenge to see other green creations this week!

The Scraps Continue

I've been playing along with RSC19 and continuing to work through lots of scraps, even though my blog posts are few and far between. I know several people in my life with fabric accumulations bordering on hoarding, which scares me and makes me want to use what I have and share my quilts with others. I'm glad my guild has an active comfort quilt program which will find a good home for anything I want to make.

This yellow scrappy rail made a good dent in my bag of yellow scraps. I always try to use up larger pieces on the back, and this is no exception with pieces from one of the graduation quilts I made last year.

For years I have cut many of my scraps into usable sizes, inspired by Bonnie Hunter's scrap user system. My box of 4.5" squares was overflowing, so I pulled squares with blue and/or green for this scrappy quilt, anchored by the solid blue star. At least the lid on the 4.5" square box snaps securely now!

Check out other scrappy projects at Angela's blog. I'm looking forward to tackling some of my green scraps in March!