Last Minute Finishes

Our guild meets tomorrow and I successfully finished up a few more things ...

The scrappy rail top I made earlier this summer is now quilted, bound and ready for the comfort quilt team.

My addiction to happy blocks continues, this quilt is finished for comfort quilts. I love the bright colors and seeing fabrics that have been hidden away in my stash included in a quilt at last. I have enough centers and borders cut to make two more when I'm so inspired.

This little wall hanging (19" x 25") was made with a photo I took, printed on a fat quarter at Spoonflower, and then cut into an attic window setting. I have seen panels done this way, but I like the intimate look of a smaller photo. I have four more printed photos in my sewing room to try soon. This wall hanging is destined for a charity auction.

My work-in-progress is a double square star quilt (instructions found at Missouri Star Quilt Company) destined for Quilts of Valor. I like it's scrappy look so far, but it didn't make much of a dent in my red fabrics.

Check out Oh Scrap this week for lots of inspiration!

Fat Quarter Creations

Our guild has a very active comfort quilt program, and I was the chairwoman for 4 years. We provide kits to members which include fabric, batting and an easy pattern. Now that two other ladies are chairing the committee, I am the "comfort quilt consultant" and stop by to check out the (huge) fabric stash, suggest pattern ideas and make samples.

We receive many yards of donated fabrics and try to find patterns that work with the fabrics we receive. The fat quarter bins are overflowing, so I set out to find some easy, free fat quarter patterns. I started with 2 different sets of 12 fat quarters. This first quilt is the small lap-quilt size Fat Quarter Fizz from the Fat Quarter Shop website.

I quilted loops in the rectangles and funky flowers in the squares.

I used up the remaining fat quarters and some extra fabrics from my stash for the backing. I cut one binding strip from each fat quarter as I cut the primary pieces. The only downside of this pattern for our purposes is the size: it is 48 inches wide, so the backing must be pieced. We try to make most of our kit quilts 38-40" wide so the backing can be a single piece of fabric.

With my next set of 12 fat quarters, I made this triple square quilt. I found inspiration and instructions here, but I modified it slightly. My center squares are cut 5", the first border is cut 2.5" and the second border is cut 3". This gave me 13" finished blocks, and I could cut a binding strip from each fat quarter as well. Overall size 39" x 52", no piecing required for the backing.

Even though piecing the backing was not required, I found several flannel pieces to combine for a cozy scrappy back.

One other fun comfort quilt completion was this Hoffman Supernova panel. Adding stars in the border gave it a perfect finish!

Linking up with Moving it Forward where I always find lots of great inspiration!

Something Old, Something New

An old project finally finished! This top has been finished since January 2017, but this month I finally quilted it and finished the binding this week. The blocks were made month-by-month in the 2016 Block Lotto, a fun group I have participated in from time to time. It was a great project to use lots of scraps, and I really loved making the chickens and chicks.

I found a perfect chicken backing fabric to finish it off!

A new project (using old fabric). I decided to use up my small pile of Halloween fabrics using Happy Blocks. These blocks are terrific for novelty prints and leftover strips. My kids loved when I made Halloween themed place mats and pillow cases when they were little, but now they are teens and I haven't touched these fabrics in years. Time to clear them out. I'm sure our comfort quilt team will find a kid who loves Halloween to snuggle with this quilt. I pieced the remaining Halloween fabrics for a scrappy back, and I just need to finish the binding for our September guild meeting.

Linking up with Cynthia's Oh Scrap where there are always many wonderful scrappy projects!

Sewing From Stash

I've had lots of sewing time this summer and I continue to try and sew from my stash. After a series of graduation quilts this spring, this summer I'm sewing this and that, mostly for charity. The lid on my batik bin would not close, so I made this quilt inspired by the Bermuda Sunrise pattern. I made my blocks 12", adding half blocks along the sides for a rectangular quilt. Our guild gives quilts to new Habitat for Humanity homeowners, this is a nice gender neutral quilt for that program. The lid on the bin closes now, but I'm sure I could make several more quilts from it.

This orphan block quilt started with the four house blocks in the middle. When I helped our guild's comfort quilt team sort through some donations, these blocks came home with me. This and that from other projects easily filled the other rows.

When I was making the orphan block quilt, I added a row of scrappy blue rails across the top. Looking at my bulging blue scrap bag, I decided to try to empty the bag. Usually an impossible task for me! After making 108 six inch blocks, the bag is very close to empty and I like the look of this scrappy top. Of course, as I look around my sewing room I have found more blue scraps to start refilling the bag.

I continue to be inspired by so many scrappy project shared by others, hope I give someone else a few ideas. Linking up to Oh Scrap where there are always great ideas to try!

Graduation Quilts

I have not done much blogging, but I have done a lot of sewing and quilting. My daughter graduated from HS this year, and I made graduation quilts for 10 of her friends. It was a fun year-long project, with my daughter providing lots of input and suggestions about what each of her friends would like. I used lots of stash fabric, but also added some specific fabrics, like science fabric for the pre-med friend and word fabric for the future journalist. I hope they are enjoyed in their respective college dorm rooms across the country!

Scrappy Progress

I haven't blogged much, but I've been inspired by others and been busy sewing and using up a lot of my scraps. My quilt guild has a very active comfort quilt program, and 5 of these quilts will be donated.

This woven quilt with 4" squares was inspired by Cynthia's scrap-a-palooza quilt gallery.

I had a pile of colorful chevron fabric samples and I didn't want to cut them up. Using them as 8" blocks and sashing with different black and white prints created a fun quilt for a girl or a boy.

Cynthia's orphan quilts inspired me to put this collection together into a quilt top. It's quilted, but still needs the binding. A friend gave me a bag with the six animal panels, the red and yellow rectangles (cut rather unevenly), three finished blocks and 1.5 yards of the folkloric fabric. I found other orphan blocks in my stash and in those donated by guild members.

Jackie Kunkle visited our guild and held a workshop making the Hip to be Squares quilt from her Splash of Color book. This quilt uses the leftovers from that quilt, and I'm keeping it to gift to a friend.

In December, my guild provides quilts for each of the children living in a nearby transitional housing facility. This year there are 30 kids aged from 10 months to 15 years. We try to match the quilts we have to their ages and interests. I saw on the list a 13-year-old girl was wishing for purple and pink room decor. I couldn't resist pulling out my small pieces of purple and pink fabrics for this quilt. Of course, I had more than enough purple and pink in my stash, so I cut enough for a second quilt which I will make at another time. Perhaps I'll try sashing the blocks in white for a different look, but I thought black was good for a young teen.

Finally, this panel was easy to make into a quick quilt for a little girl, I just added polka dot fabrics at the top and bottom.

Linking up with Oh Scrap where I am always inspired by others!

Scrap Bonanza

Rainbow crumb blocks from 2016 finally made it into a top!

Once upon a time (in the 1980's), I made myself a dress for a special trip from a brown/orange Cranston Print calico. I think I still have the dress somewhere tucked away in a box. When I helped my mother move recently, I found a box full of dressmaking scraps from things she and I had made over the years. I don't really like these types of calicos any longer, I much prefer more modern prints and fabrics. However, I felt challenged to put these scraps to good use. I thought about that long-ago trip while I sewed. I used up all the calico scraps in this rectangle quilt, pulling solids and near-solids from my stash to brighten it up. The last bit of fabric is in the scrappy backing. This will be donated to our guild comfort quilt program. The rectangle pattern was inspired by Mary who is very generous with her pattern instructions!

Since this project contains orange scraps as well as other colors, I'm linking up to Angela's RSC this week. Check out all the other great orange scrappy projects!