This is a photo of a quilt top that will be finished and donated. The pattern is called "Hen and Her Chicks" from the book "Quilts from the Heart". I love this book. I have made several patterns already and have almost every pattern started in my UFOs. The small 9 patches are made with 1.5" squares. This is a great scrap user, as is most of the patterns in the book. Only the border was cut from yardage. The rest of the quilt, including the white, was all from scraps. I had the 1.5" and the 3.5" squares all pre-cut in my scrap boxes. I dug through my scrap basket and pulled all the white from previous projects, spent a little time pressing and trimming and in no time was ready to put this top together.
Over at a yahoo group I am on called Heartstrings, there is a project going on called Happy Blocks. Basically they are a framed square. This is a picture of just a few of the 116 blocks I have made so far. I pulled as many different brights out of my scrap basket and my stash as I could find. Dug around and found two baggies full of pre-cut novelty squares. This is going to be an ongoing project for me this winter. Not sure how many I am going to use per quilt. Will decide that when I am ready to put a top or two together. These will be donated quilts. There are several of us who make children's quilts and donate them to a local family crisis center.
This is my computer companion, Smokey. She often sits up on that shelf and keeps me company while I am at the computer. The quilt she is laying on was the second quilt I ever made. It is a full sized scrappy Irish Chain. It is completly hand pieced and hand quilted. It was a gift for my then 12 year old son. What was I thinking???!!!! Giving a quilt with so much white to a 12 year old boy? I must say, he absolutely loved that quilt. He was very rough with it, so now it needs some major repair. He keeps asking when he will get it back. I really need to make that a priority in the next few months. That quilt took me two years to complete start to finish. Every little 2" squares was traced from a template and then seam allowances were added. No rotary cutting. I did win a second place ribbon at the county fair. Was very pleased at that.
As you can see by the picture, this is also an area where I keep most of my stash. Those messy shelves actually hold boxes of pre-cut scraps. I trim my scraps into the largest size I can. I have boxes ranging from 1.5" up through to 6.5" by half inch increments. If I took a photo of the other part of this little room, you would see larger boxes where I store my stash by type and/or color.
Now, a bit of an update on my goals for this week. One goal was to tidy up some of my sewing areas. This picture shows my cutting and sandwiching table. It is now all cleaned off, so that I can work on another of my goals. Please ignore the messiness around the table. I keep my UFOs in large ziplock bags under the table. I have several laundry baskets into which I sort my UFOs.
The folded quilt on the table is the one I will be basting later today. The backing is washed and just needs to be pieced together. I have my tin of pins next to the quilt, so all is ready. I have several drawers in the white cabinet. There you will find my duct tape and junky scissors. I use duct tape to tape down my backing while basting. I find it works so much better than masking tape.
This final picture brings me to another of my goals for this week. This is a mystery quilt that I did over New Year's Eve. I love how it came out. I am planning on putting a small inner border of the light green. Then an outer border of the focus fabric. I have the borders all pieced and pressed, just waiting to go on. Will bind it in the dark green. I haven't decided if I am going to donate this one or keep it on hand. It is larger than the children's quilts I usually make, but would be a nice quilt for a boy.
That is what I have been up to so far this week. What have you been doing??
Darlene
1 comment:
The TP holder is cool. As always your quilts are gorgeous. I can't wait until we can get together for a day of sewing.
Post a Comment