Scooter & Tod
I have donated these two recently finished scrappy quilts to my grandkids elementary school for a silent auction that will raise money for school programs. If you are interested in bidding on either of these baby quilts, you can bid on Scooter (airplane) here, and Tod (fox) here.
Each quilt measures 40″x40″ and is made from 100% cotton outer, with 80/20 cotton/poly batting, machine pieced and quilted.
The auction is open from March 11-19, 2022.
Scooter
January 2022
Every Spring, I try to participate in the Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts. This year I decided to get a jump start on making baby quilts for this great cause. Since I was working to deplete my scraps bins with my recent Tod quilt, I kept the momentum going and made these yellow and blue log cabin blocks with “mostly” scraps. I say “mostly” because I was being a bit too fussy about the colorway, and did go into my stash for some of the blues and yellows. I made the airplane using a raw-edge appliqué technique.
Why the name? Scooter was a super sweet pound puppy that my sister had year’s ago. While this isn’t a dog, I thought the airplane was super sweet, and it reminded me of my sister – she’ll know why.
This was donated to Friends of Short Avenue Elementary for a silent auction in March, 2022.
Tod
January 2022
While putting away my holiday scraps, I found that my reds bin was close to exploding. So, time for a red scrappy quilt! I kept this baby quilt super simple, patchworking 2″ blocks. As for the fox, I found a coloring page online, and then enlarged the image to the size I wanted, and traced directly from my monitor. I know all you techies are cringing, yes, it’s probably not good form to trace off a monitor, but I try to press only ‘very, very lightly’ 🙂 Typically, I either trace using my monitor, or against a window… of course, during daytime for using the window 😂 I made the fox using a raw-edge appliqué technique.
I often hear new quilters ask about the best way to store and manage their scraps. I hear some quilters suggest cutting into standard sizes before storing, and to only keep those pieces larger than 2″. My recommendation is to keep it all, and to not pre-cut it. Since I often dig into my scraps for appliqué projects, the size and irregularity of a piece is not a problem. I also enjoy the crumb block technique, which uses not only irregular shapes, but also very small pieces. Lastly, I sort scraps by color and use photo boxes to keep them in. This way, when the lid no longer wants to stay properly on the box, I know it’s time to do a scrappy quilt! If you are needing ideas for a scrappy quilt, check out Quilting is more fun than Housework’s blog.
This was donated to Friends of Short Avenue Elementary for a silent auction in March, 2022.
Traveller
January 2022
I’ve been wanting to make a Wanderer’s Wife quilt for awhile and when I came across these jelly rolls, I knew they would be perfect for this project. Part of wanting to do this quilt was the desire to use up some of my orphan blocks. As it turned out, the blocks I used are about half new and half orphan blocks. It does not have as many blocks as some Wanderer’s Wife quilts I’ve seen, but I like its simplicity.
I like being able to repurpose, and I really like how this quilt pattern enables reusing scraps and orphan blocks. The jelly rolls were the only new fabric used, while the blocks that were newly pieced used scraps. I made this as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing and tying it.
When I had added this quilt to my ‘to do’ list a few year’s back, I knew it by the name Gypsy Wife quilt. Since that time, it has been renamed to Wanderer’s Wife. There is excellent information about the history and current Romani and Traveller human rights crisis here.
While I had intended this quanket to be donated to a foster child, sometimes life just has different plans. In mid-2022, my connection to CPS sort of just dried up. The facility I had been dropping my quilts off to, closed. I left many messages for my contacts with CPS, to no avail. So, the quilts were just sitting, waiting to find a home.
In early 2023, my Dad was admitted to the ER. It’s a long story. Anyways, Joe was Dad’s room mate. I really enjoyed my time hanging out with Joe while visiting my Dad in the hospital. Joe’s sister Gayle and his son Daniel, were so wonderful, and made the time in the hospital much more bearable. Daniel was always such a huge help with my Dad, when the nurses were otherwise occupied. I miss you Joe, and I hope you, Gayle and Daniel find peace and strength in your journey through life.
H♥me
November 2021
My nephew Joe is getting married today, to his love, and best friend, Bailey. The name H♥me is meaningful to them, hence the name.
Home is where the heart is. (Bailey)
You are my home. (Joe)
I hope through the years they become even better friends and share every possible kind of happiness life can bring.
The majority of the material used for this quilt is new, with a few pieces of the past mixed in. The pattern is called Geometric Slide, by Faith Jones.
Cheery
September 2021
Here is my finished Hometown BOM (block of the month) that was hosted earlier this year by Jacquelynne Steves over at Art of the Home. She typically hosts a couple of sew alongs each year, and this is the fifth I’ve participated in, which included Save the Bees, Silver Linings (I made two), FaLaLa and her current Snowman & Silent Night sew along.
The colorway inspiration for me came from the border fabric, which has been in my stash for a while, waiting for just the right project, and this was it! The sew along was offered in two colorways – Spring and Summer. I loosely followed the Summer colorway, using the colors from the outer border for selecting the other fabrics for the blocks and setting triangles. I quilted it on my regular sewing machine, doing meandering stitching in the border and setting triangles, and 1/4″ away from the ditch stitching on the blocks. The quilt finished at approximately 66″x66″. Here is how I finished the back…
Lassie
September 2021
This quanket combines many scraps from Toodles, a quilt I made for my nephew Dexter, six years ago. The colorway is very mid-century modern. The avocado, browns, teals and oranges have made these fabrics a bit of a challenge to incorporate into other quilts over the past six years, not only because of their strong color personality, but also because the colors are all very saturated. I felt the linen color for the background provided the neutrality needed to compliment these strong colors.
This scrappy quilt began by sewing the small’ish scraps (most under 4″x3″), combining them with the solid linen and avocado colored fabrics. I constructed 12″ blocks, but wasn’t happy with how they looked once they were up on my design wall*. So, I used a trick I learned many year’s ago when making Calm Reflection, of cutting the block in half, and flipping it around to create a new design. The technique was one I had found on wont-to-be quilter’s blog, however, I can no longer find the instructions there. Please drop me a comment with your email address if you would like me to send to you. I made ‘Lassie’ as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing.
“Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that (way)?”
~ Roud Folk Song Index number 5040
This quanket was donated for a child in foster care in October, 2021.
*While the picture of my design wall doesn’t have this latest quanket on it, I thought you might like to see what my design wall looks like. It is a piece of 1/2″ styrofoam insulation covered with felt, measuring roughly 5’x6′. My murphy-style cutting table is immediately behind my sewing machine, a 1950’s Singer 401a, slant-o-matic. The cabinet for the fold-up cutting table has a blackboard backing, so I can keep notes for my current projects. The sewing machine was my grandmothers, and the one she used to teach me to sew over 50 years ago.
Stormy
September 2021
I try not to have too many UFOs, but this one became an unfinished project last year, during the pandemic. With the rush on cotton fabric for making face masks, it became increasingly difficult to sometimes get fabric, let alone trying to find more of a specific fabric. I needed less than a 1/4 yard of one of the outlying darker blues, but could not find it anywhere. Even as the pressures on cotton fabric eased over the last several months, I still had no luck finding what was needed.
After sitting in a drawer for a year, I decided that a finished quilt was better than a perfect quilt, and substituted a dark solid blue fabric, seen in the top and bottom rows. The piece of past fabric in this quilt is the first band of the darker blue fabric. It was some that my sister gave me several years ago, previously a favored sundress of hers. I have used it in several quilts, and the dress is now whittled down to a just a few remaining small scraps. I made this as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing.
It was a difficult decision for me to just ‘move on’. From the early designing phase I intended it to have that particular fabric in that particular spot. In reflection, I think this quilt is like life sometimes: we have a certain vision in our minds of how we think it’s going to go, but life throws us a curve ball, and we must decide to move on, or be stuck in a drawer. I chose the name Stormy as a reference to the turbulent year of 2020.
“…a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor”
~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt
This quanket was donated for a child in foster care in October, 2021.
Bunn Bunn
August 2021
I usually don’t do panels, but this one was just too cute to pass up! The center panel is Timeless Treasures Fabrics Bunny And Her Bear. The panel is 24″ wide by 44″ long, which is a little narrow for a quilt – even a baby quilt – so I bordered it with a narrow soft pink all around and added the two side hourglass borders to make the overall quilt wider. I custom quilted the center area to highlight the design – it required tying and burying a lot of knots on the backside, but the overall look was worth it.
This was gifted to my grand niece, who was welcomed in March by my sister-in-law (Grandma), her two older brothers, along with my niece (Mom) and Dad.
M82
August 2021
The cream fabric in this scrappy quilt is leftover from my Firsts quilt while the blues were pulled from my bottomless blue scraps bin. I organize my scraps by color, and it seems that no matter how many times I create scrappy blue quilts, this bin is always full! I created the scrappy blocks by sewing seven, 1.5″ x 7.5″ strips, and then combining a cream block to make the half square rectangles (HSTs).
I love the versatility of HSTs. Just a simple rotation, or placement of fabric and color can make it look completely different from something made in the same quilt design. I’m not certain if there is a name for this particular design. I use EQ8 and designed it there, basing it off a Lonestar design. I love the look of an off centered Lonestar, such as I did with Rising Star, and in this case I chose to not complete it out to the star points, but instead kept it extremely ‘zoomed in’. I made this as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing.
This quanket was donated for a child in foster care in October, 2021.
Love Hugs 