Cutting Corners

Posted on May 23, 2020 by jeanswenson

Cutting Corners
May 2020

The scraps bins have really been a lifesaver these past few months of safer at home. I’ve made a good dent on my yellows (stay tuned for my next post for this one), my black/grey/white, and now my blues. I am also participating in Jacquelynne Steves Silver Linings QAL (quilt along) that started a couple of weeks ago and I will be making two baby quilts with the completed blocks: one in a pink colorway and one in a blue, using fabric from my scraps bins. There is still time to join her quilt along here.

There are so many pieces of the past fabric in this one, which is usually the case when I dig in on the scraps bins! The jump-off fabric that informed my design direction is the larger border of blue and red/burgandy flowers (blast from the past quiz for my daughters to see if they remember where I had used this back in the late 80’s). Of note, there are fabrics from both Edith (the red/burgandy) and from Granny (the edge binding). I used the same method for building the blocks as I did for Ziggy, using dryer sheets as the foundation. This time I trimmed the dryer sheets to squares as opposed to leaving them rectangular. My sewing room always smells so good when I am using used dryer sheets as foundation 🙂

I had two names I considered for this quanket: this, and Infinity Mirrors. While a ‘cutting corners’ behavior is generally not considered desirable, I think that sometimes the efficiencies gained by cutting a corner outweigh what was “cut” in the cutting of that corner. What do you think?

This was donated to the County of Ventura, Children & Family Services for a child in foster care in June 2020.

To the Point

Posted on May 17, 2020 by jeanswenson

To the Point
May 2020

During the past two months of staying safe at home, I’ve depleted quite a bit of my stash fabric on quilts and facemasks. Thank goodness my scraps bins are still plentiful, especially the black, white and grey scraps bin – which is still packed pretty tight even after making the 336 half square triangles for this quanket. A few years back, I made Flamingo Floyd based on a quilt I had seen in a magazine. I wanted to try something similar with this, but in my own design. My daughter said this has an Escher look to it – I’ll take that as a compliment! 🙂

The choice for the name To the Point should be apparent. I also like that this name is somewhat opposite in meaning to my last quilt, Monkeying Around. However, I still did a fair amount of monkeying around with designing this quilt 😉

This was donated to the County of Ventura, Children & Family Services for a child in foster care in June 2020.

Monkeying Around

Posted on April 30, 2020 by jeanswenson

Monkeying Around
April 2020

Here is the fifth baby quilt to be donated to the Little Lambs Foundation as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. I used the 7 Seas design from McKay Manor Musers for three of the five baby quilts, as choosing and doing a unique applique for each was fun. It also was less time spent on the piecing part, so more time could be spent on the quilting part. For the quilting, I stitched intersecting circles, using a trick I picked up from the Thimblelady website. They have a lot of free quilting templates – and a whole lot of other quilting related stuff – as well as some great tips that I found very helpful.

The name Monkeying Around sort of encompasses my general approach to quilting 🙂 It’s fun to experiment and play around with designing quilts. And now that I have dipped my toes into the quilting aspect as well, it adds a whole other dimension to the creativity aspect that I so enjoy!

This was included in this year’s Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts, and went to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids @littlelambsfoundationforkids

#h2h2020 #hands2help2020

Peach (Dino Dragon)

Posted on April 24, 2020 by jeanswenson

Peach (Dino Dragon)
April 2020

I seldom make baby quilts, however this makes the fourth I’ve done in the last several weeks, and I have one more that’s almost finished. All five will be going to the Little Lambs Foundation based in Utah as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge.

I really liked the simplicity of the 7 Seas design, from McKay Manor Musers, which I used for Deep Blue Sea. Here too, I chose to deviate from the original puppy or kitty design and instead used a dinosaur for the applique to match the dinosaur fabric in the second horizontal block. For the quilting, I stitched veritical lines in each block, using the lines from the striped fabric as my template.

The name is inspired by two things: one being the peach fabric backing that was taken from a bed sheet. The second is my three and a half year old granddaughter, who likes to pretend that she is a dino-dragon called Peach. I’m not exactly sure what period dino-dragons lived in, but from her play acting, they were certainly a fierce creature not to be taken lightly 🙂

This was included in this year’s Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts and went to Little Lambs Foundation for Kids @littlelambsfoundationforkids

#h2h2020 #hands2help2020

Deep Blue Sea

Posted on April 14, 2020 by jeanswenson

Deep Blue Sea
April 2020

The design for this baby quilt is called 7 Seas Blanket, from McKay Manor Musers. While the pattern calls for a kitty or puppy applique at the bottom of the center vertical block, I opted to use a whale to match my bottom fabric. I stuffed him with puff batting to make him more three-dimensional and backed him with flannel to add stability before attaching to the quilt. Since I am still a newbie to quilting on a domestic sewing machine, I played around with different designs, making waves, rippling water, currents, and jumbo letters, W-H-A-L-E.

Sailing off California’s coast has allowed me the opportunity and joy of seeing whales in the ocean: Humpbacks, Grey Whales, mama whales with their calves, and the largest of all, the California Blue Whale. I never tire of seeing the spout, the slow roll of their back as the dorsal fin cuts up through the water, and back down again. And if they are diving, catching a glimpse of their tail fluke as they make their descent. While each encounter is unique and incredible, the most amazing thing I got to witness was a whale doing bubble net feeding.

#h2h2020 #hands2help2020

Grandma’s Garden

Posted on April 6, 2020 by jeanswenson

Grandma’s Garden
March 2020

While I typically make what I like to call quankets – fleece backed quilt tops – I’ve been experimenting over the past year with machine quilting. I had pretty much resigned myself to thinking that machine quilting would be too difficult on my 1940’s something, narrow-neck Singer 401, and while it is challenging to manipulate the quilt on certain turns, I find if I go slow, it’s not too bad.

The center is quilted to resemble a flower, and from there, I borrowed visuals from my garden for the other quilting designs – leaves, vines with heart-shaped flowers, and lattice. The polka dot fabric is some I inherited from my Granny while all the others are from various past projects.

#h2h2020 #hands2help2020

Spot

Posted on March 31, 2020 by jeanswenson

Spot
March 2020

If I had a pet giraffe, I think I’d name it Spot. The impetus for this quilt was the giraffe-like minky fabric on the back and some cute animal fabric I had leftover from Peek-a-Boo on the Savannah. I fussy cut the animal fabric to center the giraffe in the block, which I surrounded with 2″ squares pulled from my yellow and green scraps boxes. I’m not sure if there is a pattern name for this, as I was just winging it!

#h2h2020 #hands2help2020

Love Hugs

from Pieces of the Past

Tag Archives: Quarentine Quilt

Cutting Corners

To the Point

Monkeying Around

Peach (Dino Dragon)

Deep Blue Sea

Grandma’s Garden

Spot