Detour!

I was able to get the top together for the Dino Oh My Stars last week, but a hectic week at work made for not a lot of quilting this week. But the top came together pretty quickly for this one. The border has a faint white polka dot on a cream fabric and it almost matched the creams in the fabric line perfectly. 

I'm not sure if I mentioned it last week, but I bought a super soft herringbone green fabric for the backing, and I'm going to bind it in solid orange. But the two baby quilts didn't go any farther than the tops being completed. 

I pulled a few fabrics together for another baby quilt, I'm leaning towards an economy block for the boy one and possibly a snail trail block for a little girl. I might just make both tops so when I'm inevitably asked for another quilt, I already have one made. 

My plan for the rest of the week was to work on basting more pieces for my EPP that I'll be taking on my trip this coming week. But then on Monday while eating a sandwich after work, I was browsing the Quilting subreddit and saw a call for quilters. A picture of a quilt had been posted a few days prior of a beautiful Iris quilt someone's grandma had made them. It had been stolen out of her car after only using it once and she was devastated. She was looking for someone to help her find the pattern and then how to make a quilt as her grandma had passed years before and she wasn't a quilter. But the call was put out for quilters to volunteer to make a block, and for someone to assemble the top and someone else to do the quilting. 

I couldn't resist. I had enough fabric to make the block and I wanted to be part of something like this. So Monday night, I said I was only going to pull fabric. But then I decided there wasn't really a lot of cutting to do, so I'd just cut the fabric so I could make the block the next morning before work. Well we all know how this story goes. I cut the fabric, then decided there was not a lot of half square triangles, so I'd just make those. I did manage to stop myself at this step and proceeded to finish my block Tuesday morning.

My block had since been mailed off and received to move on to the next step of assembly. But this was such a fun block to make that I think I might make another one, though slightly larger to make a wall hanging for spring. But that is going to have to wait until after the baby quilts are done. 

But what I love about being a part of the quilting community, is the response to this call is amazing. If everyone that commented follows through, there will be enough blocks for three or four quilts. It was suggested that the extra quilts be donated in her and her grandma's name to a homeless shelter as she believes based off what was stolen from her car that the person was homeless and just trying to keep warm.

Other than that detour, I've been basting away on my handwork project. Because by all accounts, basting, even thread basting, is not fun on a plane or airport. So I'm trying to get as many pieces ready to go as possible. I probably have more than enough ready for the entire trip, but I don't like flying and having something in my hands to distract me is going to help. I hope. 

So there won't be any block post next Sunday as I will away and trying to disconnect as much as possible.

Happy Quilting!

The Mad Scramble!

I've made some progress this past week. I have one baby quilt top complete and the second one is moving along. The lighting isn't the best in my bedroom where I hung an old curtain from my closet doors. It's a great way to have a design wall, though you need to pin to it rather than just stick them up there. I have a second curtain in my living room where my sewing machine is, so this had to do for the moment. I didn't feel like taking all those squares down just to hang this up for a moment. 

But I've come to the conclusion that I made toddler quilts, not baby quilts. This one is 42" x 53". The second one I'm working on is going to finish at 41" x 51". My justification is that they will be used much longer than a small baby quilt. They can be used for blanket forts or laying on the floor to watch TV or even laid over a toddler bed. 

I took this photo early this morning, so the lighting for photos isn't great here either, but it's bright enough to sew. The missing bottom quadrant is currently at my sewing machine. The last Oh My Stars quilt I made, I stitched it together in rows. And I remembered how much I don't like sewing long seams, so this one I'm sewing in quadrants so I only have one long seam. I'll probably have the center portion together today and work on the borders tomorrow.

There's a bit of a scramble going on for me right now. I leave for vacation in a week and a half. I want to have these two tops together before I leave. I'll switch my machine over to quilting once they're done. But that's not the true scramble right now. The true scramble is getting my EPP project ready to go. I have a seven hour flight with a two hour layover out there and an eight hour flight home with a three hour layover. I'm going to need some stitching to do! Plus, I know from past vacations, that once we get back to our room at night, I like to relax with some sewing while we talk about our plans for the next day. 

So here's my travel bag. It has enough pockets that I can keep everything organized and it's clear so hopefully I have no issues with TSA. My only concern because I've heard mixed experiences is my clover thread cutter pendant. I have a pair of nail clippers packed just in case though. It was only a few dollars, so if it doesn't make it through, I won't be heartbroken. But I'm trying to get as many pieces basted as possible, because I know that's the part I am not going to want to do on a plane. But I will be packing more fabric and papers so I can baste once we land and all that. Right now, I have enough pieces basted for eight blocks. That might last me the way out, but definitely not out and back. 

 

I know my carpet isn't the best background, but lots of people use design floors. I'm debating if I want to take the three blocks that don't have the white kites with me. I'm doing my best to sew the background to my blocks as I go so I don't have just kites to sew once all the blocks are complete. So I guess that decided for me. 

I'm still working on my Barnstar quilt. I've managed to get a little ahead of schedule, which is good, because for some reason, I decided that the four days next week before my trip was a full week and I should get six blocks done. Thankfully, I am currently eight blocks ahead of schedule to finish by Thanksgiving, so as long as I stay on track this week (while basting shapes like a mad person), even if I don't do any sewing next week, I won't be behind and need to catch up. At least that's the plan. I hope you have time to get some sewing in this week.

Happy Quilting!

My Barnstar Sampler

So I figured since I've mentioned it a few times, and because it's such a large project, I think my Barnstar Sampler Quilt should get it's own post. About a year ago, I saw a few people in one of the groups I'm in post pictures of their progress on their Barnstar Samplers. Unbeknownst to me, there was a sew a long for this quilt going on in 2023. But I fell in love with this pattern and knew I wanted to make it using 30s prints. But not having the money in my quilting budget to buy the insane amount of fabric I needed for the pattern, I added the book and a few of Lori Holt's fat quarter bundles to my wish list. And my wonderful partner bought the book and a fat quarter bundle for me for Christmas that year. He even bought me a few neutral bundles from her lines to go with it (he does listen when I go on and on, definitely a keeper!). 

The top is made up mostly from Lori's Bee Vintage line, but I think there are some of her Bee Calicos in there as well. I also added to the backgrounds he bought me with some that I had in my stash. So if you can believe it, once all the Christmas celebrations were over, and we were back home, I started sorting fabric and assigning numbers to each print based on the pattern. 

The next day I started cutting and sewing. I did end up ordering a quarter yard of two different dark brown prints because that's all I was short on between all the fabric I had gotten, so I started by making block 2 first. I probably would've finished this quilt top sooner, but I was changing and adjusting things as I went. The author of the pattern is a big fan of sew and flips. I'm not. Sometimes it feels wasteful to me, so I made the flying geese, half square triangles, and square in a square blocks the way I like making them. So there were slight adjustments to the pattern. I find I get more accurate blocks this way, so I'll continue doing it my way. This might account for why I had so much fabric leftover after the quilt was done, but it might also just have been extra fabric built into the pattern to account for miscuts. But I would also like to add, I made my quilt larger than the pattern by adding an extra row of 8" blocks and I still had extra. 

My leftover print fabric after the top was done.

It took me about a month and a half to piece the top. I had a week off of work after Christmas and that made a big dent in the large blocks and I worked on the blocks after work. Some days I would pick fabric for a block and cut it and the next day I would sew them together. By the time I was making the last few 8" blocks, I stopped paying attention to the colors the book suggested and just looked at my quilt top to see what colors would look good in that spot. I think I even moved some of the larger 16" blocks around so the colors were more evenly spread out. 

I knew when I originally saw the pattern that this was going to be one that I would hand quilt. I enjoy the quilting process, but my free motion skills are not up to taking on this large and complex of a quilt. Not only that, I was about to finish my then current hand quilting project and was in need of another one. 

To tie it all together, I decided to do a cross hatch on the background of all the blocks and outline each star. Each star would have it's own quilting design. A sampler of quilting patterns as well as a sampler of quilt blocks. I kept the backing fabric plain, Kona Snow, so that the quilting would show up and if I ever wanted, it could be flipped over and used as a whole cloth quilt (though I doubt I'll ever fall out of love with the top). I'm using Hobbs Tuscany Wool batting for this and it is such a dream to hand quilt with. It shows the texture of the quilting so well and my needle just glides through it. For thread I'm using 12 different colors of Gutermann Hand Quilting thread and matching the thread color to the fabric on the front. It means the quilting doesn't really stand out a lot on the front, but I know from experience, once washed, it will show the patterns I chose really well. 

So how close am I to actually finishing this by Thanksgiving? Well, the background crosshatching is completed. That felt like quite the milestone. I have also quilted the stars around the outside. The 16" an 24" blocks I only quilted about 8" in, because I wanted to sew the binding on because the wing nut on my hoop kept getting caught in the extra batting around the edge. So I made a scrappy binding and it is sewn on except for one corner where I'll be attaching a label once it's done. That's just clipped in place for the moment. I also added a hanging sleeve because I want to enter it in my local guild's quilt show in 2 years when they have the next one. At this point, I have it figured out that I need to quilt six 8" blocks a week to finish it by Thanksgiving, and that accounts for taking a week off for a vacation. Some of the blocks are going to be more intense to quilt and getting 6 done in a week is going to be all I can get done. But then there are also other blocks that I could probably get 6 done in a few days. I'm OK with getting ahead of schedule!

I've also noticed that when I finish a 24" block, it feels like I've gotten so much done. More so than if I finish 2 16" blocks. I don't understand it, but I should finish one more 24" block this week and that will leave me with one more to do. I might quilt a few smaller blocks before tackling that one because I've also found that I don't want to quilt the same block back to back if I can help it. 

So that's where I am with my Barnstar Quilt. In other quilting, I have all but the borders made for the baby quilt for my brother's friend. And when I asked him if he wanted anything specific on the label, he mentioned a verse, but also asked if I could make a quilt for a baby boy another one of his friends is having. 

So in order to fit all this in by Thanksgiving with a week long vacation in there coming up in a few weeks, I ordered 2 charm packs and am going to make another Oh My Stars by Pat Sloan. Mostly because I know I can make one start to finish in less than a week and I can deliver both to him at the same time. I'm still in the block arranging phase, which is a little hard with this line because there are only 9 different prints in 5 colors and I'm using the orange blocks for the stars. I still need to get border fabric for this one, I'm thinking a dark teal which should allow for the orange stars on the border to still pop.

Happy quilting!

One finish & one new start

I'm thinking weekly posts might be a better idea for me. It doesn't feel like I'm making enough progress on any quilt to post more than once a week. Part of that is that hand quilting is a slow process. And I enjoy it. But it doesn't leave much to show every few days. 

But I did finish a quilt on Friday. I finished hand sewing the binding down on my Christmas Pocket Change quilt. It was started last year on National Sew A Jelly Roll Day, which was September 16. So it took almost a year to finish. No big deal. If I remember right, I only got half of the quilt top done that Saturday, or maybe not even that. My niece's birthday falls around the third Saturday in September, so it's not a block that day off the calendar so I can sew day. I don't remember when I finished the top, but according to my quilting journal, I basted it at the end of February. And then it sat because I had no idea how to quilt it. I finally got around to it a few weeks ago after I had posted pictures asking for suggestions. I think the modern/asymmetrical design works pretty good for the pattern and fabrics. This one will be a Christmas gift to Danny's aunt who loves to decorate and has a lot of farmhouse vibes and black/white/grey colors going on. I also love that it's not overly Christmasy and that you can only see Christmas fabric on one or two of the fabrics, so it might stay out through Valentine's day. 

I really wanted to use a solid black for the binding, but when I got to Joann's, they didn't have any solid black fabric. Which was weird, but considering all the issues they've been having lately, not all that surprising. So I went with Kona Gotham Grey, which might've been a slightly better choice, but the black would've been sharp. But I had the day off and wanted to get the binding sewn on and didn't want to drive all over town trying to find solid black fabric.  I was briefly considering using the backing fabric, but I thought lining up the plaid for the binding would drive me nuts, plus the plaid not lining up with the backing would also drive me insane. 

I also started another quilt. But this one I'm getting paid for. Not a lot, but the cost of materials plus a little extra. His friend is having a little girl, so I'll be using some leftover fabric from making my Dresden Plate quilt (still not quilted) to make my Child's Play pattern. I'm still working on writing patterns for a few quilts I've designed in hopes of opening an Etsy pattern shop one day. The fabric line is On the Bright Side by Me & My Sister. The line has been out for a while so I had to chose a different background fabric. I managed to get the blocks sewn this weekend, so now it's just sashing to decide on and the outer border.

Until next week, happy quilting!

That's a Lot of Quilts!

So while trying to create a Quilt Gallery of sorts, I started documenting all the quilts I've made that I can find pictures for. I think there might be about four that I don't have pictures of, don't ask how that happens because I swear my phone mostly has quilt pictures or pictures of flowers. 

I'm not gonna lie, I've made more quilts than I realized. I have photos of 45 finished quilts. About a quarter of them are baby quilts, but there are quite a few large, bed sized quilts. And that doesn't even count the dozen or so in progress quilts that I have. When I started quilting again in earnest in 2022, I decided I wanted to clear out the backlog of UFOs that I had, so there are only two or three quilts that I made in my early quilting years that aren't completed. And thankfully, I haven't added to that pile very much.

This Jacob's Ladder quilt is still one of my favorites. It's where my love affair with tiny pieces and scrappy quilts was really born. This quilt has just over 3,000 pieces in it. I'm insane, you can tell me, it won't bother me! The half square triangles and four patches finish at 2". The lighting in the first picture doesn't show the pattern super well, but I promise I can see it when it's on my bed. 

I also find it fun to see how my scraps changed as I worked on this as a leader/ender project. Some blocks have a lot of yellow in them, and others lean more towards white/grey. 

To anyone who is getting frustrated with your seam matching abilities, look at the above photo. I really wanted to make this quilt when I first saw it when I started to learn to quilt. But as you can see from the right photo, I wasn't that great at seeing value or matching seams. Fast forward eight years and I've gotten much better. No more chopping off (as many) points or squaring up blocks and ending up with rectangles in the corners. 

I also learned a lot about color value and how important that is with scrap quilting. It's what takes a quilt from blah to wow. The quilt from 2014 I just use a warm and a cool color triangle to make the half square triangles. But as you can see, sometimes that doesn't work. Because I can have a light colored cool triangle and a dark colored warm triangle and it doesn't work for the pattern. 

So while I didn't totally succeed in understanding value with my Jacob's Ladder quilt, I think I've come quite a long way from where I was in the beginning. Using the black and white filter on your phone's camera is a great way to see contrast. Other things I learned while working on this quilt were to square up blocks as I go. Turns out blocks actually line up if they are the right size in the first place. Imagine that. Squaring up that many four patches and HSTs was tedious but it was worth it in the end. 

So what am I working on now? I took a quick break from hand quilting to make a quick baby quilt for a shower on Saturday. On Sunday, it was announced that there will be a baby shower for one of our missionary couples on Saturday. They are back in the states while they await the arrival of their first child. So naturally I decided I would make a baby quilt for them. Because normal people totally decide to make a quilt in less than a week. Luckily for me, I had 2 Kona solid rainbow charm packs in my stash that I wasn't sure what to do with them. I pulled out the pinks and purples and mixed in a few prints from my stash. The animal print was all that I had leftover from a baby quilt I made last fall and I was really hoping Hobby Lobby still had it in stock so I could use it for the backing. So I pieced the top Sunday afternoon, went to the store after work on Monday and picked up backing so I could quilt it up that evening. Tuesday I stitched the binding down, and dashed off to the laundromat across the street only to find that they closed. I didn't feel like driving 25 minutes in rush hour traffic to the next laundromat so I washed it in the tub and hung it over the curtain rod with a fan to dry it. Where they're going back to in Africa, this is probably how it will be washed anyway. Hopefully they will be able to use it in Northern Africa, even if it's just as a play mat. I doubt they'll need it to bundle up in!

I even sewed and trimmed my bonus triangles that I made into hourglass blocks. 2.5" unfinished hourglasses felt more usable to me than 1.5" half square triangles. There are only 20 of them, so into the orphan block box for now. I was going to use them across the back because I thought I needed to piece the backing, but the fabric was just wide enough to not be needed. 

But now I'm back to chugging away on my Barnstar Sampler. I will have it done by Thanksgiving. Hopefully sooner, but I have a plan to have it done by Thanksgiving at the latest. I made my self imposed deadline for two reasons. One, I want to be able to take pictures of it outside with the wonderful autumn light. The few quilts I've taken pictures of in the fall just have a lovely golden glow, and the backdrop of still green grass but colorful leaves just makes me happy. The second reason is that I plan on doing the Quiltville Mystery Quilt again this year and that starts on Black Friday. So I'm trying to clear the deck so that I can keep up. Most likely I'll make it half size again this year. It's easier for me to keep up that way, but also I don't have quite the assortment of scraps as some quilters, and I'm trying not to go buy more fabric for it. I want to use up what I have.

Oh, and somewhere between now and Thanksgiving, I need to squeeze in another baby quilt that my brother has commissioned me to make for a friend. I'm not mad, he did ask me a few months ago and I did agree. He's the one person I take commissions from, he leaves the fabric and pattern choices completely up to me and has no issue paying me. I probably don't charge him nearly enough, but since he's really just paying me to make something I would probably have made anyway, I don't have any issues. 

Happy Quilting!

Welcome!

Welcome to Scrap Basket Quilts!

I decided to start a blog so I could keep track of all the quilts I'm making/made and just share my love of making scrap quilts with the world.

I began quilting my senior year of high school. Well, maybe I technically started earlier while playing with extra quilt blocks from my mom's quilts. I do vaguely remember asking her to teach me and she had me use a needle and thread to sew the extra blocks together. I think it might've been a saw tooth star made with her extra half square triangles, but I could be wrong, I was probably about 7 or 8 at the time. I'm honestly not sure what happened to it, I don't think it was ever bound, but I still used it as a doll quilt regardless.

Fast forward to my senior year of high school. There was a Home Ec class where you could learn to sew. I tried to get into that class every year but it never happened. That's when I decided to teach myself to sew. My mom still had all her supplies but hadn't quilted in years due to life circumstances. I asked her if I could use her machine and fabric and she showed me the basics of using the machine and handed me a bunch of saved Quiltmaker magazines. Between those and YouTube which was just starting to get sewing videos, I taught myself to quilt. 

Those first quilts were made from scraps and cheap Walmart or Joann fabric and I even used some old thin blankets as batting for some. My mom was a scrap quilter too, she inherited fabric from her grandma and her sister's mother in law who were also quilters. I'm still a scrap quilter for the most part but I enjoy the fabric bundles as much as the next person.

Two of those first quilts

I just dug out two of those first quilts I made. These were made with the intention of giving to any future children or nieces or nephews. I was too afraid of binding them so I used the birthing method on both. The blue one was "machine tied" by just stitching in the same place a few times. every few inches. Not sure what I was thinking then. The purple one doesn't even have batting, just backed in the same purple fleece that I bordered it in. It's definitely a snugly quilt. I did actually quilt that one in the ditch so I'm proud of myself there.

So what am I working on now? Well, I have a few on going current projects, but a bunch of UFOs. I hesitate to call them UFOs because they are on a list and I do want to finish them, they just aren't currently being worked on. So for starters, I'm working on hand quilting my Barnstar Sampler quilt by Shelley Cavana. I'm a little over halfway done quilting it and have a plan to finish it before Thanksgiving. I absolutely love this quilt and how it has turned out. Most of the fabric is from Lori Holt's Bee Vintage line, though there are some of her calicos mixed in as well and the neutral backgrounds are mostly her fabrics but also some from my stash. 

 

Barnstar Sampler top

What else, I just finished quilting a jelly roll quilt that I made last year on national jelly roll day. I still need to finish sewing the binding on that, so the hand quilting might take a backseat for a few nights so the binding can be finished and I can check that one off on my list.

Debating on binding color, but a sneak peak of Pocket Change

As for what am I piecing at the moment, that would be a scrappy hourglass quilt. I received a jelly roll for my birthday back in May and it's been sitting on the corner of my cutting mat since then. I had no idea what I wanted to make with it. It was an Aunt Grace Calicos 2 jelly roll and I felt like it needed to make something vintage looking. I finally settled on pulling out my triangle ruler and cutting it up into quarter square triangles to make hourglasses. It won't be a huge quilt, and if I've done the math right will end up being a square quilt. But I'm not sure yet. I might end up adding sashing between the blocks, but there is also a good chance I just butt them up against each other and go for it. 

That's about all that I'm actively working on. I'll probably share some of the other not currently working on but hesitate to call UFOs in the future. 

Happy Quilting!