quilt scraps | Needle and Foot

Hi everyone – somehow about two weeks have passed since I have posted. I am unsure if it is because I don’t have much to tell you or I have been busy or what? One would think with the shelter in place rules, I would have tons of time to write blog posts but it hasn’t happened.

Actually, lots has been going on – a few days ago we drove to Julia’s university to clean out her dorm room. They decided for sure the students will not return to campus until fall session opens. This was sad and is the case across the country. When we were cleaning out the dorm room, Julia was melancholy. She certainly didn’t get the dorm life experience she was hoping for with all of these changes.

Like all of you, we have been keeping busy with projects and cooking – so much baking!! Julia has made cookies, bagels and dinner rolls. Currently she is learning about sour dough starter. She started one batch but it didn’t work so she tossed it and has started again.I made pumpkin bread the other day with some pumpkin from the freezer (actually from out garden last summer). We are trying to cook all sorts of meals based on what is in the freezer – mainly because food tends to be shoved to the back of the freezer and forgotten. Now is the time to take stock of what is there and use it up.

As far as sewing goes, it has been hit and miss. At the time of my last post, I was really into it and then I sort of lost my motivation. But when the governor of California asked residents to begin wearing masks in public, I decided to make masks for the family. I have looked at a couple of patterns and mashed them up to get a result I am happy with. It is a work in progress for sure.

Certainly not the most fun sewing project, but a necessary one.

I mailed a few to my son and his wife in New York. Those two are the members of the family I worry about most. They have been very careful and stay in their apartment most of the time. They have a dog so do need to be outdoors to walk her. It is so awful in New York and they need to be extra diligent.

I spent a couple of evenings cutting lots of scraps into squares for future use. This was actually somewhat satisfying. At least I was able to close my blue bin after doing this. Now of course, I have a new bin with these squares and more on the way. Sigh. It is never ending.

Another day or two was spent making half square triangles with a pack of charm squares I got from who-knows-where? I thought they would be cute used in some fashion. Can you tell I am just mindlessly, aimlessly sewing? So HST’s are made and trimmed and in a bag. Someday they will be used. Making the HST’s is the worst chore – it will be more fun to stitch them up.

Another fun hour in the sewing room was spent hunting through scraps to find polka dot fabric. I am trying to stick with dotty prints for the 2020 Color Challenge. This month is purple but I have not yet started the block.

I am still enjoying lots of texts, photos and FaceTime with my two grand babies in Vermont. Not as good as real life visiting but this is all we have for now. Above is a picture of my grand daughter, AKA Princess Mirabelle, enjoying a pretend birthday party with her stuffed animals. She makes me smile every day.

This is such a random post but it well represents how things have been. These are strange times and it will be something to look back on 2020 and the Corona Virus pandemic. Hope we are are on the other side of this soon! Please do be careful, stay healthy and reach out to friends, family and neighbors.

About 18 months ago I finally finished a quilt for my daughter’s bed. It was one of my first really challenging projects. I am happy with the way the quilt finished up, though it was harder than I expected. I used a pattern from Natalia Bonner’s wonderful book, Beginner’s Guide to Free Motion Quilting. This book has excellent information for those that, like myself, are trying to learn to FMQ. I am not sure the pattern that I used was really one for a new beginner. The piecing was a challenge. Long story short, I bit off way more than I had thought but now that it is done, I am happy I did it. Here is a picture of the quilt:

The pebbling took roughly 1.5 billion hours. Or at least, it felt that way The spirals were really hard because I quilted this on a fairly old Janome that isn’t equipped for FMQ. I couldn’t drop the feed dogs and I was fighting the machine the whole time. If you look closely at the quilting on this, it is painfully apparent that I was just learning. Again, glad I did this one and even happier that it is done!! (And happier yet that ,since then, I bought a newer Janome that quilts with ease!)

Once I finished this quilt I had amassed a huge pile of scraps. Cutting the lavender circles left a lot of waste. Here we are 18 months later and I finally used some of the leftover scraps.

I decided to make a throw pillow for Julia’s bed. l created a checkerboard with some blue and lavender squares and then added some borders. I love the floral print. It is an older Kaffe Fassett print that I used for the backing of this quilt. To quilt it, I made a quick sandwich with a piece of leftover batting and some lightweight muslin. I quilted a cross hatch pattern and then added the back.

I made the pillow cover “envelope style” so it all came together quickly.

Pretty cute.

I also made a little mat for Julia’s desk. My husband made her a desk for her 12th birthday. It has a walnut top and Julia had been putting a couple of pieces of felt underneath her desk lamp and some other items so the top wouldn’t get scratched. I made a rectangular mat (11 x 18″) for her to use instead.

This was a fun little project. I took an assortment of scraps and just played around with them until I found an arrangement that I liked. It was my first attempt at improv piecing. Just slicing and dicing and moving things around instead of drawing a sketch and measuring each piece. I am not one for doing things without a pattern or direction. I (usually) cook from recipes rather than just making things up as I go. As a kid, I colored within the lines. Get it? So playing with the fabric and just moving the pieces around was a fun exercise. As far as improv piecing goes, this is pretty tame. None of the pieces are wonky – it all lines up. Baby steps, right?? I used straight line quilting and machine binding.

Two scrappy projects completed and they brighten Julia’s room. (Honestly though, these two projects made hardly a dent in that scrap pile!) She is at camp this week and these will be fun surprises for her to come home to.

Linking up with: Linky Tuesday at Free Motion by the River; Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story; Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Quilts; WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts.

Needle and Foot

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