Tag Archives: scrap quilts

Quilt Tops, Crochet, and Quilt Shops

Other than running, walking, some post-holidays cleaning, and trying very hard to not read too much about the horrors of #47, I have enjoyed a fair amount of time in my sewing room. Not sure if this is true of you, but my interest comes and goes. Sometimes I just don’t feel like it and then other times, it is the best place to be!

In an effort to finish up existing quilt tops, I got this one basted and started to quilt it with a super loose stipple. This quilt top was given to me by Erika whom I ‘met’ on Instagram. She had a number of tops and asked if I wanted to finish one for donation. She even included the backing. It is such a pretty quilt and I will share it once I finish the quilting and get the binding on. Erika is clearly an excellent quilter as this top laid perfectly flat when I basted it. Plus the back was so neatly trimmed and pressed. It is all in the details, right?

Here are a few more projects I finished up over the past week or so. As I mentioned in my last post, I am working diligently to use up my 5″ squares. To this end, I made two quilt tops for the Quilted Love organization in Texas. I used to follow them on Instagram and love the fact that they will take quilt tops and finish them up. Being able to mail just the top is not only easier, it is less expensive. So far, I have completed two top

This little kitty was a breeze to make. The border on the left side has a wave to it so I need to unpick some stitches and fix that. I debated trying to do something to the bottom row of charm squares to make it look like a paw was showing. If anyone has any ideas how to do this, I am happy to unpick a few seams. I just couldn’t see how to do it.

This simple quilt used a number of 5″ squares and feels like a fun I-Spy quilt. The child who received this might look for kitties, Winnie the Pooh, birds, cherries, ants, paw prints, a cow, a deer with ice skates, piggies and even a dragon.

Both quilts finish at (about) 39″ by 44″. The organization has instructions here for the sizes they will take for quilt tops. Quilted Love donates quilts, preemie/NICU blankets, and some larger lap quilts for adults. If you are looking for a place to share your talents, this is a great option.

I have been working on my crochet skills. I would say I am still a beginner, maybe just more than that? I enjoy this sort of methodical, meditative hand work in the evening. This little baby blanket was so nice to make. While far from perfect, I am still happy with it. I bought both yarns at a thrift shop. The blanket is very soft and just the right size for a new baby. It will be donated along with the quilt tops.

Moving on to quilt shops….. My friend Annette and I took a quick run over to Annie’s Quilt Shop in Shelton, WA. Annette has been there but it was a first for me. What a great shop. Annie stocks so much fabric with a large variety. Tons of Moda, lots of novelty fabric, batiks, good selection of solids and a reasonable selection of garment fabric (knits, rayons and pretty wovens with a linen-like feel). Most interesting about the shop is their policy to cut in full yard increments. They will not cut a stack of 1/2 yard cuts of fat quarters for the customer. Because of this policy, they reduced their price per yard substantially. Most of the fabrics (new lines) were about $9.00 per yard. Of course there are many quilters who do not want full yard cuts. To help with this, there is one rack of pre-cut 1/2 yard pieces and another rack of pre-cut fat quarters. Also, I noticed she carries a large number of prepared kits. All of these policies mean less labor for the shop and a very quick time for customers waiting at the cut counter. I was very impressed. Thinking back to my days of having a fabric shop, I remember the length of time spent cutting 1/2 yard pieces – it is laborious. People seem fine with Annie’s business model judging by the number of shoppers who were in the store. Smart quilters could easily split one yard cuts between themselves just to take advantage of the price. As for me, I bought a cute panel for a cloth toddler book (they had an enormous selection), two cuts I plan to use to make a dress for my grand daughter, and a piece of woven fabric – I wish I could remember what it was.

I used it to make cloth napkins because it felt so nice and I think it will be absorbent. (I have made napkins from regular quilt cottons and the weave isn’t great for this use – just my opinion though.) I just finished these up and am curious to see how they wash. There were about four other colors I really liked so I just may need to head back to Annie’s if these work out well.

The next quilt shop visit happened to be a ways north of my home. Gossypium had a reputation for carrying a great selection of fabric and I wanted to check them out. We did some house/pet sitting for my son while he and his family were on vacation. This was a great opportunity to go for a quick run over to the shop. Much to my surprise, there were huge going out of business signs all over the building. It is so sad to see another brick and mortar shop closing up. Talking to the woman who was working, she shared how sad she was as she had worked there for several years and really enjoyed it. There are no other quilt shops in the immediate area. Clearly the sale had been going on for some time. They had several shelves of Kaffe Fassett fabrics at 50% off. These prints were the large scale florals in the less popular colors, sort of the leftovers. There really were not many prints that interested me. However the solids were 25% off. My solids are a bit low and what I do have are more the darker colors now.

The piece in the middle is a pretty pastel green which was a trick to photograph. These will be good colors to have on the shelf.

Can’t wrap it up without a few cute pictures, right?

Is there anything sweeter than tiny toes?

My older grand daughters were on a trip to Hawaii (hence the house sitting gig) and their parents scheduled a photographer to do a set of family portraits on the beach. They had sweet matching dresses and, from what I hear, were well behaved for the session. Afterward the water called to them, the dresses got a little wet, than maybe a bit soaked and finally, here they are! This makes me think of how I parented when my children were little. I know I would not have let this happen. I would have interfered and stopped them. But look at them. I suspect is a memory they will treasure. Will they talk to each other and remember when they were all dressed up and ended playing together in the waves at sunset. The dresses will wash out and no harm was done. When I look back on myself as a mom, there are a few things I would change. Of course it is always easy to look back, right? To think of how one would do things differently.

I am linking up with a few of my favorites.

Wednesday Wait Loss

Finished or Not Friday

Oh Scrap!

Green Strips and Pink Hearts

We just finished up a week or so of bitterly cold weather. We don’t often drop into the teens here but yikes it was cold. No snow (which disappointed me). Lots of rain but then this is Washington, so it is to be expected.

With the super cold weather, our heater was just keeping the house warm. My sewing room has never gotten much heat and it was pretty chilly up there. But I braved the cold and sewed anyway. Nothing an extra sweatshirt couldn’t take care of!

I finished up the quilt top for the twin bed in the grand kid guest room. It is going to be so cute! Yesterday I pre-washed the backing fabric because it is a deep pink color and I was concerned it might bleed into the white background. Now I can sew one seam to make it large enough and do some spray basting. For quilting, I am thinking an edge to edge over the white background and some sort of meandering motif in the patchwork heart. I am excited for this one – it will look so cute in the girls’ room. (Hmmm, if I ever have more grand children, are the girls going to think it is unfair to have to share ‘their room’ with cousins???)

A few weeks ago Ray and I (mostly Ray and only a little me) painted the kid room. That pepto bismol pink was so awful. In the summertime when the sun came through that window, it cast a deep pink glow over the hallway. The room had so much pink and ugly dark gray curtains! I bought some off white paint and found these sweet polka dot curtains on Facebook Marketplace. What a difference this made. When the heart quilt is done, it will replace the patchwork that you see above. I love the twin bed frame. Ray made it for Julia when she was about four or five years old. It weighs 500 billion pounds and should we have an earthquake we will all run in there and hide out under the bed. We will be perfectly safe there.

Always thinking of my girls, I saw this (undressed) doll at a thrift shop for a dollar. I went to get my stack of doll clothes patterns to make something for her and remembered I donated all of them. Why did I do that??? Anyway, I had a pattern for pants and drew a little pattern for the shirt. It closes with velcro in the back and looks pretty cute (if I do say so myself). She needs a bit of hair styling but I am thinking H and A can take care of that when they come over.

Quite a while ago, I participated in the annual Rainbow Scrap Challenge project. These projects are hosted by Angela at So Scrappy. Below are some projects I made with RSC blocks. In case you are unfamiliar, and I cannot imagine anyone is, Angela picks a color each month. The quilter makes blocks with that color and at the end of the year assembles a rainbow themed, scrappy quilt.

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014 Quilt; Finished January, 2015
RSC 2017; finished March 2018

This year my goal is to use up my bin of strips. It is stuffed to the brim. The only thing I won’t use are binding strip leftovers. These are rolled up and measured. Maybe I can use them as a scrappy binding at the end of the year? As for what blocks I plan to make with these, that remains to be determined. Right now, I am just joining strips and ‘making fabric’.

This week I joined all of the green strips. Most of these pieces of made fabric are seven inches tall. The length is determined by the size of the strips I used. Hard to tell from this picture but the bulk of this measures about 30″ wide and 21″ tall. So it is a good chunk. The green has been dealt with for now. If one of the monthly colors doesn’t exist in the strips bin, I will just skip it. I have a few books for inspiration when I think about how to use the strips. Sunday Morning Quilts, No Scrap Left Behind, and 15 Minutes of Play are my favorites for this sort of thing. I am sure I will find inspiration within one of these books and decide how to use the strips. Thank you to Sandra of MMMQuilts for this idea. I saw her working on something similar on Instagram and decided to follow suit.

That sums up my work in the sewing room this week. Good start to the year, for sure.

My son texted this picture to me last week. He was picking A up from preschool. She was covered in mud! She goes to a farm based preschool and they play outdoors no matter the weather (which makes sense around here or the kids would never be outside.) When the school year began, parents were warned not to send the kids to school wearing anything special. These kids play hard and are allowed to make mud, dig holes, whatever. There is a really cool area called The Mud Kitchen which has all sorts of utensils, bowls and pans to ‘cook’ with. She clearly had a great day. I love the expression on her face. “Mud? What mud?”

Linking up with Angela at So Scrappy.