Scrap,Quilt, Preach: baby quilts

I have been trying to be diligent and use up fabric that has been in the closet way to long. You know the pieces that you just have to have cause they are so beautiful but you don't want to cut into them or the novelty prints that you aren't quite sure how to use? Yeah, I know you have them in your stash too. Since the novelty print pile is at my eye level and it is counting about 16 meters/ 16 cuts, I thought I would start whittling them down.

As I was working on a quilt top using one of a trio of patterns from Me and My Sister designs, I thought I would test out another pattern of theirs and see how that went. It went well. Easy to follow and put together. The hardest thing for me was deciding on what fabrics I was going to use.


from me and my sister designs Easy as 7-8-9

Anyways I pulled out this subtly shaded western print. Not sure who the fabric line is now or even if you could find it. All i can tell you is it has a cowboy and Indian and bank robber theme. Since its now politically incorrect to use the term Indian and it can be confused with other Indian groups, I named the quilt Cowboys and Aboriginal People quilt. It measures 40X 41 inches and is backed in a multi colored green flannel.

Cowboys and Aboriginal People Quilt

First of all my apologies in not blogging a lot sooner. I am not sure where the time went. Pretty bad when you think you have blogged and only did it in your mind! LOL. So what have I been up to you ask?

This week I have been cleaning out the sewing room. It’s a mess with many projects on the go and stacks of fabric and paper piled high enough that a young children could mistake it for a place to jump and have a soft landing. So far I have gone through the scraps and have a recycle bag (a pretty big one) full of left over scraps. I am going to weigh it when its full and see just how much it weighs.

I had been promising myself that I would use these scraps and make some scrap quilts, but they haven’t materialized (or at least enough of them haven’t) to keep the stash down. Right now I have four bins full of scraps so its time to give them a new home. Anyone else have a hard time parting with scraps too? Lie to yourself and say that you will get at least 5 large scrap quilts done a year? So my scraps will go to a good home and someone who will use them for some charity works as well as helping out her senior income. Good stuff all around I think.

New Projects –

Pink Scraps, Green Scraps.

While sorting through those scraps I was able to pull some favorites to make some simple stripy baby quilts. They go together very quickly after cutting and I can make one top a night. So far I have pulled out pink and green scraps and have blue waiting in the wings to be cut and sewn. While they are very monochromatic only broken up with a bit of white they have enough different shades of color that they are interesting to look at.

Pink baby stripy quilt - off to quilters

The green version of the above quilt

Black, white and red-

I also came across some black and white triangles from a project in 2001 in a bottom of a scrap bin that I married with some red scraps to make another quilt top, zig zag pattern this time. I hope it doesn’t look too militaristic Nazi - ish. Right now its still on the design wall so it can change yet again.

Halloween Runner – I picked up last week a book by Disa on runners. Last night I started tracing out pumpkins and spiders in hopes of using up some orange and black scraps that I have laying around and some Halloween novelty prints for the back.

Joy bee blocks – its my turn. I was able to make up my block a few weeks ago to see how they would look and I think they are going to be just great and make a lovely quilt. The patter for these have come from Marcia Holhn at Quilters Cache.

On Going –

What is still on the burner at my house? Way too much. I am making two color ways of the NYB blocks and so far am behind. For one color way I was only going to make 4 – 6 blocks so I don’t have too much to do, but the other one I will need at least 25 blocks… yikes.

I was able to finish off making a skirt and a dress for upcoming nice weather. It was so lovely to sew some clothes and the patterns went together nicely with only minimal altering which is even better.