eXtreme Scrapping: A Table Runner from Leftovers

I'm a little bit silly about saving fabric scraps.  I save just about every little bit of usable fabric.  Usable for me can be as little as 1/2 inch.  Does that move me from the silly to the compulsive category?  May be so.  So be it.

Extreme Scrapping Table Runner - Batiks
leftover from the Tsunami Quilt
http://busybeeno16.blogspot.com/2012/12/tsunami-quilt-descent-into-chaos_26.html

The center squares are done by topstitching
(with a decorative stitch)
two little scrappy bits together.

I do not use a foundation, just slightly
overlap the pieces, topstitch, press and trim. 

It is a technique I developed when I decided
I needed to use up all the little bits leftover
from the New York Beauty Christmas quilt.
http://busybeeno16.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-new-york-beauty-christmas-quilt.html

I thought this would be a great project to try
quilting with Perle Cotton.

And quilting with my
grandmother's crochet thread ... why not?

The back ... and all the hand quilting.  

The quilting was all done free form,
experimenting with the different threads.

The difference in look of the
10 and 30 wt crochet threads.

The 10 wt bedspread weight thread is a bit too heavy and was hard to pull while quilting.  But I really like the heavier look of the thread.

The  Perle Cotton is the easiest to quilt with and
also has the heavier thread look.

The 30 wt crochet was also easy to pull.

It's a Boy! It's a Girl! Oh My, It's Twins!

My cousin is having her first baby.  But it's really babies.  As in twins, a boy and a girl.  And she is over the moon about it.  I made these quilts a few years ago and have been saving them ... now I know why, and for what occasion.

My standard wrap for quilts ... like
the English Christmas 'crackers'

I came up with this wrap the very first quilt I gifted.  I of course did not have a box to put it in ... but I did have tissue paper, wrap and ribbon ... and it just seemed natural  to roll the quilts up.

Hug and Kisses, X's and O's ...
one for a boy and one for a girl

I knew these matching Michael Miller gingham's would be perfect for the backs of the twin quilts.  I think I have just enough of these fabrics for another set of baby quilts.

And by luck I had matching color graded fabrics for the binding, one in a pink yellow colorway and the other in a blue green colorway.  I really like something interesting going on with the binding on my quilts.

 I just love how these two quilts turned out.  Can't wait for the babies to get here... early February!

I Will Spend the Winter in a Flower Garden

Contrary to my young years, summer is my least favorite season. And August my least favorite month ... I'm weary of the heat, my under-the-eaves sewing room is too hot and everything in the garden is past it's best bloom.  But just on the horizon is autumn ... cool crisp air, bright blue skies ... and the beginning of a new Quilting Season.

This year's TV time project is to finish the Flower Garden quilt that my Grandmother started back in the 60's.  YiaYia got all the flowers pieced.  I joined the flowers together.  And now she's ready to quilt.  Since this is all pieced by hand, I am going to quilt it by hand.

Grandma's template for cutting the hexies.
1960.  3 lbs of hamburger or sausage for $1.00

These hexies were not English paper pieced.
They were just plain ol' hand pieced.
The key is learning to pivot and anchor each of the Y-seams.
After a few, you get the knack.

If I had to bother with templates, this quilt never woulda happened.

Early in my quilt life I pulled all of the flowers with red centers from Grandma's pieced blocks and made a small baby quilt.

 ... and did the quilting by hand.
I think it was my first large hand quilting project.
It was lap quilted without a hoop.
I should have used a hoop.

If I had used a hoop there may be fewer
 globs of fabric where they ought not to be.

The other thing I learned was not to fully quilt each hexie ... there is no definition of the individual flower garden blocks.

So this Flower Garden quilt will be quilted
to follow the blocks, not the hexies.
I am much happier with the look on the back.

I am still finding the hoop a bit awkward
because there is lots of turning as
I quilt around the blocks.
But I'm sure I'll get better at it.

This is a big quilt ... 90 x 95 ... 99 blocks
There is lots of opportunity to hone my craft.

Aqua Blue and Lime Green and Two Very Different Quilts

Aqua looks good with just about every color ... but my favorite is with lime green.  I've yet to meet something aqua that I was not immediately drawn to.  My heart's desire is a pair of aqua cowboy boots ... someday, sigh.

The circles quilt I made a couple years ago as a wall hanging in the laundry room to hide the electrical panel.  The walls are a soft soft lime color and the floor is black and white check so it looks really zippy. I'm going to try and make a Christmas wall hanging with lime green and red (same plan as I had last year ... one of these year's anyway).

The chevron zigzag quilt is a girls quilt I just finished for Etsy.  I made the chevrons using a square two-patch method because I wanted the lime green strip a wee bit smaller than the aqua strips ... you don't have the option to vary the widths with the half square or triangle method.

The squares are 6" and the circles are roughly 3" and
the circles are pieced with the freezer paper method.

Anyone who has done their own quilting is familiar with Leah Day's website The Free Motion Quilting Project.  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

I did the quilting in a 'stream of consciousness' way using several of Leah's patterns.  It was a blast to do!  With the heavy quilting it causes a trapunto effect on the front and I hand quilted around the circles to give them even better definition.

The batting is 100% polyester because I wanted to minimize the puckering since it's a wall hanging.  For the quilts I keep warm with I don't like heavy quilting because it makes the quilt too flat (learned the hard way) and I always strive for just the right amount of wonderful quilty puckering ... it's that quilty puckering that makes a quilt so comforting, and warm.

And back to the other aqua lime quilt ... the back is a wonderful Michael Miller gingham that I got years ago.  I have the same pattern it in pink too. They make a wonderful quilt backs.

The strip is made with the little leftover bits from the zigzags.  I really like pieced backs ... and I really like not having scraps left. There was next to nothing left on this quilt.

While we're on the subject of zigzag quilts, thought I would share my sad story of the blue and white batiks ... indigo bleed.  Augh! This quilt was originally intended to be an Etsy quilt, but that beautiful deep rich indigo batik bled into the white.

Chagrin for me ... but not for my brother and sister-in-law ... it's their new boat quilt.  It'll be a great quilt to have for sitting back deck when the evenings are cool.

I did use 3 color catchers in the wash which I think helped
minimize the bleed, but didn't stop it altogether.

Aqua quilt on my aqua screen door.

Here it is on Etsy ....

https://www.etsy.com/listing/156288053/girls-chevron-zigzag-quilt-baby-toddler?ref=shop_home_active

Lone Star Quilt ... with Half Square Triangles

A Lone Star quilt with half square triangles is a much less daunting proposition than a Lone Star quilt with diamonds, bias edges and inset seams.

It has a wee different look than a traditional Lone Star, but still makes a striking quilt without all the sewing anguish.  Inset seams still give me lots of quality time with the seam ripper.

This is the first quilt I did on the Pfaff Grandquilter.

Pebbles on the Lone Star.  I love quilted pebbles
but end up not doing them very often anymore
... they take such a long time.

As designed in EQ.

The squares and HST's are 4-inches finished and the
overall quilt dimensions are 68 x 93,
which washed and dried down to 63 x 87.

I find I usually get about 13% shrink once my quilts
get all their quilty puckery goodness.

In the Dogwood tree ... it's a nice quilt hanger
(when it's not raining).

One mo' picture, just because the tree fern
is looking so good this time of year, and I like the pic :}

New Life for My Grandmother's Orphan Lone Star Blocks

There were three Lone Stars in my Grandmother's suitcase of orphan blocks.  I saw a picture of a Lone Star table topper on Pinterest and thought it was so cute and decided to do table toppers with these three Lone Stars.  I think Yiayia would like the idea.

This is the first one completed.

It is a quiet little riot of Federal blues, reds and pinks.
And perfectly imperfect with one of the star points 'out of pattern'
and a little piece of make-do tan fabric.

The other two Lone Stars are indigo and white.
One is completed, the third one is a work in process.

I'm hand quilting the stars and finishing the edges
with a traditional knife or butt edge binding.

To try to keep the star points from getting too wonky,
the center pieces are all quilted first leaving the edge pieces
un-quilted when I do the knife edge bind.

Pippa Ross at her Welsh Quilt blog has a wonderful
tutorial on how to do a traditional knife edge binding.

http://welshquilts.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-sew-traditional-or-knife-edge.html

Once the interior pieces are quilted, excess batting and backing are trimmed away, the edges are folder under and pinned together.

It takes forever plus two and a half hours to do the trimming and pinning, repinning and repinning to get the star points just right.

I knew those little applique pins would come in handy one day.

The second star done.

With all my Grandmother's quilty things, I am always
prone to pondering whose shirt or dress did that fabric used to be?

My Grandmother's Suitcase of UFO's

When my Grandmother passed away, I became the caretaker of all her quilty things.  The saying is 'if walls could talk' ... but I wish that these quilt blocks could talk!

I have a suspicion that some of the things in this suitcase are from my Great Grandmother, and maybe even a Great Great Grandmother or two.  But the blocks aren't talking, and I'll never really know.

On the right is a set of pieced blocks, ready to be topped in the ducks feet pattern.  I'll post these another day.

Today I became focused on what lay beneath in the suitcase.

  

An assortment of indigo blocks.  Most are hand pieced.
Some are machine pieced. Some are poorly pieced.
Some are artfully pieced.

These and all the blocks in the pictures below are just one each's.

They were maybe left over from other projects
or
"I made this one and I don't want to make anymore"

An assortment of stars and star-ish blocks.

The lone star on the left is interesting ... the diamonds
are set in a way that they look like swallows in flight.
I don't think I've ever seen that before.

And an assortment of circle-ish blocks.

The large wagon wheel on the lower right has the brown paper
pattern pinned to it with a piece of fabric in another corner so I
think that it might be left over from a project.

I thought this little block was particularly interesting ... and
how difficult it would be to piece into a block.

Is it maybe intended to be appliqued?

And someone along the way had the same idea that I had
as I went through all these disparate little blocks ... to sew
them all together into a scrappy willy-nilly quilt.

I love the ocean waves blocks.
With indigo centers.

One of my fore-mother's loved indigo or wore a lot of indigo.

I'm sure somewhere among these blocks are
remnants of the clothing of a grand parent I never had the
chance to meet.

That is a wonderful part of old family quilts.
Chances are that indigo fabric was Grandma's old dress.

Quilting Family Treasures ... A very large Lone Star and unfinished Signature Blocks

I come from a long line of quilters.  Dad knows that three generations worked on this Lone Star quilt ... his mother, grandmother and great grandmother.  He thinks it is very possible that his great great grandmother put her hand to it too, making it a four generations quilt.

Lone Star Quilt c. 1910 - Davenport & Sprague, WA

It is stunning and it is in unused condition.  And it's huge.  It generously fits on a queen size bed which is why I think maybe it was never used ... it ended up too big for on anyone's bed at the time.

The diamonds are thumb size.  It is a marvel to contemplate the hours that went into the piecing.

Unfinished Signature Quilt Blocks c. 1930 - Davenport, WA

And then there are the signature blocks ... there are nine of them.  I'm trying to figure out who they may have been intended for and why the quilt was never finished.

Many of them are signed 'Aunt' ... Aunt Sarah in the bottom right corner is my great grandmother.  And three of the other blocks are signed by her sisters.

Their generation was gone by the early 40's but grandma kept the signed blocks neatly packed away until she passed away.  And then I became the caretaker of all her quilty things.

I hope to figure out who they signed these blocks for, but I fear the quilt was unfinished because of some sadness which I don't even really want to contemplate.

But one of these days, I will piece the signature blocks together and finish the little quilt.

Oh that I could time travel, I would surely love to meet my great grandmother and her sisters.

Yiayia's Sunbonnet Sue Quilt ... A Christmas Present

When I was 12 the girls all received Sunbonnet Sue quilts from Papou and Yiayia for Christmas.  Papou didn't have much to do with the quilts of course, except maybe taking Yiayia to Newberry's to get batting or more thread.  Yiayia never did learn how to drive.

Papou was 16 when he immigrated by himself to the US from Greece.  He worked laying railroad tracks in Idaho, got 2 nickels to rub together and opened a shoe shine stand, then got a couple more nickels and bought a small hotel and tavern.

Yiayia's family made the trip west by covered wagon in the late 1800's to homestead in Davenport, WA where they raised wheat.

They met when Yiayia stopped to have her shoes shined at Papou's shoe shine stand during one of her infrequent trips to the city.  I love their story.

Papou and Yiayia and The Cousins

I am top row middle ... the little devil child
who didn't want her picture taken

I love that each Sue is set a wee bit different ...

Some Sue's wear their hats brim up ...

... and some brim down

Some Sue's slouch ...

... and some Sue's have
I-practice-with-books-on-my-head posture

I love the old fabrics ... many are much older than the quilt.
The quilts were made in the early 60's but this bird fabric
I will guess is 30's or 40's.

But most of all, I love the little free hand embroideries on the bonnets.

Daisy ...

And how sweet is this?

A bouquet of violets ...

And a blue butterfly ... on chartreuse!

I would give anything to see Papou and Yiayia gain ... just one more day.

Update .... July 11, 2014

I added a picture of the back for Sandra ....
who wondered what the back looked like.

Very sweet to see the Sue outlines.
And this diamond quilting is what Yiayia usually
did on her quilts ... it goes fast, looks nice.