Funky Churn Dash Quilt Finished

By | December 11, 2019
6 Comments

I’m happy, I finished binding my churn dash quilt yesterday!

funky churn dash quilt

I love how funky it looks. That background fabric really makes it. I really wish I hadn’t run out of that material but at least I had just enough of it to make some sashing to avoid having to deal with points matching and seams nesting. The scrappy binding was done out of necessity rather than as a design feature even though it just adds to fun look!

My initial plan was to donate this quilt but it’s not going anywhere but on my chair in the living room. I’m liking it too much to give it away. 

Construction Notes

  • 12 inch finished churn dash blocks, press to centre 
  • 1.5 inch cut sashing, cut 12.5 inches long
  • 1.5 inch square cut cornerstones for the sashing – considered doing multicoloured the same colours as in the blocks not sure why I didn’t do that, probably would have looked good
  • No sashing surrounding the outside of the blocks only because there was insufficient background material 
  • scrappy binding, no piece longer than 1/2 WOF

 

 

UFO List December 1st 2019

By | December 1, 2019
4 Comments

Here are the UFO’s on my list that are still to be completed as at the beginning of December 2019. Since July I have made not too much progress,  however, I must brag that I did finish 16 UFO’s in the first half of this year.  UFOs do not include any projects started in 2019 of which there are some. 

2. Friendship Star baby quilt – COMPLETED August 17, 2019

3. Loose Star blocks – Completed Nov 30, 2019

4. Alletaire – A Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt – a few blocks need fixing and top needs to be finished

5. Halloween square pumpkin wall hanging – needs quilting

6. Cinema at 7 – Completed November 20, 2019

7. Found charm square top – top made or donated?

8 Cross and Chains – top completed

10. Too nice to cut lap quilt – top completed

11. Black and white wall hanging, finish quilting 

15 Coin Quilt – COMPLETED NOVEMBER 17, 2019

17. Purple and Green Galaxy Star – top completed

18. Grand Illusion Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt – borders need to be added

19 – The last of the ZIG ZAG Nines quilt All DONE

  • 19b) dancing nine patch blue border – Completed Nov 20, 2019
  • 19d) dancing nine patch green border – Completed Nov 23, 2019
  • 19e) zigzag 1 – COMPLETED SEPTEMBER 2019 
  • 19f) zigzag 2  – COMPLETED NOVEMBER 7 2019

20. Arizona Crossroads – top completed

21. Shannan’s Poly cotton Quilt – top to be finished

22. Black table runner – quilt or scrap 

23. Peaky and spiky quilt – top to be finished

25. Rainbow Star lap Quilt – top completed

27. Star Struck quilt (brights on black)-  COMPLETED NOV 10, 2019

30 Marc’s Gradient Quilt in 3 colours – needs fixing

31 Irish Star Quilt – borders?

32 Quilt top (not made by me) found at VV – needs quilting

35 Whirlygig –  Borders to be added?

37 Stars touching – COMPLETED NOVEMBER 8, 2019

38 Black & brights Livejournal swap quilt – top needs to be made

Starstruck is a Finish!

By | November 17, 2019
8 Comments

I’m happy that my Starstruck quilt is finally finished! About time!

This one is going on the wall in my sewing room! I just love how the colours glow against the black background! There isn’t a lot of wall space in the room as I have shelves up so I’m hoping this will just fit on the one stretch of wall that is open.

Cinema at Seven is Quilted!

By | November 3, 2019
5 Comments

Marc and I spent a few hours at our local long arm quilting studio yesterday morning quilting Cinema at Seven.

This was started in March 2016 and has been a top since April of that year. I’ve had the backing for a few years but it just never had been quilted. I was intimidated by it thinking it was bigger than it was.

It’s based on the quilt Film at Five from the Wedding Dress Blue blog. However, I changed the squares to 2 inches and added two columns and rows probably due to some insanity caused by liking teeny tiny little squares of fabric. It’s approximately the same size as the original quilt give or take a few inches just with quite a more pieces. What was I thinking?

The batting is Hobbs wool batting and it’s my first time using it. Marc insisted we purchase wool batting when he found out that wool batting is a option. He also stated that all bed quilts I make for us going forward have wool batting. I was good with that but I did stipulate he’s going have to give them the proper TLC during laundering (that’s his chore) because I don’t want my quilts felted. I quietly did a silent cheer that the expensive roll of wool batting was his idea and not mine. I’d gone to the store for a roll of Hobbs 80/20 on sale! We came home with both that day. 

Anyway, I digress,  I really do like how the wool batting shows off the quilting. We used a pantograph called Bolero. 

On today’s agenda is making binding. I’ve found some black & white fabric with very small stripes that will work well with this quilt and hope to have the binding made and applied and ready start the hand sewing to the back of the quilt before the day is over. 

Doll Quilts

By | October 27, 2019
10 Comments

A few years back I made a couple of doll quilts for friends who collect dolls.

The doll quilts were made of poly cotton therefore if you are the quilt police and disapprove of anything but 100% cotton quilts I’m afraid this post will upset you. I don’t like to mix fibre types in a quilt but I’m totally cool with an all poly cotton quilt.

And you have to admit there are some cool pillowcases and sheets from a few years ago when polycotton was all the rage for bedding, as these two doll quilts attest:

Blue Sawtooth Stars

By | October 24, 2019
4 Comments

Quite a number of years ago, how many I’m not sure, I decided I’d make 9 – 8.5″ blue sawtooth star blocks. I don’t recall making them or having a plan for them. Not surprisingly they’ve floated around the sewing room for years. 

As part of my “get old projects done” push I pulled them out along with some graph paper and said enough and let’s figure out how to make a baby quilt top out of those blocks and be done with it.  After coming up with a few layouts that involved lots of sewing and making more blocks I decided to go with the easiest of the layouts using the theory keep it simple and get it done!

I found a yellowish stain on one of the blocks – luckily a spot treatment with blue Dawn dish soap and hot water took care of that quickly because without that block I was looking at making at least one of more block. 

So the blocks got put together with some red sashing and white cornerstones. 

I love how fresh the red looks with the blues and whites.

My first try at the border I used white cornerstones:

I liked it but it just wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t until I auditioned it with blue cornerstones that I was satisfied. 

The white cornerstones in the borders have now been replaced with the blue and a medium blue fabric has been found for the binding.  

To give this baby sized quilt with US/UK colours a bit of a Canadian edge I’m hoping to use a red flannel hockey themed fabric on the back.  But until I get a chance to quilt it, it’s going into the mountain of quilt tops that need quilting.  The end of October is going to see me doing a quilting marathon and most likely learning to apply binding by machine.

Churn Dash Fun

By | October 20, 2019
9 Comments

I found some lovely fabric in my stash, that for some reason I had not used yet; “Mugungalyi” -Circle by Nutex 100% cotton www.nutex.co.nz – great quality with a lovely feel and thickness. And black and white, what could be better to use with bright scraps?

A simple churn dash block I thought would show off the fabric nicely. I had just enough fabric to make 12 blocks with enough left over to make some narrow sashing to avoid dealing with seams butting.

But what layout?

Any thoughts appreciated, I’ve still not decided, though I’m leaning towards the second one.

Purple Galaxy

By | October 17, 2019
12 Comments

Here is a picture of my Galaxy Quilt top. It’s a design by Deb Tucker.

galaxy quilt top

It was started at retreat last year and had needed the outer border put on which as you can see has finally happened. As this is a bit wider than I like to handle on my home sewing machine so I’m going to find a wide back for it and then rent time on the long arm to quilt it. 

Pennies in Rows

By | October 12, 2019
15 Comments

One of my big goals this year is getting old projects finished.

I’ve had some new starts this year (of course!) but so far I’ve managed to complete 17 projects were started prior to 2019. I’m very pleased with that and hope to get a few more done before the end of the year!

This project was started around 20 years ago when greens and pinks were still fairly big colours in decorating.

I’d sewn strips of mostly pink and light green floral fabric together. A whole box of strips of it. All of the uneven and sometimes wonky strips were trimmed to six inches wide and were of varying lengths. There was no project note in the box but I did recall thinking I’d make a coin quilt with these strips.

I went and did some image searches for coin quilts as and found a quilt called Coins on the Sidewalk made by Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation . While I didn’t copy this quilt it did inspire the setting I ended up using for my quilt.

I cut my strips sets the size of my 6″ x 12″ ruler – seeing the strips were already 6″ wide it just seemed the easiest way to go. And I cut out 2.5″ strips for sashing. Here is my quilt top before borders.

And here is the quilt top with the slightly wider outer borders.

While not finished this quilt has made it from “kit” form to the rather large “to be quilted” pile. The leftover strips that didn’t get used aren’t enough for much and will be tossed as I don’t do strip quilting at this time and don’t have the room to store them until that time when I decide to start.

Stars in the Darkening Sky

By | October 6, 2019
27 Comments

A month or two ago I started making 16 patch blocks using 2 inch squares when I should have been using 2.5″ squares of fabric. I made a lot of blocks before I realised I had made an error. 

Not a world ending problem at all though some rather pithy language did occur at the time.  Truth be told, I like sewing together little squares of fabric. I used some of the 16 patches to make my Big & LIttle Patch Quilt but what to do with the rest?

I, of course, started cruising the web to come up with ideas on what do to do with the rest of the blocks (I made a lot of the wrong blocks) and saw this quilt on the web.  It’s described as alternating sawtooth stars and uneven 9 patch blocks. 

YES, that gave me inspiration and got my creative juices going. A dark grey background, scrappy centre sawtooth stars, scrappy centre uneven 9 patch blocks and a lighter grey corner blocks for the 9 patches. Yes that would work! 

Here are my first 9 blocks:

Definite possibilities but I did not want to make this a charity baby quilt and I still had scrappy 16- patch blocks. Another row and column were added. 

I liked the size better but didn’t like the fact that the corners were different on each side. That really bothered me.  So it grew again (Why, yes I had made that many incorrect 16 patches before realising my mistake). I added another row and column and the quilt was square:

Please excuse the craptastic picture. It’s the only one I have at this size. However, at 60″ square I had the same issue I have with all 5 foot square quilts. It’s to me, a weird, not very useful size. 

So back to making 16-patch blocks (I had finally run out) and then a total of 10 more blocks, for a quilt that would finish 60″ x 84″.  That would work as a large lap quilt. Great for snuggling on the couch on cold winter days. 

Laid out on the bed I liked this much more:

And finally the sewn together quilt top: 

I’m really happy with this.  We have obligations the next few weekends that take precedence over quilting (our wedding and honeymoon) but after that  we need to find a wide backing for this and then I’m scheduling Marc and I for a few quilting sessions on the long arm machines at Whirls & Swirls  as I want this one on the couch sooner rather than later.