Some Finished Projects

I promised to post some finished projects, and I am getting a little better about loading pictures to blogger. I am learning a little more about quilting, too, by my practicing!! Our mothers always told us that practice makes perfect, and I think of that when I am sewing and see all my imperfections! Anyhow, this is my completed baby boy quilt and I am very fond of it. I showed it at a quilt gathering on Saturday, and some people even wanted to take pictures of it! It is very simple to make and very similar to the gingham girl quilt I showed before. The backing of striped shirt material seems to go with it. All part of my stash reduction project!

Look at the quilt and not the hands and feet! DH and I need some more practice at taking quilt pictures! And, again, the red in this quilt is a cherry, Christmas red.

Here is my zigzaqg quilt, all put together, and you will see more of the red and shirt material. This one was more challenging to put together. It comes from crazymomquilts blog.

Ya gotta chop off some of the zigs or zags, whatever you want to call them, to make a straight edge. Since I don't like bias edges, I cut more of my bountiful red on the straight grain to put a border around it. And, I have kept all those zigs and zags, and will do something funky with them, you can be sure!

I have started to machine quilt this but ran out of red thread. Small wonder since I have been doing so much sewing with red!!

Ah, my musical quilt. It sat for a week or so. I went to the fabric store to find something to put on for borders and binding. I loved this green batik fabric with it and it seemed an excellent match in the flourescent lighting of Joann Fabrics. Now at home and on the camera, it seems less than perfect to me.

I also bought a yard of this brick red with gold stars, which is an excellent match even under our home lighting. If only it were musical notes instead of stars!! I am hesitant to introduce the stars to the musical quilt, but I have decided to use it as binding.

Here is the quilt, with all the blocks put together, hanging over my ironing board. I decided to put a narrow green batik border around it. The coordinating musical print that I bought in the beginning is not going to show up at all in this quilt. The design is busy enough and the green batik border seems to be just right to frame it. This will hang on the wall over our bed.

I have it made into a quilt sandwich with muslin as backing. This quilt is not part of my stash reduction project!

But this one is!! This is a dolly quilt, or called a ticker tape quilt on crazymomquilts blog. The gingham scraps from cutting the five inch squares for my baby girl quilt are a fun idea for this quilt. You just sew the raw edged pieces onto a quilt sandwich! I also did some loop-de-loop quilting between the patches to practice. It was fun to make this little quilt and my grandkids will enjoy it with the dolls when they come.

I bound it with some bias pink gingham that I had a roll of from my rug weaving days. More stash reduction!

This is the holiday hexagon, again from crazymomquilts.com. I made it two strips bigger than the pattern shows. It fits nicely in the center of our kitchen island and shares the same fabric as our crazy quilt valances and our mixer cover. I practiced my loop-de-loop free motion quilting on it.

Now, back to my autumn fabric. I had posted a table runner that I made using the fabric from our fat quarter exchange at Chat & Sew, plus a couple of pieces that I had. I had some fabric left over, so thought I would cut 5 inch squares out of it and make some disappearing nine patch blocks. Here is the table runner I came up with--it's a little long for a table runner, but we have a big dining room table, so it is fine.

I learned a couple of important lessons from this runner. 1. I did more loop-de-loop quilting on it and had lots of fun doing it. However, now that it sits on the table, it looks about as flat as a tortilla! Of course, I am using 4 oz. batting which is not super-lofty anyways. But, too much dense quilting takes away the softness. 2. There are good reasons why we put borders on quilted items, and it is not just because of looks. When I sewed the binding on, I had one area that was a little stretched because I was attaching it to a seam that was weak. Binding is easier and does a better job if you are sewing it onto an unseamed border.

I had some five inch squares left over. I sewed some of them into half-square triangle blocks and made two potholders! These also got rather stiff because of my dense ldl quilting! Usually I give potholders away (they make nice hostess gifts!) or sell them, but these went to my drawer because they are so pretty! Plus, I enjoyed putting the same squares together in a different way.

Oops, I still have two five inch squares left over. How about a pincushion? I seem to use and need lots of them since I go to a quilt group, and also sew upstairs and on the dining room table.

This little guy is rather cute.

One square left. Since the pincushion above it rather small, and I use lots of these quiting pins to sandwich quilts together, I decided to put a border around the remaining square to make it a little bigger. This is a great size---

So, that ends my autumn fabric creations. I still have a nice piece of the fall fabric strings sewn together, but I have put it on the back burner. Other things have taken my creative ideas!!

In looking over my post before publishing, I discovered that my musical quilt it at the bottom of it! I thought I had lost this picture from this posting, but here it is! It shows the narrow green binding sewn around it. Now to get it quilted!

Musical Quilt and other WIP's

I had to get some more of the striped fabric to complete my musical quilt. This time I decided to tak a picture of the fabric before I started cutting it up!

Paper plates work really well to sort out quilt pieces. These triangles have some bias edges and I want to handle them with care!

This is a great tool from Fons and Porter. Jill got this one to make her quilt and I also found mine invaluable for cutting these triangles accurately.

Now, to the sewing machine! I have pinned several of these triangles together. Making this quilt is a lot like sewing plaids. If you don't cut it out right, there is no hope of it matching when you sew it together!

And I am handling these bias seams carefully!

Some of the blocks all nicely pressed, sitting on my big board ironing board.

Then I added more triangles to the squares. These are the triangles I cut from the cross-grain of the fabric. They will make a design of their own when I put the quilt together. Then off the squares go to the WIP category. I need to get some more fabric for borders, backing, and binding.

One of the promises I made myself is that I would reduce the size of my stash. When I was weaving rugs, I bought a lot of fabric. One older woman sold me her stash of fabric, and I got boxes of cotton fabric, enough to fill the floor of a pick-up truck, for $100. She worked at Joann Fabrics, and also made, or intended to make, shirts for her husband. I much preferred polyester double-knit fabrics for my rugs, so I stored this clean, cotton-type material upstairs under a bed.

I have found several very interesting quilting blogs. One of my favorites is crazymomquilts, and I have adapted several of her patterns for my stash reduction projects. The first one is a baby girl quilt, made from the under-the-bed stash of gingham. I believe crazy mom called this fair and square. She staggered her rown, but I like my lined up, so her it is:

I actually did NOT like this quilt after I got the top sewed together. It wasn't until I quilted it that it won me over! The quilting just seemed to bring it to life!

I also used a striped fabric from the same stash for the backing. I have more of this fabric and I think I will put it with the gingham on the front for another quilt.

The next stash-reduction quilt I made is a boy's baby quilt. I used red for the sashing on this. It is actually a true red, even though the pictures show up as having an orangey tinge to it. I used the darker men's plaid for the five inch squares. Here it is as a quilt sandwich, all ready to quilt:

The next posting will show a picture of the finished quilt. I also wanted to try the zig-zag quilt pattern from crazymom's blog. Once again I used the red fabric as the main color. Here is a picture of it on the ironing board after I string-sewed it together. I have completed the sewing of it together. Next I want to put some red borders around it. Without borders, the quilt would have bias edges, which I consider a no-no. It looks like this one is also going to turn out baby-quilt size.

I am very excited to say that I have registered to go to my very first quilt retreat/camp! It is in two weeks time, and I will stay there four days! I can't wait!