Batik Quilt Is Completed

At our fall retreat, I won a door prize that was kindly provided by Lorena. It was a basket of sewing notions and goodies, including a charm pack of batiks. Last month, I stumbled upon the charm pack in the sewing hole. I watched some YouTube videos to find inspiration to use five inch squares to make a quilt. One of them looked interesting- an inch and a half strip was cut off of each one, then the pieces were shuffled around and sewn back together. After that, a half inch was sliced off the unit to make it square. They were assembled into windmill type blocks. I didn't fancy the idea of discarding a half inch of fabric from each piece, so I contemplated a different layout that didn't have any waste. Fabric is much too expensive to be throwing it in the garbage. There was a major excavation in my batik fabric bins to find fabrics that were in the same colour family as the charm pack. The backing is muslin, but it wasn't wide enough for the quilt top. I added two rows of leftover batik segments to enlarge it. For the quilting, I tried out a free-motion woodgrain design, which I hadn't done before. The thread was Aurifil in a variegated pink/yellow/tan. I had that spool since 2012 but it never suited any of my other quilts. It worked well for this project. Now I better get busy and finish the Sasquatch quilt, it needs to be completed for our trip to the cabin in May.

Friday Finish: Ten Year Old UFO

I put the last stitches in the binding this morning. This quilt was made from a free tutorial on the Wedding Dress Blue blog. The pattern is called, "Film at Five". We are having a UFO completion challenge in our guild, this was one of the items on my list. I guess ten years from start to finish isn't too bad. :) I forgot how big this quilt was, it turned out to be queen size. I couldn't display the whole thing hanging straight on the photography frame, it went all the way to the ceiling with the bottom part resting on the floor. It's still too mucky outside to take a picture on the lawn. Normally, I don't like to use a pure white fabric for the backing, but I had a lot of it in my stash. It's good to use what we already have, considering the high cost of fabric these days. The quilting is a free-motion "Topographical Map" design.

Donation Quilt Completed

This was another variation of Potato Chip blocks. I made four giant ones, then added a different style of blocks on the top and bottom to make the quilt rectangular. The elephant print came from Thailand. Coralee's friend was there and brought fabric back to Canada. I attempted to make a flange binding by watching a YouTube video. The directions made an awfully narrow binding, I would do it differently next time. Lynda helped by sewing the binding onto the back. I thought I might have to stitch it around to the front by hand because it looked too narrow to sew by machine. The next day, I took a look at it and discovered that it could be sewn along the edge of the piping instead of in the ditch- yay! I fastened it down with Wonder Clips and sewed slowly to keep the stitches as close to the edge as possible. The backing is muslin and the quilting is simple free-motion loops. Marge insisted on being in the photos. I always wash a quilt just before I donate it to make sure there isn't any cat hair on it.

Day Three Of the February 28-March 2, 2025 Quilting Retreat

I finished the last few blocks that I was working on yesterday, then switched to a different project. These blocks are a variation of the Potato Chip block, I've been trying to do as many different configurations as possible. The Rubbermaid bin is packed with 2 1/2" X 4 1/2" pieces that I've been cutting for the past few years. Other people have their cut pieces all organized into colours neatly stacked. Not me, I have a chaotic mind. I just pluck what I want from the container and sew them together with wild abandon. I call it "Mindless Sewing". I do have a colour scheme going here- purples, blues and greens. They are going to be connected in an on point setting.

Day Two Of The February 28-March 2, 2025 Quilting Retreat

I would have accomplished more today, but one piece of fabric was cut the wrong size and the rest of it was at home. Also, I didn't cut enought of the small white squares for a block and the rest of that was also at home. Oh well. We had a great potluck lunch. Of course, I ate too much, everything was delicious. Lynda did a machine binding demo, which was excellent. A good time was had by all.