Scraps: not just for the pigs or the wood bin anymore!

Growing up on the farm, we had two kinds of scraps:  table scraps and wood scraps.  Wood scraps went into the wood bin to be used for kindling, and table scraps became dinner for the incredibly stinky pigs.  Neither kind of scrap stayed in the house for long, as you can imagine.

 

Since I began quilting, I've discovered a kind of scrap that I love to keep...fabric scraps!  Some are large, some are small, some are in the strangest shapes...none of them, however, can be tossed out.

 

 

 

This quilt (pattern source is listed here) used a layer cake (42 10" squares).  My scrap pile didn't look like much, but I kept them...mainly because they were so pretty all piled up on my table. 

 

 

I had a decent-sized pile or 1" x 10" strips and a small pile of 1.5" x 5" strips.  

 

 

The long strips became the center of my table topper.  I added a thin border of Kona Snow and then made four patches with the smaller scraps.  After offsetting the four patches with Snow, I added one last border.  A cute little table topper using some of the smallest of my scraps...now that's putting scraps to good use!







Handquilted eBay Find to Picnic Quilt

Near the end of the school year, I received an e-mail from a friend.
She explained that she'd bought a hand-stitched "funky" quilt top off of
eBay and wanted to know if I could quilt it into a picnic blanket for
her family to use.  I wasn't sure what to expect when
the box arrived.

There's a book series that I love to read.  The series is called Elm Creek Quilts, and the books
are written by Jennifer Chiaverini.  The books range from current time back to the
Civil War.  They are fiction, but the quilt history included in the story line is amazing.
When I received this quilt top and looked at the back of it, I remembered some of the history in the books....how ladies used to save every single piece of fabric that was left over after they made their clothing, their curtains, feed bags, etc....how they didn't have a "stash"...how they would gather at one house, set up the quilting frame and work together on one quilt, by hand. 

Someone spent hours, days, stitching this quilt top.  The fabrics are different colors, different textures. As I worked on it, I wondered what each piece of fabric had also become for this quilter.
Was this a shirt?  A dress?  A curtain for her home? 

I have such respect for those that hand sew, either by necessity or choice. 
I have a small hand-stitched piece that I work on here and there.
It will one day be the only quilted piece that I've ever made entirely by hand; but
it'll be a long time before it's completed.  It takes time, patience, a good set of eyes,
maybe even a massage or two.
For just a moment, I considered completing the quilting by hand....
and then I thought of the many, many wavy lines I intended to make back and forth across
the quilt and pulled out my machine.

Here we go!

Oh...my...goodness.  Do you see that little spot there where the entire quilt is
stuffed?  This is the biggest quilt I've quilted on my machine, and I believe
I've discovered it's limit!  The good thing is that I was able to combine sewing with quite the
arm workout!

6,336 inches (or 528 feet) of stitching...and it's finished!

I often go to quilt shows with my mom, and we marvel at the quilts that we see there.
But, when I get close, for me the best part is the quilting.  Even if it's just
a bunch of wavy lines, it adds such character, such depth to the quilt.
With the quilting, the backing and the binding, it doesn't look so "funky"
any more.  It looks like a quilt that will be pulled out over and over for family picnics,
that will be washed many times, that will follow three little boys from picnics, to soccer games, to the beach, to wherever they may go.

Lime Green, Black and White Chevron Quilt

When I saw this line of fabric, I fell in love with it!
No, it matches absolutely nothing in my house.
No, it's nowhere near my favorite color.
But, oh my, I'm loving this combo!

This is my second zig-zag (or chevron) quilt using this method.
I've always been intimidated by the chevron method using triangles.
I came across this technique using 3" strips (I use 2.5" strips if I'm making a baby
quilt).  Sew a strip of each together and then cut into squares.  Lay them alternating direction and they create a zig-zag pattern.

Click here for a baby-sized
grey and yellow chevron quilt.

Chevron Baby Quilt

I love to quilt.  But I do not like to make traditional quilts.  I simply do not have the patience for it, nor am I came to get my seams to meet like they are supposed to.  Mine tend to not meet up at all ~  they are kinda shy that way.  Most of my quilts are strip quilts.  However, I had to give this chevron pattern a try.  It was so fast and so easy.  And, no, not all of my seams meet as they are supposed to, but it's well hid with the thicker batting and the chevron quilting design.

~~~

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Mommy by day Crafter by night
Sew Many Ways