Spiderwebs on my bed

Bonnie at Quiltville is having a linky party of what's on our beds.

This string spiderweb duvet cover is based on a Quiltville pattern.

I know I've shown it here before, but I love the scrappiness of it

and I thought my newer followers might like seeing it.

You can see the variety of reds in the border, since I used up what I had.

This scrappy 4-patch/16 patch is folded at the foot of the bed

 for extra warmth on cold nights.

Right now, the temperature here is hovering around freezing

so I'm nowhere near not needing a wool comforter covered with spiderwebs

and an extra quilt.

What's on your bed tonight?

Four patch decisions

I've been making scrappy four-patches from the leftovers of the 2 inch square box as a leader/ender project for the last few months. I've made about 160 of them, finishing at 3.5 inches, and they are very scrappy, using 1980s and 1990s fabrics (these are ones my mother cut years ago and then never used them.) Some have light/dark contrast, some match, and others just clash. Scrappiness at its best and worst, I suppose.

So, armed with courage from making precision blocks with Quilt Pixie at the Friday Block party, I cut into other 1980s and 1990s scraps from my mother, and made some hourglass blocks. Which layout do you prefer? Number 1 above, with alternating hourglass and four patches.

Here's Number 2, with light squares inside the dark diamonds, and showing up the dark star points.

Or layout Number 3, with the four-patches inside the dark squares, giving me an on point design?

My goal here is to get a throw or single-sized quilt top, using only scraps from stash. No yardage here, no funky current prints (see previous posts) just lights and darks and the scrappy four patches. I'm open to another path altogether. This will make quilt number 5 or 6 from that box of thousands of two inch squares. Amazing what one can do with little bits of fabric, isn't it?

It's a different arrangement again

I decided not to use either star in the little word quilt on my wall. So now I have the beginnings of a wonky star quilt in black, red and neutral, or maybe another priority hope quilt. For now, they're going into the parts drawer. Below is the final arrangement of "A different thing". It's different than my other arrangements. I made more friendship star blocks, this time with red points, and more nine patches, and threw in a few more red squares.

The red borders are on, but not the black ones. I'm sort of debating cutting off the right side so the words are more centred, or unpicking the "altogether" row and moving it to the right, but then again, the forces of inertia say no. Actually, I did unpick it after looking it this way for a couple of hours. I have a sharp, new seam ripper and I got it apart and back together in about 45 minutes. It looks much better. Right now is 36 inches wide and about 24 high without the black. I had intended to make this mostly about the words, but I decided halfway through I wanted more variety in the background, so I started sewing two inch squares together in various neutrals to make stars and nine patches. This probably won't be much fun to hand quilt because of all the seam allowances, but I'll take the needle to it anyway. If you look carefully, you can see the bottom row patches are wonky, mostly because the letters were a different height.

For those of you who are Steve Bell fans, you'll recognize the lyric.

Three funglies and a two-inch square

I've been busy in the sewing room, and I have something to show for it! In summer, I joined Tonya's and Bonnie's fungly challenge, where we used uglies, old print, novelties, and fabrics we were just tired of to make a fun and maybe ugly, but definitely interesting quilt. I started cutting 3.5 strips off of oldies and not always goodies in my stash to make these framed squares (a variation of a nine-patch) that finish at 9 inches, and after a week or so of sewing like a maniac, made 108 squares.
Here's a nine-patch of muddy pinks and blues that will finish at 33 inches for a baby quilt. The bigger one at the left finishes at 45 by 60 and is a wonky I Spy quilt made from novelties. I'll back both of these with fleece and tie them.
This is my full-sized fungly, finishing at 63 by 81. This one is a blanket for Mennonite Central Committee's refugee relief program. I'm passing it on to my mother, who will take it to her local MCC centre to finish it on their industrial machines. This one has a huge variety of prints, everything from lipsticks to robots to old calicos and very orange scenery prints. I also made some nine-patches of orphan patches to mix it up a bit.
Thanks to Bonnie and Tonya for this fun challenge. It cleared up a bunch of yardage and scraps, got me sewing in the middle of summer, and pushed my colour boundaries, since many of these colours shouldn't go together, but they do.
This is my fourth (and smallest) quilt out of the two inch square box that I've completed in 2008. This is a teeny one for the preemie set at the hospital. It's backed with minky and tied. The others included a baby quilt, a throw with wonky stars for the teacher and a full-sized quilt for my bed. I think I've sewn together at least 2,000 of these squares. No strip-piecing on any of these projects, since I inherited the squares already cut. And since I've been organizing my sewing room, I've cut dozens more, so I'm guessing I'm never going to run out of two-inch squares.

Fun, and ugly!

Turns out I have more uglies than I might care to admit, most courtesy of Mom's stash. So I decided to join Tonya and Bonnie's Fungly Challenge after all. But I don't really like sewing half square triangles, so I went for something easy and really fun, using 3 1/2 inch strips and squares. What's fun about this is how quickly they sew up, especially since I've spent most of the winter sewing together those two inch squares, or 3/4 inch strips to make letters.
Fungly enough for you? I'm realizing I need some more busy little prints to contrast with all the big ones. But a good way to use up the paper doll fabric and the robots and the farm/garden print and yes, the lipsticks. Some of these I used for making pillowcases for Christmas, othese were inherited.
And to prove that chaos reigns in my sewing area, I'm showing you a fairly tightly cropped picture of my sewing area. I can't quite bring myself to show you the whole area, but I do clean up occasionally, between projects.
I sew on a 40-year-old Elna SP, similar to my mother's Supermatic, which she bought new in 1968 and the machine I learned to sew on. This one is heavy -- 25 lbs. and will sew through almost anything. But I can't drop the feed dogs, so I haven't mastered free motion quilting yet.

Life is a field trip

Today is the last day of school, and I finished the quilt for the teacher with about 12 hours to spare. Here it is with my two sons, who each spent three years with this teacher (her name is Sid) in a multi-aged classroom, called Room 303. Since they overlapped by one year, our family had Sid as a teacher for five years. The son in the yellow is just crawling out of bed for his last day of elementary school. (In Canada, elementary school usually goes until the end of June. We start up again after Labour Day or the first weekend in September.)
I backed it with flannel, put a bamboo batting in it, and handquilted it on the diagonal through the darker squares and around the stars. I used cotton quilting thread for the borders and some of the stars, but most of it is quilted in big stitches with perle cotton and a big needle I broke several needles with it, after I learned from embroiderers one can't quilt with a chenille needle -- I was supposed to stab stitch, not load up multiple stitches. This is made up entirely of scraps, with those four patches in the nine patch blocks from the 2 inch square box, and the bigger patches from my mother's scrap pile. There's some very old prints here, but I was going for a muted effect with the nine patches, and it works. The stars are wonky a la Gwen Marston, and I used Tonya's letters for the top and bottom. In case you can't read it, it says "Life is a field trip" on the top and the bottom says "Sid, star of 303."


I think you can see some of the quilting in this picture. You can certainly see the busy little prints from the early 80s. Not my favourites, but they just blend together for the most part. I am wishing that I tea-dyed those white squares on the 9 patch on the right. Too late. This is a true scrap quilt, which is exactly what Sid has to do as a teacher every year. She takes a bunch of students who don't necessarily fit together, and by the end of the year, they're working together as a group. They're still individuals, but they've learned to respect and appreciate each other. Huge life lessons, and we're grateful we had a great elementary school teacher like her.
For those of you with eagle eyes, can you spot the Hoffman Painted Desert fabrics in here? They're all visible in the top picture of the whole quilt. There are three colourways of it (the light patches, in the words, and the border/binding fabric.) I really used a lot of old fabrics in this quilt.

What's going on my bed

Another finish, from the two-inch square box. This quilt is done, except for one edge of the binding and ready for a show next weekend in Winnipeg. It's a study in values, made totally out of the 1200 two inch squares inherited from my mother's stash, a stack of 3.5 inch squares passed along from another quilter. The only squares I cut are the larger light ones. Thanks to Mary for the inspiration for how to use the little squares -- scroll down the left side of her site for directions for a Double Four Patch. There are hundreds of different fabrics in this quilt, and I'm liking it more and more every time I look at it. It was machine quilted in an all over stipple or meander design, and I'm going to use this as my everyday quilt.

For the past 10 years or so, we've been sleeping under a handquilted Amish square within a square made by my mother as a wedding gift. I've posted pix of the miniature version which hang over the bed. It's a beautiful quilt, but its starting to show wear, so I want to rest it for a while.
I'm off to Boston for a few days of sightseeing. Any suggestions on fabric stores or quilt exhibitions not to miss?

Stars and nine patches

It's another finish from the two-inch square box! This time I used all the mediums, and went for a muted look in the four-patch nine-patches. I also used up lots of uglies from the 80s in the light print -- click for a closer look at the busy little calicos. No yardage was sacrificed for this project (OK, I did cut the borders from yardage) with most of it from the two-inch square box or other smallish pieces from the stash)and Mom's stash. It measures 45 by 63 without the narrow border, and I'm planning on adding words and names in a wider border to make it a nice throw size. This is intended for an amazing elementary school teacher we've had for the past five years, and I'm going to put her name and some of her favourite sayings around the edge. I'm going to back it with a nice flannelette and machine quilt it on the diagonal. Here's a closer look at some of the wonky stars and the background fabrics.

Back to back

This is the label which was integrated into the pieced back for my double-sized four patch made from my box of two inch squares. I concentrated on values instead of colours in this quilt, hence the name (all the squares work together to make a pattern, regardless of colour or denomination!) The back is typographical print with magic squares and numbers. I've used three colours in the back -- red, orange, and this orangey-yellow. I'll post pix of the whole thing once it is back from being quilted. This is the back of my genealogy quilt from the post below. I used up large scraps for the back, and put in the name which you see in my profile. I had hoped to piece together names of my own genealogy on the back, but ran out of time.

Also, my friend Val (ValleyP) has joined blogland. Please check out her amazing work, and her Peppermint patty quilt.

Scrappy liberated stars

I've been back to my box of two inch squares to make this scrappy stars quilt for a favourite teacher. I'm using busy calicos and other "uglies" which made it over to me from mom's stash, and I'm aiming for muted colours so the stars pop. Here's a close-up of a star, using the liberated method a la Gwen Marston.
This is meant to be a throw size, with some words around the border, and backed with flannelette so she can cuddle with it after a hard day of school. The squares are finishing at 9.5 inches.

I've layered and pinned my To Be quilt, and I'll be quilting freehand fans on it this weekend.

Two inch square finish!

So after digging through her stash, my mother found some solid blue and a multi-coloured heart print to coordinate with the pink and blue squares from that box of two inch squares. She cut and I sewed for a few hours last week and came up with this baby quilt, measuring about 40 by 47. She took it home to layer it and tie or quilt it, and it's headed for some as-yet-unknown baby. That makes two quilts from that box of two inch squares. The first one is all sewn together, and is just awaiting borders.

Using up a big box of little squares

Since Christmas, I've been sewing two-inch squares together. I "inherited" a box of thousands of squares from my mother's studio. About 20 years ago, she cut 2 inch strips off everything in her stash and made a log cabin using values, not colours. The rest she cut into 2 inch squares to make a water colour quilt. After years of not her getting to the water colour, I took the box home with me and started making this double four-patch out of darks and lights.

Above, it is laid out unsewn on my bed, and the borders of my handquilted Amish square within a square quilt (made by my mother for our wedding) are peeking out. You can see there are many, many colours in the dark squares. I also found a pile of 3 1/2 inch squares in a dark print that I used for the bigger four patch. The only squares I cut in this whole double quilt were the neutral 3 1/2 inches and some light 2 inches when I ran out. I've used up about 1,200 little squares for this project.

After that, I still had many, many squares left, so I sewed together the medium pinks and blues. This time I had to cut the bigger squares, again from my mother's stash. Right now she's looking for sashing so I can make this a crib size quilt.

This has been fun -- mindless sewing and no cutting. The biggest challenge has been finding coordinating fabrics from the 1980s and 1990s to match the busy prints in the squares. And I'm determined not to buy any new yardage to use up this old fabric.

Stay tuned for more 2 inch square projects. there's hundreds left, mostly in busy florals. Those may be a challenge.

One question: I uploaded both of these photos exactly the same way and with the same instructions, but only the second one enlarges when you click on it. Any suggestions?