My E-Mail Friends are a Bad Influence on Me!!

 

Years ago I got addicted to doing Dear Jane blocks and exchanging them with several email friends.  They were entirely too addictive (although they taught me a lot about quilting because they were such small blocks with so many pieces).  I ended up making about 1000 blocks, enough for several quilts and I still have about 50 I haven't used yet!  About 100 of those blocks were from another series of 30's blocks from a very obscure source!

Well, those email friends strike again as they started making "Farmer's Wife" blocks from two books, one featuring 20's blocks and one 30's blocks.  They are probably the only two books I have purchased in the past couple of years!

I used EQ8 to diagram all the blocks from both books but didn't start them when I was here last year.  I finally got a lot of unpacking done and some organization and decided it was time-- I had selected the fabric palette I was going to use last year.

These are the first five blocks I have done.  For some reason, even though I did them in the alphabetical order in the book, EQ randomly moved them around and I can't figure out the order if there is any!  So I just doing them in the order of EQ.  This one was pretty straightforward.  I am probably going to overlay part of the yellow but will decide for sure further on.

This one was a bear!  It ended up being 5 1/2 inches instead of 6 1/2 inches, thus the border.  The "grid" for it was 5 and when I did my drawing on EQ, I didn't do what I did with other grid 5 blocks which is to add the 1/2 in border all the way around.  So I ended up doing it after the fact.

This one was also a bear to do and it was much too big and then I trimmed down pieces and it became too small!  So another border!

Finally an easy one!

This was an easy one but did have 51 pieces so it took some time and a lot of ripping out as I kept sewing in the wrong directions despite my nice organization of the pieces on a piece of batting!

This is the palette I am using, many are very small scraps so it will truly be a scrap quilt.  I have just about used up one 10 in square already with the light purples.

I have got to get started quilting the many baby quilt tops I have made.  Here is another one which I haven't sewn together yet, having been distracted by the above project!  I was trying to do one block a day but ended up doing 2 each of the last two days!

What To Do With Those Pesky Scraps! A No Picture Day!

 Two years ago,  I took all my less- than-a-yard solids and solid substitutes (predominately one color pieces but have patterning) and cut them into strips.  I kept the full width (45 inches) strips separate from the ones cut from fat quarters which were only 22 inches wide.  My goal was to cut 6 of these 2 1/2 inches wide as I could then use then for borders or binding.  Usually there was some left so next I cut 2 inch strips and then cut miscellaneous sizes if there was any left after that.  I ended up with probably 50 to 100 lbs of strips sorted by color into 2 1/2 gallon bags and set into a deep box so they could stand up and not get wrinkled.  I have actually used up most of the purple strips in the 2 1/2 in length and the greens are getting more sparse!  I gave away a baggie of brown strips as down south I don't tend to use a lot of dark colors anymore.  This has made binding quilts more of a breeze as I don't have to cut the fabric.  At the time, I didn't feel this would be a good thing to do with my lively patterned fabric.  

This week I decided to take a crack at that patterned fabric and so far I have filled two trash cans with strips and pieces that are less than an inch wide or just the selvedge!  I decided to cut the fabric into 10 in squares (like layer cakes) and 5 in squares.  If there is any left, I just cut 2 1/2 strips or smaller.  There are bunches of fabric that I had used partially, some where I cut motifs out of a piece so it had lots and lots of holes.  Many of these were really nice fabrics of which I only had a quarter, half or eighth of a yard.  I cut the really nice ones into 10 in squares but only if I could get at least two 10 in squares (I use these in Delectable Mtns or just by themselves).  If there is fabric left, I cut them into 5 inch squares.  If the piece is wide enough left, I will cut smaller squares (4 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 3 1/2 inches).  If smaller than that, I just cut a 2 1/2 in strip and any left just gets stuffed into a miscellaneous bag if 1 in wide or larger.  

My reasoning for the sizes was (1) seems to be the popular sizes that are being sold online and in quilt shops and (2) I use a lot of the 2 1/2 in size which both 5 and 10 are easily divided by.  I am very very predominately a scrap quilter when doing traditional quilting and have been my whole quilting career.  My exceptions are of course my stack and whack and art quilts.  My very first quilts (applique which was my introduction to quilting) were scrap quilts, even before I had ever heard the term -- my first quilt teacher called me that when she saw my fabric selection for the sampler she was teaching!

I have emptied two plastic boxes of miscellaneous fabric leftovers!  I will have a head start on many charity quilts!  I am very very thankful to have one of those wonderful rulers with the slits in them so I can make very accurate cuts and go through several layers at a time! 

I should also note that I have a ton of black and white fabric -- I used to buy it with the intention of overdyeing it so have substantial yardage.  I make a lot of baby quilts using this fabric now so I cut the small pieces of black and white fabric into 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch pieces.  I use this in the quilts I have pictured quite a few times in my blog!  I have so much, I may decide to cut some into the 10 in squares at some later point.  I have been using quite a bit of it for backing lately as they are substantial pieces. 

Using up All the Leftover Stuff - Making Progress

 

Well, I finished the first and second of the three Baltimore Album leftovers quilt tops.  They measure about 40 x 57 and I am pleased with them!

I killed two birds with one stone here, using the leftover blocks and a lot of the leftover strip fabric I made so long ago.  I still have a bunch.  Some of my ice dyed fabric made a nice outside border!

This quilt was inspired by a quilt I saw on Facebook which used a Delectable Mountains block to make flower-like blocks.  I had this pile of 5 inch blocks cut from the leftovers of various quilts.  I have been trying to decide what to do with these blocks as they stare at me each day.  I finally decided to try the Delectable Mountain approach with these blocks, making half square triangles with the blocks and white.  Instead of cutting them in four pieces, I cut them in half. When sewn back together,  this results in blocks that are 5 inch by 4 1/2 inches.  In order to put the four together, you need to use a partial seam approach, adding a center made from a 1 inch square which finishes to 1/2 inch.  This was the tricky part but finally I figured out a way to make this happen.  Even the border is scrap as it was used in the first quilt above!  

Still Attacking the UFOs!

The beginning of another quilt which will be pretty long using these 4 leftover stack and whack blocks from very  very early on in my stack and whack history.  Have no idea where the original quilt is!

Here it is done with the blue strips from my large collection of strips.  They are darker than they appear here.  The quilt is about 40 x 65.  

I finally decided to divide up the Baltimore album leftovers into three quilts plus 3 pillows.  Each of the 3 quilts will be in this format and should be fairly long.  The ones I saved for the pillows are the fancier ones with lots of applique.  I was finding it hard to give them away in charity quits.  You can see I used more of the strips here and it was definitely a pain to cut these!

Here I was auditioning what fabrics I would use to frame these red and green blocks.  I wanted a fabric with both red and green in it and not a Christmas fabric!  I decided to go with the lowest one which is a wild abstract -- a fabric I really like but seem to have bought more than once!  I will use the red and green with the huge flowers as backing.  The tulips go back to the stash to back a smaller quilt.  

I still have to decide the fate of 3 more of these blocks.

 

Attacking the UFOs

We had a request from one of the RAFA members to contribute 6 inch square pieces to her for a charity here in Rochester called Empty Bowls where potters make bowls which are auctioned.  She is making some kind of wall hanging to go with the auction.  I utilized some very small pieces of leftover painted fabrics to make my bowls.  I had held onto these pieces, wondering what I would ever do with them as they were small and there weren't many.  Seemed like a good  use.  Each one is appliqued, batted and zig-zagged around the outside.

I decided to only use the Baltimore Album blocks instead of including the birds as they just were dwarfed.  I settled on this arrangement and then decided again to take the three more complex blocks and make pillows from them and then use the remaining 9 blocks in groups of 3, 4 or 5 to make the medallion type quilts which I have made with some of the other leftover blocks.  They follow!

Here is the first one completed.  It measures 42 x 60 inches and will be donated.  It is made up of 4 leftover stack and whack blocks and the columns are made up of fabric that I pieced, cut and recut and then never  used for any project but thought it was perfect for this.

I really liked how this one turned out!  It is made up of a runner I made to show some ladies how to do disappearing 9-patches.  I utilized a bunch of my marbled fabrics for the squares and the border is made from the huge pile of the strip yardage I made from leftover blue fabrics many years ago.

It measures 38 x 65 and I might just keep this one!  I found some perfect fabric for backing both of these quilt tops.

 

UFOs

I decided not to start any new projects for now as it would probably just be another stack and whack!  I have a box of excess blocks, UFOs, sewn together strips and other miscellaneous projects.  I did a cursory look through the box and pulled out a bunch of square blocks and some projects from long ago!

This was a runner that I did when showing a group of women how to do a disappearing 9 patch.  I didn't care for it as it was just too dark so never finished it.  I decided to incorporate it into a quilt with cuts from those huge sets of strips that I have.  Here is auditioning to see how it would look with the strips interspersed with white or off-white.  It's a go.

This was a combination of several leftover stack and whack blocks for a quilt I once completed (and I have no idea where it might be!).  I decided to combine it with some pieces that I cut up some time ago from another quilt that didn't make it.  I was going to use them in combination with some bird blocks I had bought for practically nothing from a guild member.  I will add some white and probably some solids strips to make it wide enough for a quilt.

This is my conundrum though!  I made this 40 x 40 inch top in a Nancy Crow class in 1992 -- yes 30 years ago when I found it even more difficult to leave the "block" concept in quilting.  It is made up of 25 of these blocks.  I would love to find a use for it and would donate it for a baby quilt but it may just be too ugly.  I am going to surround it with a dark border in hopes that will bring it a little bit together.  Currently it has a pale yellow border (not shown).  Is there any hope?

This was easily the most shocking discovery!  I had 13 blocks leftover from a Baltimore Album quilt started 40 years ago and finished about 5 years ago.  The 2 center blocks are the bird blocks and I think they have to go as they just look lost.  I have 2 more unfinished blocks and 1 that is slightly stained with red splotch.  I am thinking I am somehow going to resurrect two of these three and put them in the middle.  One thing I did decided, however, was to use the "quilt as you go" method to quilt this quilt.  This was a relief as I didn't want to hand quilt this one. (I did hand quilt the original).  One of the blocks is really from another class I took some time ago but it blends okay with the Baltimore Album blocks.

 

Back to the Passacaglia and of Course a New Stack and Whack

 

Well, I finally got back to the final bits of the Passacaglia sewing in the few pieces around the outside filling in areas that needed a bit more.  Then came the chore I was not at all looking forward to and had put off as long as possible.  Because I couldn't believe the pattern would have you cut off large areas that you had painstakingly pieced, I am appliquing the piece down on a dark green background which will take forever I am afraid.  But FIRST, I needed to get rid of all the paper on all of those tiny pieces that the of which the quilt is made!  I am sure they amount to 1000's.

My first step was to soak the whole thing in warm water in my bathtub.  This was particularly scary as I used a lot of dark hand dyes and sometimes I am  not as good about washing enough times as I should be and I was afraid of some serious bleeding.  I tried taking the paper pieces out kneeling by the tub but only lasted about 5 minutes.  I then grabbed a fairly large plastic box and wrung out the top as best I could and put it into the box and returned to my sewing room where I proceeded to take out the pieces.  The good news is that the glue that I used  which was Roxanne's Baste-it  worked very well.  I had used some other glue earlier and luckily had only used it on a few pieces as it did not work.  The freezer paper that I had ironed down released immediately so that was also good.  Also the dissolvable thread I had used initially also dissolved completely.  

I have probably spent a good 10 hours so far taking out paper!!  The first couple of days I did it with the wet top.  After I got out all the larger pieces,  I decided to throw the quilt into the dryer with the tiny tiny star points still mostly unpulled as they were super difficult to get out.  I was surprised that even fairly wet, it dried without too much trouble and didn't leave a bunch of paper in the dryer (which is why I didn't use the washing machine}.  I then sat in front of the tv and started trying to get the papers out of those tiny pieces (3/4 of an inch by about 3/8 inch}.  There are 100s and 100s of these pieces and I have spent at least four hours so far pulling out the papers.  I have discovered it is much much easier to pull out the dry pieces of paper and would definitely somehow dry the top if I were ever foolish enough to do this kind of quilt again.  Tweezers also help getting into those tiny areas and it is not a bad way to spend time in front of the television as it doesn't take a lot of concentration, just searching the top for the papers.  As the pieces are so small the seam allowances cover up the papers so you have to go by feel!

I found four small panels left over from a quilt  made a few years ago and decided it was time to do something with it and since I have been on a stack and whack kick, here are the blocks.

 Here is the original quilt using the panels which faced in  opposite directions!                                 

 It was a little unusual as there were only three repeats so I alternated on the hexie blocks!  For some reason I had 4 leftover panels that were all facing in the same direction which is what I used for the blocks above.  Good thing I keep my quilts on Pinterest as I couldn't find the blog entry with this quilt on it!

I had originally planned to only use the reddish orange, green and yellow but for some balance, decided to add the purple.  This was my first iteration which was okay.

For the final version, I did switch things up a bit so it is very balanced!  Because it is only 33 inches square, I will need to add some borders to make it a baby quilt.

At first, was only going to add the green and purple which was okay.

I finally decided to go with a thin strip of yellow -- I always seem to do this!

Isn't it truly amazing how different this quilt is from the original quilt using these blocks from the same panel!!