Mid- Week finish. Easy Peasy- a charm pack, a yard of fabric and some fun!

One of my favorite go- to quick quilts is a charm pack arranged in bars and a yard of companion fabric.  It makes a great lap quilt and a nice quilty gift in a Jiffy!

I thought right away when I saw these prints from Moda's "Mixed Bag" collection it would make a great bar quilt like this.  The prints were so much fun. When I finished it,  I wished I'd bought more! 

Happy Weds!

cheers, Claire W.

Searching for Unity in a world of Orphaned Blocks?!

Being a volunteer for the guild Flea Market has it's advantages;  I often get first pick from the scraps and Orphaned blocks at only $4.00 / pound!  At that price I can afford to do a lot of experimenting!  Maybe they are leftovers blocks or blocks that did not make the cut or just the starts of an idea that did not pan-out.  What ever the case,  I see them as fun challenges. Design problems to be solved.  And when finished they make great charitable donations.

Sometimes the challenge is made easy because there are enough blocks to simply sash and sew borders and sometimes there are only 3-5 related blocks and you have to figure out how to put them together.  Sometimes unrelated blocks can be combined. They should have some commonality.  It could be Color,  type of prints, brightness, darkness etc.

Here's a bunch that I brought to the cabin to play with.

This first one was easy peasy.  It's kind of small but I'll figure some borders for it when I get home to my stash. The extra block on the right worked into the next top... 

This bunch was more of a mix, but the commonality is they are all improv blocks with a big mix of prints.  They just needed a fabric repeated here and there to tie things together.  The turquoise poke-a-dot did the trick.

It needs a border too.

This next bunch is a bit more of a stretch...The commonality is the color blue,  batiks and the blue and white stripe.

The blocks on the right are actually a rather large deconstructed "disappearing 4 patch" block.

Sometimes it's easier to cut something up than sew something together. 

After a bit of splicing and dicing and sewing back together this emerged...

Like I said this one was kind of a stretch...it kind works?!

These will all finish to about 36" x 48"  the prescribed size for Vet lap quilts.  It's a good size for these odds and ends blocks.  

Happy weekend!

Claire W.

Log Cabin in the cabin!

I posted about finishing this quilt top a while back (here).  I finished quilting it last week so's I could bring it with me to the cabin for a final audition!  I'm pleased with the fit and the look on the Murphy bed!

I  quilted the quilt very simply.  My go-to longarm equivalent of stitch-in -the-ditch, which is squiggly stitching along the seam lines.

I prefer this to an all over pattern.  I think it shows off the piecing better.

Instead of using batting and backing I used a plush blanket.  I figured it would be warmer for the winter and it makes the quilt really cuddly.

The quilting looks cool on the back too.

I finished the edge on my serger.  It makes the edge nice and tidy while putting on the binding and keeps all the plush fuzzy stuff to a minimum.

These aren't standard quilting practices but it makes a nice warm squishy Winter quilt!

Have a great week!

Cheers, Claire W.

Road Trip

We are on our way to Washington state where we have a family cabin.  The journey from Santa Cruz, CA to the Olympic Peninsula is a two day car marathon.  We generally stop somewhere in central Oregon for the night.  Last night we ended up in Eugene.   I went for a walk early this AM around the old downtown where there are lots fun shops like this antique mall.  This display particularly caught my eye.

Sometimes Antique shops are so clutter you can't see anything properly but this shop had really nice vignettes.

Of course what really drew my attention to this vignette was the quilt!

A new pattern to me.  It was quite worn but that did not detract as much as it might have because the way it was worn was so consistent it kind of created it's own secondary pattern.  all the flowers on the outside of the bouquet had once been solid red but the centers have all worn away leaving the red scalloped edges with white centers.  It was still quite charming to my eyes.  

There were some other nice quilts in the window .

This applique,  another pattern I've never seen, really unusual!

And then this T block (?) quilt that was in pretty good shape and nicely quilted. 

Oh, if only I'd had time to wait for the shop to open...  I think I could have done some damage to my pocket book!  Ah, but we had to hit the road.

Happy Trails!

Claire W.