Yo-Yo's!

I'm Coordinator of the "Bargain Garden" aka Flea Market for my local guild's Quilt Fair this year.  As such a lot of interesting things (and fabric, teehee!) pass through my hands on the way to the storage locker.  I never really considered making or purchasing a vintage example of a Yo-Yo style bed cover but this one got my attention

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 It is a wonderful example of a Yo-Yo bed topper!  It's still a scrappy 40's style but the checkerboard design provides some over all continuity and focus to the scraps. Setting the blocks on point and sashed by the diagonal blue lines adds a dynamic element making the over all appearance more interesting.

These bed toppers are often pretty worn out because of the structural challenges that yo-yo's have but this example is in great shape!

I was tempted  to put in an offer on this lovely but I already have more vintage stuff than I can adequately store.  I think I will offer it to the Live Auction committee as they have a better venue for getting the best price on good quality vintage items.  I've also toyed with the idea of putting it on ebay.  (we'll see if I can get that organized, lol)

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope the rest of your Holiday Season is filled with lots of fun and love!
Cheers, CW

PVQA November BOM 2016

This month's BOM has a Winter Theme.  Two-fabric quilt tops are not usually my thing but this indigo snowman fab with the Kona white seemed like a nice seasonal choice!

 My first sample blocks used background fab that was tooooo busy (see last post). The secondary pattern in the corners really got lost, but with these two fabs in the block the pattern really  stands out!

This block is kind of a variation of a "disappearing nine patch".  You sew some squares together and then cut and re-sew.  But in this case first you sew two large HST's,  instead of a nine patch.

                                                                  Cut 2- 10" squares.

Place the squares right sides together, press, draw a line diagonally, put a pin on either side of the line and sew like you would for any HST. 

Cut on the diagonal line. Press toward the dark fab.  Orient the HST as in the picture below and cut a 2" strip from the right side and then a 2" strip from the left side.

Cut a 2" HST from each of these resulting strips.

From the remaining rectangle cut a 2" strip from each side.  

All the pieces should look like this: 

Switch the strips around so that they match the picture below!  And ta da!  You have all the pieces you need to make the block!

Sew the HST's to the long strips and press toward the long strips. Sew the short strips to each side of the center and press away from the center.

Sew the long seams on either side of the center, leaving any excess to stick out as shown below.

Press to the outside edge. Trim off the dog ears and excess tabs.  The block should measure just a hair over 8.5"

So easy and fun!!

And there are so many different ways you can arrange the blocks!

Playing with layouts is so much fun!!

Have a great week!!

Cheers, Claire W.

Rainy weather allows for a lot of sewing!!

We spent almost two weeks at our cabin last month.  It was really nice but it did rain most days.
I brought a variety of fabrics so's to have flexibility in projects depending on my mood...
After the fun I had with the Halloween O's blocks made from 10" layer cake fabs ( read about that here)  I decided to try the O's in some vintage layer cake fabs.  I figured the layer cakes would provide a lot of variety without having to lug a boat full of fabrics on vacation. 

 These blocks are fun and easy to make but at 8" I've still got a ways to go before I have enough for a bed sized quilt.  And I did find that the colors in the layer cakes only went so far, so back to my stash I must go!

After the vintage fun wore off I switched to this Dr. Seuss Fabrics.  Again I relied  on a charm packet  to give me some portable variety and with two yards of grey I whipped up a kid quilt.  These fabrics are so cute!! 

 Now back to the vintage fabrics I used  some of the 10" squares to make these blocks.  It was kind of an experiment kind of like  disappearing nine patch block.  I think this method might be the BOM for Nov. so I will post that next week.  It was fun but the background fab is to busy to show off the interesting geometry of the block.  Higher contrast is needed to make the pattern work...

As a third alternate fab source I brought my basket of Batik scraps.  I had fun resorting the basket and decided on an easy monochrome color scheme of greens...

This is as far as I got on that, but then I grabbed all the browns and quick made this small lap quilt.

The quilt project for wheel chair bound vets asks for quilts that are 36" x 48".  I had just enough brown scraps to make this.  Nothing fancy but it will make a nice lap quilt.

Funny thing is...after all that intensive sewing I've been home almost 2 weeks and I've hardly sewn a stitch!  I guess I'm waiting for it to rain?!

Have a Great week!

Cheers, CW

Three For the Road

I managed to deliver 3 Charitable quilts to the hospice program yesterday!  The quilts were all in varying stages of completion.  Sometimes just getting myself to snip off all the loose threads on the back or put a binding on is all that they need to be on their way but I just don't have the umph to get it done.  I have not actually kept track but I think a lot of my quilts wait longer for bindings than piecing or quilting?!

I think I actually posted a pic of this quilt a couple of years ago after I finished quilting it and then it sat around for another year or so before I got the binding on.

Below is the back.  I'm really trying to use large chunks of stash fabric to make backs.  Part of what my friend Randy calls a "Stash reduction program"! 

This pinky soft quilt is actually an Irish chain layout tho' you can hardly tell. So much for low 

volume contrast! 

                                            But I did like the way the quilting turned out!

Another pieced back.  Lord knows how long I've had that floral fab?!

This last quilt was actually an orphaned project.  The star blocks came to me all sewn together.  All I had to do was sew some borders on and quilt.  Easy peasy!

I like the way the quilting came out on this one too!

I like to try and make 8- 12 charitable quilts a year.  This bunch brings me up to 6 so I've got a ways to go, but I've got quite a few tops made so I still might reach my goal!! 

 If I can just get off my duff!! 

LOL!

Have a wonderful weekend!

And since I'm so happy with my finishes I'm linking up with Can I Get A Whoop Whoop! Link button is on the top right of the post!

Cheers, CW

The Imposter revealed!

Here is the block before assembly (just so you know I'm not trying to pull a fast one, lol).

You will find the block in the 1st column, 4th row position in the layout.

Two people guessed this block, Nancy and Mami, congrates, to you!  "Well Spotted" as they say on Safari!  And thanks to all who made a guess and left comments!  

My aim in using these fabrics was to make the block as innocuous as possible and use fabrics that I had on hand.  The tan stripe was a pretty good match to one of the fabrics in 3 of the blocks. The shirting fabric (which came from an old shirt)  seamed a better match than any of the vintage shirting fabs in my stash.   It did seam a bit bright but there are lots of other bright fabs in the original so I did not think that would make it stand out more than some others.  I might Tea dye it to tone it down and further camouflage it?

Now the trick will be finding some appropriate border fabric?!  I want it to be big enough to use as a bed topper.  At present it would only be about 45" square.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for playing "Find the Imposter"!

Cheers, CW

Find the imposter!

A couple of weeks ago I posted some pix of these blocks gifted to me by a friend.  All I needed was one more block to make this layout.  So I dug deep into my vintage stash to find two fabrics to use for that one block.  i did not have anything that would yield an exact copy of any of the blocks but I wanted to catch the flavor of the other blocks. Can you find the imposter?  It was a fun exercise and I hand pieced the block to be authentic to the original blocks that are all hand pieced.  Of course that was not to difficult since I only had one block to make!! lol

I'll post the answer next time...

Have a great week!

Cheers, CW

Update on the August BOM

I thought the August BOM was so much fun and easy to make I just kept making them!  I saw this block set somewhere on the Internet using a similar kind of block and thought it would look great using these blocks!

This quilt is so scrap-o-licious I thought it would be good to hook up with Scraptastic Tuesday.  Link is to the right!

  Here's a little display of the blocks that were turned in at the Sept. general meeting!  There were a total of 82 blocks!!   With that many blocks we had two Winners!

With 41 blocks you could easily have enough for a full lap quilt right off the bat!   If I've peaked your curiosity here's the link back to the instructions here. 

                                                 Happy Weekend! Cheers, Claire W.