Recycling

Hello everyone! I'm happy that I have another post for you so soon! Since I haven't had much time for sewing or crafting over the past month and a half I think I'm compensating for it now that I have time during the day.

I've been spending my mornings sewing while it's kind of cloudy and cool here. When I was unpacking my craft and quilt supplies I found the left over bits from my Over the Rainbow quilt. Basically they were a lot of strips ready to be sewn into 9-patch blocks.

So, I sewed up all of those strips into these units - 54 of them. A lot of these seams were pretty off. I had sewn all of the 9-patch rows together when I was 13 and not very experienced. So, I'm not really worrying about things coming out wonky on this quilt. Actually I'm kind of liking the effect.

To make things even more wonky, I decided I wasn't going to just use these as straight up 9-patch blocks. So, I cut them all into quarters diagonally.

And then I grouped them so all the quarters were matched up with other colors and sewed them up into blocks.

As you can see all of the points are kind of wonky. That's because the original seams were off, but I wasn't about to spend the time to pick out all of the seams I sewed together 14 years ago just so my corners would turn out. I'm thinking I'll be using this for a little beach blanket anyway, so it really won't matter. I'm actually liking the wonky bits of this. :)

Here are all 54 blocks quartered, grouped and ready for sewing. I've got 14 of them done so far, so 40 more to go. Originally I squared up all of the 9-patch blocks up to 6 inch blocks. After sewing the quarters together to make the final block, they'll measure 5 1/4 inches square. So, finished they'll be 4 3/4 inches square. I'll have to add some borders to make it big enough for a beach blanket, but I think I'll finally use up all of these bits and pieces from my Over the Rainbow quilt. I really do love recycling! :)

Happy crafting everyone!

9 Patch Table Runner

With Mother's Day coming up I knew I wanted to make something for my mother-in-law, but wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. I made her a quilt years ago for Christmas that she uses all of the time, so at least I know she likes what I make!

I was looking through my fabric stash trying to see what I could put together without making a special trip to the store. I don't have much of a stash since I try to buy just the amount of fabric that I'm going to need for specific projects.

Luckily, I had lots of little 1.5"x1.5" squares left over from the Super Mario Quilt I'm making my husband. (That project still isn't done, but you can see more here: Super Mario Quilt Project.) So I figured I could do something with those. In the end, a 9 patch table runner is what I came up with. I had just enough summer green, dark brown and white fabric left from the Mario quilt to complete the table runner. I guess it was just meant to be! I used a fat quarter that I didn't have any plans for on the back. I wanted to keep the back pretty neutral in case she wants to flip it over and have something less colorful.

I really like how the colors turned out together. If my mother-in-law puts a vase of flowers in the center of this, she could use it for pretty much any season with the right color of flowers. (I'm almost tempted to keep it for myself, but maybe I'll make another with similar colors and pattern for my own table.) I still need to wash it yet, but I've got a couple weeks before I'll be giving it to her.

For the quilting, I just kept it simple with a stitch-in-the-ditch between each 9 patch square and around the border. I hand stitched the binding on and just used up the rest of the green fabric I had on hand. So, I hope you've all got some finishes under your belt this week, and if not I'm sure you're working on some marvelous projects. I had one other project from this week which you can check out here: Pin Cushions - where I made some of those cathedral window pin cushions that are really popular now. Hope you all have a great upcoming week! Happy crafting!

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for another finish! Check out everyone else's projects there!

Finished Jelly Roll Quilt

This post includes a lot of firsts for me:

1) This is my first finished quilt of 2012! (Shouldn't have taken me so long to get to my first quilt finish!)

2) This is the first quilt I've ever made with a jelly roll - in fact the first jelly roll I've ever purchased or used!

3) This is the first quilt I've ever machine quilted!

4) This is the first quilt I've ever started and finished in the same week!

Wow, it felt really good to write all of that! :) As a brief overview, I bought the jelly roll from JoAnn Fabrics on Monday evening. I put all of the 9 patch squares together that night. Tuesday night I sewed them all together and added the borders. Wednesday I didn't work on it at all. Thursday I sewed on the binding and hand-stitched it all to secure it to the back of the quilt. This might very well be my fastest finish ever.

I'm planning on giving this quilt to my sister for watching our cats while we're gone on vacation. She'll have to deal with their rambunctiousness for a little over 2 weeks and I know they're going to drive her crazy!

I used fusible batting inside, and I LOVED it! I did pin down around the edges, but I didn't have to spend a lot of time pinning everything together to be able to quilt the top. It almost seemed too easy...almost. I stitched a large diagonal pattern onto the quilt that makes it almost look a little like argyle.

My favorite part of the quilt is the binding. I used the leftover strips from the jelly roll, so it's all different colors. I think it makes the quilt very festive. All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with this little quilt, so I think I'm going to have to make one for myself sometime. I'll be linking this up to Crazy Mom Quilts, Confessions of a Fabric Addict and AmyLouWho's Sew-n-tell so be sure to check out their other finishes of the week! Happy Crafting!

Jelly Roll!

I'll be linking up to my first WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced for today's post. This week I started my very first jelly roll project! My husband jokes that it looks like the state flag of Maryland except that there's no red in it. I'm from Wisconsin, so I have no idea what the Maryland state flag looks like. 

Back to the topic at hand...

I found this jelly roll at JoAnn Fabrics, normally $12 but with my 50% off coupon I got it for $6! (Take that Maryland!) I really liked the different fabric patterns so I decided I'd give it a try. I have seen a lot of quilts lately made with jelly rolls so I figured I would see what I could do. 

I came up with this layout of 9 patch squares. They will be 5.5 inches square when the whole quilt is sewn together, otherwise they are 6 inches square in this picture. I played around a lot with the pattern. I started off with all of the dominantly dark squares in rows and the dominantly light squares in rows and it looked too stripey, so I changed it around and ended up with the pattern in the picture. I think my camera makes the yellow and black colors stick out more than they do when you're actually looking at it. But, I kind of like the asymmetrical look of this. I didn't want it to be too patern-y. 

I did buy some additional fabric in coordinating colors/patterns for the borders. I did 3 borders, the first was cut at 3 inches wide, the second was cut at 3.5 inches wide and the third was cut at 2.5 inches wide. Right now I have the quilt completely top stitched in a diagonal pattern, so it just needs the binding attached.

I started this project on Monday, sewed the borders on and quilted it on Tuesday, and now I'm so close to finishing I can taste it! But, my husband just got home from a long business trip and has to head out again tomorrow, so I'm not turning tonight into a finish - hence the timeliness of my first WIP post! I'm hoping to get it all finished up for a Friday Finish, so stay tuned to see it all completed! Happy crafting!