What I’m Working On…

It was a slower week here when it came to sewing.  You might remember that I was working to get the tulip quilt sent out…

The story on the quilt was at Carla’s of Longarm Quilting Inspirations.  Carla was working her magic.  She was periodically sending me photos.

Be still my heart…she was doing an AMAZING job.

I can’t begin to tell you how pleased I was with Carla’s work.  I highly recommend Carla.  You can find her contact info HERE.

Carla dropped the quilt off on Thursday.  I got the threads trimmed and got it squared up ready for binding…and then Friday, the family ended up at my house.  I had planned on binding the quilt Friday night but, that didn’t happen so I didn’t make Saturday’s mail as intended.  So I bound it over the weekend and the quilt is going in today’s mail.  YAHOO!!  Another quilt out the door!!

While Carla was working on the tulip quilt, I was working on… my next design for American Patchwork and Quilting.  It’s a quilt I’m calling Maker’s Market.  Sewing on this is slow going.  It takes about 20 minutes to a half-hour to make a single block.  That’s how fast it is now that I have a system.  I think I have 20 blocks or so left.  This isn’t due until April 15th so I’m doing good working towards this deadline.

If you like scrappy quilts, I think you are going to LOVE this one.  I know I sure do.

The problem with my Maker’s Market quilt, all of that had to be cleaned up and set aside so I could get the binding on the tulip quilt.

In the meantime, I ordered fabric for the sashing.  I ended up with this.

When the three oldest grandsons were here on Saturday, they were out playing in the sandbox.  I took enough time to cut out the sashing.  It was quick and being I cut at the kitchen island, I could watch the boys while I cut.  It’s so nice that they are old enough to hang out together.

After I cut that out, I finished cutting out the rest of the batik squares I needed for the squares quilt I’m planning on making.  Donna, a blog reader, had sent a pile of squares cut at 5 1/2″.  There were other batiks in the box too.  Then another blog reader sent a package at the same time that had quite a few batiks.  I ended up pulling all of that and keeping it with the intention of making a simple quilt of all squares.    I cut enough to make a 90″ x 90″ quilt.

Lots of people like to sew projects as leaders and enders.  I do too but I don’t like to use complicated blocks to do that.  The fewer pieces the better and what is less than single squares…nothing.  I use these as donation quilts.  If there is a family that needs a quilt, these are perfect.  I can imagine a teen really liking this quilt once it’s finished.

You can see by the pictures that I processed the leftover pieces as I cut.  This is always how I cut things out.  You can see in the container I have the square for the quilt.  To the far bottom left, I have a pile of “bricks” which are 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ rectangles.  I could easily design a project using them.  There are also a couple of 2 1/2″ strips, 2″ strips, 1 1/2″ strips, and a few crumb scraps.  There is some yardage there that I didn’t need to cut into.

People always ask, “how do you know what sizes of scraps to cut?”  The answer is I let the fabric decide.  In this case, I was cutting 5 1/2″ strips of fabric.  I would cut as many 5 1/2″ squares as I could from the fabric.  How many depended on if it was a fat quarter or full width of the fabric.  There was always leftover that was perfect for cutting a couple of 2 1/2″ x 4 1/2″ bricks so that’s what I cut.  Now that I have a nice little stack of them, I’ll likely try to remember that next time I’m cutting and purposely cut more of them.

People always ask how I can get so many quilts made…taking care of my leftovers as I cut a quilt is one of the answers.  Next time I go to make a batik quilt and need 1 1/2″ strips, I already have several cut.

The cut strips are all going into my scrap bins, which are organized by strip size, to join other scraps.  I just love this system.  In my previous life, I didn’t do this and wasted hoards of time and fabric.

That’s what I was up to this week.  Sorry I haven’t had a video lately.  I can’t really film many when I’m working on a project for magazines.  Soon I hope I’ll have a little break and can film something again.  Thanks to those of you who asked.  In the meantime, you can always rewatch a video or scroll through and see if you might have missed one of my videos.  You can find me on Youtube HERE.