Scrappy Quilts Beyond Borders

Hello, friends! Today I'm sharing three little finishes for Quilts Beyond Borders, all made from my ever-growing scrap piles. This ziggedy-zaggedy one was made with 3.5" strips and squares in blues, greens, and purples. I must have been channeling Sandra since those are her signature colors! I had a hankering to use my Tri-Recs ruler and saw this block pattern...somewhere. 

If I were a better quilt blogger, I would keep meticulous notes on where I found the pattern and would share a link with you in case you wanted to try it. But alas, I'm not great at keeping track. I kinda quilt from the hip, to be honest. If I find the pattern again (I can picture it in my head!) I'll come back and link it here.

Meanwhile, here's a close up of the design. It consists of triangle-in-a-square blocks that alternate with squares, and it used lots of scraps! I quilted it with squiggly lines running along the zigs and zags, cream thread in the lights and turquoise thread in the darks.

The back is this cool fabric in the same colors that I've been holding for just the right quilt. I love it! The finished size is 42"x50", a little smaller than most QBB quilts. It will be going to a child in foster care and the compact size fits easier into a backpack.

The next quilt is this funky, scrappy herringbone design. It is made from 4.5"x12.5" strips that are pieced together using partial seams. The good news: I did keep track of where I learned this technique. It was from this video. The bad news: it was a PITA (pain in the ankle) and I can't really recommend it!

I suppose if you really LOVE partial seams, you could give it a try. But I found it kind of tedious and never did figure out a good way to iron the seams properly. That being said, it makes an interesting design and I'm glad I did it. Once. It's hard to be too unhappy with a quilt that has herds of zebras in it, right?

To quilt it, I did some rough and ready feathers that followed the back and forth shapes of the herringbone. Since the scraps were already trimmed to the 4.5" width, this blue dinosaur fabric ended up saying "hump" instead of "thump" in several places. If this ends up in the hands of a 11 year old boy, there might be snickering.

However, the backing made of pink kitties and yellow mushrooms might push it a bit too far into girlie territory. 

The last quilt is made of 2.5" squares and strips. The design is from a short quilt along by...someone. Oh, dear. I've completely lost track of whose blog it was on. I'd love to give her credit but I just can't find it again. Does it look familiar to anyone? It was another great scrap buster and went together fast and easy.

The back of this one might be more appealing to that 11 year old boy, with a truck theme. I have no idea where I got these monster truck and bright construction equipment fabrics, but aren't they fun?

Here's the entire back. Almost as scrappy as the front! The quilting is simple diagonal lines through each block, using my walking foot. The more free motion quilting I do, the less I like using the walking foot. It's sooooo much slower and causes more puckering. But for long straight lines, it is the tool of choice.

We've moved on from this dock in Virginia and are now moving south through a rather remote part of North Carolina. This will post automagically while we're probably out of internet coverage, so if you don't hear back from me for a few days after you comment, don't worry!

And speaking of comments, lately I've been getting more "no reply" commenters, which means I do not have access to your email address. That means I can't reply directly back to you when you kindly leave comments here. Cindy, you said you spotted one of your blocks in my quilt. That's so neat! I'd love to chat with you about that but I don't have your email address. Annie, you asked about how I receive mail. I wrote about that on this post, if you want to check it out. You can learn more about no-reply commenters here.

 

Other people's scrappy blocks

Once again I've been busy sewing and not so busy blogging, and it's time to play catch up! Today I want to share with you two quilts that were made with blocks that other people made. My task was to put them together and finish the quilt.

Aren't these colors pretty? Melinda stitched up the scrappy string blocks from her stash. She has some gorgeous fabrics!

Each block has the same white center strip. I set the blocks into diamond shapes.

The quilting is a simple petal shape in each diamond, using pale green thread, plus ditch stitching around the white sections.

These blocks were all donated to Covered in Love, and Kat sent them to me. She also gets donations of yardage. I thought this zigzag fabric looked good for the back.

The binding is a lime green with tiny white hearts from my own stash.

I also used that green to piece between the zigzag yardage. This allowed me to piece in the CiL label and more importantly, avoid matching all those tiny jaggedy lines!

This quilt was super fun to puzzle together. All the blocks are left over from CiL's annual red, white and blue star block donation drive.

This star is made of appliqued hearts. So pretty and clever!

Some of the blocks were odd sizes, so creative use of sashing, borders, and cornerstones was necessary.

This one reminds me of a buzz saw blade. I really like the bandana-esque fabric, too.

Kat included some larger chunks of red, white and blue that I pieced into the backing with the label. My goal is to use as many of the donated pieces as possible in Covered in Love quilts, with only the tiniest final scraps ending up in my own stash.

I put these three blocks on the back, along with a large chunk of donated yardage. If you zoom in, you can see faint blue and red stars and swirls printed on the white. This is actually the reverse side of the fabric. The front is printed in really pretty, sparkly metallic ink. However, the ink was quite rough feeling, and I decided that the smooth backside would feel better against the skin of the recipient. 

A thin red inner border, a scrappy squares outer border, and a scrappy dark blue binding complete the piece. Most of those fabrics were donated, too, with a few additions of my own.

I had so much fun putting together these quilts and the ones I wrote about last month! I told Kat she could send me her Covered in Love orphan blocks any time. She has since sent me more blocks, over 10 pounds' worth. We think there could be a dozen quilts lurking in there! More on those in another post.

Sharing my Good Fortune

This year for the first time, I participated in Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilt along, Good Fortune. I knew her quilts usually end up quite large, so I decided at the start to only make about two thirds of the blocks at each step.

I stuck with her proposed color scheme of red, orange, blue and green, with light neutral background. The blocks were fun to make and used up a lot of scraps! The full pattern calls for another fancy pieced border, but I decided to stop after the green triangles. The size was just right for one of my preferred charities.

The busy fabrics and dense blocks called for simple quilting, and I used my go-to stipple. The backing is a soft green plaid given to me by my DH's aunt. An inset piece of a green blender made it easy to sew in the required label for Quilts Beyond Borders. That's where this quilt has been donated, and other volunteers will make sure it gets into the hands of someone who needs a quilty hug.

 

This little wheelchair quilt has also been finished and donated. It will be given to someone in a nursing home in Alabama, where my friend Doris' guild does their charitable giving. The train panels were given to me by Kathleen of the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild, and all the other blocks were made as part of Sunshine's monthly block lotto.

So all I had to do was put the pieces together, find these gray and red chunks in my stash for a backing, and quilt it up. The combination of panels and prefinished blocks makes for a fast little quilt. 

I'm so fortunate to have access to so many generous friends who help me create and distribute these quilts. And how great that Bonnie Hunter shares her design talents for free each year with her mystery QALs. 

Long distance gifting

Another gifted finish to share today! This one was made for my dear friend M, who recently redecorated her family room. She asked for a medallion style quilt, and I made this 60" x 60" lap size to toss over the back of her sofa.

The design is based on a photo I found using a Google image search, which I printed out and pondered. I think it is an original design by Quiltmekiwi since she doesn't specify a pattern name or other designer. Hers is completely scrappy, which I love too!

The design is made entirely of HSTs and is quite symmetric, so once I decided on the color scheme, it was pretty straightforward. Just lots and lots and lots of HSTs in the aqua, burgundy, dusty pink and creams of M's room.

So how do you get just the right color mix to go with a room 3,000 miles away? With paint chips! While I was visiting M over Christmas, she and her daughter carefully matched paint chip strips to the rug and furniture. I took the chips back to Florida and dove into my stash. I think I got pretty close compared to the chips at the top of this photo. And as an added bonus, many of the fabrics that matched had a cat motif, and they are a kitty-loving family.

The backing is a big autumnal print with apples and flowers. I had used some of this same fabric on the back of some placemats I gave her last year, so I knew that she liked it. I didn't realized how much I had left!

The fabrics are fairly busy, so the quilting doesn't show much. I did big feathers

around the dark outer border, and a fairly tight stipple in the scrappy creams. Each aqua and dusty pink block has a geometric dot-to-dot motif stitched in variegated thread.

The overall effect is lots of nice texture, and I'm pleased with how it softened and crinkled in the wash. Most importantly, M reports that it matches perfectly and she loves it!

In other news, I was a guest blogger on the Wrap-A-Smile blog this week. Many thanks to Ann for inviting me!

Lotto blocks

My latest finish is made almost completely by other people. All these 12" finished blocks were stitched by members of the Sunshine Online Quilt Guild. The lotto blocks for the month of July were pink and green, and I won the lotto!  A big stack of pink and green goodness arrived with our next batch of mail in August. 

The idea of setting them on point entered my brain and wouldn't leave. I picked out eight that looked nice at an angle and played well together, adding some hot pink sashing and setting triangles. Zip zoom, the top was finished.

This photo shows the colors much better, bright and saturated. And that block is one of my favorites! Finishing at 36"x52" this one struck me as a good candidate for a wheelchair quilt. 36" is a nice width so the quilt doesn't get caught in the wheels. I put a green and off white plaid on the back and quilted it up with floppy feathers in pink thread. A stripey binding finishes it off.

Because of the labeling requirements of various charities, I try to decide where a piece is going before I quilt it. For instance, both Wrap A Smile and Quilts Beyond Borders want labels with their names on them sewn onto the back. That's much easier to do before quilting. My own personal labels have machine wash and dry instructions on the back, so I don't use those on quilts going to other countries. My labels get sewn into the binding, like this.

The last few days we've been skedaddling south and in the open ocean off the shore of New Jersey. Unlike our trip north, the weather has been only OK, not great. The seas are rough enough that sewing is quite difficult, which hasn't stopped me from trying! After I fell off my sewing stool, though, I decided to just stick with a bit of fabric petting and organizing. And no, I didn't hurt my body, but my pride got a bit bruised. Nothing like finding yourself on your butt, wedged under your sewing machine, for tasting a little humble pie. Mmmmm, pie.

All my panels had been hanging in my clothes closet but were a bit "out of sight, out of mind." So I opened each one up, measured the size of the subpanels, folded them consistently, and labeled them. It was fun to remind myself what I have...lots of really cute stuff! I was also surprised to see that they take up less room folded like this than they did on the hangers.

And speaking of panels, while we were still at anchor in quiet waters, I put together this little top using some bright jungle animal panels. There weren't enough of them to fill out the entire quilt, so I augmented them with crumb blocks. 

For the non-quilty readers, crumb blocks are made with really small scraps sewn together willy-nilly then trimmed into neat squares. It's fun to see glimpses of things like cupcakes in the scraps. The crumbs were already trimmed larger than the animals, so I used the black polka dot sashing to make everything neat and tidy. This one is the next to be quilted, once we're back in calm seas!

A finish and a tour

I cleaned up my studio last week and decided it was a good time to take a few photos and invite you in for a tour. A number of people have recently asked to see how I quilt on a boat. I wrote about my studio a couple of years ago here, but there have a been a few changes.



But first, the finish! This super scrappy string quilt top was pieced almost a year ago. I just recently decided to add navy borders to make it the right size for the double/full size bed in our guest stateroom. The mattress sits on a platform and is surrounded by a built in railing to keep it from moving while we are underway. I wanted the quilt to just fit inside the railing. I'm happy with how the bright yellow inner border shows along the edges.

The guest stateroom is also my quilting studio. It's pretty small, with about 2 feet on average around each side of the double bed. It's in the bow of the boat, so the room is a little triangular, narrowing significantly up near the head of the bed. I wish I could take better photos of the space, but the combination of dark wood walls, tiny (8" x 18") windows, and no way to step back for perspective makes taking pictures difficult.



The bed itself is my main work space. At the foot of the bed, it is about counter height. By adding a piece of thin plywood over the firm mattress, I have a good surface for my cutting mat and folding ironing board. I really like how I don't have to bend over to cut and iron. I also like having room for a 24"x36" mat. The iron is cordless, which is a good choice for a moving vessel. Less chance of getting tangled or caught if the boat lurches.



My Juki TL2010Q sewing machine sits on a small built in table on the starboard side of the room. The table is covered with dark brown vinyl so it's hard to see but easy to clean. It's wedged in tightly and bolted to the wall, and can be removed if we have guests. The surface of the bed acts like an extension of the table, supporting pieces as I quilt them. There's just enough room for me to sit on an adjustable stool in front of the machine, but not enough room for the stool to have a back. That's OK, I try to only spend about 20 minutes at a time sewing, then move to ironing or other activities.



Most of my tools are hanging on the wall next to the Juki for easy access. The rectangular brown basket holds the stuff I use the most often. The glass door to the right in this photo is the en suite shower, which is where I store batting in big plastic bags. There's another window in the shower, so I get a little extra light that way.



My stash is stored in every nook and cranny of the room, including inside the small attached bathroom. See the stainless steel sink? This is my scrap strings and crumbs storage area. Spray baste, starch and an extra iron are stored under the sink with the toilet paper and bottles of wine. No wasted space on a boat!



Here is the port side of the room. You can see some of the plastic storage boxes to keep out dust and salt air out of the fabric. There's a spring loaded curtain rod running between two shelves under the window to hold WIPs. More of those live on hangers behind the door and in my clothes closet. Because really, who needs more clothes?



Two of the four drawers under the bed contain ziplock bags with fabric sorted by color or theme. Equipment under the bed (the bow thruster) generates black graphite dust, so this fabric needs extra protection. Keep those ziplocks zipped!

These two larger bins on the floor next to the bed are all my yardage bigger than fat quarters. The woven basket crammed in behind that holds pieces large enough to use as backings.

 

The wall space is extremely limited because of all the doors and cabinets, but I hang up my frequently used rulers wherever there's a bit of room. 3M Command hooks work well and don't damage the woodwork. There's no way I can have a design wall, so I use the top of the queen size bed in the master stateroom.

So there you go, my little nautical studio! I love having all my quilting stuff close at hand and spend many happy hours here. It may be small and salty and constantly moving, but that gives me a built in excuse for any wobbly free motion stitching. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.