Mar 24, 2016

scrap happy

I went to quilt camp this past weekend. I intended to do the quilting on my round robin top but I just got it pinned. I didn't really have enough room to quilt it there. I also have no idea how I'm going to quilt it. I did get my 12-inch mini finished - I'll be sending that one to the Maritimes for a swap.
And the back is pretty cute too.
It was fun to tinker with. The paper airplanes are paper-pieced and that was really my first time doing that. Then I chopped them down and improv-pieced them back to square. I did pretty minimal quilting, but I'm happy with the jetstreams and the ghost cloud that echoes the back.

I also finished a quilt for a coworker's daughter. They have both been sick lately so I don't know when I'll get it to her, but at least it's done.
I love love love the pink stripe binding on this one. And the owls (Riley Blake) in the centre of each square are totes adorbs. I have a really cute fabric on the back that looks like inter-lined paper. There's the odd word and picture, but it's mostly blank. I don't mind if she writes on it when she's able to - I did. No label required!

At camp I also made a pair of oven mitts that you can't get your thumbs into. I'll head to the store for the Easter weekend sale and get more Insulbrite and see if I can make a better pair. I'll actually have the current set of mitts to use as a template instead of going from memory, which is sure to result in success.

I had a terrible time with cheap flannelette squares on the weekend - I made a few nine-patches and then decided that I didn't like the fabrics or the way they were going to go together. They'll be orphan blocks for a while.

Remember how I was sorting my scraps? I went a little crazy with the 2.5" squares. I decided to sew them to a 2.5" strip of Kona White, and then realized how quickly you could eat up a meter of fabric doing that.
I got 17 squares on each strip and I had about 21 strips in the end. Then I ironed the seams and opened them all up. Then I spent some time meticulously cutting them into their white-and-x sets.
 And sorting them into colour stacks and colour  families.
And then planning all the 16-patches and stacking them for sewing.
It's going to be an interesting design exercise to line up the 16-patches that can go together into a quilt. I still have 2 stacks of 2.5" squares, so I can carry on and provide more options if I need to, and I can also sock them away and wait for more scraps to be born. I'm going to do 2.5" strips instead of squares wherever I can, though. Squares are finicky.

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