Feb 18, 2017

Organized and improv

I showed you the quilt I made for the preemie program that my kid filmed, so these are the other two that were donated at the same time, bringing my lifetime total to 5:



And this is the flannel I put on the back of them both:


For those 2 quilts, I dug into my collection of 8-patches and 4-patches and lined them up in 16-patches. They aren't totally coordinated or planned, but they work. Each square is finished at 2 inches.

I quilted straight lines on the diagonal through all the white blocks. I used Aurifil 50wt for all the piecing and quilting in colour 2600 - dove gray.

I don't have a ton of space where I live, so I am careful with my scraps. If I have leftover fabric, I tend to chop it into as big a strip I can get, of any length, and then I sort the pieces into bags. I didn't use to keep 2.5 inch pieces - I cut them into squares right away. Then, while I was at quilt camp, I sewed all those squares onto a 2.5" strip of white fabric and then cut them all apart. That gave me a stack of 2-patches. I still have some left as 4- or 8-patches. And I'll probably make more. 😊

I did a Katie Pedersen workshop last weekend (see sewkatiedid.com) - the improv class called psychedelic baby - and it was super fun. We made lots of strip-based blocks and you get basically a square shape that you then cut the diagonal block from. That gives you 4 corners of triangles that aren't part of the main quilt.

Here are my blocks all lined up for ironing:


When 4 of the diamond blocks go together, you get this sort of effect:



Then I used my 18 diamonds thusly:



And I sewed 2 of the off-cut triangles together to make squares, and I have 36 of those. I used 16 of them to make this top, using 9.5" squares:


I'll get another top out of the remaining 20 off-cut squares, and they're a little smaller. I'll play with layouts a bit tonight. I could get another 16-piece layout like above, and have 4 left for a cushion front. We'll see! 😊

The piecing for these two tops was all done with the dove gray thread as well. It's my favourite.




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