Happy Scrappy Houses Quilt Top Finished!

The House quilt top is finished. Took a bit longer than anticipated as I made it very scrappy indeed and underestimated the amount of time it would take to cut the scraps to the required size. But what a beauty!

This is a free pattern over at Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site. My quilt comes out at 56in x 67in, a nice size for the sofa. It's one of the older patterns that I did see when I first started quilting and recently re-discovered. Definitely is a pattern that 'eats' up a lot of scraps, but will take some time to cut out and put together. In Bonnie's version the sashings are in one colour, however I quite liked the idea to make it a little bit more colourful as I already had decided on that blue border thinking that this would give it a nice, cheery contrast.

The blue border...I have had this fabric for at least 10 years! All it says on the selvage is David Textiles. Had about 2m of this, saving it for something special.

The photo really does not do it justice. It is just beautiful and I knew straight away that this was it. Funny how you just know sometimes exactly what you want to use for a particular quilt.

I had a bit of fun with this quilt, putting all sorts of characters in the windows for a bit of amusement.

The sloth, my absolute favorite

The hippo timidly looking out of the window

The piglets

The little chicks

...and many others, but I won't bore you to tears. Bit more work in terms of cutting them out, but brings a smile to my face every time I look at them. So darn cute!

I am planning to piece a backing together using some of the bigger scraps and some ugly fabrics. I did this last year for a small quilt and really enjoyed the process...like putting a jigsaw puzzle together and looks fantastic (remains to be seen for this quilt in terms of mixing in some uglies). I am determined to make this quilt entirely out of scraps and unwanted fabric.

In terms of quilting, I am thinking of doing an E2E design, however this will have to wait until I have my stationary longarm again (due to what's happening in the world, there seems to be a delay and I have no idea when I will get the new machine). The way this is going, I will have a lot of quilt tops to quilt once the machine arrives.

Next on the list is another pattern that I want to put together or maybe another fox quilt or maybe that irregular grid design...I have so many projects on my list!

Linking up to Off The Wall Fridays hosted by Nina Marie over at Creations...Quilts, Art...Whatever

Karin

Testing Times

More and more restrictions in place across Australia.

I spent most of the weekend watching the news and quilting. Finally got around to something I had been wanting to do for a long time...and that is, sewing my batting leftovers together. I did chuck a lot lot out about 2 months ago, but again have quite a selection of leftovers. I seem to keep everything!

I could use batting tape which I have used before, however that would be a bit expensive. This is only to be used for the many practice sandwiches that I do. Just to give you an idea of how much batting  is leftover from one quilt

This is about 28in square and is from the overage of the Traffic Jam quilt that I just finished. I use a three step zigzag stitch for this, but you could also just use a simple zigzag stitch. I have used this to piece together batting pieces for a quilt before and it presents absolutely no problems when quilting.

So, I spent the entire evening just rattling down batting pieces and have a whole stack of them ready to go.

I will do this from now on with all the leftovers rather than using fresh batting for the practice sandwiches. Way too much wastage going on.

Today then I continued on the Scrappy Houses quilt (see that empty space..this is where the new machine is supposed to go...still no word!)

Decided to take the scrappiness to the next level by also making the sashings all out of different fabric. A bit more work intensive but I am hoping to really reduce the stash of accumulated fabric cut offs as much as I can.

This is how far I got

I am not matching or coordinating colours because that would probably drive me insane and, of course, had a red cornerstone together with a red sashing. Very annoying but I will just leave that and sew them together as they come through the machine. Otherwise this project will become too time consuming. This is just meant as a throw for our sofas, so it will do. Planning on a very pretty dark blue border and then it will be done.

Linking up to Oh Scrap! over at Quilting is more fun than Housework to show off my progress and have a look around at what other quilters are up to.

Karin

Scrap Project

I am determined to make a dent in my scrap accumulation. It's just ridiculous how much I have got stuffed away all over the place.

So, I am working on these houses. It's a free Bonnie Hunter pattern called "Happy Scrappy Houses". Certainly not a super quick way to use up scraps, however it is effective once you get going. This is how far I got in the last few days.

I experimented a bit with the surrounds of the houses as Bonnie had given alternative measurements to do those houses without the sashings. Decided in the end to go with the sashings as I don't fancy having to deal with the almost bias edges of the blocks over the entire quilt. However left a bit more room around the houses so they float a bit and hide my sloppy squaring up of the block. I think it needs the sashing to stabilise the blocks. Initially I was tempted to go for a one-coloured sashing all over which would have meant cutting up some more fabric, however then I decided to go with whatever I have got on hand...after all, that was the idea! This will be very colourful, as the corner stones will have to be all different colours as well.

The blocks certainly 'eat up' fabric in a hurry, particularly the surrounds of the house eat up a whole chunk of fabric (I am using 2, 3in x 12in rectangle for the surrounds)...I am paying a little bit of attention to what colours I am putting together (obviously not in the first block on the left) wherever I can and try to insert a bit of a fun element in the windows just to keep me interested. The last two days have been interesting in terms of going through the scraps over and over again, sorting and trying to work out a way to speed this up. I am a very messy quilter and soon found myself working in this tiny little space on my cutting mat  Everything around me was taking up with scraps in various sizes. Today then I worked out a bit of a system of how to go about this. Sorted part of the scraps into house bodies, roofs, chimneys and doors...

...then I did non-stop strip cutting with the Accuquilt GO 2in strip cutter...and can you believe it...I remembered that I have a 2in x 3 1/2in die which is just what I need for those house bodies! I bought this for a Churn Dash quilt which is yet to eventuate. Just goes to show, like I said the other day...you forget what you have lying around when not in use.

Spent most of the day cutting out strips and shapes and working out a bit of a manageable structure where I can chain-piece whole sections of the houses in one hit, i.e.
- sew strip sets and crosscut into chimney sections (pairing the chimneys to the roof whenever possible)
- sew the roofs in bulk as this involves marking a square which will then be flipped over to become the triangle of the roof
- cut out house bodies in bulk and have them ready to go at the machine,  stitching up 3 to 4 at a time,
- have the doors cut out and ready to go,
- sort bigger strips into pile to be used for surrounds, and...
- organise my work space at least a little bit

Still working in a rather smallish space, but I feel I am now more organised to tackle this. Also can report that the white scraps are gone by half...the strip sets take up a lot of fabric.

I wonder how many houses I can stitch up before I start looking for more fabric. The surrounds of the houses will be the most difficult as you need a fair chunk of fabric...but we shall see. If nothing else, I'll get a lap quilt out of this with hopefully half of my scraps gone. I am hoping that I will be left with the smaller strings that I will then sew up into a string quilt. Also thinking about using up some uglies to piece the backing together...certainly got a stack of them where I am wondering what possessed me to buy that fabric.

How funny, this was not what I was intending to work on next actually but it certainly has gripped me...
Linking up to Quilting is more fun than Housework ‘Oh Scrap’ Linky

Karin

Scrap Project

Well, it's finally happened...I ran out of room!

Went to Ikea and bought a chest of draws to house most of my 'good' stash.  This was a bit handy as it also serves as a place for the little TV that I have in the sewing room.

As one does, I started to go through some of the other stuff that I seem to have stashed away in all sorts of containers in various places. Found an entire project from leftover blocks from a quilt made some years ago. This could be handy as a practice piece to trial some rulers on...

Have a box full of orphan blocks...am tempted to just chuck it out, but could not do it, so put it back in its place. Then I got to the strings...must say, I was getting slightly overwhelmed by then. Started sorting them into white and others.

...this is just a collection...have three more containers with various scraps. Not only that, I found several stacks of pre-cut shapes, i.e. 2 1/2in squares, some rectangle shapes, some leftover units that were sewn together...was almost like a treasure (could have used the white background in the Elizabeth Hartman patterns that I have been doing lately, rather than cutting up new fabric). By now I was definitely overwhelmed and thought that I need to make another string quilt. I did start a spiderweb quilt some years ago, however that takes a bit of effort to construct and you only use a small amount of strips at a time. I did lose my motivation for that as it is fairly time intensive. Similarly, a string quilt requires a foundation and judging from last time, it will not make a sizable dent in the strings available.

Went onto Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville website for some inspiration and came across the 'Happy Scrappy House' quilt. This was a bit like a trip down memory lane...I loved that quilt when I first saw it when I had just started quilting...had another look and decided that this was a good project to get rid of 2in strips in bulk, i.e. it will use up a longish 2in strip to make the house, some bigger pieces for the roof and the smaller white background pieces for the background. I may even get away with using bigger background pieces for the wonky surrounds. Still will have to make another string quilt out of the smaller strings, however I am hoping that the houses will 'eat up' a sizable portion of the scraps.

So, I made some houses yesterday

Very cute and yes, it does 'eat up' the longer strips to make the house in just one colour. This is helpful and should make that initial sizable dent in those strips. I will need some 42 blocks like this...if I make a few every now and then that should be achievable. I will deal with the wonky surrounds later once I see how much I have got left over. Fear not though, I have stacks of fabric stashed away (not shown here) that could be used for that and I probably still would not empty those boxes.

Here is to hoping that this could make a dent. The funny part in all of this was how difficult it was to actually chuck some stuff out...it pained me even with really small pieces to throw them out, always thinking...oh, I might use that! Well, doing all those foxes recently and also the Lemur quilt, I just have proven that you actually do not remember what you have unless it is right in front of you. I spent hours cutting out those small white background pieces for the two quilts from new white fabric when I could have just taken one of those pre-cut strips that I seem to have in abundance lying around.

Karin