I Am Still Using Scraps

It has been a long time since I have made a posting, but I truly have been working on my scraps.

I had a dear quilting friend pass away almost two years ago, and I have received a great deal of her fabrics from her family. I have decided that I am a "topper" and need to work harder at the finishing part of the process. I love the creating of the multi-fabric designs. However, starting near the first of the year I have been working on sixty-degree designs, lots of string variations, and little else.

I started working with a Moda American Jane pattern called "Pretzel." I was intrigued with the design and was very interested in it. I had hoped for an easy strip-piecing type of assembly. No, traditional y-seam assembly was required. I instantly re-sized the design as the 2-1/2-inch strips seemed large for the variation I was working on, so I cut from 2-1/4-inch strips. Then I had to change the hexagon size. I hand-pieced the first variation, then decided to hand-quilt it, too. With my deterioration of vision and agility through the past few years, the black on black quilting may not have been the best idea. From across the room it doesn't look too bad, and the stitching doesn't show much, so after adding a binding it will be ready for the wall.

I received a box of 2-inch strips from the family of my friend, and after cutting two 6-point star variations from them I had enough red and black strips for two quilts in the Pretzel design. I made one variation that I appliqued to a background, and a second set have been appliqued to blocks.


This small lap quilt is ready to be basted for the quilting.

With another pile of the two-inch strips I cut hundreds of diamonds. I am working on two tumbling block variations, one with 9-patch blocks and one with 25-patch blocks. I have the 175 required 9-patches pieced, ready to be pieced into blocks.

I took a large pile of the scraps that I had been given and cut 2-1/2-inch diamonds, and my quilt group started piecing a tumbling blocks variation. This top is the one that is ready for quilting:


I am working on 19 other quilts with the leftovers--more cookie and milk quilts. Twelve tops will be baby quilts with a stack of the blocks in the center. The other seven are variations, each one different. Am I out of diamonds? Hardly!

I cut leftovers into strips for string variations. Longer strips are used for diagonal piecing, and short strips I stitch into spiderweb designs. These tops are ready to be basted for quilting:

It is impossible to be out of strips. There are many more string quilts coming.

Our quilt group has decided to use the Bonnie Hunter Pineapple Blossom for our retreat design for this year. Time to get out the ones I have in progress and cut the new ones I want to do. And from the leftovers from those quilts....