After I got a huge pile of scraps from our charity quilt coordinator, I made a few more quilts in January. Here is a pattern that I found in a book called "Charm School" by Vanessa Goertzen. She called this one First Crush. Her quilt was 72" x 84", but I made mine 60" x 72".
December is the month that I like to set aside to make quilts for charity. I wrote a previous blog about 4 quilts that I made and donated to my quilt guild. Guess what? When I dropped them off with our coordinator, she asked me if I liked using scraps, and before I knew what I was saying, I said enthusiastically, "YES"!
"Oh good", she replied. "Come on in and let's go into the charity quilt set-up in my garage." One of our members had just dropped of 6 boxes - yes 6 boxes full - of scrap cotton fabric from a local manufacturer of bicycle skirts. I didn't know that bicycle skirts were made of cotton, so I tried to back out, but she quickly assured me the fabric was all cotton.
You probably know what happened next.....
A huge pile of fabric ended up sitting on my drafting table, just waiting to be made into more quilt tops. I think January will now also be a month for making quilts for charity. Hey, what else am I going to do? Everything is still shut down because of COVID-19, and we can't go and visit anybody and they can't come and visit us.
I hope you are also finding things to keep you occupied (and productive).💚
Do you have as many ideas floating around in your head as I have? I swear that I will have to live to be 100 just in order to sew up all the things that I want to make!
I have several sets of placemats that I use seasonally. My Christmas placements have a holiday theme on one side and plain red fabric on the other side, so they last through Valentines. The fall ones have a Halloween theme on one side and orange fabric on the other side, so they go from the fall through Halloween. But for much of the year, I don't have any that I have made and use store bought placemats. Not that there is anything wrong with buying them, but they are looking ratty and I wanted to make some more.
Two yards of fabric makes 4 placements. One yard is for the front, and one yard is for the back. You also need 1 yard of lightweight batting. (And material for binding.)
Cut the fabric into 4 rectangles, apx. 14" x 20" (assuming your fabric is 36" x 42").
Layer one fabric on the bottom, right side facing down, one layer of batting, and one layer of fabric, right side facing up. Quilt as you like and stitch around the outside edge. Apply binding. (I zig zagged the edges on one of the new sets, but don't recommend it as an edge finish!)
And voila! There you have 4 placements that are two sided.
Here is a set that I made for spring, showing both sides:
And here is a set that I made for summer, showing both sides:
I hope that you like them!
P.S. Here is why I didn't like the zig zag edging:
I had to steam press them and spray them with starch to get them to lay flat. Over time, I will have to do that every time they get washed too. 😕
December has traditionally been the month that I make charity quilts. Since I had a lull in the action on my quilts, I pulled out some scraps and went for it! I developed a quick and easy pattern:
And here's the first two:
This is a continuation of 4 previous posts about the making of the Bryce Canyon Shadow quilt.
The next thing that I tackled was the picture of my husband. I decided to add him in black and tones of gray so that it would stand out against the colored background. I used a similar technique that I used on a tree against a colored background a few years ago. The figure was put together using fusible web and a non-stick sheet. And of course, I forgot to take progress pictures!
After all the pieces were in place, I ironed them to fuse them together and let them cool. Then I transferred the figure to the quilted background and fused it down. The final step was to sew around all of the edges.
Sometimes, I straighten the edges on my art quilts, and sometimes I square it all up and add binding. Since the paper fabric was pretty stiff, I knew that it would be hard to turn the edges to the back. So, binding seemed to be the logical choice. Black also seemed a natural choice. Here it is all done! It measures 31" W x 45" H.
I hope you like it.
This is a continuation of 3 previous posts about the making of the Bryce Canyon Shadow Quilt.
After the pieces of "paper" fabric dried, I added more paint and tinted each section darker than the first one, until I achieved 4 tones of each colors. Then I took pictures of the pieces in monotone to make sure that I had enough difference for the pieces to show.
Now that I had all the base materials, it was time to put them together on the design wall.
I cut out sections of the pattern, pinned that to the right shade of each color, cut around the sections and spray basted them directly to the batting, which was placed underneath the full sized pattern.
After all the main pieces were placed, I cut out all of the little pieces and pasted them to the background. I don't know if I would do this again; you can barely see the little spots of color against the background, which already had plenty of variation.
I placed a piece of gray tulle on top of the background. Then I placed 3 layers of black tulle underneath the section of the shadow. I sewed around this a couple of times, then cut away the excess.
I hope that you like the progress so far.
