Baby Blue is Ready Too

I mentioned last time that I surprised myself and managed to quilt the Strippy X baby quilt on the weekend. Well, it's now bound too so that makes two baby quilts ready to pack off.

For some reason quilting on the diagonal wasn't sitting well with me and I was going to do randomly spaced vertical lines, but in the end I went diagonal. There are double rows of quilting through the scrappy strips and then a row of stitching about an inch outside of the strips in the cream, which make for a nice 9-patch pattern.

It is backed and bound with one of the prints that I used in the strips. I was a little concerned that it might be too dull at first but it works really well. I used a cream thread and always increase my stitch length a little bit so that the stitches are pronounced without being overdone.

Often I don't get a full pic of the quilts that I finish because I don't have a great place to hang them, but with the little ones (and my handy, dandy new mini design wall!) I can get shots of the baby quilts. So here it is, all done. It's incredible that one little unassuming pile of scraps was (almost) enough to make a quilt - I love that.

The two of them together, this one and Strawberries & Cream (the pink heart on cream), make a sweet little bundle to send off to the Madonna House Gift Shop....M

Ready to Quilt

My little scrappy Strippy X is all together now and ready to be quilted and I'm more convinced than ever that making it a baby quilt rather than two table runners was the better choice.

It's made with my Sea Glass remnants so there is a definite 'family resemblance' to them but still a difference - there's more cream in this one. And you don't see it in these photos, but I've also added a cream border.

The border is deeper at the top and bottom, about 4", and about 2" on each side (you know, so that I could ever so slightly avoid that square quilt thing...). The creams throughout the blocks are a scrappy collection of mostly three tone-on-tone prints so I used one of these for the border.

Now to give some thought to how to quilt it. This one will be done on the machine so it will be fairly straightforward quilting - I still have not cracked the FMQ nut. I'm thinking of something that will follow the diagonal lines of the blocks. I'm also thinking that it will be nice to move on to a less muted colour palette...M

Back to Blues

The idea of picking up that little pile of scraps and whipping them up into something useful quickly seems to be fading, but I still want to get it finished so it was back to making Strippy X Blocks in blue and grey. I had enough blocks to make two runners three Xs long, but they didn't seem substantial enough.

So I made nine more blocks for them each of them to be five Xs long. They were fine, but I couldn't say that I was overly excited about them. When you look at them from a distance they almost look like DNA strands, don't they?

I started sewing the blocks together but there was still this nagging feeling about the whole thing. Now that I have my handy dandy design wall I decided to see if I liked them any better if they were all one piece laid out in three shorter columns. Much better.

But that meant that I'd need to make even more strippy blocks. My 'speedy' little project was taking longer and longer, but I decided that it was worth it, so I found a few blues and greys to add to what was already cut and made four more blocks.

The tutorial suggests that you sew one long strip of the scraps and just cut the lengths that you need for each block from it, but I found it easier to make strips that measured just over 9" and work from those.

So this is the final layout and I like it best (the left hand column is shorter because all of those blocks are sewn together). It's 36" x 36" and is going to be a charity baby quilt. I'm not one for square quilts but I think for a baby quilt I can make an exception. It will likely need a cream border but I'll get it together and then see if I'm right....M

Strippy Blues: X Block

Within two or three feet of my chair in the sewing room I can reach out and touch any number of WIPs. They run the gamut of incompletion, ranging from piles of leftovers all the way to 'almost finished'.

Well, there has recently been a 'laying on of hands' to the pile of blue and grey leftover strips from Sea Glass to take it to the next level. I had made four wonky Log Cabin blocks with chartreuse centres for a pillow from some of them but there are still lots left.

I have long loved this scrappy Rainbow Connection quilt from Amy at Diary of a Quilter, and the other day I came across this tutorial from Leigh at Leedle Deedle Quilts which is the same one that Amy used, so, Tutorial + Strips = New Project!

Mine will be much more muted than Amy's (though some day I want to do a bright version) and there aren't enough strips to make a quilt, so I think it will be a table runner. The blocks are 6" finished so I might do three across - I'll see what it looks like. It's relatively mindless sewing but feels so good to move through that pile. That said, I'm amazed at how long the pile is lasting. I thought I might have enough to do a cushion, i.e. four 6-inch blocks, but there will be lots more than that....M