Cute Happy Cats - a finish!

 My focus for 2022 is my word “Consider”. Part of the process is to consider my stash: to go through my stash, using up yardage as well as scraps. This has been easier to do because of my thorough sort through last year when I reorganised and labelled everything.

At the beginning of the year I started to design little quilts around the contents of my box labelled Happy Blocks. Firstly I made the little quilt called “In the Nursery “ I recently showed on my blog and a couple of days ago I finished a quilt called Cute Happy Cats made from strips of cat pictures given to me several years ago by my dear Patchwork friend Win when she was downsizing in readiness for moving into Residential  Care. Win died a few years ago at the wonderful age of 104. Some of the strips I used to frame the cats were also in the Happy Blocks box so the top came together quite quickly. 

It measures 40” square and was machine quilted. A nice bright fun quilt with lots of quirky cats to look at, ideal for a Linus Project gift.

                                               

                                                     Now, a couple of Close ups of those Cute Cats:

                                       

   I used my Pumpkin fabric for the backing and a cream coloured fabric for the sashing and binding.

Splashing out the pink

I finished hand sewing the binding on this baby quilt yesterday and have started embroidering the label. I'm gifting it to my cousin's granddaughter born on 20th November.  Baby's name is Margot Emily- a very pretty name, I think.
I loved making the quilt, all made from stash.  Four patch blocks using Crumb Blocks from blocks stashed in a big tin and 4" squares cut from favourite scraps.
The sashing, outer border and backing is a piece of fabric I bought a couple of years ago in New Zealand.  It was a bargain from Spotlight. I love the colours in the fabric- the way the pinks, oranges, blues and turquoises splash across the fabric is delightful. Reminds me of Jason Pollock pictures. So the title of the quilt came to me straight away.
Splashing out the pink!

Sorting out my NZ stash

As we have sold our NZ house I am sorting out all our belongings ( not too many, thankfully!) and that includes my sewing things.
Last year I made a conscious effort to use up old scraps so when I got out my stash yesterday it looked like this:

A cabin bag of larger pieces ( not yards, just pieces left over from backings etc)

And packs of completed Crumb Blocks, 4" and 4.5" sizes, packs of scrap squares of varying sizes, a small jar of buttons ( although I have since found a larger jar and lots of loose ones!) and a tin of embroidery flosses.  I also have the usual cutting mat, rotary cutter, rulers, sewing kit, threads and so on.

 

I also have a large pack of 5" Liberty-style squares. Not really my taste, too pale and flimsy:

 

And a pack of Fat Quarters:

As I love making Scrap Quilts and over the years I have enjoyed looking at so many lovely RSC photos I decided to make up kits for 5" String blocks (each one in a set colour: blue, red, pink etc), Twinkler Blocks, again in a set colour with the same cream muslin star, 9 patches using 2.5" squares, and perhaps some strips of joined rectangles I can use in a Coin Quilt.

So I have been busy ironing scraps and cutting as efficiently as I can into the sizes of strips and squares needed for these projects.  Now I am all set to go to the various Patchwork meetings I will attend whilst I'm here in NZ.  I belong to two groups so I hope to sew a lot of scraps up into useful blocks, perhaps even a little quilt?

As I write this post I am smiling at the reactions of me bothering to use up such small quantities of fabric! I know from reading many blogs that so many folk have huge stashes and mine - including my one back home in the UK - must seem so tiny! However as a post WWII child I was brought up on the Make Do and Mend school of thought so I hate to waste anything. If I can make some useful blocks I shall be pleased.

I'll keep you posted!

 

 

Creative Use of Stash

As I have been trying to get my stash in order for several years, making loads of Scrap Quilts, cutting up smaller pieces into squares and strips I wholly empathised with Bonnie Hunter's blog post that she wrote a couple of days ago.

As you might imagine the amount of fabric I own and am dealing with is a mere 'drop in the ocean' compared to Bonnie's!  I gazed in awe and wonder at her filing shelves of see-through plastic shoe boxes containing FQs, sorted into colours, one or more box for each colour collection. She even had enough FQs to differentiate between the shades of pinks etc.

But of course Bonnie is a designer, teacher and prolific maker of HUGE quilts whereas I quilt as a hobby, making quilts for family and friends, the local hospital and good causes. I don't have a huge basement as a studio either, just a small bedroom that belonged to my son.

But, I do have a chest of drawers full of fabrics, a bookcase holding books and plastic boxes of threads, ribbons, embroidery floss, tins and jars of buttons, plastic bags and boxes of strips and squares of various sizes, a big box of batting off-cuts and bags of larger pieces of batting, three bags of strips, and tins of small scraps of fabric to use for making Crumb Blocks.  A lot for me to keep on top of and to keep moving from stash to finished quilt.

Very conscious that I need to use up some of this stash, I have been concentrating on using some of the pieces of fabric I re-discovered in my recent Big Sort Out.

I found a lovely Noah's Ark panel - bought so long ago I had completely forgotten I owned it and can't even remember where I bought it.  So, before it got buried again I decided to USE IT UP!  As I sorted I gathered together fabrics, squares and strips that I thought would blend with the panel colours.  Quite an unusual combination of muted colours but I found plenty to make a Boy Baby Quilt.  This morning I managed to use more from that fabric collection to make a pieced backing and it is now sandwiched ready for hand  quilting with a variegated yellow and olive green Perle cotton.

Every single part of this quilt was what I had squirreled away in my Sewing Room and I am pleased with the result.  Even more pleased that this quilt completely uses up stash that has been lying around for far too long.  Of course by the time I trim the quilt for binding I will create yet more scraps and strings which will go back into my stash.  You can't win, can you?

Here's the quilt:

 

And here's the pieced backing:

 

Of course there is another ulterior reason for my Big Sort Out. From 6th - 9th August it is the large Festival of Quilts Show at Birmingham's NEC.  I will be going on three of the days as there is far too much to fit into one visit. On the Friday I will be taking my sister with me so that's a nice opportunity for us to spend quality time together.  There are vendors galore and now I know what stash I have I know where the gaps are: batting, neutral fabrics ( 1/2 metres and FQs ), large pieces of green, yellow and blue fabrics, especially for backings and some solids.  Good job I am making more than one visit so I can carry everything home with me!

Happy sewing!

 

 

The importance of labelling stash

I have always liked to label things so I know exactly what is in bags and boxes. Saves so much time and effort fruitlessly looking for things.

About three years ago I sorted out my Sewing Room, labelling drawers and boxes so I knew where everything was.  But then I did loads more projects and everything got mixed up again. 

During my recent "Spring clean" I came upon lots of labelled packs, fabrics I had gathered together for future projects etc.  Amongst those I found this pack of strips ready to be made into a backing, I had even slipped a little note inside the pack with the dimensions it would end up as and a little sketch of the order in which to join the strips!

 

The strips all needed a good press because they had been folded away in the plastic bag for years!

 

 

But I pressed them, sewed them up and made just the right sized backing for another Boy Cot quilt I put together last week.  More stash used up.

 

The quilt is sandwiched and ready for me to start hand quilting tomorrow when I am at my Patchwork Group meeting.  The quilt has used up scraps from my stash too.

 

So, my tip is "Label your stash"!

 

Elephants on Parade - a Finish!

I finished my baby boy quilt, Elephants on Parade.

Here it is:

 

And a close up of some of the blocks:

 

 

I am so pleased with this quilt.  Such lovely 'cool' colours, all found in my stash to compliment the elephant Fat Quarter I found.

 

Then I used this pale green with lemon spots fabric for a backing - I literally had just enough for the quilt backing!

 

 

It's not the same shade of green as the fabrics in the front of the quilt but is somewhere between the green and turquoises in those fabrics so, in my eyes anyway, it works. The lemon dots tie in with the lemon stars in 4 of the charm square patches.

 

The batting was a piece I had in my stash of remnants.

 

The hand quilting is a mixture of deep turquoise Quilting thread in the ditch between the blocks and in the sashing joins and a variegated turquoise Perle cotton larger stitch around the appliqued hearts and in the sashing.

 

So, another finish for 2015 and a baby Boy quilt to add to my stash of completed quilts.

All of the fabrics and the batting and threads were from my stash so nothing bought especially for this project.