Enjoying my stash

I am the kind of quilter who likes to collect great fabric.  Then someday I use it.  Once in awhile I keep it too long and no longer love it, but that is a different story.  For years I collected fabrics that would be good for baby quilts.  I had absolutely no idea how those fabrics would be used.  Last week I went to my stash to find ingredients for a baby quilt.  My eyes settled on this delightful, funky plaid:

There was enough for the background of a quilt.  I decided to pull fabrics to match the colors in the plaid.  This is what I selected:

The red on the right was perfect because it had bits of pink that matched the pink on the left.  The yellow was good because it had a lot of variation, looking bright yellow in some places and orange in others.  I chose not to include a fabric the color of the deep blue in the plaid.  It seemed too bold for what I had in mind. 

The pattern was one I'd made many times so it went together quickly.  The block are set on point.  The quilt has setting triangles.  In the past I've cut all setting triangles from the same fabric.  This is the first time for using scrappy setting triangles.  This is the finished (unquilted) top:

It's a happy quilt!

I will cut bias binding strips from the plaid.  Today I hope to find the perfect back for it.  Can't wait to see it finished.

Quilting the big ones

People often ask how to manage the bulk of a large bed size quilt on a home sewing machine.  The one I am working on now - Big ZZ - is 95" x 95".  I am still quilting the long vertical zigzags in the ditch.  I started by rolling the quilt from one side to the center zigzag.  I put it under the machine with the roll on the right and the unrolled portion to the left.  I wish I'd taken a picture at that point.  The roll seemed really big. 

After I had quilted in the ditch on both sides of one zigzag, I removed the pins from that zigzag.  Removing pins is a milestone for me.  Makes me feel encouraged.  Then I quilted the next vertical line and got to remove more pins.  Another milestone.  After I had quilted several more vertical lines and removed more pins, I started thinking the the roll was no longer so big.  More encouragement. 

This is how the quilt looks right now.

The first thing I ever read about packaging the quilt said to roll up both sides towards the center and to keep the package neat and compact as you worked.  Every time you unrolled the right side, you were supposed to roll up the left side.  I tried that, and it did not work for me.  I spent too much time and effort trying to keep the package neat.  My machine sits on top of a table so I don't have a large flat quilting surface.  It seemed like the roll on the left kept jerking the package in the wrong direction and making my quilting eratic.  Eventually I decided that it was better to keep the left side piled up so it was free to move around and less likely to get caught on the corner of my machine. 

Notice the chair pushed up to the table in the lower left corner of the picture.  That is a quilting fence.  It keeps the quilt from falling off the table and jerking the package in the wrong direction.  There are also 3 chairs pushed up to the table on the opposite side, but they are not visible in the picture.

The child in me is wondering how many more vertical lines I have to quilt before I reach the edge.  It's an are-we-there-yet thing.  The adult in me does not want to unroll the package to find out because it would require me to take it out of the machine and roll it up again.  That is not my favorite part.

Back to quilting.

Little zz and big zz

Zigzag, that is.  Little zz (17" x 22") is quilted and bound.  And very sweet.

Big zz (95" x 95") is pinned and ready to quilt.  I would be less than honest if I didn't say that I am feeling...trepidation.  It is so much larger than the projects I've worked on lately and very heavy with its 2000 pins.  I chose to pin it every two inches to keep the fabric from shifiting and hopefully to keep it nice and square.  This is how each 8" block is pinned.

The first thing I will do is (free-motion) quilt the long lines between the red/green zigzags and the lighter ones. 

Even though I am feeling that trepidation, I am also excited.  Right now I am going to prepare my machine and then get started.

This might take awhile...

Saturday morning pin emergency

I have pinned the middle 40" length of a 95" x 95" quilt.  The supply of pins is dwindling fast.  Would my supply of 1300 one-inch curved pins be enough?  The blocks are pinned very consistently with pins every 2".  I did the math.  I need 2052 pins.  YIKES! 

Time to visit my local quilt shop.  Or shops.  Whatever it takes.

Question:  How much will the quilt weigh with over 2000 pins in it?

Little blocks

How cute is this? 

The finished size is 17" x 22". Each little strip is 1" x 2".  The quilt has 188 pieces. (I'm into quilt statistics.)


I made it because I was cutting strips from fat quarters and kept ending up with a strip that wasn't wide enough for the quilt in progress.  I cut 1 1/2" strips and set them aside for later.  Later came before the other quilt was finished.  I pieced this top over the last few days.  It isn't quilted yet, but we already established that I can show works in progress (WIPs). 

So here is an idea.  Imagine that you are making the zigzag quilt for a little girl in baby quilt or larger size.  How much fun would it be to make a miniature quilt for the little girl's doll? 

I'll tell you.  It would be SO MUCH FUN.  Try it.

Disappearing zigzag

No stone will be left unturned!  I decided to try another version of the same design shown in the previous blog entry (Diagonal Zigzag - the multi-pastel quilt with the blue border).  For this new version I made all the 8" blocks the same.  The zigzag disappeared and the result was more of a basket weave. 

This is one block.

I thought this might appeal to a brand new quilter who wanted to focus on piecing and not worry about how to arrange blocks that are scrappier.  I found all but the blue fabric in my stash.  I selected the border print first.  It is from a great old Laurel Burch line called Jungle Songs.   Next I found four fabrics to go with it.  I cut enough 2 1/2" x 4 1/2" strips of each color to lay out several blocks.  I played with them for awhile to decide where each color would be placed in the block.  In the end, I liked that two warm colors went in the one direction and two cooler colors went in the other direction.  I also liked that there were floral, geometric, dotted and marbled prints in the mix.

Some baby will be happy to own this quilt.

Diagonal zigzag

It is a little out of character for me to make a whole bunch of the same quilt, but I am enjoying
1 - using fabric in my stash and
2 - making samples to (hopefully) inspire members to make baby quilts for a guild project.

There were 3 zigzag quilts posted earlier where the blocks were set on point to make a vertical zigzag.  Here are 2 variations where the blocks are not set on point, resulting in a diagonal zigzag.

The pink one has twenty-five 8" blocks.  The other has sixteen 8" blocks and a 4" border.  Both are 40" square.

I had everything for the pink one and all but the green for the othe one in my stash.  If I look real hard, I can see that I made a tiny dent in my stash.