slow and steady wins the race

I've come to the conclusion that there is a fine line between scrap usage and insanity. This is a line I am willing to test, repeatedly.

In my last post, I shared a quilt I made for my baby niece. When I began making the blocks, I noticed that there are a lot of triangles that are cut off as waste. And being a scrappy quilter by nature, I just couldn't relegate them to my scrap bin, to never be found again, to become distorted or to be lost.

From the get go, I decided to stitch a second seam 1/2" away from the the first seam on the edge that was to be cut away. That way, when I cut off the parts that the block no longer needed, I would already have a tiny little half square triangle block, ready to be pressed, ironed and trimmed.

I found that while some blocks could handle being trimmed to 1 1/4", it was safer to trim them all to 1". Each Shimmer block generated 24 half square triangles. And there were nine blocks total in the quilt I made, so if I just kept it up and didn't flake on this, by the end I would have as many as 216 HSTs. The thought was really exciting.

(Mini anything has always appealed and I have been itching to make a mini for my wall.)


While I stitched through my niece's quilt, I kept pondering the layout. To sash or not to sash? Single HSTs or grouped HSTs? If grouped, how big a group? If sashed, how big? Round and round I went.


I trimmed all my HSTs using my Bloc Loc ruler and about half way through, realized I could do multiple (as many as 5), at a time in one layout. (See my instagram account if interested in a video of this.) This definitely saved time and I'll be using this procedure again for sure.

Eventually, I decided on groupings of four HSTs of the same type. After sorting all my HSTs, I realized that regardless of the color of the HST, each sorted group had an amount based on a multiple of 4. And I wanted to use up all my little hard earned blocks, so groups of 4 was the way to go.

Once I decided that, I made a quick plan of doing 54 groups of 4 blocks (216 total), which would work out to a nice layout of 6 blocks by 9 blocks.

I decided on using a sashing of 1 1/4" width for in between the blocks. Each HST finished at 1/2" square, making the 4 patch block 1" square finished. The sashing between would finish at 3/4". I did an outer sashing of 2" unfinished.

I am beyond thrilled that this turned out EXACTLY as I hoped.

Now to decide on quilting...

Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for it finish it up Friday.

A Scrappy Norway Quilt

For Fall Quilt Market, Camille Roskelly of Simplify released a gorgeous quilt pattern called "Norway". I immediately added it to my "one day" list. I just love the blocks.

My initial plan had been to make it the way the pattern indicated, with each block dedicated to a fabric. But then I started thinking about a scrappy look... and that was it. Once I had it in my head, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

It all started with this block, to see if a scrappy look would work.

 And then there were two.

Then, nine.

And after a whole lot of rearranging, a quilt top!

And, since I'm not the type to let a quilt top linger, it was basted and quilted in record time (for me). I tried something new and practiced swirls with the periodic hook as a quilting design. Once I found the rhythm of it, I fell in love. It's my new favorite quilting pattern. And when the quilt has been washed and is all crinkley and gorgeous, the texture is phenomenal.

The weather hasn't cooperated lately, so I had to take what I could get for a photo shoot. I bundled up the three kids and took them for a cold, misty walk.

There is a definite advantage to having children available to hold quilts.

For the backing, I pieced yet another Norway block in grey and added two fabrics from Emmy Grace by Bari J. The darker fabric is voile and it makes for such a luscious quilt. I can't get over how soft and lightweight it is. This will be the perfect summer quilt. 

 

This is the last one, I promise. (By this point in the afternoon, the kids were hankering for hot chocolate and carrot cake.)

This has been such a fun quilt to make. I love the rainbow spectrum that I worked into it. I love that the top is made entirely of scraps. With such a grey and cold winter, a happy quilt is exactly what we needed.