New Project Santa

Santa Claus is coming. Santa and Child pattern from Doggone Quilts.com

Its amazing how a little Christmas music gets my fingers working a little faster.

If you loved playing with paper dolls and puzzles you will love making a Doggone Quilts pattern. It is lots of tracing, cutting and fusing. It works best to trace a small part of the quilt at one time, like all of the cow then fuse to selected fabrics, cut, reassemble and fuse to the backing otherwise it is completely overwhelming keeping track of all those pieces.

I took a few liberties with the pattern and changed the bows so the tails were straight. My sky fabric had stars so I just cut one star and straightened the rays so they shine on the Christ Child.

 I used a Dutch Wax print that my mother bought me when my parents were in the Netherlands at least 15 years ago for the blanket around the baby.Every time I pulled this fabric out of the stash I puzzled over how to use it. To fussy cut it would waste so much fabric in any shape other than hexagons and to cut hexagons and sew them back together seemed redundant so there it sat. You can see I carefully cut the blanket parts from the edges so I wouldn't waste fabric. It was the logical choice for the border. I added a narrow accent strip of gold because it needed a little spacer. Now to machine quilt around all those little parts.

Happy Quilting,
Ann

End of the Scrap Pile

Log Cabin

private collection

This Log Cabin quilt is made entirely of leftovers from previous quilts and backing. The center squares are different sizes, the logs around are varying widths. When I thought the blocks were big enough I  squared and trimmed them all to the same size.

Most of the fabrics are woven plaids and stripes  a few are printed stripes and plaids.

The only thing more fun than buying new fabric is using is all up but I frequently wish I had a little more because I have the perfect place for it in the next quilt. Then I have to go fabric shopping again its a vicious circle!
I did run out of cut strips for some of these quilts and had to dig in my stash to find someting that would work. That is all part of the challenge and charm of scrap quilts. Making due just like Grandma. I miss my Grandmas.


Happy Quilting,
Ann

Scrap Pile VI

Buzz Saw is all plaids and stripes, mostly homespuns.

private collection

Large half square triangles were sewn together then 2 1/2 inch strip were cut from the half squares. The strips were rearranged in reverse order then sewn back together with the addition of another 2 1/2 inch strip to make it square again.

The buzz saws just called for sun faces and mandala designs in the quilting.

No two buzz saws are quilted the same.

quilting on the back

private collection

chalk lines for quilting the sun faces

Another version of the Buzz Saw because I cut twice as many squares for HST as I needed.  I goofed on this quilt big time. I learned you have to pay attention to how you place the HST on the cutting board. All diagonals need to be the same upper left to lower right and always cut vertically. I cut my second group of 4 HST horizontally so my spin was opposite the first buzz saw, then the smaller "buzz saw" became a horizontal arrangement or a vertical. I had to repeat my mistake so it would be symmetrical. And the funny thing is this was the second quilt. The first quilt was easy because I
read and followed  the directions. I tried to do the second quilt from memory a couple years later and oops!!!!!





Learning from my mistakes,
Ann

scrap pile V

Log Cabin Spools is made with scrappy log cabin blocks with triangles sewn to each corner to create the spools. The spools were all made from the same fabric for unity.

The pattern is from Kim Diehl's book Simple Blessings, she calls it buttons and bows and has a button sewn in the center of each log cabin.

This quilt has found a permanent home on my dining room wall and yes that is another quilt on the table and we do eat on it. My kids used their nice table manners when the table was set nice or maybe the quilt just muffled a lot of the noise. The quilt on the wall also softens the noise.

Happy Dining,

Ann

Scrap Pile IV

Hopscotch and Stars

sold on Etsy

Hopscotch and Stars is the same block as Hopscotch and Butterscotch. The sashing is narrower so the cornerstones are smaller. Dark Blue cornerstones are placed with all the four patches and warm colored cornerstones are placed with the triangles. The intersecting triangles are not all the same color so the design pattern is not as strong as in Butterscotch and Hopscotch.

A third design emerges as the inside triangles are matched for color and value. Do you see the stars? Some are very subtle.

Happy Quilting,
Ann

Scrap Pile III

Hopscotch and Butterscotch

Hopscotch and Butterscotch consists of two 4 patchs and two half square triangles. I have seen it in books and magazines called the jewel box or variation of a Jacob's ladder.

 The sashing and cornerstones make a secondary pattern frequently called the shoofly, churn dash or hole-in-the-barn-door block. Quilting is folkart and the names of blocks were made up by plain folks so there are many names for almost every block.

I places a dark blue cornerstone where the 4-patches intesect for continuity of the strong diagonal movement. I placed and orange or red cornerstones where the triangles meet to call your attention to the shoofly.  A few butterflies flit across the quilt where the inside triangles meet.

This is where I'll be snuggled up when the cold winds blow.

Happy Quilting,
Ann

Scrap pile II

Twilight Stars consists of a courthouse steps block, a variation of the log cabin block and the evening star block which has long star points. Today's quilters call it a tri rec star because of  Darlene Zimmerman's wonderful tri rec tools for putting a triangle in a square. It has more plaids than the other quilts from this group of fabrics. Alternating light and dark stars with the courthouse steps creates a strong design.

sold on Etsy

Happy Quilting,
Ann