This first finish was completed 2-3 weeks ago, but it has taken me this long to get pics and write a blogpost. It’s taken me even longer to finish the quilt! I can’t remember when I started it, all I can tell you is I decided to play around with some scraps that were cluttering up my sewing room. I thought the scraps were light enough to stand out against a dark background, but they weren’t really that light. Or the dark wasn’t dark enough, I’m not sure. My stash was a lot smaller back then. The top sat around in the UFO pile for awhile, then I used it to play with paintsticks. I used a glass dish from Goodwill for the “rubbing plate” – literally a plate in this case. That helped. It languished for some additional time in the UFO pile, until I did a free-motion quilt-along 2-3 years ago and used it for a practice piece following one of the tutorials. And now, TA DA – I finally put the binding on! I even did it the hard way, hand-stitched to the back. And I added a sleeve, although I didn’t get a pic so you’ll have to trust me on that one.

I call it Scrappy Mess. Which may need a number because it isn’t the only scrappy mess I’ve made, but I’m not counting.

Next up is the one project this quarter that I managed to quilt AND bind! I did work on some others but wedding announcements by two family members changed my quilting priorities so they got put aside. This one started with some little scraps I fished out of the waste basket after my sister left, so I call it Waste Basket #1 (number 2 was finished earlier). The scraps were prints and the rest is solids, something I don’t work with very often. I quilted it with a walking foot, and boy was I tired of twisting the quilt back and forth by the time I was done! I finished hand-stitching the binding down about 3 days ago.

You’d think I had a purple theme going here, but it’s just chance. I think. It’s not my favorite color or anything.

EDIT: Here’s the link to my proposed finishes list, and these two are numbers 9 and 8 (respectively) on that list.

This tablerunner has been waiting for the binding for over a year. It didn’t take me long to finish it, but without the Finish-Along I would have ignored it for a few more years.

I made it from scraps left from making cloth napkins for myself. Two years ago my sisters volunteered my house for a family get-together. They both came without husbands so it wasn’t quite as full a house as it could have been, but with my parents here also I had to scrounge a couple mattresses to put on the floor in my sewing room for my sisters.

I forget who had the idea, but we decided to try a napkin-making party. My mom had sent a box of fabrics she’d salvaged from some vintage blouses that had belonged to my sister’s roommate in college, plus some other fabrics, and we made her napkins from those. (My sister cut, I sewed.) I had pictured a group sewing bee but ended up being the only one sewing, working on my own pieced napkins. My other sister decided what she really wanted was fabric squares to dress up the tops of canning jars, so we cut up a bunch for her.

Anyway, mine started with a charm square pack I’d bought online from another quilter, plus a bunch of spring-inspired fabrics from my stash. The leftovers make up the central part of this table-runner. I think they were already pieced, being trimmings when I cut the napkins to the desired size. Or maybe I sewed up all the scrap first, my memory is already fading. Basically it is a stacked coins (shown above on edge, try tilting your head if you can’t see it) with the “coins” presewn scraps.

The binding is straight-cut and sewn on one side at a time, on the back first and folded over to the front and straight-stitched along the edge. The ends were done last and the end of the binding folded over for a finished corner.

And that’s my finish for this week. (List of proposed finishes HERE. This is number 14 on the list.)

Needing all the help and encouragement I can get, I’m going to join the Finish-Along again. This year it is hosted by a group of quilt bloggers and you can participate from whichever one you like. Here’s where I found the info.

And here’s my list of proposed finishes, all 17 of them (it will take a miracle to actually complete them all, but they are mostly small). Names are working names:

1. Confetti #4 – needs binding, sleeve, and label

2. Corral – needs quilting.

3. Cuddle quilt – needs quilting, this one is nap size

4. Green stripes – needs binding and label

5. improv piece, small. needs quilting

6. improv piece, needs quilting (which I am currently working on)

7. Lattice, small. An old UFO, I actually hand quilted this one! needs binding, sleeve, label.

8. Boxes on purple, needs basting and quilting.

9. Purple mess, needs binding, sleeve, label

10. purple spirals, needs binding, sleeve, label

11. QAYG project – one block shown, this one is twin I think. needs assembly.

12. Red Stripes, another QAYG project, this one with strips sewn onto backing and batting. Needs the other strips sewn. Will be twin.

13. Red-eyed ghosts (isn’t that what it looks like?) – needs binding, sleeve, label

14. table runner, needs binding

15. Three Stars, needs border, then basting and quilting.

16. Whacking through the Jungle, needs binding, sleeve, label.

17. Yellow 4-patches – needs binding and label.

OMG we are well into April already. Spring has sprung, the weather is beautiful, and I am busy in the garden. I may or may not have much time to quilt this quarter, but I’m going to try and finish the following:

1) Airplane quilt. (Wallhanging) I started this one years ago – can’t remember how many but over 10 – as a gift for my dad, then realized I wouldn’t finish in time and gave him something else. I recently unearthed in during an archeological dig in my UFO bins. He turns 80 this year, so I think it’s time to finish it. I’m also making a small quilt for my mom (also turning 80), but that one is not started yet.

2) Yellow squares. (Wallhanging) I made these blocks (only a few of them shown) recently to use up scraps that were cluttering up my work tables. I’d like to turn them into a finished quilt soon rather than add another UFO to my list.

Two more unstarted quilts are on my list. That’s 5 already so I’ll be lucky to get them all done, but just in case I discover a cache of extra time, I’ll include these three as repeats from last quarter:

3) “Stripes” – A QAYG quilt made by sewing strips directly to the backing and batting, which, I’ve discovered, is boring as hell. I may have to pay myself in chocolate to finish this one. Why did I make it twin size??

4) QAYG blocks #1 – Layered and basted blocks, ready for some free-motion practice. I expect to get these quilted, but whether I’ll get them assembled into a finished quilt by the end of the quarter remains to be seen. (Twin, I think.) [edit – I copied these as is from last quarter and just read it over – these blocks did in fact get quilted last quarter. Now I need to assemble them.]

5) QAYG blocks #2 – Another set of basted blocks waiting for free-motion quilting, [edit – centers are done. The wide sashing will be used for feather practice, which awaits some other quilt I want to use feathers on]. (Another twin, if I calculated right.)

(I finished this quilt back in late January but held off on a post because I planned to become a Craftsy affiliate. Of course, I haven’t actually applied for one yet, and time is running out on posting for the Finish-along, so here we go. This is also finish #2 for the Finish-Along, original post here.)

This quilt had it’s beginnings in Joe Cunningham’s Craftsy class Pattern-free Quiltmaking. In this class he teaches several processes for making fast, easy, arty quilts. First lesson is for a Three Sisters (or Rail Fence) variation he calls Three Crazy Sisters. As I worked on this first version, I started referring to it as a Twisted Sister, so that’s what I called this quilt.

First thing I did, after pulling fabric from my stash, was to misread the directions. It says to cut two 7 inch strips and I cut two from each fabric. Turns out it is two total – one from each fabric. By the time I was done making pieced 2 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch strips, I had twice as many as I needed. And I had half as many unpieced strips as I needed, because I ran out of fabric.

Well, what the heck, this is supposed to be pattern-less fun, so I made the blocks with the pieces I had, even though the result was a bit different from Joe’s version. Nothing wrong with exploring the “what-ifs” and nothing wrong with exploiting your mistakes.

Here’s my first layout with my blocks, where I put them up on the wall as they came off the pile.

Not bad but not very interesting either. I played around with pulling the greens to green and the pinks to pink for larger chunks of color.

Better.

Then I remembered I meant to use a rectangular layout so I could add a border and make a crib-size quilt for charity. As I moved the blocks around again, I thought, I wonder if I can connect all the greens? This was the best I could do. There are three blocks that couldn’t be fit in. Or, I couldn’t fit them in with the time I allowed myself to play with it.

Now you see why I call it Twisted Sister!

And here it is finished. I used a thick batting, which I don’t like but I have a whole roll of it to use up. I was worried it would be difficult to free-motion quilt but it wasn’t.