Preprinted panels and quilts

One of the things that I'm trying to do this year is to use up the preprinted fabric panels that have been in my stash for 10 or more years.   Most of these were originally meant to be used for pillows.    But that hasn't happened for me.

The cat panels that I blogged about over the weekend are easy enough to use for a kid's quilt.   And I have more of the cats that have the leaf border to use up (have yardage of that one).   But I'm not sure what to do with two of the panels that i have.    I want to do donation quilts with these, and know that the chicken panel would work for an adult.   So that one isn't a problem and I've already got an idea of what I want to do with it.

However, the pig panel at the top is one that I'm not sure about.   I was thinking a kids quilt for donation, but not sure that would be appropriate or not.  

What do you all think about these two panels?

Gratitudes:
1. School is back in session today with only a two-hr delay this morning.
2. For having been able to make a lot of headway in getting my paperwork organized for my taxes yesterday.

Sewing on a snowy winter weekend

It has been a snowy weekend here and I've been stuck at home both days.   Was supposed to have been at work at the store today and a robotics competition this weekend, but both things were cancelled.   And that meant that I got to stay home and play in the sewing room.   =)

First thing that i did was to work on the wedding quilt making more blocks.   Was able to finish up another 27 blocks for it.   That puts me at 76 completed blocks out of the 180 that I need for the layout.  I started laying them out to see how the quilt was going to look and this is as far as I got.    

I've also finished up three quilt tops yesterday and today.   The first has a focus fabric that reminds me of the old-fashioned chenille fabrics, but in color.   I went shopping in the stash for the coordinating blue and fuchsia solids.   Quilt finished out at 40" by 40" for a final size.   the focus fabric was part of a scrap bag that I bought at a local quilt store.  

The next two quilt tops started with pillow panels that I had purchased about 10 years ago from Ben Franklin's in Phoenix.     They've sat for what seems forever in my stash while I tried to figure out what to do with them.   Pictures aren't true to life but give you an idea of what I did with them.   the one at the left finished at 32" by 46".   And the one to the right finished at 46" by 54"and used 4 orphan blocks in the corners of the borders.  

At this point I'm not sure what I'll do with these three quilts.   They may go to Sunshine Quilts, or I might finish them and then try to sell them.
 
Gratitudes:
1. A stash that I can go shopping in for quick projects like this.

2. For the warm house that God has blessed me with in this crazy extremely cold weather here this winter.

Finished Postcards and new fabric

Finished the green scrappy postcards this morning.   Nice to have a few minutes in the morning to sew before heading to school (2-hr delay for school today.   The big one is 5" by 7" and is going to be going into the mail this evening and on it's way to a friend who is going through hard times at this point.   I'm not quite sure who the others are going to, but have possibilities for a couple of them and maybe the third.   =)



The fabric pictured to the shows a shot of the cute FQ's that I found at Joann's this past weekend.    The dresses that the girls are wearing are all military inspired and I love the old-fashioned look to them.   I plan to use the fabric as a focus fabric in a quilt for American Heroes. 

Gratitudes -

1. A warm house, warm clothes, a car with a good heater and a job that keeps me inside (albeit in a room that can be chilly) instead of having to work outside in the bitter arctic cold temps we are having here at the moment.

2. For good friends who are always there to encourage me.

Leftovers...........

Leftover bits and pieces from any quilt that I work on that is, I just can't seem to get rid of them when they are big enough to do something with.    In this case from the wedding quilt that I'm working on at the present time (one of many projects). 

The first thing that I did with scraps was to sew the strips I blogged about before.   Pic to the right shows a couple of the sets with some of the purple strips that I'm considering putting with them.   And here's a pic of all of the purple strips that I have pulled out.  I haven't decided yet on what I'm going to do for sure with the two groups of fabric but I think that they will play nicely together.

Meanwhile, as I make blocks for the wedding quilt I'm ending up with a lot of triangles that get cut off as I make the flying geese.   The first thing I'm doing with the ones that are from a single piece of fabric is to sew them to a square of a COC fabric with a scant 1/4" seam.   Then cut between the two seams and press them flat.   Final step is to trim them to an unfinished size of 3.5" for most, if not all of them.      If I've counted correctly I'll end up with approximately 288 of these blocks.

The triangles that are trimmed off from the strip sets are slightly smaller than the solid fabric triangles, so I am sewing a strip cut at 1.5" to both of them and then trimming the resulting block to 3.5" unfinished.   I should end up with about 72 of these blocks.  One possible layout for the resulting blocks, when combined with the half-square triangles is show at the right.

One of the last things I did was to make the fronts for 4 quilted postcards from the small bits and pieces of the strip sets.   I'll be adding silk flowers to these after I put the backs on them.   But before I can do that I actually need to find where I've got that fabric tucked away for safe keeping.

Gratitudes -

1. For the award for my published magazine article and the response at the school to it.

2. For the possibility of being able to attend the conference and receive the award.

Progress on the wedding quilt

Last weekend was UFO Weekend for an online group of friends and I was able to sew with them for once.   I worked on the wedding quilt and made a lot of progress in getting blocks done.   Final tally for Saturday was 49 blocks out of the 180 required are now finished up.    I had to readjust the layout because I realized I'd forgotten to flip the pp'd patterns.   But once that was done I was able to layout some of the blocks to see how it will go together.   Am loving how it is starting to look.

Haven't had time to work on anything else this past week.   But hopefully that will change this week.

Gratitudes:
1.  No snow today!  lol

2. For the positive feedback that I've received after hearing that my journal article had been awarded the "Top Peer Reviewed Article" award for last year.

Distractions......

.....Also known as a short attention span........In working on the wedding quilt one of the first things that I needed to was to make the strip sets for 36 of the 180 total blocks.   This meant that I needed at least 72 different strip sets because I don't want to duplicate them in the blocks.   Got those made, was able to cut 74 different strip sets for the blocks and had a bunch of the strips leftover.

Once done with that you'd think I'd go to work on making more blocks.....nope, I got distracted by all of the scrap strips that I had pulled out of the scrap bins several yrs ago.    I spent several hrs sewing together the rest of the strips into strip sets.  All sorts of shades of green and prints are in these strip sets.

I'll be cutting 4.5" wide sections from the sets and combining them to make 8.5" to 9" long strips.   I will need to pull some more strips to make some of the sections long enough, but i have more than enough scraps in the 2-gallon bag of green scraps to do that.   The plan is then to use my black scraps and put strips down both long sides to make an 8.5" unfinished block.   I've also found a pile of purple strips that I had bagged up at some point in the past that would make up good strip sets.  Those aren't sewn together yet, but I'm thinking that i would use them along with at least some of the green ones in a quilt along the lines of the sketch to the right.

I've put one block together, but I'm not sure after all of the black.   I was thinking it would make the strip sets pop, but it didn't really do the job.   The lighter greens looked ok, but the darker ones didn't really show up against the black.   And I know there are a lot of darker greens in the strips sets.   So  because I want them to all show up I'm going change the black something else instead.    Am thinking of either using a WOW or COC, or using the purple strips for the outside strips of the blocks.   Then just alternating directions of the blocks to put them together.  Which do you think would be more fun?

Using the green and purple together isn't necessarily my normal choice, but I figure that nature puts them together in lovely combinations so why can't I? 

Gratitudes -

1. Nice 2-hr delay for the start of school today meant that I could work on writing this post.

2.  For the $100 Amazon gift card that I won in a contest.  =)