Quilted Flower Pillow

 

This is another orphan block creation.  I made this block for a guild "competition" to create a Cotton Rose block.  I really didn't want to make a whole quilt out of it, mostly because I didn't want to make more blocks in this same size.  It's a lot of small half-square triangles.  So I decided to add a little border to it, quilt it, and make it into a new pillow cover for the small pillow I keep on my bed.  I like how it turned out, and I enjoyed doing the free-motion flowers.

A Jazz Quilt

 

 

My free-form scrap quilt is finished!  I continued to use scrap fabric to make the sashing pieces that join the blocks and rows together.  I used leftover pieces of binding strips to make the binding.  I did the binding completely by machine this time.  I attached the binding to the front, turned it to the back, and then stitched in the ditch from the front, to secure the binding on the back. It measures 50 inches by 62.5 inches.

 

Here is a look at the back of the quilt.  Ideally I would have spread out the darker blocks and not put same fabrics side-by-side, but this quilt wasn't about ideals.  It was, in fact, an attempt to get away from ideals, so I made no effort at all to arrange the blocks in any particular order.

It is very busy, colorful, and loud.  It is nothing like what I usually make when I am quilting, but I really enjoy it.  I like looking at the quilting that I did on it.  It was a learning experience and a liberating experience.  It's good to get away from the idea of perfection and the fear and anxiety that goes along with it.  I'll probably end up donating it somewhere, but for now I'm just enjoying that it's finished.

I guess you could say that I'm already working on another one, because I'm still sewing together scraps, but not as a full-time project. Instead of using a single piece of scrap fabric to sew over when I'm taking something off the machine, I just sew two scraps together.  I'm just putting them aside for now, but ultimately they'll probably end up in something.

An Experiment

 

 

I watched a YouTube video a few weeks ago where a woman sewed her scraps together to make scrap fabric.  I didn't want to make a bolt of scrap fabric like she did, but it inspired me to make a free-form scrap quilt.  

I used several of my orphan blocks and scraps out of several boxes, bags, and bins (but nowhere close to all my scraps) to make blocks that were roughly 13 - 14 inches square.  I didn't worry at all about color, though I did think some about light and dark when sewing together half-square triangles.  Occasionally I did make the scraps into recognizable blocks, but mostly I just sewed pieces together based solely on size and shape.  It was a little difficult for me at first, but it really was liberating to just sew and not worry about if it was "right" or not.  I also used up odds and ends of thread that I had around.  It was an anything goes kind of project.

Once I had made 20 blocks, I used scrap batting pieces, and some miscellaneous fabric from my stash as backing, and quilted the blocks.  I wanted to practice some free-motion quilting, but I was always worried about messing up a completed quilt top, so again, this was a liberating experience.  I didn't have to worry about getting things perfect.  I could just practice and have fun.

When the quilting was all done, I trimmed the quilted blocks down to 12-1/2 inches square.  Pictured above are the quilt blocks laid out in the general configuration for the quilt.  They won't necessarily stay in those exact places in the finished quilt. 

I plan to use a quilt-as-you-go method that I learned in quilt guild to put the blocks together.  I will use narrow strips (1-1/8 inches) on top to join the blocks.  This will make the blocks butt up against each other and not make a thick seam like if you sewed them directly together with all the layers already quilted together.  Then I'll use a 2 inch strip, folded in half, to cover the gap on the back.  That is another technique I've been wanting to try and this seemed like a good opportunity.  

All around this has been about learning, experimenting, and having fun sewing.  I'm glad that I did it.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out in the end.