Scrappity Doo Dah!

Have been working on making blocks for a scrap quilt made up of fabric pieces of many of the quilt projects that I have made over the course of the last 6 years. Should be interesting.... Each of the fabrics will remind me of a quilt or bag or place mat that I have made. :)

I downloaded the directions from the McCall's Quilting site. It is a design by Ann Weber of the Gingham Girls.
This pattern uses 6 inch squares and 1 1/2 X 8 inch strips. Each square is cut in half diagonally and the strips are randomly sewn in the middle between the two halves. The directions say to then trim the block to a 5 inch block but I find that's a bit of a waste of the fabric so I have been trimming mine to 5 5/8 inch blocks which seems to be working out well.

So far I have 50 blocks completed.  20 more 6" squares and 1 1/2" strips have been cut and are ready to have the strip sewn in the diagonal centre. I will probably end up with about 70 finished blocks, but I will need a minimum of 120 blocks to make a throw-sized scrappy quilt which I plan to use on the couch in the family room.

This is one of those ongoing projects that won't be completed for a while, depending on how many other projects I do in the meantime and how much scrap fabric I have left over in the next months.

So you will be hearing off and on about this one! :)

New Spiral Table Runner #2 /May 2011

I  completed the new spicy spiral table runner (#2) in early May, this one for my daughter's birthday. :)  At Easter our grown children and their spouses were all here for the Easter weekend (along with our 'grand-dogs'. :)   I had my own "spicy spiral" table runner on the dining room table and both my daughter and step-daughter had commented on how beautiful it looked. I decided I would make them each one for their respective birthdays.

Spicy Spiral # 2 turned out beautifully; in fact I like it even better than the one that I had made for myself! LOL!

This time I had to cut all the wedges myself, (unlike the first time when my friend W helped me to cut them,) but it worked out fine. I have a small round table in the kitchen so I put my cutting mat on there, laid out the fabric stratas, (Stratas are the sewn together strips of fabric)  and just walked around the table to cut the opposite sides of the wedges as needed.  Worked great! :)

After quilting my daughter's table runner, I used the left over wedge pieces and made myself a small table runner out of them. I'm not sure that I like it though....  It looks too small, more like a funny shaped place mat.  I already enveloped it together with the batting and back fabric, but think I might take it apart again, add some fabric on the sides and make it longer....

Then I cut more fabric strips and sewed together another set of 4 strata to make a spicy table runner for my step-daughter's birthday which is not until September so I have some time to work on it. (No photo forthcoming for now of #3.)

Oops! Just realized I don't even have a photo of runner #2! Guess I was keeping it too much of a secret, LOL!  Will have to ask my daughter to take a photo of it and email it to me so I have a record of it for my quilting scrap book/ album.

(Much later...)
AH! Here it is at last. :)