Scrappidy Do Dah

Scrappidy Do Dah Quilt

Quite a while ago I had downloaded a cute idea for making a scrappy quilt made out of pieces of leftover fabrics. After a time a quilter ends up with so many small chunks of fabric leftover  from previous projects,  I thought it would be a great way to use some of them up.
I had started making the blocks a long while back. (How long? I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing about 3 years ago…)  I had made enough to make pillow shams for my sofa throw cushions, but not enough to make the whole quilt top yet.

Each block is made out of a 6 inch square and a 1 1/2  x 9 inch strip contrasting of fabric. (anything goes!)
The square is cut in half corner to corner to make 2 triangles. The fabric strip is then sewn in between the 2 rectangles to make a bigger square.  Then use a square acrylic ruler to trim the blocks to 6 1/4 inches or whatever is suitable. Easy Peasy! :)   I had made about 60 of them.

Auditioning fabrics for the inner border with Kitty's help. :)

In March I found out that a close friend of mine had cancer. My quilt guild makes comfort quilts regularly to give away to people in the community who have illness and I had often taken part in making them, but up until now, it was mostly for strangers. My friend lives in different part of the province and was going to Edmonton for treatments in April. I had promised to visit her there, not having seen her since last year.
"Why not make M a comfort quilt that I could take along?!", I thought to myself. It was only about 2 weeks until the time of the visit, so it would have to be something relatively fast.

I took out my Scrappidy Do Dah blocks and laid them out on the floor (my "design wall" :)  ) to see if I could make a pleasing pattern. I rearranged them numerous times taking photos to look at each time, until I had something I liked.  I decided that I needed to make 4 more of a lighter colour to balance out the blocks, but in the end, I think it turned out looking quite good.

I burned the "midnight oil " to get it completed in time. Next the sandwiching and pinning was done on the kitchen floor, as usual. Then I used my sewing machine to ditch quilt the blocks. I free motion quilted the brown top and bottom border strips in my usual butterfly pattern. The outer border got a meander pattern quilted all around.

Quilt layers:  bottom fabric taped to the kitchen floor, batting smoothed out on top of that and next the quilt top smoothed out at the very top. 

Next I cut the edging strips and sewed them to the quilt top. I finished hand stitching the edging strips the night before my trip to Edmonton. I made a label for the back using the embroidery alphabet on my Janome. (After 3 attempts, I was satisfied with the label for it. That's another story!

we headed off to Edmonton to visit my dear friend and brought her the surprise quilt. She was so pleased! And so am I!

Finished size: 60   x 70 inches