New Scrap Quilt ~ Red and Green

 A year or so ago I had a great plan to make a red and green quilt.  As you can see I didn't get very far before pushing her aside for the next big quilt plan.  Tis the season to start a huge Christmas quilt plan with hopes of having it finished in time for Christmas.  What's a holiday season without one or two unnecessary expectations!

Over the last year I've been building a scrap saver system, so that seems like a good place to start looking for more fabrics.  As you can see, there's not much in the scrap saver system that will work in this quilt.  Just a few greens in both the squares and the strips, no low volume backgrounds.  The basket with the green and red fabric might be enough to get the quilt top made, if not I can always go to my large red and green scrap bin for more.

It was time to dig through the bin of low volume prints that are less than 2.5 inches wide.

Well poo!  My quilt will be over 90" square.  This isn't going to be enough background fabric and I know the other low volume bin with larger cuts doesn't have the prefered style of prints.

So it was time to pull out the extra large tote of shame.  This tote is solid whites, white on whites, creams and cream on cream.  I've been adding to it for about 15 years with very little ever being used.

 The first thing I found was this bag of hundreds of 2.5" solid white unstarched squares.  I would have preferred they be white on white and starched but this will work.  The plan is a quick and easy scraps quilt.  Using what I have will keep it quick and easy and it gets me out of a comfort zone.

It didn't take much longer before realizing more space was needed to sort this tote of fabric.  So I took the sort down to the floor.  After an hour of sitting on the cold tile floor a break was needed to warm up my tooshy.

Then it was back to the cold floor for another hour of sorting.  There's more than enough white on white fabric for this quilt.  

It gave me a chuckle to see the little specks of itty bitty colorful prints hiding in the huge tote of whites.  Y'all know I have a hard time trashing little bits of fabric.  It was hard to let the pretty little ones go but I sticking to my rule put in place earlier in the year ...  I can only save it if I can cut a one inch square.

Thankfully I had tucked away  some larger pieces of white on white fabric in this tote.  The larger scraps will make the piecing go faster. So I'll be using the larger pieces first. The rest of the white on white will be stored in a smaller project tote just incase they are needed later.

Some of these prints are from 15 years ago.   And they are not quilt shop quality.  More than likely they came from Joann Fabrics.  They also are from the time in my quilting journey when I didn't starch my fabric, so they got a good starching and pressing before the cutting began.

To start out my day of sewing I cut just enough to go with the few green squares I found in the scrap saver system and the squares that were hiding the basket of fabric I shared earlier in this post.

Before I knew it they were all sewn and pressed.  A few of them were pulled and will not be added to this quilt.  They will find their new home in the orphan block tote.  They look a little too blue for this quilt.  Then it was time to start counting.  I had more than expected, over half of what is needed for the quilt.

At this point you're probably wonder what's the quilt pattern?  Christmas Garland by Wendy Sheppard.  It was on the cover of Quilters World Magazine, Winter 2025.

I'll be honest, this quilt isn't one of those that I saw and thought it was a must make.  It's one that looked like a good way to use up a lot of little scraps and it's easy piecing.  It should go together quickly with strip piecing most of the units.  

For now she's being set aside so I can work on a few other things.  

First up will be the Yo-Yo coverlet.

I finished the last of the yellow yo - yo's.

This week I'll be cutting green circles from the scrap bins.  I found four green ones already made.  I don't remember making them but obviously I did.  That's 466 yo-yo's made so far.  759 more are needed from the scrap bins.

After making 759 more from the scrap bins, I'll still need 800 more white and green for the borders.  I'm 13 months into the 2 year plan for this coverlet.  My thought was one year to make the yo-yo's and one year to sew them into a coverlet....sigh....a 3 year plan is looking pretty good right now...HAHA!  

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DIY Curtains and Valances

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week was full of sewing ... just not quilts! Curtains were the theme of the week. It all started with a simple valance for the laundry room.

The cute little blue floral duck cloth was purchased at Hobby Lobby well over a year ago. From start to finish, it took about 30 minutes to make. After I finished it, I realized I had forgotten to add a lining. Oh well, it’s good enough! Sometimes you just have to call it done and move on.

The little valance put me in the mood to keep going. As you all know, my sewing room has been without curtains for a long time ...  about a year, actually. I purchased the fabric for the curtains two or three years ago at Hobby Lobby for $2 a yard. It was a great price, and I fell in love with the sweet little embroidered flowers.

Aww… look at them! Little daisies… my favorite flower.  I knew they would probably cause a little trouble when sewing, but it was a chance I was willing to take. After all, who can resist a fabric covered in little daisies?

 They didn’t cause a problem at all. The needle went right through them with no issues. BUT the fabric, on the other hand, was the biggest pain in my keister!

I tried every size needle in my stash, and not one of them would go through this crazy fabric without pushing the fabric down into the bobbin housing. After a few swear words, a time-out, and a completely useless search of the internet, I started brainstorming the problem.

Then, out of nowhere, I came up with a solution. My thought was that if I pulled the fabric from the back side of the walking foot and from the front, but in opposite directions, while helping it along, it might stop the fabric from being shoved down into the bobbin housing.

By golly gosh, it worked! It was a little awkward to do, but it got the job done. Sometimes you just have to outsmart the sewing machine! 

It took a little longer than expected, pretty much the whole day to make two sets of curtains for the windows and…

.…one set for the door. Yes, I have an exterior door in my sewing room. We think that at one time, this was a small one-car garage.

The next day I thought, why stop now? I was on a window treatment roll, so let’s make a new valance for the bedroom. I wanted something a little more “fancy.” How about a valance with a scalloped lower edge?  Oh, that would be cute!  I had to tape together some packing paper to make a long enough template. There was a little math involved to get the scallops evenly spaced, and I used an old quilting template to draw the wavy line.  Who knew all those quilting tools would come in handy for making curtains? 

This valance will be lined. I watched a few videos on how to add a lining, and they made it seem far more complicated than it needed to be.  I decided to keep it simple ... put the right sides together, sew around the outer edge, and leave an opening for turning. Sometimes the simplest way really is the best way.

Slowly, I made my way around the fabric. Sewing a 5/8" seam made me feel like I really knew what I was doing,  It’s been many years since I’ve used anything other than a quarter-inch or half-inch seam allowance.

That extra 1/8" had me feeling pretty fancy!

After turning it right side out and giving it a good pressing, I sewed around the edge to keep the seam secure through future washings.

A rod pocket was added to the back by making a simple tube of fabric. I drew a straight line on the backing, lined up the edge of the pressed tube with the line, pinned it in place, and sewed it down.

This was much easier than the complicated methods used by those professional curtain designers I found on YouTube. Sometimes I think they just enjoy making things harder than they need to be.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all of the fabrics in today’s post were prewashed and dried on high heat for maximum shrinkage. No future shrinking surprises for me!

She turned out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself.  Maybe next week while doing my weekly errands I'll stop by Hobby Lobby and check out the trims.  Perhaps a short fringe of little fuzzy balls for the scalloped edge?

  

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Quilt Top Finish - 169 Cake Stand Blocks

After a year of sporadically working on the Cake Stand quilt, it’s finally a quilt top! 

I’m pretty sure I deserve to do a little happy dance for this one. 

For all of my math loving readers here's the numbers.

The quilt top finishes at 91 x 91

Total piece count is a whopping 

6188

Yep, you read that right.  No wonder it took me a year to get this one together!

This week the plan is to piece the quilt backing from the yellow and teal floral yardage, make a label and attach it to the backing, and then make the binding.  Speaking of a label, I've not come up with a name for this quilt.  Any suggestions other than Cake Stand?

The rest of the week I'll be focusing on quilting the blue quilt on the frame.  I didn't make one stitch in her for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I can't wait to quilt up the cake stand quilt, so that's just the push I need to get ole blue quilted and off the frame.  I guess she’s been waiting patiently long enough.

It was a busy week in the sewing room by the end of each day I wasn't in the mood to work on the yo - yo's.  Only 17 to add the stash, that's better than none.

See you in a day or two for more about last week's sewing room adventures.

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Weekly Update

This week in Podunk is going to be busy, so todays update....short and to the point.

Half of the cake stand quilt is together, the upper half.

I tried to keep the same prints from touching but it happens.

Two things that made me smile last week.........

Thing one

Thing two.

Two things that didn't get much attention last week.

Thing one.

Thing two.

See you next week!

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