Week 19, 2013 Recap and Stash Report

Happy Mothers’ Day to all moms!  We will be celebrating a little later because both of my kids are in the thick of finals.  Jen will finish up later this week and I’ll go down to Madison to pick her up.  She has an internship here in town this summer so she’ll be back at home.  I’m really excited since I wasn’t sure she would ever be home again for any length of time.  Then next Sunday, my daughter-in-law, Laura is running a half-marathon in Green Bay so we will go up there to cheer her on. Hopefully, we’ll have another chance to see her while she’s in town.  Unfortunately Bryan won’t be coming home with her since he’s studying for boards. We’ll go down to Milwaukee in a week or so for a quick visit with him.

This week almost went by without a single finish but this afternoon I got busy and finished up the first rails and chain quilt.  This ended up being a pretty big quilt—60” x 80” so it used quite a bit of fabric.  Everything in this quilt was from stash; 2-1/2” strips, chain fabric, borders, binding and backing.  I wasn’t sure the binding would be finished by dark so I took the picture earlier in the day right after it came off the frame.  The binding is now finished and this one is ready for donation.

The quilting on this was very quick and easy.  The center is overall meandering and the borders have feather quilting.

The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  11 yards
Used year to date:  158 yards
Purchased this week:  3
Purchased year to date: 38 yards
Net year to date:  120 yards used

Be sure to check out other stash reports at Patchwork Times.

Week 18, 2013 Recap and Stash Report

This morning I finished hand sewing the binding on the last of my charm quilts on the drive to and from church.  This one is Falling Charms from a Missouri Star Quilt Co. tutorial (here).

There is a block turned on the lower right-ugh!  I’m keeping this quilt so it’s not a big deal!

Here is a close-up of the quilting—and the border.  I just love the way the border makes this quilt.  The quilting is a pantograph called Plumage by Willow Leaf Studios.

I missed last week’s stash report so this is a two week recap.  I finished five projects:

Baby Geniuses Grow Up-La France:  3 yards
Jumping Jacks-Marmalade: 3.5 yards
Jumping Jacks-Spring Song: 3.5 yards
Falling Charms-Christmas charms: 7 yards
Grandma’s quilt: 5 yards (back and binding only)

After having a few weeks with no fabric purchases I fell off the wagon this week.  Some of it was jelly rolls that I need for a pattern I’m working on—I can ALWAYS justify purchasing fabric!

The weekly stash report:
Used this week:  22 yards
Used year to date:  147 yards
Purchased this week:  14
Purchased year to date: 35yards
Net year to date:  112 yards used

It’s still going down!  Check out the links at Patchwork Times so see how others are doing on stash reduction.

Auditioning Borders

A border can really make or break a scrap quilt.  When I had the quilt shop customers frequently came in for help in choosing a border for a quilt and we were always happy to pull lots of fabric to try out.  I always think it’s a good thing to not have your heart (and mind) set on a particular color or print for a border until you’ve auditioned several fabrics.  You really can’t know ahead of time which one will really make your quilt sing!  Since I use so many fabrics in scrap quilts it can sometimes be a challenge to find the right border fabric. Sometimes a fabric that I think will be perfect for a quilt just falls flat. I’ll often pull 20 or 30 fabrics to find one that truly accentuates the pieced center.

This is an example of a border that just doesn’t work. 

The colors are good, but the print has too much light fabric and doesn’t coordinate with the center.  Even the inner border is distracting.  That’s the biggest reason this is still in my UFO pile.  I’ve contemplated  taking the border off and either replacing it or leaving it off completely.  It’s partially quilted though so that would be a pain.  What I think I’ll do with it now, is just bind it, donate it and move on.  Really that’s the most sensible option.

A couple of weeks ago, I made this charm quilt.  Originally I had planned to use a little tone on tone dark green print from the same line as the charm squares.  I wasn’t crazy about how it looked and then I found this printed plaid in my stash and now I love the quilt.  The border just adds so much to it.  I just need to hand stitch the binding and it will be finished.

This morning I finished piecing this chained rails top.  I’m still not liking the chain fabric too much.  It just didn’t have enough contrast, but I was too far into the project to change it.  Again, I’m just going to move forward, finish it and give it away.  I’m hoping the borders will help it out a little bit because it is a nice quilt otherwise.  Here are a few fabrics under consideration.

There is a lot of green in the quilt and I thought maybe a green border would work but this one is kind of ho hum.  Next I tried a brown but up close I didn’t really like the print.

I usually really like plaids for borders on scrap quilts.  I thought this might be a perfect fit because the quilt has a lot of blue and red.  It doesn’t work because of the light in the plaid.  The quilt doesn’t have any other fabrics that light.

Brown was still my top choice so I tried a dark brown.  It looked pretty good but I still thought there might be something better.

Red wasn’t a color I had even considered but I saw this fabric and I think it’s my top choice.  It’s a little black and red homespun plaid check.

I’ll add a narrow black stop border, then the red check. 

I’ll get the borders on and quilt it then show a picture of the finished quilt then you can decide if I made a good border choice or not!

Finished Charm Quilts

During down time in Milwaukee over the weekend and on the drive home I managed to finish two more of the charm quilts. 

This is made from charm squares from the Baby Geniuses Grow Up line and is the Villa Rosa pattern La France.

I quilted it in wavy vertical lines.  After quilting the Marmalade charm quilt with straight lines last week I got smarter and did curvy lines on this one.  Much easier and you don’t have to worry about keeping them straight!  It looks really cute on this little baby quilt.

Also finished is Jumping Jacks from the book Quilts from Sweet Jane made from charms in the Garden Song line by Benartex.  I really like how this one turned out.  It’s really soft and pretty for spring.

It is quilted in overall swirls.  This is always my go-to quilting design when I want to finish something quickly.  I really need to expand my quilting repertoire.