Catching all the remaining missed quilts

As mentioned previously I have been going through my excel list of quilts and there are a handful I have never posted about.  Some I didn't take pictures of.  Some are duplicates of previous patterns so really not point in posting (I've made several floating blocks and they all look about the same).  And others just never made it into a post yet.  So in the interest of making this blog a complete reference - here they are.

This is based on the traditional jewel box pattern and used up a bunch of scraps.  The quilt was done in 2012 as a donation quilt.  I need to give this one a try again once I have enough large triangles in the scraps.

I'm surprised I missed posting on this one.  It's called Floating Novelties.  It was a fun quilt to do.  I always enjoy grouping fabrics by color and this one is pretty flashy.  It looks difficult but is actually pretty easy to piece.

This quilt was also done as a donation and specifically to use up some of the pink novelties and fabrics that never seemed to get used out of my stash.  I'm sure a little girl who loves pink loved the quilt - I however wasn't too excited about it. 

 

The pattern for this was called Wild thing by Barbara Groves.  I made a rainbow version a couple of years ago - it is another good way to use up triangles.  Made in 2006 for the daughter of my boss at the time, her favorite color was purple, so I used purple tone on tone fabrics.  

This quilt was one of my first experiments.  I didn't yet know that puffy batting wasn't a good idea and that satin binding was an even worse one.  Even the colors didn't work well.  Ugh. I've learned a lot since 2005.

This quilt idea came from a demonstration I saw several years ago at the AZ quilt retreat, presented by Quilter's lumberyard.  It has some great large blocks but is a bit more complicated due some a few partial seams.  If I make this again I think I'll make the little friendship star around the square in a different color to make the secondary pattern stand out.

I call this one Colorblock.  It uses a combination of 2" & 4" squares.  I completed this one in 2015.  Sometimes I used the same fabric in the 2" squares, but sometimes it is a coordinating fabric - when I could find one that read the same.

This is another Quilter's lumberyard idea called ladders.  It is a great way to use up 2 x 4 rectangles or even piano keys.

I've made this pattern once before, called When I'm 64.  But this version uses only cat fabrics.  I was given a large stack of cat squares and was having trouble using them up as I try not to repeat pictures in my kid quilts  So I decided to put the all cats in one quilt for a co-worker who owned several cats.  Not sure why the pattern was called that, there are only 50 large squares and a lot more small squares.  But it definitely helped use up some of those cat squares.

This last one was a family joke, made for my son.  [He decided to get a tattoo on his leg and thought he had chosen sharks, which was one of his favorite toys as a kid.  But the tattoo turned out to be Koi fish.  I had fabrics for both in my stash, so I made this for him the following Christmas.  Just to help him tell the difference.

Well I think that gets everything caught up and organized.  It is always interesting looking back through older quilts, seeing how my quilts and skills have changed through the years.

Novelty but not quilts

 I also recently realized I never posted a couple of novelty fabric projects that weren't technically quilts but were still very fun to make.

This soft book was inspired by a blog post by Crafty Staci - linked here quiet-book-of-colors.  Great idea & instructions.  I had purchased a book several years ago with instructions for fabric books that used novelty fabrics but never did make one.  Then I ran across this blog post which was so simple and straight forward.  So I got busy and really enjoyed making it.  

This was made for a friend of my daughter last year for her baby shower (along with a quilt).  Here is the finished cover, which just features a 9 patch showing the 9 colors in the book in tone on tone fabrics.

And here are the 10 pages, one for each color plus a multi-colored page and the back and front covers.  This is before they were sewn together.

I thought it was especially appropriate as the new mom is an art teacher.  It was a fun project, fun to pick out the best fabrics to represent each color.

I also made a two I spy travel games for twin little boys who had joined our church.  They were too old for quilts but thought they might enjoy the fabrics presented as a game.  Momma gave me some ideas of things they were currently interested in and I went hunting through my stash.  I didn't take photos of the games as they weren't particularly pretty (the pictures were the point) but the idea is a very quick and easy one.  If/when I make them again I need to take pictures.  Here is the link to the blog post by Stitched by Crystal- i-spy-toddler-travel-game

This last idea I have not yet made as I think it will take significant time - I will likely do it for someone extra special - perhaps my own someday grandchild (sigh).  Really fun idea though, using a fabric featuring the letter of the alphabet in the shape of the letter itself.  The idea came from a post I saw on Facebook - I don't know this individual, she just posted on a group I was following.  Such a great idea.  I'm guessing she found it somewhere but she didn't reference the source in her post.

I missed one!

Not sure how but I missed posting about this quilt.  Kind of surprising because I remember spending a lot of time figuring out how to do it.  I think I finished the quilt about the same time I started this blog, so it likely got lost in the shuffle.  I was recently looking through the excel file I keep of my various quilts and blog posts (yes I'm an accountant) and realized I never posted this one.  So here it goes.

This quilt was made for my boss's 1st grandchild in October 2014.  She now has 3 grandkids, all who have their own quilts and she tells me they still love them and play with them, consider them special.  Which is so sweet to hear.

The idea was for this quilt was the pattern Urban Abacus by Sew Kind of Wonderful - I saw several quilts made using this pattern at the Dallas quilt show that year, all made in "contemporary" colors - gray and pastels - bleck.  I didn't want to purchase a special ruler to cut the arc but a friend gave me an extra long arm ruler that I was able to use.  It was fun to be able to use large prints and not have lots of seams.  I struggled with what to make the "strings" out of, settled on a striped fabric that I had previously used for borders.

It turned out well, but I think this one falls in the probably not again list of patterns.  Looking at it now, I should have made the strings narrower and it needs a contrasting inner border.  But Kennedy doesn't mind.  Several months ago her grandma showed me a video of her & her little sister comparing their quilts and finding matching fabrics, getting so excited.  Made me grin from ear to ear.  Sigh.  And that is one of the reasons I keep making these things, imaging little people getting joy and comfort from something I enjoyed making.

Borders and bindings

One more post related to my recent finishing ten I spy quilts.  Many times I will make a top but not add borders or quilt it until I know what I am going to do with it.  On occasion I have wanted to make it bigger for an older child and so will make the borders larger.  But this time I wanted to finish all the tops I had made (plus one I found in the closet).  So I was adding borders, quilting and binding all 10 at the same time.  Just to mix things up a bit I tries some different things.

This border & binding is pretty typical of what I usually use.  A bright narrow inner border (1" wide) with a dark patterned wide border of 2.5" and a binding from the same fabric.  I like this on quilts where I want the pattern of the quilt to be the center of attention and the borders to act like a picture frame & mat.

On this I had added a pieced inner border to make the quilt larger and made the outside border from the same fabric as the corner stones in the quilt.  But I didn't have enough for the binding.  I decided to use a nice black with larger polka dots.  It doesn't fight with the busy border at all, kind of fades into the background. I had purchased the fabric thinking to use it for narrow inner borders but it works pretty well for bindings too - I may have to go back by Hobby lobby to get more.  I have a feeling I'll use this one frequently and I only got 2 yards.  

For this quilt I liked a green inner border and I used the last of the fabric with those little scattered squares (the reason I didn't have enough for binding the previous quilt).  I didn't want to use the black dots again for the binding - and definitely didn't want green so what else would work?

I had this rainbow loops fabric that I have purchased for borders many MANY years ago but it never seemed to work on any of the quilts I tried it with - always too busy or something.  It had been in my stash for at least 8 years (I know it was at least that long because I did use a little of it on a T-shirt quilt).  I decided it was time to use it and so I cut it all up for binding. It works pretty well on the quilt - a bit crazier than the black with polka dots but since the quilt itself has a lot of calm white background I think it will be ok.  

Here's a bigger pic of the loops.

Since I was "using up" old fabric, I pulled out this one too.  I actually was given this fabric by a coworker when her mother died - since I have not worked with her for 12 years that gives you an idea how long it has been in my stash.

But see how well it works on this quilt - it sets off the simple pattern  and makes the novelties sparkle.  I like that it reads more as a color of it's own instead of the black multi that I frequently use.  

This string quilt was looking a little calm with the chambray border/sashing so I gave it the rainbow loops binding and it really set it off great, a perfect use of that wild fabric.

After adding this border fabric I realized I was getting pretty low on this fabric and wanted to save it for another quilt.  So I used the remainder of the blue/purple binding instead.  I wish it was a better match for the blue inner border but it's such a busy quilt I think I'm probably overthinking it.  Certainly not worth replacing the inner border.

This border I struggled what to use for binding also, but I had some notes binding left from another quilt, so I made a bit more and added it.  The colors work and it's so narrow I don't think anyone will notes I mixed alphabet & music notes.

After adding all these borders I got nervous that I was getting low on border fabric so I went by Hobby Lobby to see if they still had either of the numbers/letter fabrics I had gotten last summer.  Of course they didn't - but they did have some great fireworks fabric.  I had previously purchased some of this to use in the novelty quilts (for eXplosions - haha) but decided it might work well for borders too.  So I bought 2 more yards.   Certainly it is bright enough.  I also purchased 2 yards of the black with dots for the narrow border.  The dots are larger than what I've used in background before, I like that you can really see the colors of the dots.  On this I didn't want more contrast so I made the binding from the same fabric as the border.

I like how it sets off this quilt with so much white background.  It balances it will without overpowering.

This next quilt had me stumped for a while.  I really liked how it turned out but everything I tried as a border just didn't work right.  They all seemed to distract from the fun rainbow wave pattern.

Finally I decided to just add a binding with no border but make it a bit wider than my usual 2.5".  I had just a bit of this striped fabric left in my stash and cut it straight of grain so the stripes would be perpendicular to the quilt. 

This is another one of those fabrics that I have used in several I spy (and T-shirt) quilts over the years.  Joann fabrics carried this along with a coordinating black background with scattered multi dots for several years and I used them a lot.  But no more - they are both gone now. Part of quilting is using things up, even favorite fabrics.  I'm sure I'll find new favorites.

A Special quilt for a 1st grandbaby friend

 One of the things I enjoy most about I spy quilts is when I can make them special with fabrics meaningful for the family.  I got to do that for one of my daughter's good childhood friends early in 2020.  And recently I got to do it again for daughter's "birthday buddy", her friend who shares the same birthday.  We are also friends with the new grandparents from church and so I was able to ask them for ideas for both mom and dad. As this is the 1st grandbaby they of course are very excited.  They gave me lots of great ideas and it became a treasure hunt to find relevant fabrics.  As I was finding the fabrics in my stash as well as shopping I would sent texts to grandma.  We were both having a lot of fun thinking of ideas.  I thought I'd share the fun here as well as the finished quilt.

The first idea was that mom and dad met while students at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.  That one was easy, I found the fabric at my local LQS that keeps a selection of Texas university fabrics.  

They also both enjoy going to see the Texas Rangers play base ball - also easy.  This I found at JoAnns.  

I also had some generic sports fabric with a baseball bat in my stash.  

The mom was a music major when she first went to school, plays the flute & piano.  I knew I had several music related fabrics in my stash.  This particular fabric I used for the letter X (xylophone) before I found the X ray cats.  I used to have several yards but with all the fussy cutting over the years there isn't much left.  Fortunately there was a piece with both a piano and flutes close together.

The dad is currently going to medical school and doing medical research.  Aha, this fabric previously purchased for a family friend whose husband is a doctor would work for both with the microscope and prescription bottle.  When I showed this picture to the new grandma she also mentioned mom loves fried pickles - perfect!

Mom is a nurse at a clinic.  Nurses are a little harder to find but I did have this fabric in my stash that a friend gave me several years ago.  I'm not a big fan of animals dressed up like humans so I haven't use it much.  But it does definitely give the idea of nursing.

Mom wears glasses - that was in my stash too.

They also have a family dog though I couldn't find the exact breed of their current dog.  Mom did grow up with a chihuahua and the big eared one at the bottom looks a lot like a chi. 

Mom loves to read so I included this stack of books.

And crochet.  Well I knew the yarn fabric had to be included regardless for the letter Y.  I didn't have any crochet hooks but she won't mind the knitting needles. 

Now for dad's hobbies and interests.  1st the family mentioned he has purchased a canoe and has been taking it out on a nearby lake.  Hmm, no canoes in my stash.  But I did find this one at the LQS - I was so excited.  I have to laugh though, as soon as the quilt was finished I found another fabric with canoes.  That is one of those things that often happens, you keep finding things after you are done looking.  But now I have a canoes in my stash.  

Dad also enjoys cooking outside - I was so excited to finally get to use this fabric.  I've had it in my stash for a couple of years.

And the very best.  The dad grew up in Amarillo, Texas - and look what I found!  Most of the fabrics in my stash that reference Texas usually show Austin or Houston (due to NASA) but I found this in a scrap of Route 66 fabric.  Can't wait for him to see this one.

All 3 of these fabrics were so perfect as far as content but the fabrics didn't have enough contrast with the background so I added some scrappy flanges to make them stand out a bit. 

But the toughest thing to find.  Mom and dad both enjoy singing in their church choir.  Hmmm.  I could not find anything in my stash.  I tried searching the internet with no success.  Though I did get the idea of looking for Christmas caroling fabric - but of course all the Christmas fabric is long gone from the stores at this point.  I posted on the online quilt forum I've enjoyed for years asking if anyone had Singing or caroling figures in novelty fabric.  Fortunately a friend in Oklahoma had the perfect fabric that she shared with me.

And here is the finished quilt.  The pattern is Double Square Star from Missouri Quilt Company.  I'm sure they will have a lot of fun finding the special fabrics in the quilt.  I can't wait for the baby shower.

A Busy Spring

 Not sure why, but I frequently get a bunch of ideas at once and next thing I know I've made a  stack of I spy quilts with no idea what to do with them all.  This spring the start for all those ideas was a baby shower for one of my daughter's high school friends.  While looking for ideas for one quilt I found so many the next thing I knew I had a stack of 10 finished quilts and only one home for them.  No, I'm not going to give the new mom 10 quilts.  I've posted about several of them previously and the one for the baby shower will get it's own post.  Here are the remaining 3.

This idea came from a Jordan Fabrics video & pattern called Jagged X.  I used up a bunch of 2.5 strips and a stack of 2.5 x 4.5 rectangles for this, so there are fabric repeats but it was nice to be able to use the large stash of white novelties I've collected.  It was a fun pattern to do and Donna Jordan had a great suggestion on how to sew the diagonal without marking a line that was helpful, proving that even experienced sewers can learn new skills.  (Search Jagged X Jordan Fabrics if you wish to watch the video).  I think I am going to make this again in the future using non-novelties.  I like the effect and since there are very few seams to match it goes together quickly.

Jagged X

The idea of this next quilt also came from Jordan Fabrics though in a round about way.  They have a pattern called Chain Links which looks kind of like an Irish Chain using a 9 patch alternated with TOT to make a diagonal pattern. Since I wanted to use my standard 4" finished square, I decided to make modified 16 patches instead of 9 patches to make the math easier (1" squares) and allow me to use up some more of those scraps that always accumulate after fussy cutting.  I envisioned a long "leader/ender" project but wow, I should have done the math - 216 little 4 patches to trim. But once I started I felt obligated to finish.  This one goes in the "won't be doing that one again" list.

This next quilt is one of my favorites from the 10 made this spring.  The idea came from Lynne from an online quilt group.  We enable each other frequently with ideas.  I love the secondary zigzag pattern on this one.  Her original quilt used 4 patches and HST but I wanted to have larger pieces of novelty & fewer seams so I made a large flying geese instead.  Still pretty quick to do.