Let's make something!
Not a week can go by without some kind of creativity, right? Here we go again!
I have a wonderful dear friend Vanessa who is going to be a GRANDMA soon and I wanted to make something for her Army Ranger son and his lovely wife. Vanessa doesn't know it but this quilt is for her grand baby girl. Shhh don't tell. Maybe she doesn't read my blog!
As you may figure, I quilt and I garden the same way I scrapbook. My motto is: USE WHAT YOU HAVE ON HAND FIRST. Taking my own advice I dug out my existing stash of quilting fat quarters and scraps. Bummer. Only two of them really had pink in them. Well maybe three if you count the lavender-pink. Hmmm. Ok take those three fabrics for sure and let's use some of the other colors in those prints. Purples, greens and yellows. Now we are getting someplace. I have several other fresh greens yellows, golds and purples that will fit the bill--and USE my stash.
Design pattern? I wanted a pattern that is fast and fairly easy. Log cabins and strip quilts are fast. I looked in my pile of unfinished quilt projects. (SHH!! I didn't just say that I had those, did I?) In one of the baskets I find 8x8 pattern printouts from another vintage fabric quilt I am (still) making. I overprinted the Log in a Log log cabin variation pattern set about 7 years ago --meaning I sent it to the printer twice because I thought the first go around didn't print and I couldn't bear to toss out the printouts. Sick huh!?? But it is a GOOD thing now. Those old printouts came in handy. There were 15 of them and I copied another to make an even 16 which is baby quilt size. Boom! We have a pattern concept printed out and all our front side fabrics.
Thread. Well I don't have a huge stash of thread like some people. I only have about 15 spools period. But I did have some oddball white spools and look!! 5 spools of variegated thread. BINGO! It occurred to me that those variegated spools are not far off in colorway from the fabrics I chose. At one time about 10 years ago, I thought I might do machine embroidery. Not happening. So why not just break down and use that beautiful high-quality thread? Close enough for horse shoes and baby quilts!
At that point I started sewing and got all 16 of my blocks done. I do admit to making some errors in my fabric strip placement. But you know what? I decided not to rip them out or redo them. I left them in as is. It wasn't a sewing error. It did not affect the functionality of the quilt. It was more of a design symmetry error. And that's ok with me. Like isn't symmetrical. Baby will never notice and baby will still be warm and cozy. It's my way of admitting to the world that Kathy is not perfect. You can know that about me. It's ok. :D Like I said, close enough for horseshoes and baby quilts.
Backing fabric? Well I dug up two pieces of stash yellow/gold fabric
each 41x41 so that was plenty to work with for the back. But that is a
pretty boring back unless we have a signature block to spruce it up on
the reverse. I have a great fondness for this little Candy Box paper pieced heart pattern and I had two or three extra printed 8x8 sheets from when I made
Jenny's college quilt 5 summers ago. (I do tend to keep things don't I?
Hmmmm,) I just needed one block and since I have sewn this pattern a time--or
ten--before, it took me all of 15 minutes to make that signature block.
Batting. Now it is Sunday night and literally 5 minutes to 5pm. No time to run to a store. I have a little half-panic that I have been on such a productive roll with this that it all might hit the wall right here. I need to find batting in my tiny 3 foot sewing cupboard of stash or it might come to a screeching halt, right? I have in my sewing cupboard three bags: one is a full sized cotton batting. Hate to cut into that if I don't have to. Another batting bag is a queen sized half poly and half cotton batting. Hate to cut into that for the same reasons. Options narrowing by the second here!
In the third bag which is only half full I see the right thickness of batting. It is another cotton batting and it is the leftovers from Jenny's college quilt....Will it fit? I take it up to place it and with some zig zag kluge stitching, it will!! Relief! I don't have to cut into a full bat. And I don't have to wait and go to the store the next day before continuing my sewing spree! Whoohoo! No delay! It's so nice on the porch today and I can just keep on sewing!So I did.
When I got out the batting, I thought that I had better look into my fat quarter baskets again and consider my options for bindings. If you quilt you know that the binding can use a lot of your chosen fabric! Fat quarters usually don't cut the mustard for rendering enough binding. Oh for heaven's sake! What is that green baggie? This is meant to be! Six and a half yards of homemade binding I had left over... LEFT OVER!!! This welcome bit of leftover green goodness is from a quilt I made 4 years ago. Already strip cut, already folded and already ironed. Ready to go! Wow.
And did you just notice what happened there?
I found ALL the supplies for this sweet baby girl quilt within my own home. It was all there just waiting for me. I think this could be the "greenest" new quilt I have ever made. Now that feels great!
Creating something new and beautiful for Vanessa's grand baby gift was so much fun! And yes, I get the picture, God. This quilt was meant to be. I was meant to sew
on it this week and USE ALL THIS lovely stash while making it. It's more
than serendipity. It's daily abundance being made evident. A big thank you to the Man Upstairs for giving me that message this week.
It turned out great! And I hope the baby will be wrapped in lots of love her whole life through!
What can you make this week?
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